[p.23]

A BOOK OF THE BEGINNINGS

SECTION 12

HEBREW CRUXES WITH EGYPTIAN ILLUSTRATIONS

According to Josephus, the Egyptian writer Apion most strenuously insisted that the Jews were of Egyptian origin. He affirmed that when they were cast out of Egypt, they still retained the language of that land. He brings forward a proof which Josephus irately repudiates. Apion's account of the Jews was intended to satirize the worshippers of Sut-Typhon, the aat, lepers, outcasts, and religiously unclean. These, he says, were driven out, and as they were afflicted with the bubos, they rested on the seventh day and called it the Sabbath, after the disease. Apion was playing upon words. Josephus asserts of him, 'He then assigns a certain wonderful and plausible occasion for the name of Sabbath, for he says, "When the Jews had travelled a six days' journey, they had buboes in their groins, and on that account they rested on the seventh day, that thus they preserved the language of the Egyptians and called that day the Sabbath, for that malady of buboes in the groins was named sabbatosis by the Egyptians." This grammatical translation of the word Sabbath either contains an instance of his great impudence or gross ignorance; for the words sabbo and sabbath are widely different from each other. The word Sabbath in the Jewish language denotes rest, but the word sabbo as he affirms, denotes among the Egyptians the malady of bubo in the groin.'[1]

Apion was impudent or humorous enough, but not ignorant of his subject. He was right in asserting that the Hebrews retained the Egyptian language. Saba, in Egyptian, means solace or rest. Sabba-tosis or saba-tes denotes some secret or veiled form of opprobrious disease, just as in Latin bubo is the owl, sabu signifying all that is profane, wicked, insulting, and typhonian. This permitted a pun on the word sabbo. He was no doubt speaking of the botch of Egypt, the boil out of which broke the plague of leprosy.[2] Tesh is red, and sabo-tesh, the red boil, as bubo is the red boil in the groin. Sabo-tesh might also have signified the sabbo or boil with [p.24] the red spot indicative of leprosy. The Hebrew name for the botch, shachen, and the Egyptian name for rest, repose, alight, cause to alight, as skhenn, offer another play upon a word, with the same result. These outcasts of Egypt were, according to their own writings, fearfully afflicted with the botch and leprosy. Diseases of this kind were attributed to Typhon, who was called Baba, the beast. Ba is the beast; saba the beastly, and those who had the diseases were worshippers of Sut and Sebek (Sefekh), whose name is for ever associated with the Sabbath, because it signifies number seven, and the seventh day, the Hebrew צבש, which the afflicted fanatics kept so gloomily, and in the secrecy of that gloom held up to heaven with piteous appeal their sufferings and their sores; a sad sight and a sorry subject for jest. There was, moreover, another covert meaning in the word sabbatosis. The subject has to be further dealt with, and meanwhile it must suffice to say that sabu (Eg.), not only means to circumcise but to castrate. This was the earlier form of excision practised in the worship of the genetrix, by the Sabeans, who offered up their manhood to the motherhood. Sabu is the name of the ox or bullock, the castrated animal, and of the eunuch. Seb (Kronus) was the castrator of his father. Sabu-tes means to excise the genitals; tes is the testicle, and the very self. The disease Sabbatosis, the botch of Egypt, and the leprosy, were evidently attributed to the sabu in this sense, and the lord god of Sabaoth was thus not only the deity of the seventh day, or seven stars, but of the self-mutilated, the Galli, the Attys priests, who became Eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake.

The Hebrew chethem is identical with the Egyptian khetem, to shut, lock, and seal; it has the meaning of a seal, to seal up, and set a seal upon. The root is khet, to shut, to seal, and a signet. This will throw light on the form of the word as chethen, to give one's daughter in marriage, to circumcise, to be a bridegroom, etc. Each is a form of sealing. Khet is likewise to cut, and cutting is the sealing by circumcision. Khet is cut and sealed. To seal is to cut, and the seal is cut. The circumcised child[3] is called metaphorically a bridegroom of blood, that is, sealed (cut and sealed with red) with blood. Aben Ezra says the Jewish women call a son when circumcised the bridegroom[4]. Further, the seal and signet khet is a ring, and the excised portion of the male is a circle, a wedding-ring of the peculiar rite with which the covenant of the bridegroom is contracted, and the sacred bond is sealed. The word circumcision implies the excised circle. Also, in Egyptian, the form 'heten' is a ring. The rite was symbolical, and the khet-ring is hieroglyphical. It is the type of reproduction, and if we read the matter hieroglyphically, the covenant of circumcision was instituted as a rite of reproduction, a swearing-in of the male to reproduce his kind, and a protest against [p.25] all unnatural practices of the earlier time. The proper period of the ceremony with the primitive races was that of puberty, when the lessons were taught as in the Maori 'young-man making.' The Hebrew circumcision for the second time[5] probably denotes a second mode; the one in which the circle was excised for the first time in the solar cult. Hence the foreskins heaped in the circle of Gilgal or the ring of reproduction. The Jews identify the second circumcision[6] with the word periah, now applied to a secondary part of the rite. The numeral value of the letters in the word periah amount, by gematria, to 365, and that being the number of the negative precepts of the law, it is said the circumcised person is to be considered to have fulfilled all those precepts[7]. The number identifies the rite with the solar year, as did the twelve stones set up in Gilgal, which came to supersede the Sabean-lunar reckoning, together with some of the older ceremonies.

The Hebrew words דוח (chevd), to tie knots, and cheedah, an enigma, a dark saying, riddle, parable, as in the symbolical sayings of old[8], the sentences of the hidden wisdom called Proverbs, have great light thrown upon them by the Egyptian khebt and khet. The goddess Kheht carries the knot or tie, the sign of a circle, so much time (Kept) measured out, and tied up by quipu. Kep also denotes the hidden things, to lurk darkly and lie in wait; khab is the phase of eclipse. Khebt modifies into khet, to shut and seal; kheti, to go round, surround, make the circuit. Khebt was the goddess, but from the abraded form of khet we obtain the name of the god. Khetu is a god of things, we might say of the hidden things which belonged to the earliest science, and were the secrets of the learned, but hard riddles, and dark sayings to the ignorant. All this and more underlies the word דוח applied to the dark sayings, parables, riddles, and hidden wisdom, spoken of by the psalmist.

The Talmud[9] says there was a flute in the temple which had been preserved from the days of Moses. It was smooth and thin, and formed of a reed. At the command of the king it was overlaid with gold, which ruined its sweetness of tone until the gold was removed. The flute in Egyptian is sebt: it was a symbolic seven, and the name of sebt (hept or khept) identifies it with Sut and the number seven. On account of the typhonian origin of the seven, it and the flute became the synonyms of all that is vile, wicked, profane, abominable. in the word seba or sebt.

It is a Jewish saying that the sun always shines on Saturday. Such sayings are a mode of memorizing facts that can only be read symbolically. Of course there is no direct meaning in such a statement. But Saturday is the day of Sut, and Sut signifies a [p.26] sunbeam. Suti, the sunbeam, has the determinative of the sun shining; and in the hieroglyphic sense the sun always shines on the day of Sut or Saturday, because it was, so to say, the earlier Sunday or Sabbath.

