220 THE SHEPHERD KINGS OP ECfYPT. 



These migrating peoples carried their traditions with them, — tradi- 

 tions which, most of them, refer obscurely to Egypt and Palestine, 

 but which have been generally supposed to belong to the period of 

 their settlement in the lands which, in the accepted historical period, 

 bore their names and witnessed their more complete and isolated 

 national existence. When, therefore, I find the names of ancient 

 Ashchurites occurring in the mythology or early annals of Persia, 

 Assyria, Greece, &c., I rightly jiidge that the peoples among whom 

 these traditions are foimd were emigrants from Egypt and Palestine, 

 and, in most cases, that the stocks from which they sprang descended, 

 at least in pai-t, from him who once gave his name to the town of 

 Tekoa, and exei'cised sovereignty over Lower Egypt under the name 

 of TJsecheres the First. Traces of the family of Ashchur are found ■ 

 in Ari^bia, Assyria and Babylonia, Phoenicia and parts of Northern 

 Africa. It will be remembered that reminiscences of the Horites 

 also survived in these lands. The Arabians were, as the word used 

 to denote them is translated in Exodu^s xii. 28, " a mixed multitiide," 

 numbering in their tribes representatives of almost every great 

 family of antiquity. It is in Arabia, and not in the region of the 

 Caucasus, that we must find the nearest approach to the conditions of 

 an ancient centre of population. The rulers of Babylonia seem at 

 first to have been of Horite descent, the supreme god II or Ea being 

 the great deity of the line of Shobal. Those of Assyi'ia, however, 

 were Ashchurite or Shethite. Phcenicia contained a mixture of Horites 

 ■ and Ashchurites, the latter chiefly in the family of Hepher. Carthage 

 and other regions of Northern Africa indicate, in their traditions 

 and geographical names, the presence of the descendants of the sons- 

 of Ashchur by Helah. 



Arabia. — The name of Ashchur occurs in the earliest annals of 

 Arabia. He is Ashar, or Shar, from whom came the Shariin.- This 

 tribe is also called Sachar, and is vmited with Jasm or Tasm, Wabar 

 and Themud, as one of the oldest Arabian families. The Saracens 

 tool^ their name from Ashar, although many ingenious writers have- 

 endeavoured to connect this name with that of Sarah, wife of Abra- 

 ham. In Arabia Petraea, the land of the Amalekites, and in Arabia 

 Felix, many geographical and other traces of Ashchur are to be 

 found. 



2 For this and many of the following facts in Arabian history, see Russell's Connection., 

 Sale's Koran with Preliminary Discourse, Lenormant and Chevalier's Ancient History of the 

 Bast, Palgrave's Travels iu Central Arabia, &c, _ : 



