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on hot or black is futile,” and he quotes Bochart’s proposal 
to derive it from Kama, to conceal, but wisely sets such 
aside. To quote one of his letters again- — ‘‘ (cognate 
in character to on') means to be hot ; from it are derived 
the forms Hammah, ^‘heat,” also sun, “the receptacle of 
heat.” Another noun is Hema, “ fiery anger.” This latter 
form occurs in Deuteronomy 32, 24, in connection with the 
names of snakes or some such animals.” This word is, 
according to Professor Theodores, incorrectly translated 
“ poison.” It would appear to be heat, as in hot with rage. 
The author did not know how far Semitic scholars would 
allow the next stage, which is to connect this with n^H, 
which certainly softens the first letter, giving us the meaning 
of noise and excitement ashy intoxicating drink. 
On enquiry of Dr. Birch how such a word could be con- 
nected with the Egyptian and Assyrian, he says, “ The word 
for heat is Hhamamw or Khamamu.” Then he gives gam, 
Egypt, or the black land, gam meaning in Egyptian black. 
Having obtained the first idea, heat, it was impossible to 
avoid going thus far, but there was a difficulty, namely, in 
the connecting links between Egyptian and Semitic. Still 
it is allowed that there is frequent connection, and this word 
links itself with the Hebrew both towards Egypt and Assy- 
ria. It was too early to stop here, because we have the 
province of Egypt, Chem, which would seem to have been 
the kernel of the Egyptian nationality, the nation keeping, 
as it expanded, the original name. The metropolitan name of 
Chem is Chemmis, although Thebes overshadowed it. In 
Brugsch’s “ Egypt from the Monuments,”*' we learn that the 
district was especially under the god Chem, who was the 
divine representative of heat as emanating from the sun and 
producing life in all nature — not the sun as the Glorious 
Apollo, but the sun, we might say in modern phrase, as an 
* A History of Egypt under the Pharaohs, derived entirely from the 
Monuments, by Brugsch-Bey. Murray, 1879* 
