PHOENICIAN RECORD. 393 



lighter complexioned, was an Amhara, or red man. 

 The Surdi he insisted as existing, and was con- 

 tented to believe, although I did not seem to know 

 anything about them, that I was of that race. 



His fathers, Karissa said, all believed that at 

 one period the people of the whole earth were of 

 one colour and language, and that the first man, 

 like Adam, was produced from clay. Here I may 

 observe, that the Abyssinians all contend that the 

 real signification of the word Adam is first, and 

 is a form of Adu, the Geez for the numeral 

 one, and as such was once used to designate the 

 first day of the week, and the first month of 

 the year. Kadama is also another modification 

 of the same word, signifying before the first. 

 A very interesting comparison can be therefore 

 made between the Mosaical account of the Creation 

 and that which has been preserved in Manetho as 

 the Phoenician record of the same event; for the 

 name of the first mortal in the list Primogenus will 

 bear an interpretation similar to the Geez transla- 

 tion of Adam, or the first. That which makes the 

 identity more striking between the two narratives 

 is, that the name of the first woman, according to 

 Manetho, or rather the older writer, Sanchoniathon, 

 was iEon, which is the very word that is given in 

 the Genesis of the Geez Scriptures as the name of 

 our common mother, and which, by tracing it 

 through its modifications in Arabic, Hebrew, and 

 the Greek, to our own language, will be found to 



