PRIMITIVE HISTORY OP THE lONIANS. 401 



etymology of the word I have no time to deal, forther than to state 

 that the Scripture and Greek names, Beth-Shemesh and Heliopolis, 

 cleai'ly exhibit its solar character. The Onites, like the other mem- 

 bers of the Horite family, were pre-eminently a solar people. As for 

 Onam himself, he was what the mythologies call a twice born hero. 

 We have found him connected with two lines. " Jerachmeel had 

 another wife whose name was Atarah, and she was the mother of 

 Onam." But it is not said that Jerachmeel was his father, while he 

 is counted as the youngest son of Shobal, the Horite. The genealo- 

 gies of Onam are given in the following table down to the fourth 

 generation from him, ascending no higher than his reputed parents. 

 The 2nd chapter of 1st Chronicles gives us twenty generations in one 

 line of his descendants, but on the consideration of them beyond the 

 fourth I forbear at present to enter. Yet I desire to call attention 

 to these twenty generations as evidence of the great importance of 

 the family of this remarkable man.^^ 



Jerachmeel = Atarah = Shobal. 



Onam. 



Seled. Aj)paim. Acliban. Mohd. Peleth. Zaza. 



The first point to engage our attention is the peculiarity which 

 appears in the parentage of Onam. I am convinced that a passage 

 in the Phcenician history of Sanchoniatho refers to this. There it is 

 stated that Ilus — whom, in my paper on the Horites, I have identi- 

 fied with Alvan or Reaiah (II or Ra), the eldest son of Shobal — 

 made war upon Ouranos (Jerachmeel), and drove him out of his 

 kingdom, taking from him Anobret (the beloved of Ann), a well- 

 beloved concubine, whom he gave in marriage to Dagon, in whose 

 house Demaroon, her son by Ouranos, was born.^^ There is much 

 confusion in this passage, as in all the statements of Sanchoniatho ; 

 but the main facts bear the impress of truth. Tlie lunar associations 

 of the name Ouranos favour its connection Avith the lunar Jerah- 



^5 1 have not been able to pursue my investigations in tliis line mueli beyond the fourth 

 generation, and cannot, therefore, tell in whom it is to terminate. I should not be astonished 

 to find that Cyrus is the goal to which it points. It may, however, be a record of a Gentile 

 family in Palestine, some of the" members of wliich occupied the throne of Israel. 



8s Sanchoniatho's Phoenician History, by Cumberland. 



