324 
from Asia Minor, and their first associations would m that case 
familiarize them with the idea of the sun setting in the Western 
Ocean. From their geographical position, the persons we ca 
Orientals (by which I mean those dwelling at the eastern end 
of the Mediterranean), would observe the sun going into the 
waters at night, but not rising from them in the morning, a 
we islanders do. The sun-worshippers it would seem, as I h e 
pointed out in a paper in the British Archeological Journal 
for March, 1873, were in the habit of worshipping the i sun 
when he appeared on the tops of the mountains. I do not think 
the peoplef as a rule, ascended, but only the priest, who was 
seen enveloped in his glory. Indeed, it is found that the 
inscription on the Moabite stone contains an expression 3>pn, 
(daybreak)* not known in the Hebrew writings the nearest 
approach to which is, “like morning spread . upon the 
mountains,” described by the same writer as a time ;°f dark- 
ness : i. e. idolatry— their idolatry being sun-woiship.t Hence 
such a person as l have assumed would see a similarity in this 
common act of the sun and the river, the two agents through 
whose means the earth was fertilized. , . , f 
8 The river, then, would become in particular an object o 
veneration. Now, with regard to Egypt, where the sun and 
serpent were both worshipped, let us take an idea from the 
description of a late popular writer as to the appearance ot the 
Nile (I prefer such an opinion to that of an 
of science or any person having an idea to clothe). He 
describes the view from a lofty summit thus: “A vast level 
panorama, bounded by the chains of the Arabian and Libyan 
hills, lay spread before us, diversified with every shade of 
ereen and watered by the Nile; creeping like a silveiy 
serpent, through the green savannahs.” J That which meets 
the eye of the traveller now, so far as nature is concerned, met 
it then and, in the eyes of the devotee, the river was a giant 
god of which the serpent was but a symbol. Moreover, while 
ft has been frequently suggested that the annual renewal of the 
serpent’s skin would be construed by the observers of nature 
into a renewal of life, and by inference into the p»peN «■ 
immortality, it has never, I think, been pointed out that this 
* W. P. Walsh, quoting Professor Davidson. 
t Warburton, The Crescent and the Cross. It is remarkable that the 
Hebrew word for green vegetation, pin (Cant. i. 15) is almost identical with 
the name'of the goddess Ranno, goddess of harvest, &c.-See p. 2. (W. R. 
Cooper.) 