Here is another typhonian illustration. In the Mishna[10] it is said, 'If a person has slaughtered the animal with a hand-sickle, it is clean [kosher] and fit to be eaten.' The crooked hand-sickle is a type of Typhon. It is extant in the sickle of time (Kronus), and an early form may be seen in the Egyptian scimitar, called the khepsh, a sickle-shaped scimitar, which bears the name of the hinder thigh, a special ideograph of Typhon and of the Great Bear. The khepsh is crooked, and khab means bent, crooked-like, cam in English and other languages. The origin of the shape as bent, crooked, orbicular, depended on the turning round of the Great Bear, the ancient genetrix who carried the loop-shaped emblem as her sign of rule and measure. In later times a moral or immoral meaning was read into the imagery, and the crooked or bent was made typical of perverseness, wryness, deflection from the straight rule and right line of rectitude and the strict accuracy of law as represented by the stretched-out measure of truth, personified in Mati, goddess of the twofold right. The coiling serpent, nenuti, had been an earlier type of the circular measure, and this was superseded, together with other crooked things, by the straight rule, the straight knife (kat), the straight path. But the sickle-knife which was permitted to be still used in common with the knife of stone and of reed was a survival in shape from the earliest, the Typhonian Cult, and can still be identified by the khepsh sabre with the goddess of the seven stars and the seven Cabiri, or turners-round. So persistent shall we find the primitive types, many of which were preserved by the Hebrews.

But first of some verbal cruxes in relation to Egyptian.

The Egyptian origin of Hebrew is well illustrated by the name of the wilderness as Midbar. No satisfactory account of this word has ever yet been given. The root mat in Egyptian, Hebrew, and Sanskrit, has the meaning of measure and extent. Mat (Eg.) is likewise time, to fix, appoint, prove, witness, and the middle, or midway. Par (bar) is the name for a road, and signifies coming out, to manifest, show, and explain. The midbar was a mark of boundary, and a synonym of the wilderness and desert; the desert of Arabia[11]. The midbar, as the extent measured and made manifest by a set boundary, is identical with the desert or wilderness. In Egyptian the nome, district, frontier, and the desert are identical as the tesh, and teshr, with the t terminal, our word desert. Egypt of all countries was the land of the desert-boundary, the narrowest strip of land in the world running between such a double desert; hence the wilderness, or waste, was the nearest, most natural image of visible limits to the [p.27] Egyptian mind, and the wilderness was with them a synonym of boundary. The Hebrew midbars bear the name of the adjacent town, as the desert of Ziph, Maon, Edom, Gibeon, Paran, Jeruel, which shows the midbar did not express the modern idea of a wilderness. Ezekiel refers to the midbar of Egypt. 'I pleaded with your fathers in the midbar of the land of Egypt.'[12] Possibly the desert of Edrou Heremos or the Mhagh of Edair, the Irish Hill of Howth, is a form of the midbar-boundary named from the wilderness, in the Egyptian sense.

Bunsen, whose Egyptology is often of the most cursory character, and who was personally obsessed with the idea that the so-called Semitic speech was earlier than the Kamitic, and that the rootage of Egypt was in Asia, has asserted that the word makatura for migdol 'has no root in the Egyptian language. It cannot come from mak.'[13] But it does, and makatura is of course the same by permutation with migdol. He derives migdol from the Hebrew gadal, to be great. In Egyptian tura is the tower. Mak means to watch and rule over. The migdol was a watchtower. Makatura signifies the watchtower. 'There stood a watchman on the Migdol,'[14] 'the Migdol of the watchman.'[15] It was the tower of the mag or mage, the starry watchman of the night. Mak, the mage and to watch, doubly identifies the Egyptian origin of the migdol as the watchtower.

The river of Egypt, the inundation, the 'flood of Egypt,'[16] are called the iaur (or ior) in Hebrew. That is the Egyptian aur. But nahar (רהנ) is the name of Nile, the actual river and flood of Egypt, as well as the river of mythological astronomy, the river of Eden[17], the river of Egypt[18], the typical river emphasized as the, no matter under what name. The river, as Nile was religiously designated, is aur, and the Hebrew name of names for the river, the typical waters, the mythical floods, is that of the Nile, and the formation of the name is Egyptian. Nahr (Heb.) is a plural for river. In Egyptian aru is the river, and nay is the plural article the; the river is Nai-aru, or the dual waters of the Nile, the two waters welling from the pool of the Two Truths, or the Vase of Hapi-Mu, the biune waterer.

The divinity of the Psalms who founds and establishes the earth on the floods[19] does so on the Nile and its inundations, which deposited the earth as khebta; surely then it must be an Egyptian divinity who is celebrated in the Psalms.

According to Josephus[20], Kimchi[21], the Seventy[22], and Ben-Sira[23], the river Gihon (or ןוהיג) of Genesis, is the Nile which flows through [p.28] all the lands of Kush, the southern lands. It is not that the narrator thought of the origin of the Nile as being in Asia, as Fuerst[24] suggests, but because the narrative was Egyptian at first, the imagery is Egyptian from the first, and the riddle of the mythical commencement can only be solved in relation to the localities as Egyptian. Theirs is the river that runs from the south through all the lands of Kush. Calmet[25], on the river Gihon, says the people of Goiam call the Nile by that name. The Hebrew name of the river in full is the Gichon, i.e., the Gikh-Khan, an Assyrian synonym for the river Euphrates. If we refer this back to Egyptian, khekh denotes the tidal water, and khen means the interior, the lake, the southern (khent); thus khekh-khen is the tidal river of the lands of the south. The Nile of Egypt flows from south to north, but the celestial Nile was figured in khepsh, the north, and only in the Egyptian imagery, and by aid of the Egyptian naming, can this Kvsh of the southern land be reconciled with the same naming, khepsh, of the celestial north, and only on the theory previously propounded, that the first namers dwelt where the land of Kush (Ethiopia) was yet to the north of them, and Kush, Kvsh, or Khepsh, was their north, whilst khentu was then their south, and kheptu-khentu was their north and south. The Nile thus identified as the terrestrial Gihon includes the celestial river, and proves the mythos to be Egyptian. According to Fuerst, ןוהיג is derived from היג, i.e., the equivalent rendering of khepsh, the thigh, as the mouth of source, the great water of the hinder thigh, located in the place of emanation[26]. No explication of the scenery and naming is possible from the Hebrew alone, whereas the Egyptian will make all perfectly plain, and followable in phenomena. This place of source is the well or pool of the two waters and the hall of the two truths, and as such was readapted to other localities wherever a fountain rose and formed a double stream. Hence Gihon is found as the name of a fountain on the western side of Mount Zion, where it made a double pool, the upper Gihon being identical with the upper pool[27], and the lower with the lower pool[28], the celestial prototype of these being still represented by the double stream of Aquarius.

The Hebrew word shakam, has the general sense of to rise up early, to perform some act, also to enter some place, to bend oneself, the first thing in the morning, although no noun is found in the Hebrew thesaurus as a basis for the verb shakam, which would denote morning. This implies an original use of the word shakam, such as included the morning or the act of the morning, to identify the primal meaning, which may be traced by aid of sakh (Eg.), the shrine or sanctuary, the act of saluting and adoring, also the illuminator, which might be the opening eye of day. Am denotes that which appertains to. The skhem (Eg.) is also the shrine, and sekhem-t means to obtain grace. In Egypt going to the shrine was a typical [p.29] act of the morning, and the equivalent for rising early, and 'shakam' remained with the Hebrews as an expression having a sacred because symbolical significance when applied to early rising, even without going to the shrine. The Hebrew sakh (ףש) is the name of a hut or tent.

