146 
NATURE 
[JUNE 12, 1902 
his identity, not with a rain-god, but with the sun-god 
Ra in Egypt and Marduk in Mesopotamia. We cannot 
follow Mr. Hewitt here in all his derivations, because it 
seems that he is influenced too much by the similarity of 
the sounds of roots and not by the probability of their 
relationship. Thus, on p. 27, he speaks of ‘ Rama, 
meaning ‘the darkness’ in Sanskrit and ‘the heights’ in 
Hebrew.” The fact is that “Rama” does not mean 
“heights” in Hebrew, but Rdémdadh does mean “high” ; 
even so, however, it is not in any way related to the 
Sanskrit Rama, and the words Rama and Ramah must 
not be compared in this way. The second essay, which 
deals with the primitive village, is more interesting, and 
contains a number of original remarks which show that 
Mr. Hewitt has thought out the subject with care ; but 
in the third we again touch serious philological difficulties. 
Mr. Hewitt has followed the speculations of many 
masters, and has in consequence made a good many 
mistakes. Thus, Isis was not a star-goddess originally, 
but her soul went to the star Sept, and the name Ast (Isis) 
has no connection with Accadian at all. In this, as in 
many other places, Mr. Hewitt has adopted Prof. 
Hommel’s views, which are not generally accepted either 
by Assyriologists or Egyptologists. At this time of day 
it is little less than foolish to quote Lenormant’s works 
on Accadian, for it is now well known that his skill in 
reading cuneiform of any sort was very small, and that 
his imagination and boldness of assertion were very 
great. On p. 292 we have an extraordinary set of equa- 
tions, e.g. Tur, the pole=taurus=Syriac /awrd, a bull= 
Hebrew sur, an ox=Tyre! In the fourth essay a 
number of astronomical myths are described, and Mr. 
Hewitt lays down the theory that the primitive year con- 
tained two seasons, that it was followed by one of three 
seasons, and that mankind eventually made use of a 
year of five seasons. He supports his theory by means 
of a large number of impossible philological comparisons, 
and says, among other remarkable things, that the 
constellation Leo 
“was the Masu or Moses, who, as the pillar of cloud and 
fire, led the star-worshippers to the top of Mount Nebo, 
consecrated to the planet Mercury, the great Nabi or 
prophet of the Semites” (p. 352). 
We do not intend to weary the reader with further 
extracts from these essays, for the passages already 
quoted will explain Mr. Hewitt’s methods, and serve to 
show how philology is made to run riot in them; the 
other remarks on the volumes generally we shall make 
after we have briefly described the contents of the work 
“History and Chronology of the Myth-making Age.” 
The period of time which Mr. Hewitt discusses in this 
portly volume begins with the “ first dawn of civilisation ” 
and ends at the time when the sun entered Taurus at 
the vernal equinox between 4000 and 5000 B.C., his 
“pivot date” being B.C. 4200. About this time, he says, 
it ceased to be a universally observed national custom 
to record history in the form of historic myths (sc), and 
national history began to pass out of the mythic stage 
into that of annalistic chronicles recording the events of 
the reigns of kings and the deeds of individual heroes, 
statesmen and law-givers. It would be extremely interest- 
ing to know why B.C. 4200 was fixed upon as the pivot 
NO. 1702, VOL. 66] 
date, for there is reason to believe that the making of 
myths did not cease at that period. For all practicab 
purposes Mr. Hewitt’s book on the myth-making age is 
divided into three parts, which treat of the age of pole- 
star worship, the age.of lunar-solar worship and the age 
of solar worship. These are followed by four appendices, 
which give a list of the Hindu stars, versions of the 
“House that Jack built,” the legend of Ino and a dis- 
sertation on Melgareth. The section on pole-star wor- 
ship treats of the year of two seasons and of five-day 
weeks, the year of three seasons and of five-day weeks, 
and the year of three seasons and of six-day weeks ; 
the first of these years, Mr. Hewitt asserts, was measured 
by the movements of the Pleiades and the solstitial sun, 
the second by Orion, and the third by the eel-god. 
The second section treats of the epoch of the three- 
year cycle and of the nine-day weeks, of the year of the 
horse’s head of eleven months and eleven-day weeks ; 
and the third section discusses the fifteen-months year 
of the sun-god of the eight-rayed star and the eight- 
days week, the years of seven-day weeks and seventeen 
and thirteen months, the years of eighteen and twelve 
months, and of five- and ten-day weeks. In proof of the 
views which he holds on all these difficult subjects, Mr. 
Hewitt quotes largely from a great many works by 
authorities of varying trustworthiness ; and he reproduces 
an appalling number of equations, a few of which, taken 
singly, are correct, but which, when looked at as a whole, 
are erroneous and misleading, and confuse the mind of 
the reader. Thus, on p. 29, we are told that Zeus isa 
form of the North Pole god Tan, that Tan = the Creto- 
Phoenician (szc) I-tan-os = the Accadiamw I-tan-a (szc), 
and the ‘‘tree mothers” of Accad, China, Germany and 
other countries are declared to have a common origin 
and to typify the same things. Statements of this kind 
are difficult to understand, at least when their writer 
intends the reader to believe that the ideas concerning 
the subjects of them were common to all peoples of 
antiquity, irrespective of the distance of their countries 
from each other. Moreover, they make it exceedingly 
difficult for any student to accept the generalisations 
which they express. There are, of course, many beliefs 
and conceptions which are common to all races of man- 
kind, which are on the same level of civilisation, but there 
are large numbers of others which are not, and there are 
many which belong to a particular race, or to a people 
who live under peculiar geographical and physical 
circumstances. The cosmogony and theology of moun- 
tain races are different from those of the dwellers in 
plains, and those of the Semites differ from those of the 
Aryan nations. Another point is also to be considered 
in connection with the matter. Mr. Hewitt quotes 
authorities on the Chinese, Accadian, Sanskrit, Baby- 
lonian, Assyrian, Egyptian, Dravidian, and numbers of 
other languages, and without meaning to be disrespectful 
to him or to belittle his work, we must say that we have 
no belief in the philological omniscience which can 
decide about such abstruse questions as he formulates 
and answers. Men like Wellhausen and Kuenen have 
shown us what can be done in elucidating ancient 
religious beliefs by means of a knowledge of a group of 
cognate languages, but in our opinion no man is to be 
