PRIMITIVE HISTOKY OF THE lONIANS. 415 



the Ahban or Achban, wlio is given as the eldest son of Abishur, and 

 who is the same as the Egyptian Aubn-ra found at Nineveh. The 

 Irish Gobhan, with which Sir Henry Rawlinson compares the name 

 of Ninip or Bar, is almost identical in form with the Hebrew 

 Achban. The Alexandrian Chronicle mentions Thutas as a descend- 

 ant of Ninus, and he, I can hardly doubt, is Jadag, the same as 

 Diodas or Adodus, who is connected with Astarte, as Anu is found 

 to be on some Babylonian monuments. The name of the wife of 

 Anu, which is Anata, would lead one to suppose that in Babylonia 

 as well as in Egypt, Onam and his grandson Jonathan were some- 

 times confounded. Sir Henry Rawlinson has suggested some rela- 

 tionship between the Anu or Dis of Urclioe and the Dis, Hades, 

 Orcus, Pluto or Plutus of Classical Mythology .^^ Urchoe I have 

 already associated with Jerach-meel ; Anu gives us Onam ; Hades 

 and Dis are two forms of the name Jadag ; and Pluto or Plutus, the 

 Indian Paulastya, is Peleth of the same line. Eeminiscences of the 

 latter are I think to be found in the name or epithet Baladan ; in 

 Belochus, the last of the Dercetides or family of Atargatis ; and in 

 the mythic Polydemon a descendant of Semiramis, who was a 

 warrior in the army of Phineus.®^ 



I can hardly imagine that Shammai, Sem or Semempses ruled or 

 lived in Babylonia, and would be disposed, therefore, to suppose that 

 Zames and Shamas appear in the traditional and monumental records 

 of the Chaldseans merely as ancestors ; yet Ishmi-Dagon, with his 

 sons Shamas-Iva and Ibil-anuduma, must relate to the god Shamas 

 and to Iva, son of Anu, who is called Misharu, a name not unlike 

 Amchura or Abishur. ^^ As for the later Shamshu, who follows 

 Hammurabi or Khammui-abi, he is, I have little doubt, Shema, the 

 son of Hebron or Chebron, who married into the line of Onam.^* 

 Hebron we shall yet meet with, like his father Mareshah, as the 

 eponym of many rivers, such as the Chaboras, Hebrus, Tiber and 

 Severn, his father nammg the Arish, Marsyas, and several others, 

 and superseding the ancient Hebrus of his son by the more modern 

 Haritza. Mareshah himself is the Merodach who first appears in 

 the reign of Hammurabi.®^ It is also worthy of note that Ham- 



9176. 



82 Du Pin, Bibliotheque Uaiverselle dcs Historiens, Amsterdam, 1708, p. 211. Ovidii 

 Metamorpli, v. 85. 

 *3 Rawlinson's Herodotus, App. Book i. Essay x. Anu-duma must be Jonathan. 

 «* 1 Chron. ii. 43. 

 ^5 Itr. George Smith's Early History of Babylonia, Trans. Soc. Bib. Arcliffiol, Voi. 1. Part 1. 



