160 THE BIRTHPLACE OP ANCIENT 



as a native of Chemmis.'* The Scythians are derived from Her- 

 cules, and the whole known world included in the Greek genealo- 

 gies."^ The Egyptian and Phoenician derivation of many Greek 

 peoples I have shown in a previous paper to he a cardinal belief of 

 the Greek historians.^^ The Romans derived themselves from the 

 Trojans, although Picus was an Assyrian king, and Saturn came from 

 Crete, and the Etruscans claimed kindred with ancient Lydia.^^ The 

 Lydians themselves, through Agron, Ninus and Belus, are derived from 

 the royal line of Assyria. ^^ The ancient Indian traditions give us 

 the name of the lonians as a people bordering on Hindoostan,^^ while 

 the Shah Nameh makes the land of the Berbers part of Persia, the 

 king of which reigns in Jerusalem.^" The shepherd invasion of Egypt 

 was an event that so nearly concerned the Hindoos that a tradition 

 concerning it is found among their writings.^^ The Germans looked 

 back to Asgard on the Don, or farther east still, ^^ and the Celts to 

 Deffrobane or Taprobane,^^ as^ the lands of their nativity as nations. 

 Evea the Phoenicians must be brought from the Red Sea,^* and the 

 Moors from Arabia,^^ long centuries before the Christian era. The 

 Irish records give a most circumstantial account of the wanderings of 

 the Hibernian family or families from the distant east, where Greeks, 

 Assyrians, Egyp'tians, Spaniards and Danes were strangely inter- 

 mingled.^^ Somewhat similar is the statement made by Hiempsal, 

 king of the Numidians, concerning the original inhabitants of northern 

 Africa.^^ These are but examples of what I have found almost 

 universally in the so-called mythical histories of ancient peoples — first, 

 a derivation from the East; and second, a drawing close together and 

 mixing up of peoples widely separated and thoroughly distinct from 

 each other at the commencement of the historical period. Were these 



** Herodot. iv., 54, and ii., 92. 

 25 Mliller's Dorians. Oxford, 1830 ; i., 490. 



36 The Pharaoh of the Exodus, &c. Canadian Journal, May, 1871, p. 36. 

 2' Livii Hist. Lib. i. Cory's Ancient Fragments, p. 76. Shuckford's Connection of Sacred- 

 and Profane History, iii., p. 53. Vide Note 10. 

 28 Herodot. i., 7. 

 2!i Wilson, Vishnu Purana, p. 194. 



30 Atkinson, Shah Namah, p. 161. Le Dabistan, Paris, Tom. i.,p. 50. 



31 Asiatic Researches, vol. iii., p. 46, p. 225, &c. 



32 Anthon's Classical Dictionary. Art. Odin. 



33 Davies, British Druids, p. 98. 



3< Herodot. vii., 89. Justin, xviii., 3, 2. 

 36 Russell's Connection, by Wheeler, ii., 248. 

 30 Keating's General History of Ireland, 86. 

 3T Salluatii Bellum Jugurth., xviii. 