The Hebrew shakan (ןכש) has the same significations as the Egyptian skhen, the habitation, the place, the dwelling; whence skhent, to institute and establish. But in the hieroglyphics the word also means to alight, and cause to alight. This is missing from all interpretations of the Hebrew, yet it supplies the better sense to several passages, especially those relating to the glory, the pillar of cloud, and to the alighting of winged and wandering things. The habitation of the fowls of heaven thus becomes the far more appropriate place of their alighting[29]. Of the eagle it is said[30], 'She dwelleth and abideth on the rock,' which is tautological. The Egyptian skhen makes it, 'She alighteth and abideth on the rock.' In other instances the sense of to alight adds indefinitely to the meaning, as, for instance, 'I will cast thee forth upon the open field, and will cause all the fowls of heaven to alight (remain) upon thee, and I will fill the beasts of the whole earth with thee.'[31] 'If I take the wings of the morning and alight in the uttermost parts of the earth' is a far finer rendering than the Authorised Version, 'dwell.'[32] So in the passage, 'Oh that I had wings like a dove I (for then) would I fly away, and be at rest. Lo, (then) would I wander far off, (and) remain in the wilderness.'[33] The restored sense would be, 'then would I fly away and alight afar off in the wilderness.'

The chief value of the variant skhen, to alight, to cause to alight, is this restoration of the nomadic ideograph, which shows the first perception of dwelling, abiding, and inhabiting the earth to have been imaged as alighting like the winged wanderers of the air.

Hebraists have not been sufficiently acquainted with the exact meaning of the word nqph (ףקנ) to correctly translate the original of the passage rendered, 'And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.'[34] Some kind of destruction is intended, but it cannot be by worms. It is true the Arabic nqiph has the meaning of worm-eaten. But the missing sense and true form of the destruction will be found in the Egyptian nekhfi, to calcine or be calcined. The reading then will be, 'And though this (thing) my רוע (cover) be calcined, yet in my רשב (basar) shall I see God.' Af (Eg.), the flesh, will account for the Hebrew avr, the skirt or cover, and bes, to transfer or transform, pass from one place or shape to another, with ar, the likeness, will render the Hebrew basar. The fundamental sense of the passage then is, 'And though my likeness of the flesh be calcined, yet in my type of transference [p.30] or transformation shall I see God,' a mode of description according to the Egyptian doctrine of khepr.

In the passage, 'Thou shalt engrave upon it (the plate of gold) like the engravings of a signet, "Holiness to the Lord,"'[35] the word holiness gives no definiteness to the Hebrew qodesh. Egyptian offers us the clue to understand the word qodesh in all its applications. Ka is the type, figure, function of thing or person. Tesh is to separate, hedge about, put a boundary to. Tesh is the frontier of a nome. Tesh is blood; the separating period, the red line or full stop in the earliest of all rubric. Tesh-Tesh is a title of Osiris in the feminine phase. אשד, to be young, pure, new, is derived from this origin in feminine pubescence. Tesh, to make or be separate, a frontier and limit of boundary, yields the principle of qodesh. So Mount Sinai was rendered Qodesh by being hedged round and made inaccessible[36]. The cause, object, or result of the separation may be very various as is the use of this word. The woman set apart for seven days would be qodesh, equally with the priest who was separated and consecrated to the Lord. Hallowed or accursed are secondary meanings in the Hebrew, but to be separated, divided, set or put apart is primary in Egyptian.

Tekh, the hard form of tesh, means the frontier, boundary, crossing, to fix and attach. It is likewise a name of Taht, who represented the new moon. Hence the new moon and the time of the new moon were Qodesh. The first day on which the new moon was visible was a boundary, a limit, a measure in time, and the new moon was the type (ka) of the tesh or tekh. The moon, the lunar month, and the feminine period are particularly Qodesh. Tekhi (Eg.) was the goddess of the monthly period.

Naam, in Hebrew, is a word specially employed to express the voice of revelation, the oracle, the voice of God, by which oracles were revealed to the prophets. It is the voice of Jahveh, the Thus saith the Lord; also used for the utterance of oracles[37]. Nam is Egyptian for the word, speech, tongue, utterance. It is literally the voice of periodicity, or again-coming. Nam is to repeat, see, perceive. This repetition includes the inundation and the period determined by a drop of blood, as well as the time for joining and engendering, these being a form of the Two Times, of the Two Truths. Nam has the meaning of guiding and directing on this ground. Nam-nam means to go again, repeat. The nam (namt) is the retreat, the womb, which will be shown in this work to have been the first oracle and mouthpiece of revelation. With the permutation of the m into b, we have nabi, the prophet; naba (אבנ), to announce, manifest, prophesy. A mere hint only is here given, so much has to follow. Enough to know that nam with all its imagery is Egyptian, and that means getting foothold on granite, instead of losing it among quick­ [p.31] sands. For nam is not the earliest shape of the word. The phonetic n is an ideographic net, and nam is netem, a variant of snatem, and both relate to the gestator and primordial prophesier.

The word selah has caused much perplexity to commentators. It is frequently found in the Psalms, it only occurs three times elsewhere, and then in a hymn or psalm[38]. It is generally accepted as a sign of silence, rest, or a note importing a pause, as if it meant the singer was to rest, whilst the instrumental music went on. There is a fuller phrase[39] where, instead of the usual selah, the note is, הלס ןויגה 'hegiun selah.' Gesenius[40] suggests that this should apparently be rendered 'instrumental music-pause.' But if as is here contended, the oldest of these Psalms of David belong to the books of Taht, Egyptian ought to enable us to settle the matter. Selah with the r in place of l will be ser. Ser means something sacred, involved, reserved, and very privately personal. Ah denotes a salute. Ser-ah or selah is a most private and personal salute. We do not get silence specified as one of the meanings of the word, but this may be gathered from the others. Whilst 'huknu' is to supplicate, huknu read phonetically will be huken. The Egyptian hek has the same meaning in the Hebrew chug, to charm or the muttering of enchanters. Chug (an) is to draw a circle, the circle of magic being an early figure. Chug is also to celebrate, as in Egyptian it is to praise. Huka (Eg.) is magic or thought, to charm and to utter the words of the magic formulas. To charm is to invoke or supplicate. Taking the word hegion to be identical with huken, to supplicate, we find the truer meaning of selah to be a pause for prayer, a space of time reserved sacredly to silence and supplication. Meanwhile the music apparently died out in a cadence, for huken also signifies a cadence.

And still further, serah is an Egyptian word meaning to reveal and exhibit. Huknu-serah would indicate the supplication for the god to manifest his presence. This was done by means of representative images which made motions to the worshippers. The elevation of the host over the bowed and silent devotees is a relic of the same mummery.

Un-her-heb, in Egyptian, signifies the show-face festivals when there was an appearance or exhibition of the god to whom the offerings were made. So in the margin[41], where we find little leakings­out of the primary sense, Moses besought the face (panim םינפ) of the Lord, and the face of the Lord is the same as the showbread, or bread of faces (panim), the bread of the show-face festival, hence the relation of the showbread and bread of faces to Moses beseeching the face to show.

Tubal is a Hebrew type-name for the metallurgist. Tubal, the son [p.32] of Japheth, is a metal-worker. Still earlier Tubal-Cain is an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron[42]; this, be it noted, in the seventh generation of men. In Egyptian tub or teb means to purify and refine by fire. Teba is to roast. Al (ar) is to make, shape, create the form or likeness, and denotes the maker, doer, or shaper. Thus Tub-al (Tub-ar) is the maker who shapes or makes in purifying and refining with fire; he is the metalworker.

