PRIMITIVE HISTORY OF THE lONIANS. 425 



called Petrse at Olympus, Athens, and otlier places ; Petra the god of 

 Orchomenos, with. Apollo, Bacchus and Zeus Patrons, Artemis and 

 Vesta Patroa, is well worthy the attention of those who attempt the 

 explanation of solar myths.-*^® Bryant takes the common word Pater 

 in its ancient religious associations into his comparison, and hints at 

 what other mythologies than the classical seem to render certain, 

 that the nam.es Zeuspater, Diespiter, Jupiter, have some important 

 relations with that of the son of Shammai. Jupiter Lapis is Abadir, 

 the title given to the stone swallowed by Saturn. It is not a little 

 remarkable to find that Ahban, the son of Abishur, is represented 

 among the deities of Assyria by Abn-il or Abn-ra, the stone god, 

 who is associated with Nergal or his grandson Acharchel, as Abadir 

 or Abishur is with Termijius or his grandson Harum, Acharchel's 

 father.-'^'^ The fable of Daphnus being metamorphozed into a rock, 

 may find its place among the petrean legends of the Onites. 



Turning to geographical connections of Abishur, we find one in 

 Themiscyra, of Pontus, near (Ense, where, according to some authors, 

 Absyrtus met his death. Apsarus, on the borders of Colchis, with a 

 river of the same name, and Psyra or Ipsyra, an island near Chios, 

 have the same original. Abdera, of Thrace, has been already alluded 

 to under the name of Abderus, one of the Locrians, who, like the 

 Abderites, carried the palm for stupidity.^^"* With it Pistura may 

 connect, as in the same region. The presence of Aptera and Miletus 

 in Crete is a reproduction of a geographical state of things visible in 

 Palestine, where Sliur and Moladah lay near the coast of the Chere- 

 thites. Apteras appears in mythology as an ancient Cretan king 

 after Cydon, whom I have supposed to be Achuzam, and, strange to 

 say, before Lapes. 



For Ahban or Achban, the son of Abishur and brother of Molid, 

 I have already suggested as an equivalent the Greek Pan, worshipped 

 in the Geshu.rite region of Paneas, the Houle of that region giving 

 the Hyle of which Pan was lord. QEneis, and Penelope, daughter of 

 Icarius, names of his mother according to different traditions, Epione 

 his wife, his identity with Esmun, the Ismenns of Apollo and Melia, 

 all tend to refer Pan to the Onam line, and point him out as Ahban, 



128 Bryant's Analysis, i. 61—76, 354—375 ; ii. 265. 



180 The similarity between the Hebrew Eben a stone, and Ahban, is worthy of note. The 

 stone Abadir or Terminus, which Saturn swallowed, was thrown up by him on Mt. Petrarchus, 

 130* There was an Abdera also in Spam, in the vicinity of Onite names. 



