is much genuine history contained in this curious tradition, which connects together Egypt and Phenicia in a manner not unlike that of the old mythologic narrative of Sanchoniatho. The Phenicians, the Anakim, the Philistim, the Palli, and the Egyptian Shepherd-kings, were all the same people. They were of the line neither of Canaan nor of Mizraim, but descendants of Cush. They were the founders of the first universal empire at Babel: and, under the name of Scuths or Goths, they overran Palestine and Egypt, and more than once acquired the empire of Asia. Their great god was Cadam or Buddha: hence Cadmús is indifferently said to have been an Egyptian and a Phenician. He was both, so far as his worship was established in either country by the adventurous Palli; but no further: for, wherever the Scythians penetrated, there we find the veneration of Cad mus. : According to the Hindoos, Buddha or Cadam travelled over the whole world and they give much the same account of Siva and Deo-Naush. The Greeks and Egyptians tell similar tales of Osiris and Bacchus and Cronus. All these relate, not to any actual travels of Noah, but to the diffusion of idolatry in the infancy of the world; when each colony travelled under the protection of the great father, whose oracular image was borne before them in his consecrated ark. Now, as Cadmus was the same as Cadam, he is also said to have been an eminent wanderer: and we find him in many dif ferent countries, besides Phenicia, Greece, and Egypt. Thus we are told, that in Samothrace he was initiated into the Cabiric Mysteries and was married to Harmonia: yet he is also described as having espoused her at the lake Tritonis in Africa. He was likewise in Thrace: and he even became the king of the Illyrians, among whom he had a son called Illyrius.3 All this is nothing more than might have been expected: for Thrace, Samothrace, and Illyricum, were equally settlements of the Scuths, Palli, or Pelasgi; who were indeed the ancestors of a considerable part of the 2 tries, bringing Phenix and Cadmus from Egyptian Thebes to Phenician Tyre. Euseb. Chron. p. 27. Syncell. Chronog. p. 152. This subject will be resumed hereafter, book vi. c. 5. 2 Diod. Bibł. lib. v. p. 329, 323. Nonn. Dionys. lib. xiii. p. 372. 3 Apollod. Bibl. lib. iii. c. 4. § 1. c. 5. § 4. Strab. Geog. lib. xiv. p. 680. : Greeks. Hence we find the Getæ reckoned among the Thracians; who spread themselves far beyond the narrow limits of geographical Thrace, and who were so numerous that Herodotus reckons them as nationally inferior only to the Hindoos.' Nor was this assertion thrown out at random. The Getæ are undoubtedly the Goths: and the Goths are no less undoubtedly the Scuths, Scythians, or Chasas; one of whose principal settlements was in Cashgar and Bokhara. The same god therefore, whom they called Cadam or Buddha or Saca, was equally worshipped by the Chasas of Phenicia, Egypt, Cashgar, Thrace, and Illyricum. By the Greeks Cadmus is made only a sojourner in Thrace but the Thracian nobility, who formed the military caste and who thus subjected the lower ranks of people probably of Japhetic origin, esteemed him their great father, worshipping him principally, and adjuring him alone. This is what Herodotus says of the Thracian god, whom he calls Mercury or Hermes: but the Gothic Hermes was Wud or Woden; and both Woden and the Grecian Hermes were equally the same as Buddha or Hermaya or Cadam. As Cadmus was a Phenician deity; so, when Carthage was built, his name and worship were carried to the new settlement. The city was called Cadmèa; and the people, Cadmèans or Cadmonites. There was likewise a Cadmèa in Colchis below the high country of Armenia, in which there was a notion that Cadmus established himself: but the reason was this; the Colchians were a colony of the Indo-Scythæ, and Cadam was their chief deity. A town of the same name occurs in Cilicia, and near it another called Sida: and we find, that Phenix the brother of Cadmus was fabled to have come into that country while in search of his sister Europa. Cadmèa was so called from Cadam, and Sida from the goddess Sida or Sita, who in the mythology of Hindostan is the same as Ida or Ila or Parvati or Argha. She was venerated under a kindred appellation in Britain: for the circle of the Buddhic temple of Stonehenge is called the circle of Sidee, while Sidee herself is de Herod. Hist. lib. v. c. 3. 2 Herod. Hist. lib. v. c. 7. 3 Eustath. in Dionys. Perieg. ver. 195. Sil. Ital. lib. i. ver, 6. * Mos. Choren. Hist. Armen. lib. i. c. 9, 10. Tzetz. in Lycoph. ver. 174. 5 Euseb. Chron. p. 30. Eustath. in Dion. Perieg. ver. 874. CHAP. V. ROOK IV. clared to be the great mother and the ship within which Hu was preserved at the time of the deluge. In short, Cadmus or Buddha was venerated from the extremity of Siam to the remote western isle of Ireland for the Codom of Pegu, the Gautam of Ceylon, the Cadam-On of Phenicia and Egypt, the Cadmus and Cadmilus of Beotia and Samothrace, and the Chadmel of the ancient Irish, were all one and the same character.' I might mention various other places, where Cadmus was thought to have come in the course of his wanderings, such as Rhodes, Thera, Thasus, Eubèa, Sparta, Attica, Lesbos, and Ionia: but I must not neglect to observe, that, while some bring him from Egypt or Phenicia; others, preserving genuine tradition with greater accuracy, represent him as coming from Babylonia, the region whence also in their progress westward the Phenicians or Palli migrated into Palestine. This was the seat of the first empire of the Chasas or Cuthites under Nimrod, the centre whence the two primeval superstitions branched off in every direction. Here the worship of Cadam or Buddha commenced: and, in