Kam (Eg.) is black, and to create; in Arabic, to arise, to commence. The beginning, in mythology, was with blackness or darkness, as the background of emanation. Kimrir (ררמכ), to be darkened, as the day by the obscuration of the sun, is the Egyptian kam, black; rer, to circuit, go round, encircle. Kam-rer means to enshroud with blackness, hence to eclipse and conceal. The kimrir of Job[43] are, therefore, eclipsing or eclipses. This suggests that the Kimarim[44], the priests of the ancient religion, were really the Chimririm, or those who could foretell and explain the causes of obscurations and eclipses. Beginning with darkness, the recurrence of that phenomenon in heaven was the first to arrest attention and wonder, and to demand explanation. The interpreters were the Kimririm or Kimarim; not because they were gloomy and sorrowful or wore black, but because they were able to interpret the recurring gloom of night and the phase of eclipse, whether in heaven or on earth. For the first eclipse studied by the Kimarim was monthly, hence the monthly prognosticators. The root meaning of רמכ to be thickened, to boil, bubble up, with the connected sense in Syriac of mourning, is related to this fundamental fact of periodic obscuration, which has to do with the primeval darkness of creation. The two kinds of eclipse are referred to by Job, the celestial and terrestrial, the one naturally following the other. The raisers of leviathan, or the bringers-on of the feminine period, were the causers of eclipse. In Israel the Kimarim were degraded as the priests of an illegal Jehovah-worship[45] and of the golden calf, the symbol of the Elohim who led them up out of Egypt. The Assyrian kings used to keep astronomers who prognosticated from eclipses.

Light seems to me to be shed on the word navem (mn), rendered 'habitation' in the English version[46]: 'I have seen the foolish taking root, but suddenly I cursed his habitation,' by the Egyptian word nabeh, which signifies to be in flower, some kind of flower, probably golden. This would make it, 'I cursed his flowering, or his flourishing appearance;' and it agrees with the Hebrew הונ, to be lovely, celebrated, beautified. It would also be less repugnant than cursing the homestead. Nab or nub (Eg.) being gold, nabeh may have the meaning of gilded or glorified.

[p.33] The word tsamim[47] has been a great perplexity. 'Whose harvest the tsamim eateth up.' The tsamam[48] is a sort of gin or noose. This will not do for the earlier passage. But may not tsamim be the Hebrew plural corresponding to the sami (Eg. plural), the conspirators, the typhonian company of evil plotters? The snare, noose, or tie, is a type of Typhon, chief of the sami or tsamim, who make use of the Tsamam in the work of the conspirators. Sam (Eg.) means to devour.

'Though the root (of the tree) wax old in the earth and the stock thereof die in the ground, through the scent of water it will bud.'[49] The word rich, rendered scent, as if it were the exhalation of water, has a more appropriate meaning in Egyptian, where rekh signifies the washing or laying and purifying of the water. The Hebrew יר for a watering[50] may be the remnant of this rekh, to wash and water.

The word םדק, rendered 'prevented' in the passage 'Who hath prevented me, that I should repay?'[51] may be illustrated by the Egyptian sharma, which means to make the salaam, or salute, and sharumata to convey a peace-offering. This was a mode of propitiation for securing favour beforehand, not to call it bribery. The speaker asks, Who hath made presents to me in this wise that I should repay, when all under the whole heaven is mine?

Ramoth, rendered coral[52], is a word more probably derived from remti (Eg.), to weep[53], the ramoth denoting substances, that are wept, which supplies a principle of naming. This ramoth is mentioned amongst the precious things by Ezekiel[54] as a production of Syria. So derived, it would be some kind of gum, and may have been a form of the famous tzri, or balm of Gilead, which is rendered rosin in the margin[55]. It would then follow that Ramoth-Gilead was named from its oozing gum, balm, or amber.

The word naspu (Eg.) means to numb, stupefy, render torpid. It appears in Hebrew as natzb (or nazb), to fix, make firm, rigid, erect, set. It is used by Zachariah[56] and applied to a shepherd of souls. The shepherd, לכלכי אל הבצנה, (who) does not victual but devour that which is natzb. Here the Egyptian naspu extends the sense of natzb most appropriately, for naspu signifies, not only to numb and stupefy, but also to abuse, delude, and devour. Then the sense of the passage is that a shepherd will arise who will not victual but devour the foolish sheep who are to be falsely led, abused, and deluded, by their threatened devourer. The rendering of 'standing still' has no actual relevance to the meaning.

Jezebel stimmied her eyes, says the Septuagint, when the English version renders it 'Jezebel painted her face,' or, in the margin, [p.34] put 'her eyes in painting.'[57] This is an Egyptian relic, of which Hebrew gives no account; only by permutation of mem and peh and using the word shedph for blasting, and inferring from that 'to blacken,' can we get any approach to stimmied. The Hebrew word, however, has in it the elements of stb in stibium, and in Egyptian stem is stibium; to stem or stem my the eyes was to blacken them with stibium or kohl. With this stem the eyebrows were elongated and the underlid dyed black. In this way the maidens who had attained puberty made the symbolic eye the sign of their period. They underlined the eye, the hieroglyphic an, the periodic, and ar, which has the meaning of fructus. Smat, a variant of stem, is stibium, also to daub the eyes, a certain period of time, and to wrap up with linen.

The word shatham (םתש) is a crux of Hebrew scholars, never yet mastered, it is used only of Balaam the seer, who is called the man whose eyes were open (shatham), and in the margin, whose eyes were shut. The truth is that neither open nor shut will reproduce the sense. The Egyptian shetam or satam also means to shut. But that is by no means the whole of the matter. The picture characters of the hieroglyphics exhibit things in themselves, and shetam denotes a total of two halves. Tam is the total with the same image; the sha (or sa) may have many applications; in regard to which totality, sha, as a measure would make shatam, a total of measure. The sa is a priest, and sa-tam is an Egyptian high-priest, or an unique one, a host in himself. Satem, again, has the sense of covering round either with dress or other form of protection. Wholeness, oneness, totality, composed of two halves, is the meaning of shatam, and of tam by itself. Balaam was the seer, the man who saw with his eyes either open or shut. Sa or sha (Eg.) is to dive into, see, perceive, know, discern.

There was an order of priests in Egypt known as the sa or sha. The name is written with the jackal sign, denoting the wise men, the mages. Sha is the earlier form of the word, and signifies secret, mystic, hidden. 'shaa,' the name of the substance born of, appears to connect the name with the monthly diviners, the observers of the feminine first cause, as sha is named thirty, the end of the monthly period, one form of time. 'Shannu' is the name of a diviner, and 'nnu' is divines so that the shannu is a divine or a divining sha. Satham[58], a variant of shatham, signifies a revelation. Reading the sha as sight, sha-tam is the double sight, and as tam is second, shatam is literally second-sight or clairvoyance. The seer is a person credited with dual vision, so that 'shatham' signifies this totality, inclusiveness, and oneness, of the double vision which sees with the eyes open or shut.

