THE HOmTES. 531 



find it also in tlie cliange of the -word Cliem to Copt. Chemt is 

 almost unpronounceable, and would soon become Cliebt. To return, 

 however, to Achmetha. Our English version of Ezra, perfectly- 

 trustworthy here, renders it as Ecbatana, but places in the margin^ 

 the conjectural reading, "in a coffer or chest." The Greek equiva- 

 lent of the A-ramaic Achmetha, Hebrew Chemeth, a coffer, is Kibotos, 

 and that is the name of the ark in which the scattei-ed limbs of 

 Osiris, which were brought to Chemmis, or Coptos, were placed. The 

 words Achmetha and Ecbatana are really the same, in spite of the 

 vast difference of their appearance. The change of an on into a b 

 (one of the commonest of all changes in etymology), and the affix of 

 another Persian particle denoting a place (ana), account for the 

 variation. Ecbatana, however, in Persian is Hagvfiatan, and is the 

 town of the Persian Achaemenes or Djemschid,^^ the great solar 

 hero, whom Guigniaut and others have identified Avith the Ahom' or 

 Khem of the Egyptians.^^ The sawing of Djemschid in two simply 

 represents the division of the Egyptian Empire in his reign. 

 Whether we translate Achmetha as Ecbatana or Kibotos, we still 

 find an ^gyptus in our Achumai, and in the former case identify 

 him with the head of the Achaemenian Persians. We do not 

 wonder that Cambyses, when in Egypt, claimed to be descended from 

 its ancient kings, and those of a Horite stock.^^ 



Sir Gardner Wilkinson settles at once, in few words, the question 

 which has vexed many students of Biblical antiquities-^" Whence 

 came the Caphtorim?' The majority of writers, like Hitzig, have 

 taxed their ingenuity to bring them from Crete along with the 

 Cherethites. ISTow the Cherethites of Palestine never saw Crete. It 

 was doubtless a late stage of their progress that brought a handful of 

 them, to that island. Some of the Caphtorim formed part of that 

 migration. But these matters do not concern us tit present. One 

 of the names of Coptos, as Sir Gardner Wilkinson has shewn, is Kebt- 

 Hor, a form like Ahom-ra.^* It was the Coptos of the Horites. 

 Kebt-Hor is the Caphtor of the Bible, and the earliest city of that 



SI Eawlinson's Herodotus, Book 1., Ch. 98, Note 2. See also Book iii., Ch. 30, Note 6. The 

 Persian B, for wliicli the Greeks had no real equivalent, tlieir o^yn B having the sound of V, 

 was replaced naturally enough by the labial most akin to it, M. 



33 Guigniaut, ii, 116, 189. 



33 Leuormant and Chevalier, ii. 97. 



81 Eawlinson's Herodotus, Book ii,, Ch. 15, Note 5. Also App., Book iii, Ch. S, (15th, 16tl), 

 and 17th dynasties) Note, 