each country where they afterwards settled, the enterprizing Shepherds of the Scuthic stock were always peculiarly devoted to it. 3. Cadmus being the same divinity as Cadam or Buddha, and Buddha being the husband of Ila or the mundane Ark, we shall not wonder to find the whole history of Cadmus built upon the hieroglyphical worship of the great mother. Europa, the daughter of Agenor king of Tyre, was carried off into Crete by Jupiter; who assumed for that purpose the form of a bull, and who by her became the father of Minos. Agenor dispatched his two sons, Cadmus and Phenix, in search of her. Cadmus, having fruitlessly wandered over the whole world, at length consulted the oracle of Apollo; and was directed to settle in a country where he should find a heifer unbroken to the yoke, and to build a city on the spot where that heifer should lead him. The prophecy was accomplished in the region afterwards called Beotia; and the city of Thebes was built, agreeably to the directions which he had Collect. de reb. Hib. vol. iii. p. 636. 2 Mos. Choren. Hist. Arm. lib. i. c. 9. Herod. Hist. lib. i. c. 1. Just. Hist. lib. xviii. c. 3. received. Afterwards, he and his consort migrated into Illyricum: and, at length, they were both changed into serpents and transported by Jupiter into the Elysian fields or the islands of the blessed.' At this period of the discussion, the present fable cannot require much elucidation. Cadmus was generally thought to have denominated the country Beotia from the animal which was his conductor, Bous or Bos or Bou denoting an or or a heifer: and, in a similar manner, he was supposed to have called his new-built city Thebes from Theba, which in the Syrian dialect (we are told) signifies a heifer likewise.' But there was a more ancient city of the same name in upper Egypt: and we find it asserted, that, if Cadmus came from Phenicia into Greece, he had previously come from the Egyptian Thebes into Phenicia.' Hence it is evident, that the name of the Beotian Thebes was borrowed from that of the Egyptian Thebes. Consequently we may be sure, that, with whatever idea the latter was imposed, with the same also the former must have been imposed. Accordingly, Tzetzes expressly informs us, that the Beotian Thebes and every thing which respected it was a studied copy of the Egyptian Thebes. Now the word Theba properly signifies an Ark: and it only acquired the secondary meaning of a cow, because a cow was used as a symbol of the Ark. But, on the sphere, the Ark was typified by the Moon. Hence the Moon, the ship Theba, and the cow, were convertible: and hence the figure of the lunar crescent, which was impressed on the sides of the bulls Apis and Mneuis, was thought to have likewise adorned the flank of the heifer that conducted Cadmus; a clear proof of their theological connection with each other. The city of Theba therefore, whether in Greece or in Egypt, is the city of the Ark and both the bull that carries off Europa, and the heifer that leads Cadmus, involve symbolical allusions to the great father and to the vessel within which he was inclosed. Ovid. Metam. lib. iii. lib. iv. ver. 566-602. Apollod. Bibl. lib. iii. c. 5.§ 4. 2 Tzetz. in Lycoph. ver. 1206. Etym. Magn. vox. Onßa. 3 Diod. Bibl. lib. i. p. 20. Euseb. Chron. p. 27. Syncell. Chronog. p. 152. Tzetz. in Lycoph. ver. 1206. 5 Pausan. Boot. p. 559. CHAP. T. BOOK IV. Agreeably to such a conclusion, Theba is sometimes said to have been the wife of Ogyges, an ancient king both of the Egyptian and the Grecian Thebes, who flourished at the time of the deluge.' She was the same no doubt as the heifer Isis, who is similarly described as the consort of the arkinclosed Osiris; the same also as the universal mother Harmonia; the same likewise as the Tauric Europa. This last personage is usually made by the poets the daughter of the Tyrian Agenor; and she was worshipped at Hierapolis in Syria, as the sister of Cadmus: the priests however assured Lucian, that she was the self-same character as Astartè and Rhea. But Astarte was the great mother or floating receptacle of the hero-gods: and, as the heifer Baalath, was clearly no other than the heifer Theba or Isis. The transformation of Cadmus and Harmonia into serpents means only, that these two tauric deities were occasionally worshipped under the figure of those reptiles and their ultimate abreption to the isles of the blessed points them out as the deified tenants of the insular Paradisiacal Ararat. It may not be improper to add, that the legend of Ilus founding Ilium is an exact repetition of the legend of Cadmus founding Thebes.' XXV. Harmonia was not only reckoned the wife of Cadmus : but she was likewise thought to have been at once the daughter and the consort of Mars, to whom she bore the fabulous race of the Amazons. The fact was this: Mars or Ares was the same person as Cadmus or Buddha; and Harmonia stands to him in the double relation of daughter and wife, precisely as Ila does to Buddha or Menu. Hence we find, that one of the titles of Mars was Camulus or Cadmilus: for Camulus, Camillus, Casmilus, and Cadmilus, were all, as it is well known, the same name somewhat differently pronounced; and that name was a title of Mercury or Buddha, the same in substance as the word Cadmus and the oriental Codom or Cadam." Hence also we find, that another of his titles was Theus or Theuth: for the Cushites of Arabia worshipped him under the name of Theus-Ares; and shewed evidently, that the god, whom they venerated, was Taut or Thoth or Tzetz. in Lycoph. ver. 1206. 3 Apollod. Bibl. lib. iii. c. 11. Tzetz. in 4 Apollon. Argon. lib. ii. ver. 989-994. 5 Gruter. Inscrip. vol. i. p. lvi. 12. 2 Luc. de dea Syra. Lycoph. ver. 29. Pherccyd. apud Schol. in loc. |