This is confirmed by the Hebrew form 'sh'ttaim,' which means two, and instead of the man who saw with his eyes open or shut, [p.35] it should be who saw double or both ways; the ancients were quite familiar with this phenomenon. All that is secret, sacred, mystical, the innermost of all mystery, apparently including some relationship to or communion with the dead, is expressed by the Egyptian word 'shet,' the Hebrew sod. Having explained the duality of vision, the briefest rendering would be shatham, to be a clairvoyant, or to see double.

The Authorised Version renders[59]: 'A man was famous (i.e. in time past) according as he had lifted up Axes upon the thick trees, but now they break down the carved work thereof at once with axes and hammers.' The first word translated by axes is לישכ kassil only appears in this passage and in Jeremiah[60] for םדרק. Kassil represents the Egyptian khesr for the arrow, as that which cuts its way. Khesr modifies into sesr, sser, and ser. Sser or ser means to cut, inscribe, or carve, whence ssrt or sert is the name for sculpture, carving, and engraving; the Hebrew טרש to cut. In the rendering of kassil, the cutter or carver, as axe, is put in place of the sculpture, and the true meaning is that they once honoured the carver of the trees, but now they lift up the instrument of cutting to destroy the work of the artist. The two words are used for the sake of the antithesis. Khesr (sser) for carving supplies our chisel, Armoric gisell, a chisel, used by the sculptor and carpenter. In Polish the carpenter is a kiesla, and the block or trestle on which stone is sawed is a kazly. In the African Limba the kusala is a hoe, as the kassil appears to have been in Hebrew. In Irish, ceasla is an oar for cutting the water, and chisel is an English name for bran, the shavings of wheat. So kasl in Arabic, is the treading out of wheat, and in Zulu Kaffir qazula is to grind (cut) wheat coarsely. But the same word has travelled a long way when found in the Irish caisli, and Cornish kuszal, which denote polished manners.

There is a passage in Psalms[61], 'Dogs have encompassed me, the wicked have enclosed me, they יראכ my hands and my feet.' The Hebrew word has been rendered by 'they pierced,' and taken as such in evidence of prophecy, whilst the piercing of the hands and feet in the crucifixion, which occurs in accordance with this translation, is the fulfilment. We have the indubitable root of this matter in Egyptian, both etymological and mythological. The sense of to pierce does not exist in the original, and in Hebrew the digging, boring, and thence penetrating, is derived from the beetle Khepra. Kef (Eg.) means to seize, lay hold by force. Kep is the fist, a type of seizing and gripping. Khepra is the seizer with his claws; his name abrades into ker, to seize, lay hold, contain. The kra is the claw; ker is to seize with a claw. Kar is to seize by the foot, to entrap and ensnare, like the Hebrew kir for ensnaring. In Maori koru is a noose, a loop. Giro, in the African Dewoi denotes chain- [p.36] fetters; ekuru, kupa, fetters; karr, Arabic, a fetter; kara, Sanskrit, a fetter, a binding. Exact representatives of the Hebrew word ראכ are found in gvre (Eng.), a circle; cwr (Welsh), a circle; gvri (Latin) circle; gouris, in Chinese, is a girdle, and others might be adduced.

The Hebrew ראכ then, is Egyptian, to be determined by the hieroglyphics. The speaker of the passage is encompassed and enclosed by the wicked, who ראכ his hands and his feet. In the hieroglyphics, kheri is the victim, caught and bound for the sacrifice. The victims were bound hand and foot.

They were the kheri because bound, and the true sense of the passage is, they have encompassed, ensnared, and incarcerated me. They have bound my hands and feet. The fettering of the victim is then in perfect keeping. Fettering of the hands and feet is the true sense, not piercing, and this is the sense of the Hebrew ראכ only it did not prophesy of the crucifixion. Further, in the parallel passage in the Book of the Dead, which will be adduced, as the original matter, Horus, the 'beloved son of the father,' is 'pierced to the heart by Sut,'[62] but not in his hands and feet. 'I have seen Osiris,' says the Osirian; 'I tell him the things about this, his great and beloved soul (Horus), pierced to the heart by Sut.'

Isaiah[63] exclaims: 'We wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness. We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in eshmannim ... We look for judgment but there is none.' Here the word eshmannim, rendered in the Authorised Version 'desolate places,' and by Jerome and the rabbis 'darkness'[64], supplies a precious bit of the Egyptian mythology lurking in the Hebrew writings. Eshmannim, eshmoun, or smen, was a name of Hermopolis in Egypt, and in the map of the heavens, Am-smen is the place of the eight first gods who existed before the firmament of Ra was lifted, in the time of Sut-Typhon. In the second time, Taht, the lunar god, was made lord of smen, and in the solar mythos it was in smen that the son Horus was annually established in the place of the father. Another name of this region of the eight is sessennu, a place of agitation, torment, distraction, desolation, and darkness. Taht, the lunar deity, was lord of this region, which, in relation to the lunar orb, is the region of change of moon. From the eclipse of this change Taht emerges bearing the crescent on his head. Shmenai means the eighth in Hebrew, and in Phoenician eshmun was the eighth son of Sydyk. Sheminith is also a Hebrew form of the eighth[65]; and Isaiah's imagery belongs to eshmenein, with the Hebrew plural ending eshmannim[66]; the eighth region of agitation and distraction, torment and change, [p.37] the change from darkness to light, which does not come. 'We look for the judgment,' says the writer, 'and it is far from us.' This was the region of the judgment seat, and the place of the fourteen trials in the Book of the Dead, half the number of the lunar mansions, through which passed the moon-god. And here he signed the sentence of the dead in the Hall of the Two Truths, and justified those whose lives were pure. This was in Ashmenein. And we, says Isaiah[67], are in eshmannim, waiting for the judgment, and groping darkly for the 'manifestation to light,' but there is none.

Smen[68], signifies the 'appointed.' Smen was the place appointed for the purging, purifying, and preparing of souls. Hesmen is the Egyptian name for the menstrual purification, and in this region was the Pool of Hesmen (or Natron). The moon in one of its two phases was the woman in her courses, and smen the place of her pain and torment, out of which emerged the new moon. In the chapter of 'making the transmigration into a god,'[69] we read, 'I am the woman, the orb in the darkness; I have brought my orb to darkness, (where) it is changed to light. I have prepared Taht at the gate of the moon.' This was in smen, where the feminine moon changed into the male god Taht, or transmigrated, that was, transformed in sex, and the change was made from darkness to light. The woman half of the orb was impersonated as Sef(kh), the consort of Taht. Sef is to purge and sift; sef, to refine by fire; sephui, to torment, torture, punish; sefi is dissolution. On the other side, the name of Taht denotes the establisher for ever as the renewer of light. These represent the two halves of a lunation with the symbols derived from sex.

It was in smen that the solar god entered his feminine phase, and suffered the agony and bloody sweat, described in the Ritual as the 'flux of Osiris,'[70] and the drama assigned to Gethsemane* was pre-enacted there.

* This place was in the vicinity of the Mount of Olives, and the name is supposed to relate to the oil (shmen) prepared from the olives. The Talmudist writers affirm that shops were kept on Mount Olivet by the Children of Canaan, and that beneath two large cedars there were four shops for the sale of doves and other things necessary for the Purification of Women[71]. The meaning of smen and hesmen (Eg.) agrees with that of Gethsemane as the place of purification in the Jewish sense.

