614 THE HORITES. 



But, apart from these facts, the priraary meaning of the root Hor 

 or Ohor, for the initial letter is the Hebrew Cheth, is not a cave- 

 dweller. It would be strange indeed if it v/ere. The word is an 

 adjective, and means white, pure, and hence noble. The interpre- 

 tation troglodyte is a conjectural one, derived from false historical 

 reasoning. In so far as the meaning obtains in the Hebrew language, 

 it denotes historical corruption of the original sense, such as we find 

 in our English words pagan and villain, Whig and Tory, or, better 

 still, in the v/ord Bohemian. As well might later writers pretend 

 that the original Bohemians were a horde of vagabonds, as those of 

 the present day, that the Horites were a race of miserable dwellers 

 in caves. The children of Seir, the Horite, were the white race of 

 their age, the purest of all the Japhetic families, the nobles of the 

 world's early history. Their name is a synonym for all these quali- 

 ties in many tongiies, and especially in those of the Indo-European 

 class. The Greek heros, a hero, or demi-god, with Hera the mistress, 

 as a name of Juno, the German Herr, and hence, by the conversion 

 of the aspirate into a sibilant, our English Sir, are a few of the later 

 forms of this famous word, which fills a large part of the vocabularies 

 of many languages.^* It appears in connection with the number 

 seven, representing the seven dukes of that princely family, in the 

 seven Harits, the bright ones of Sanskrit mythology ; and these, with 

 the preservation of the guttural or strongly aspirated Cheth, meet us 

 again in the seven Greek Charites, or, without it, in the seven Ilorae 

 of the same theogony. This is hardly the place yet to enter upon 

 the connection of the names of the individual Horites with those 

 which appear in the history of the Indo-European families. Still, I 

 may be permitted here to indicate some of the links that bind the 

 Scripture genealogy to the traditions of ancient nations. Lotan is a 

 root that appears in Latona, Latinus, and many other venerable 

 names ; nor is it unworthy of attention that, as Latona is the mother 

 of Horus Apollo, so Lotan's eldest son bears the identical appellation, 

 Hori. Shobal, which connects with Shibboleth, an ear of corn, is, aa 

 Hyde unwittingly shows, the Arabic Sambula, which he makes 

 equivalent to the Greek Sibulla, and also to the Latin Spica, meaning 

 the same thing.^ In Aholibamah we have, I am assured, the original 



2* Guigniaut, Beligions de I'Antiquite, iii. 833, seq. Fuerst in his valuaWe lexicon gives 

 Phrenician Hor or Clior, the meaning of which is nohlt and free. 

 ^ Hyde, Religio Veterura Persarum, 398. 



