294 THE COPTIC ELEMENT IN 



the orio-inal root. The Assyrian BiLU consists undoubtedly of the well- 

 known Ilu, the name of the supreme god of Babylonia, and thus of 

 all deities, and a softened form of the Coptic article. The analogy 

 of EiT and BIT would aid in coming to this conclusion; but stronger 

 evidence for the truth of it is furnished by the Hebrew. In that 

 language the name of the Most High God is AL, while the word 

 corresponding to Bilu, meaning lord, and applied to neighbouring 

 gods, is BAAL. In parts of Arabia, strange to say, the article seems 

 to have been, at least for a time, knowingly retained, although the 

 Arabic al or Himyaritic ha were at hand to supplant it. Thus, we 

 find Pliny, about the 70th year of the Christian era, mentioning 

 the Thimanei,^* an inland people of the peninsula ; while Agathar- 

 chides, who wrote more than two hundi'ed years earlier, described 

 •them as the Buthemanei.^® Still, it is to the Indo-European languages 

 that we miist chiefly look for traces of this venerable prefix. A 

 Semitic root meaning strong, and, in a secondary sense, fortified, ia 

 SHADAD, SHEDID. Hence came the Hebrew, or rather Philis- 

 tine, word ASHDOD, which is the same as the name given to 

 Egyptian Babylon, Fostat. Although the Pishdadian line of Persia 

 has been supposed by many to owe its name to a root of similar 

 form denoting jiisi^ce, there is much reason to believe that "the good 

 'old rule" of their time may have developed justice out of strength. 

 At any rate there is little doubt that the Coptic article is as much 

 part of the name Pishdad, which Hushang first bore, as it is of his 

 other Persian name Pushang, which the Arabs harden into Fushang. 

 Old Creek dropped the reduplicated t of the Egyptian Fostat in 

 Fastu, the Homeric form of Astu, the city, which we have the 

 authority of Didorus Siculus for connecting with the Egyptian town.'" 

 From this old word, originally meaning the strong or the fortified, 

 and thence, by syntactical convertibility the strong and fortified place, 

 such as all cities were in ancient times, have come, through different 

 channels, our English words state and city. The former we owe, not 

 to the Latin status, but to the German Stadt ; and the latter comes 

 doubtless from a simpler form of the Latin civitas such as we find iaa 

 the Spanish ciicdad, or better still the Portuguese Cidade, a word as 

 like the old ASHDOD as we may reasonably expect so modern a 

 term to resemble so ancient a one. It is interesting to note that 



S' Id. vi., 32. 



'8 Agatharchides, de Mare RubrOj Hudson,- 57, &c. 



» Djod. Sic. i., 16. Vide et. Strab. i., ix., 15. 