When the words, 'his feminine phase,' are used it does not mean that the sun or moon was supposed to change sex; but the red, sinking, ailing, winter sun was lessening, was suffering, was ill, and the illness was described according to the female phase. Typology consists in various things being set forth by means of one original type. Symbolism was a mode necessitated, not a system designed, because the one primitive type had to serve many purposes of expression, and by aid of the Egyptian doctrine of the 'Two [p.38] Truths' the present writer expects to reach the fountainhead of the ancient typology.

Of course here, as elsewhere, the total myth can only be put together by collecting the whole of the scattered remains, some of the most precious of which are preserved in the Hebrew rewritings, and, when complete, it will verify itself and establish its right to the possession of its own members, no matter where these may be found. The present object is to show how certain Hebrew words imply the mythos, and can only be read by means of the Egyptian symbols. The sculptured stones of the first builders have, so to speak, been calcined to make mortar for the later builders, and they reappear without their ideographs and determinatives.

When we use the words ever, eternal, and eternity, we require the symbols to give definition to the primitive meaning.

On the authority of a word, αίώνιος (Aionios), found in Greek, human beings are damned for ever, for all eternity, and there is no other foundation for the doctrine of the eternal punishment with which foolish fanatics threaten all who do not think as they do. And yet ainios has no other basis than the aeon, a cycle of time. This is the Egyptian an (or han, the cycle), with the meaning of repetition. The Eternal was based on periodic repetition. Millions of times is a formulae of eternity. And four times, the equivalent of the four cardinal points of the circle, is equally an equivalent of ever. The symbol of these words meaning ever, for ever, is a circle. Heh (Eg.) is Egyptian for the eternal, and it means an age, an aeon, or an, a cycle of time. The Eternal is aeonian at last, and was based on, was a birth of time, the deity who lived and died alternately for ever, not a conception of something abstract and independent of time and space. The perpetual is the periodic.

It is said of the hidden god in the Inscription of El-Khargah[72], 'He has not come out of a womb, he has come out of cycles,' and the circle is the image of the cycle. The mode of continuity was by transformation; one circle running into another. This transformation was represented as the work of Khepra, the beetle-god, the transformer.

There is no other basis than the cycle continually renewed for the Hebrew everlasting. Ad or gad (דע) means ever and ever, everlasting, eternal, eternity, perpetually. The same word signifies until or meantime, as yet, how long, and so long as, during, duration of time, a limit of space, all that is opposed to eternal, infinite, limitless. It is a period whether monthly or a moment. דע means especially the monthly period of women, and according to the Masora the word also signifies twelve times. It was thirteen in the lunar reckoning. The earlier form in qedim (םדק) the plural of khet, for old times, shows the same origin, the letter ayin being midway between a and q or k. Qedem for Eden is the Egyptian [p.39] khetam or circle, the sign of which rounding, closing, and sealing is a seal-ring, the sign of reproduction. The khet (Eg.) means a circuit, zone, to surround with anything, make the orbit or circle. Khut softens into hut, the winged solar disk, and at, the type of time figured as a circle. At (Eg.) is a moment, with the circle and exactly the same as the Hebrew ad for the everlasting, perpetual, eternal. The everlasting is simply the ever-recurring and repeating. Aulam or gvlam (םלוע) we must take in the primitive form with the vau, when it reads gvlam, or, in Egyptian, khepr-am, with which we touch bottom.

Am (Eg.) signifies belonging to, and is the place, the paradise, Eden, or circle of transformation (khepr) and renewal in time, where the perpetual goings-forth from of old of the Messiah Son are manifested in the circle without beginning or end, hence eternally; he who is periodically reborn from avlam, gvlam, or khepr-am[73]. If we read the Hebrew as the plural of khevl (khepr), nothing is changed. It was the plurality of cycles which constituted the continuity of the eternal, the ever-during. Khep is to transform, generate, create, cause to exist. One symbol of this process of transformation was the sloughing serpent, the hef, the serpent of life, personified as heh-t, the feminine heh, with the serpent's head. Thus the ever, heh or aye, the eternal, is derived from one cycle of time being transformed into another by periodic renewal; the circle, heh, being one symbol; the seal-ring, khet, another; the serpent, heh, a third; and the beetle, khepr, a fourth. The circle of hefa (kefa) can be traced to the cycle of the Great Bear. The circle of Khepra as sun-god was that of the twelve signs, where the year was at one time renewed with the sun in Khepra (Cancer), and the circle itself is Khepram, Khevelam, or Aulam. The Phoenician gubulim means a quarter. By the circle was the Eternal established, and another Hebrew name denoting forever is tzemthath תתמצ it is used for establishing for ever[74]. The Egyptian equivalent is semi-tat, from sem, a representative sign, and tat, to establish. Tat or Thoth is the representative of the lunar cycle. Another form of the semtat, or symbol of the ever, the established for ever, is the tat sign of Ptah, the fourfold cross (Å) or cardinal points whereby the solar circle was formed. Semi means to encircle. Semi-tat is to establish the circle, the sign of ever. The first solar circle was framed in two halves, the upper and lower heavens, and the two halves of the moon. These two halves joined in one to make the whole, and the twin-total is in Egyptian temat. Temat also furnishes a Hebrew word for ever, continual, evermore, and always, as thamid דימת. Tem-at means the complete circle, and is identical with our word timed. So in the cipher survives the name and the symbol of Khepra, the creator, former and transformer, whilst heh or hoh, represented by the circle, [p.40] becomes our O, in Egyptian uau, the one, one alone, and only one. The monotheistic sign is at last a nought or a knot, found in the hands of the goddess of the Great Bear, who created the first circle of time. The name of the 'Ancient of Days,' in the Book of Daniel[75], will reveal his nature. He is the attiq קיתע. At or kat (Eg.) is the circle of time, and hek or ak signifies rule and the ruler of the circle. A title of Amen-Ra, who was born of cycles, is hek of the first region.

If we render the Hebrew attiq by the Egyptian tekh, we obtain the measurer and recorder of the cycles of time. Tekh as the moon-god is the measurer, the calculator, and distributor of time; the counter of the stars. Tekhu is the name of the instrument corresponding to the needle of the balance for measuring weights, the ancient Egyptian cubit of Tekh.*

* Renouf[76] is wrong in supposing there is no such known Egyptian word as tehu, if Chabas[77] be right, who gives the group tehu, to tell, synonymous with 'tet.'

Tekhi, the goddess of the months, was a measurer of time-cycles. The tekh, attiq, kat-hek, can be traced back to the goddess of the north, Kheft, as the first ruler of time, the original Ancient of Days. Kheft-ak, Khet-ak, or Kat-ak, is the old Kheft. The first chronicles, as the word implies, were records of time and period, and such was the primary nature of the Hebrew Chronicles; this fact is admitted in a sort of marginal remark[78] or murmur, sotto voce, that these, the subject-matters of the records, are 'attiq,' rendered ancient things. They were in their first form the registers of the celestial chronology, and, like the Book of Enoch, the record of the luminaries of heaven, together with their generations, classes, periods, powers, and names.

Without the ideography it is impossible to fathom the language of Psalms[79], 'My substance was not hid from thee when I was made in secret and curiously wrought in the lowest part of the earth.' That is in the Hebrew יתהת (thchthi), the Egyptian tuaut, the lower hemisphere. A tuauti is an inhabitant of the lower hemisphere. In the tuaut was the meskhen or place of regeneration and new birth. The language of the Psalms is only directly possible to the solar-child, who was engendered in the tuaut, and only humanly possible, because the solar birthplace was founded on womb-world, and the nethermost parts of the earth are identified with the matrix. The tuaut survives in English as the twat, a name of the feminine organ. It was here that the tomb and womb were one. Hence the tuaut is also the grave or hell[80].

