263 
which they called baa, and even with steel, or baa enpe, “ heavenly 
iron,” which this author thinks may have been because of its 
reflecting the celestial vault * The name appears to have survived 
in the Coptic benipe . f 
59. It would seem that the notions of the ancients respecting 
the founders of metal always bore (probably from tradition) a 
sinister aspect. It is remarkable to find among the three families 
of Shem, Ham, and JaphetJ the same symbolic representations of 
the smith-god, under the features of a grotesque and misshapen 
dwarf. Whether it is the Phtah of Memphis, when he is looked 
at specially as the demiurge ; the Patbques of Phoenicia, or his 
Adonis Pygmseon (the god who wields the hammer) ; or the 
Hephaistos of Homer, § who hides his deformity in the Isle of 
* Chabas, Etudes , &c., p. 61. + See Appendix (I). 
J Lenormant, Les pretn. Civ., p. 132. 
§ Iliad, xviii. 410, &c. ; Od., viii. 311, 330. 
