Dec. 1861.] 



The Origin of Brahmanhm. 



277 



too extravagant to belong to human beings. Moreover, if the 

 Pagans could render Japhet into Jupiter or Zeus ; Noah into 

 Saturn or Chronos, and Naphtuhim into Neptunus ; it is quite as 

 probable they would give the appellation of Bacchus to Misraim, 

 whose grand father taught mankind the use of the grape (Gen. IX 

 20. In like manner Misraim was called Osiris by the Egyptians. 

 Although he figures so conspicuously under this designation, in 

 the Egyptian religion, it is not a necessary consequence that Mis- 

 raim himself abandoned the simple faith of his fathers. In the 

 progress of a long reign, he may have won the affections of his 

 subjects so considerably, as to have been elevated to the dignity of 

 a deity, and had idols, and statues erected to him by the priests, 

 at that time the most idolatrous in the world, and been placed at 

 the head of their system ;* thus we find that Arbelus or Belus, 

 son of Nimrod, was among the first who was honored by his sub- 

 jects with the title of Deity.t The name of Misraim preserved in 



* History furnishes examples of foreigners, both by birth and reli- 

 gion, being raised to the supreme power, and held in high veneration 

 after their decease. The Parthians, after their separation from the 

 Seleucidae, remembered with affection their Greek conquerors of former 

 times, In the legends of some of my Parthian coins appears the fol- 

 lowing in Greek " The King of Kings, the Great, the Just, 



the Beneficent, the illustriously born, the Lover of the Greeks." Scipio 

 was invited by the Spaniards he conquered to become their King. The 

 Preetor Scaevola Governor of Asia, had festal games instituted in his 

 memory by the grateful Asiatics. Bernadotte was confirmed King of 

 Sweden by the voice of the people. 



Whether Misraim founded the Egyptian religion, whether he became 

 a convert to it, or whether adhering to the simple patriarchal religion, 

 he employed that of his newly acquired or adopted country as a politi- 

 cal engine, are points which will probably ever remain in obscurity. 

 For my own part, as the text indicates, I am inclined to adopt the last 

 supposition. Hestiaeus quoted by Josephus says : " Such of the priests 

 as were saved from Babel took away with them the sacred vessels of 

 Jupiter," a testimony to very early apostacy among the immediate de- 

 scendants of Noah. 



■f- And among the Greeks, Ganymede, Cleitus, Tithonus, Orion, 

 Castor and Pollux, Ino, and Hercules were made deities during their 

 existence as human beings, 