In the ancient thought there is not an image engraved on one side of their door of life when it stands open, but is repeated, and serves the reverse purpose on the door when it shuts, as what we term the door of death, and in that way was the eschatology founded.

[p.41] There is a passage in Book of Job[81] in which the speaker says, 'thou dissolvest my substance,' meaning the body of flesh, and it is followed by an allusion to the grave. The substance is shuvah. In Egyptian this is shebu, the flesh, a slice, a certain quantity of flesh. The shebu is a collar or tippet with nine points. This is symbolic of the nine months' time for sheb-ing, shep-ing, shaping the child, or figuring in the flesh. The Egyptian sheb and shep being the same as shape, the sheb, flesh, is the clothing typified by the sheb collar, also worn by prisoners. 'Thou dissolvest my shuvah' is identical with 'thou unshapest me,' let loose the sheb-girdle of my flesh, the vestment hieroglyphically rendered with nine points, and by captivity: or, to change the image, it may be read in English, 'thou unsheafest me,' the sheaf being a form of the binding-up. 'Thou dissolvest my substance' (shuvah) alternates—according to Kethib[82]—with 'thou terrifiest me.' Here again the Hebrew shuvah is identical with shef or shefi (Eg.), to terrify, be terrible, demon-like. Both are Egyptian, but the context shows the first to be the right lection.

The collar hieroglyphic with all its significance passed into Israel, as we learn by the denunciations of Isaiah[83]. The collar has various names. Khekh is one. Khakri is some kind of necklace. Art khekh are neck-chains. The determinative of these is the sign of horns and testes; this indicates the nature of the restraining collar. The collar with nine points alternates with one of thirteen, the same number as that of the knotted loops round the Assyrian asherah or grove, signifying the thirteen periods to the year which have but one original in nature. The khekh collar is likewise called baba, that is Typhon. Typhon the Red was the adversary, looked upon in later times as the destroyer, and at best as only working for good under restraint. The collar was a symbol of this; hence the khekh collar and akhekh, the dragon or Typhon, are synonyms. There is a vulgar expression still in use, 'Go home and tell your mother to chain up ugly.' Translated into Egyptian that would mean Typhon, Baba, the beast, who was chained up with the collar number nine, or the menat collar, number ten, according to solar or lunar reckoning.

This is enough to show the symbolic nature of the collar emblem, and account for the indignation of the Jewish Protestants at the tricking out of the daughters of Israel in such ornaments. These collars are called 'sweet jewels.'[84] The 'chains' are[85] 'sweet balls,' which can be explained by the collar with nine bubu or balls worn by Isis. The 'tinkling ornaments about their feet'[86] are gekes, one with the Egyptian khekh, and the art-khekh, or chain for the ankle.

When it is asked[87], 'Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook?' the word used is chach, that is, with the khekh or akhekh collar [p.42] of the dragon Typhon. The Hebrew chach is a hook, chain, or bracelet, and the stocks. And although the writer knew that Typhon could not be drawn out with the khekh, he also knew, as did Isaiah, the significance of the symbol; the tinkling khekhs were calling aloud for the restraint of Typhon, in other words, they were proclaiming that the wearers were marriageable. With us the wedding-ring is the emblem instead of the collar, and to gig is to engender.

The Hebrew writings are full of language which has no meaning without the types by which alone it can be understood, and hitherto it has been read and rendered without these types. It is enough, one would think, to make the ignorant expounders of symbolical language who have drivelled for half a lifetime spend the rest in a savage silence, with the tongue held fast between the teeth, as the only amends they can make.

In a passage unexplicated hitherto, the writer of the Book of Ezekiel exclaims, 'Woe to the women that sew pillows to all arm­holes, or elbows,'[88] or hands or arm-holes of the hands, whatsoever these may mean. The word rendered pillows is kasathoth (תוחמסט) and only occurs twice. 'Woe to the (women) that sew kasathoth to all arms and make mispacoth (תוחפסמ), upon the head, of every height, to hunt souls.' 'Behold, I am against your kasathoth, wherewith ye there hunt souls to make (them) fly, and I will tear them from your yod, and will let the souls go, the souls that ye hunt to make (them) fly.'

Let us see what light Egyptian may shed on this passage. The general sense as it stands is that the allurers of men wear some particular images or charms upon their yod and on the head to ensnare souls. The kasathoth are worn on the yod; the mispa-choth upon the head. Yod is the hand or the arm. Kes (Eg.) means to envelop with little bands; at signifies typical; ut means magic, to inscribe, wish, command, give directions; and ti is plural, like the Hebrew terminal. Kes-ut-ti or kes-at-ti would denote some form of bracelet or binding for the arms, worn as a magic amulet or as a means of proclamation. There was but one fact the wearer had to proclaim, and that was her period of pubescence. Kesa, in Hebrew, is the appointed time or new moon, the festival of which was divinely ordained and made statutory in Israel[89], and afterwards denounced as an abomination[90], this was, as Jewish rabbis acknowledge (as Isa Bar Au), the first day of the full moon. It was likewise applied to the whole time of the full moon. The appointed time also applied to the age of puberty, when the maiden in Africa put on clothing for the first time, if only a loincloth or basu, or the Zulu Kaffir dwaba and the top-knot, bonga, formed of crimson clay (bomvu), worn by the women.

The relation of the feminine period and the ornaments of dress to [p.43] the moon is indicated by Isaiah[91], who denounces the 'round tires like the moon' which were worn by the daughters of Israel. We still speak of tying the knot in marriage. The sense of kes (Eg.), to bind, enters into the Hebrew qshr, to tie, to bind, an  טירשק for the attire of the bride[92] which is coupled with the ידע, of the maid; ידע being a plural form of דע the feminine period. Kas (Eg.) is the knot, to tie a knot, and an entreaty to tie the knot, to bind up the female, as is symbolised by putting on the wedding-ring and snooding the hair. The same writer also includes the snood or the caul, a cap of network, in the list of things anathematized. One ideograph of kas is the loop or knot sign; one, a bundle of reeds tied up, the ret emblem of time and indication; a third is the type of transformation; a fourth, the tongue. The kasathoth were worn before marriage, and announced the season of womanhood or full moon. Their relation to the period is likewise glossed by kasa (Eg.), to mourn. The bracelet worn in the shape of a serpent holding the red blood-drop of a ruby in its mouth is a kasathoth in the emblematic language. They also made mispachoth on the head of every statue. Mes (Eg.) is the sexual part, the ems or hem. Mes is to bear, generate, conceive, give birth to the child. In Hebrew mesa is a sign of bearing; at root that is child-bearing in all languages. The pakat garment is found on the monuments as some kind of linen or tunic; linen hung up to dry is the ideograph which in itself reads mes, and in the group[93] we have the Egyptian for mispachoth, and it signifies the linen worn at the time of full moon, or the mespakati of puberty. The prophet objects to these kerchiefs being displayed on the head as a sign of invitation. The Hebrew qomah applied to the height of the headdress appears as kemhu, an Egyptian mode of dressing up the hair. Qomah signifies attainment, accomplishment; khem, to be mistress of, grace, and favour. Komah adds another correlative to the meaning of the mispachoth, or top-knots of feminine puberty, which were worn on the head as a kind of investiture and proclamation of ripe age and social status amongst many races, and in a variety of shapes.

