THE SHEPHERD KINGS OF EGYPT. 225 



as at war with the Deevs of Kabil, in whom we have little diificulty 

 in seeing the Horite line of Shobal, and the Devas of Siva. He is 

 said to have married Noraea, who is really Naarah his mother.® 



The sons of Helah are not unrepresented in the geography and 

 traditions of Arabia, but I do not venture at pi'esent to trace them. 

 I may state, in concluding this sketch of the Arabian connections of 

 the family of Ashchiir, that he is himself the god called ISTasr, the 

 Mizor of Sanchoniatho and the I^isroch of Assyria, who is made the 

 same with Asshur ; and that the Harut and Marut of the Koran are 

 the Jered and Mered of 1 Chron. iv. 17, 18, whence came the Indian 

 E-udras and Maruts, and the Arabian families of Hareth and Murad. 



Assyria and Babylonia.** — The great god of Assyria was Asshiir, 

 by many identified with the son of Shem, who, according to the 

 Scripture account, founded an empire about Nineveh. I receive 

 implicitly the record of the tenth chapter of Genesis, but, at the same 

 time, feel no hesitation' in stating that the Assyrian god was not the 

 son of Shem, but the father of Tekoa. According to Damascius, 

 Assoros and Missare were the first pair in the Babylonian cosmogony 

 or theogony. Missare is the same as Naarah or ISTagarah, ayin being 

 in this case represented by 5, as in the Latin. The childi-en of these 

 deities were Anos, Illinos and Aos. Anos is Onam, and Illinos Alvan 

 of the family of Shobal, but Aos is Achuzam. It is this Aos, in the 

 forms of As and Khi, who has been taken to represent Asshur ; 

 Ashit, a name , supposed also to belong to the god, being his son 

 Achashtari or Sheth. Before Assoros and Missare, Damascius gives 

 two elementary princij)les, Dache and Dachos. He also makes 

 Dauke the wife of Aos. In these words I believe Tekoa lies. I do 

 not imagine that Ashchur ruled in Assp'ia, but that some of his 

 descendants were immigrants into that land, and carried with them 

 the name of their great ancestor some time after their expulsion from 

 Egypt. I thus agree entirely with Sir Henry Rawlinson in his 

 statement that " the human intellect first germinated on the ISTile, and 

 that then there was, at a later age, a reflux of civilization from the : 

 jSTile back to Asia." The early Asiatic civilization, however, was un- 



9 For tlie facts recorded under this head I refer to the works of Layard, Rawlinsott, &c.^'. 

 apon the momiments of Assyria and Babylonia, as well as to the chapters written by Sir HenrjiJ,- 

 Rawlinson for Professor Rawlinson's Herodotus, and the popular manuals of Bonomi an(!|3 

 ienormant and Chevalier. 



■8 Baring Gould's Legends, of Old Testament Chari^cters, 67. 



