74 THE EASTERN" ORIGIN OF THE CELTS. 



The epcnym of the Celts is in the Bible called Gilead ; not he who 

 ■was a descendant of the patriarch Joseph, but a much older person- 

 age, who named the region on the Jordan long years before the birth 

 of that son of Israel.^* The genealogies of the Gentile and of the 

 Israelite Gilead are confounded in our present text of the book of 

 Chronicles.^ Etymologically, Gilead is the hard, rough, stony region,'^ 

 suiting admirably the character of the place thus named, and accord- 

 ing with two tracts, a smaller and a greater, to which it was trans- 

 ferred, Homer's " Rocky Calydon," and " Caledonia stern and wild."' 

 The Gileadites were represented in the region of the Euphrates by 

 the Chaldeans or Kaldai, a tribe — -the leading tribe it is said — -of the 

 great Accad family.^ Originally a mountain race, they came from the 

 borders of Armenia, in which country Khaldi, or Gilead himself, 

 was the supreme god.^ . The ancient British word Culdee, like 

 Chaldean, is not primarily a religious, but an ethnic designation. 

 Galatian and Celt are two later forms of the name Gilead. It is to 

 be remarked, however, that Gilead has, for its third literal con- 

 stituent, the Hebrew Ayin, which, although frequently rendered by 

 a vowel, is, in transliteration into the Greek, and into some of the 

 languages of the cuneiform inscriptions, generally represented by g^ 

 or some similar letter.® Gilead thus becomes Gilgad, and appears in 

 this form in Calicut, Calycadnus, Chalcedon. The emphasizing of 

 this third letter weakened, in certain cases, the power of the final dt 

 or t, so that Cilicia, Chalcis, Galloeci, and similar terms, arose out of 

 it. Chalcitis, Chalcidice, and like words, however, serve to lead 

 back to the original root- 

 Thus far I had proceeded in my work of investigation some time 

 ago, but had despaired of arriving at anything definite, for want of 

 further materials, believing that the Bible genealogies of Gilead 

 related to the Israelite of that name. This belief was staggered 

 when I studied the list of Babylonian monarchs discovered by Mr. 

 George Smith, and utterly overthrown when further investigation 

 gave me the results which I now set forth. An early Babylonian 

 king, about whom at present nobody knows anything but the name, 

 was XJlam Bury as.'' Ulam is so rare a name, as anyone who consults 



1* Gen. xxxi. 47. Jacob made use of an existing name. Gen. xxxvil. 25. 

 8 Compare Numb. xxvi. 30, and 1 Chron. vii. 17. 



* Gesenii Lexico in loc. 



* Rawlinson's Herodotus, App. Book 1, Essay xi. 



* Anthon's Clas. Diet., Art. Chaldaea. Rawlinson's Herodotus, App. Book 1, Essay %.- 



* Vide proper names in Septuagint and Babylonian tablets, 

 ' Records of the Past, Vol, v. p. 79. 



