RELIGIONS AND CIVILIZATION. 171 



hypothesis. If the Arkite theory, upon which Bryant spent so much 

 labour, he found untenable, because based upon a forced interpretation 

 of every rite and myth of the ancients as a reminiscence of theNoachian 

 deluge, as untenable must the theory be which makes a Babel of myth- 

 ology by seeking to harmonize it with a reminiscence of what might 

 have occurred in that ancient seat. Even more unintelligible is the 

 latter theory, inasmuch as Nimrod, the great hero of whom all nations 

 are supposed to have had a grateful remembrance, was, in all proba- 

 bility, posterior to the dispersion, or at least contemporary with it. 

 Moreover, we have found that the ancient traditions regard Babylonia, 

 not as the primitive seat of empire, but as occupying a very secondary 

 position, receiving its religion by way of the Erythraean sea, and its 

 royal line from Egypt. ^^ The arts and mythology of Chaldsea are gen- 

 erally allowed to be derived from some other source.'^ 



The great centre to which all the tribes of men gradually converged 

 was Egypt. Whether Noah himself moved westward and planted 

 vines in Hebron, which was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt, 

 as the Rabbins inform us,*^" will be a difficult question to answer ; but 

 there can be little doubt that the great majority of his descendants, or 

 at least those of them whose life history, in its mythical or accepted 

 forms, cares to record, did pass through Palestine and Arabia on their 

 way to the banks of the Nile. One of the earliest seats of civilization 

 I believe to have been what M. de Lanoye calls " the opulent pentapolis 

 of the Jordan ;" ^'^ and the earliest of all legends, which many have 

 confused with the story of the Noachian flood, I am convinced arose 

 from the overthrow of the Cities of the Plain. Here, or in the region 

 between the Nile and the Dead Sea, I unhesitatingly place the deluges 

 of Deucalion and Ogyges, with -the accompanying events that form an 



8* Oarrnes, mentioned by Berosus, who came by way of the Red Sea, brought letters and 

 religion with him to Babylonia. Belus, brother of Agenor, and father of iEgyptus, connects 

 Babylonia, as its first monarch, with Phrenicia and Egypt. 



95 Baldwin, Prehistoric Nations, 186. Rawliuson's Herodot., App. Bk. i., Essay vi., sec- 

 16, &c. 



9® Ritter, Comparative Geography of Palestine, iii., 297. 



*i "Since the opulent Pentapolis of the Jordan had sunk in the bituminous gulf of the Dead 

 Sea, the most compact centres of permanent population, existing between Egypt and Upper 

 Asia, were the maritime establishments which the Cushites of Canaan, driven from the shores 

 of the Erythraean Gulf by convulsions of the soil, had founded upon the Syrian coast ; the forti- 

 fied cities which the Chetas (Hittites) had built between the Orontes and the Euphrates ; and 

 lastly. Babel, in the land of Sengar, where a celebrated temple of the Sun and great navigable 

 river, attracted caravans and flotillas of pilgrims and traders from all directions." Kameses 

 the Great, 117. 



