LANGUAGES OF THE INDO-EUROPEAN FAMILY. 407 



exerted in Europe by Arabian culture during tlie palmy days of 

 Mabommedanism. Few, however, have recognized the fact that the 

 AL of Alexander is as truly Arab as the AL of Alkoran, or known 

 that the oriental form of this name is SECANDER or ISCANDER. 

 The province of Hejer or Bahrein in Eastern Arabia on the Persian 

 Gulf is also called LAHSA, a word consisting of the common 

 geographical name AHSA and the article EL, and from which 

 Ptolemy called its inhabitants lolisitae." A precisely similar case 

 is that of the old Pelasgian word Larissa, which is found in Syria, 

 Assyria, and the south of Palestine. In every case the initial L is a 

 remnant of the Arabic article, as appears most plainly in the Larissa 

 that marks the boundary between Palestine and Egypt, which is a 

 Greek form of EL ARISH.*^ The ancient Issa in the Adriatic 

 becomes the modem Lissa by an inversion of the process. Hitzig 

 connects the Philistine town Jamnia, partly on the authority of 

 SteiDhanus of Byzantium, with the Greek eiarnene, and the latter 

 word with leimon, limne.^ That he is right in his last connection 

 none can doubt, the difference between the words connected being 

 simply the Arabic article. I am also prepared to say that he is right 

 in his first connection, and that, pushing it a little farther, he might 

 have arrived at an ancient abode of the Minyans and a prototype of 

 Lemnos as well. Similar pairs of words are Academus and Lace- 

 daemon, Esbus and Lesbos, the Russian province of Astrachan on 

 the Caspian, the Indian Satrugna, brother of Rama, and the Laestry- 

 gones of the Homeric story. As a confirmation of the connection 

 between Esbus and Lesbos it is worthy of note that the town Mad- 

 mannah or Madmen of Moab, which lay near to the former, gave its 

 name to Methymna, one of the chief towns of the latter. Antiphates, 

 king of the Laestrygones, refers us not only to Amphiaraus, grand- 

 son of an Antiphates, with whom the Arab Moafer connects, but 

 also to an Alcmaeon line reproducing the Lokmans of the East, he 

 himself deriving his name from the oriental Netophath. The 

 brother of Satrugna is Lakshman. Plutarch in his Hellenica informs 

 us that Labradeus a name of Jupiter in Caria, also applied as 

 Labranda to a town of that region, was derived from labrus or lahra 

 signifying a battle axe in the Lydian language.^" Now it is to be 

 remembered that Lydia has very decided Arabian connections. 



« Genesis Elucidated, by John Jervis-White Jervis, A.B., Trin. Coll., Dublin. London, 

 1852. p. 3SS. 

 <8 Hitzig, Urgescliiclite und Mytttologie der PhUistaer. Leipzig, 1845. p. 116, 

 « Id. 128, 60 Plutarch. Hellenica ii., 301, 



