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MARTIN L. EOUSE, ESQ., B.L., ON 



and their soldiers, together with those " of the Gimmirda, of 

 the Medes, and of the Minni, had captured the city of Kisassu."* 

 But Media, as all know, lies to the north-east of Assyria ; and it 

 is generally agreed, and can be readily proved from cuneiform 

 literature, that the Minni stretched from Media to the north of 

 Assyria, while Kar-kassi was probably a town of the Kassi, who 

 inhabited the chain of mountains east of Assyria and Babylonia ; 

 but whether it was there, or, as Professor Sayce thinks, in 

 Armenia, it is manifest that the Gimmiraa had already been in 

 the region just north-east of Assyria long enough to make 

 friends with divers nations there ; and, in the absence of evidence 

 to the contrary, we may reasonably infer that even then it was 

 their proper home. And, bearing in mind that our genealogy 

 gives Ashkenaz as the eldest son of Gomer, when v, e find in 

 a Biblical prophecy, Ashkenaz as a " kingdom " grouped in con- 

 federacy with "Ararat " (or Armenia)^ " and Minni " and with the 

 kingdoms " of the Medes,"^ we are sure that the eldest branch of 

 Gomer's descendants, at all events, formed at the time of the 

 prophecy (about B.C. 600) a settled state in that very region, and 

 had not been driven out of Asia. Their site is further fixed for 

 us in the first century A.D. by Josephus, who says, " Of the three 

 sons of Gomer, Ashkenaz founded the Ashkenazians, who are 

 now called by the Greeks Eheginians ;"§ and, since there are only 

 two places recorded in ancient geography whose inhabitants 

 could have borne this name — Ehegium in southern Italy and 

 Ehagae in north-western Media, and the former was a city 

 that had been founded by the Greeks themselves, the latter 

 must be the city intended — a place important enough to bestow 

 a well-known tribal name, for it was the greatest in all Media. 



Again, the Armenians liave always declared that they are 

 descended from Haik, a son of Thogarmah and grandson of 

 Gomer,|| while their northern neighbours the Georgians, whose 

 language resembles theirs, maintain that they themselves are 

 descended from a brother of his named Karthlos (their own 

 name for themselves being Karthlians), and further that the 

 Lesghians, who live just on the other side of the Caucasus and 

 whose Grecian name was liCgai, are sprung from a third 

 brother called Legis.lF But more, Josephus, who in his Greek 



* Sayce, Higher Critics, 485. t The Assyrian " Urardhu." 



X Jer. li, 27, 28. 



§ Ant. I, vi, 1, Dindorf 's Greek text, which I quote throughout. 

 II ^"0- ^U''^- "Armenia." 



if 13ryce, Trartscaucasia and Ararat, 104 {rp. Eng. C)jd. "Caucasus," and 

 Kiepert's Atlas Antiquus). 



