1850.] Brdhminical Conquerors of India. 5 



nations were the Phoenicians ; and through them the Carthaginians ; the 

 Hebrews ; the Greeks generally ; the Etruscans and through them 

 the Romans. As to other nations more ancient than these, who may 

 indirectly have either participated with the Egyptians in their know- 

 ledge of the science of war, or have gained experience of it by subse- 

 quent collision with them, we shall have hereafter a few brief words to 

 say, more however in the way of speculation than enquiry." 



To this position was added, another elicited in the course of an 

 investigation, into the history of the use of the horse, an animal of 

 eastern origin as now acknowledged by all naturalists ; the antiquity 

 of the use of this creature in Arabia was established,* chronologically, 

 by the dates (2337 and 2136 B. C.) given on astronomical calculation 

 to the book of Job ; and historically, at a period perhaps anterior to 

 any extant conventional base for calculation, by reference to the Hyma- 

 rite rock inscriptions, found in the old seats of the tribe of Aws in 

 Hadramaut by Lieut. Welsted (A. D. 1843), and translated by the 

 Rev C. Forster.f Now as Wilkinson, " the trustworthy and accurate," 

 as Chevalier Bunsen calls him, gave for the era of the first Egyptian 

 king, no more than 2320 B. C, the question of comparative civilization 

 at the period in Egypt and Arabia struck me as worth attention. On 

 the one hand was an astronomical date assignable to the era of a 

 people (of Uz), who had already a literature, and a knowledge, however 

 patriarchal, of the arts ; — and beside it, an historical record of un- 

 known antiquity, descriptive of the private life and military habits of 

 a race, greatly advanced in the luxuries of the one, and the experi- 

 ence of the other. On the contrary it was set, on the authority of 

 Josephus,J a date for the existence of the oldest known founder of 

 Egyptian civilization, posterior to that of Job. Without skill, or 

 opportunity in this country, to examine further, I could only judge 

 inferentially from the facts before me, and, in showing the futility of 

 Col. Hamilton Smith's position that the Hyksos, or shepherd kings, 

 brought the horse to the Egyptians, who bestowed the knowledge of 

 him on the Arabians, I observed as follows : — 



* Reveries, B. VII. 



t Forster's Geography of Arabia, Vol. II. 



The argument is appended, or written, without amendment of the dates.— H. T. 

 % Wilkinson, M. L. C. Vol. I. ch. II. 