Hunting souls to make them fly is apparently meaningless. In the margin it reads, 'into gardens.' The sense is that the daughters are desirous of refreshment (naphish), but not anxious that the flowers should be fructified, or the time of flowers be followed by the season of fruit. The soul was figuratively the breath; they wanted to take the breath of life in a double sense. 'But will ye save the souls alive if they come to you?' No! they only lusted to take the life of souls, or hunted them to destroy or disperse and extinguish them.

A kindred illustration of the hieroglyphic language, only to be read by means of the hieroglyphics, occurs in Jeremiah[94], 'A [p.44] drought is upon her waters, and they shall be dried up, for it is the land of graven images, and they are mad upon emim' (idols). The reference here is subtly symbolical. The hieroglyphic hema, sign of the lady, wife, seat, place, is the ems pudendum. It is the type of containing and turning back the waters of the red source, so that in the ancient language fish may be caught, or children propagated. The symbol was then adopted as the picture of a water-frontier, the pehu, harinu, or hema; this, in the names of places, marked the water-nome. Such were the emim or hannu that Israel had been so mad upon, and the imagery is peculiarly appropriate in prophesying a drought upon her waters, because they had made so much of the hieroglyphic image of the feminine water-frontier.

The Hebrew name of the divining cup or עיבג, by which Joseph is said to have divined, is rendered by κόνδυ in the version of the Seventy. This, as the name of the cup, is also found in Persian and Arabic, and in the Sanskrit kundra, a bowl-shaped vessel, or an aperture for water or fire; the Two Truths. This vessel is used in certain Hindu ceremonies for drinking out of, and it was carried in the procession described by Apuleius[95]. It represented the self-conspicuous image of fontal nature alluded to in the Chaldean Oracles of Zoroaster[96], 'Invoke not the self-conspicuous image of nature, for you must not behold these things before your body has received the purification necessary to initiation.' Wilson, in the Asiatic Researches[97], says, the kunda was fashioned in the shape of a lotus, the type doubly feminine, the flower that bore the seed within itself, which was therefore adopted as the emblem of the Virgin Mother of mythology.

Both Athenaeus[98] and Iamblichus[99] κόνδυ mention the as being used in the religious ceremonies of Egypt. According to Norden[100], in recent times the lotus on the water was represented by the dish, cup, or κόνδυ, placed on the water for divination, just as the dish was employed for the same purpose at Shadar, in the Isle of Lewis.

Kunda is a particular name of the goddess Durga, relating to the vessel, cup, or κόνδυ, which was very primitive as the type of fontal nature. Kunda, in Sanskrit, is the name of the number nine. The cup is the Egyptian knau, Maori kona, the mother-emblem. With the feminine terminal t, this is the khent (Eg.) or hunt; English quiente; Greek, κόνδυ, Sanskrit, kunda. Kento, in Basunde and Musentando, is the type-name for the female. In Zulu Kaffir, cunda is mystically the 'woman's word.' The cup imaged the fountainhead of all kenning or knowing and thence of divining, because the mother was the revealer of the Two Truths of time and period, pubescence and gestation, in relation to reproduction. Cyn, Welsh, is first and foremost. Khen (Eg.) is to conceive, image, bear; gin, Gaelic, to beget. All forms of genesis are in this root, and many types of the birthplace are named from it, as khen (Eg.), the interior, [p.45] also the ark or canoe; qenn (Heb.), the nest; ken, Romany, coni, French Romance, Persian, khan, for the abode; kwan, Chinese, for the granary; qnah, the garden in Hebrew, and gona, a farm in Kandin, Kadzina, and other African languages. The can, an English vessel or cup, also the ken, a churn, are named from the same prototype as the Greek κόνδυ. The Hebrew עיבג is figuratively a flower-cup[101], and is cognate in sense with תעבק, which represents the Egyptian khapat or khept, called the hinder thigh, but which, like the Hebrew qebah, denotes the genitalia muliebria, as the khep, kheb, qeb, or cup. Such was the nature of Joseph's עיבג, or cup of the diviner. There was a time when the monthly prognosticators in Israel divined by the image of fontal nature itself, just as the Jains or Yonias of India do today, the q'deshoth being attached to the temples for the purpose of demonstrating certain natural facts in the primitive school of physiology. The gabia, khep, or cup, finally deposited the phonetic ka as the cup of the hieroglyphics.

The atzeb of the Hebrew is vaguely rendered an image, a representation, an idol, without telling us what the image represents. It is associated with the asherah[102], and is connected with the woman in travail, bringing forth[103]. But the wherefore is out of sight. In the hieroglyphics the aseb or asep is the seat or throne, the feminine image, the sign with which the name of Isis is written (´).

As-bu is the place of rest, and the ash is a type of this, hence the seat. The seat also shows the relation to the woman in labour. The seat or aseb had various forms based on the feminine type. The kavvanim made by the women of Israel[104] represented the goddess with the symbolical seat, the kûn image. The house of the seat (azeb) is identified with the house of Ashtaroth[105], as and hes (Eg.) being names of the seat, the type of the bearer. The absence of the seat in Hebrew has misled the translators of Isaiah[106], 'Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, their idols (atzeb) were upon the beasts and upon the cattle; your carriages heavy laden, a burden to the weary beast.' All the missing sense is restored by reading 'their seats' (atzeb) instead of 'their idols.' Isaiah identifies the nature of the atzeb with the seat of the beast. In Egyptian, hes, the seat, is also the calf, or heifer. So the atzeb goes with the heifer and calf in Israel. 'Israel slideth back as a backsliding heifer; Ephraim (is) joined to the Atzeb.'[107] Again, the atzeb is coupled with the calf of Samaria[108]. And again[109], the atzeb is one with the calves. The craftsmen have made the atzeb, and they say of them, 'Let the men that sacrifice kiss the calves.' That is kiss the seat, as in the witches' [p.46] Sabbath, the symbol of the motherhood. These ideographs infuse new meaning into words. For example, Jeremiah puns with grim coarseness on the name of koniah[110], and on the atzeb or kun, Egyptian knau. '(Is) this man Koniah a despised broken Atzeb (or Kun) or vessel wherein (is) no pleasure?' This also identifies the hieroglyphical nature of the seat or throne. Without these original images in mind half the meaning of the Hebrew constantly escapes.

The molten image of the calf is denounced by Nahum[111], 'Out of the house of thy gods will I cut off the graven image and the molten image: I will make thy grave, for thou art vile.' In the next chapter we read 'and huzzab (בצה) shall be led away captive, she shall be brought up and her maids shall lead (her) as with the voice of Doves, tabering upon their breasts.' Huzzab is a personification of which the Hebrew gives no account, but the doves show her relation to the Virgin Mother who was represented by the dove and the calf. Hus in Egyptian is the cow, or rather the calf, the sacred heifer or calf adored under the name of Hus (Isis) in the time of the old empire. Hes is likewise the typical feminine seat, couch, or bed, the atzeb, here written בצה, elsewhere as בצ the seat, sedan, or palanquin for persons of distinction, which corresponds to the hes or aseb seat and throne of the hieroglyphics. Huzzab is the goddess of the hinder part, the north, the lower half of the circle, a form of Hes-taurt or Ashtaroth. Asebi is an Egyptian name of Cyprus, the great Paphian seat or shrine.

The mest (Eg.) the sexual part, the place of birth is the name of the mother in the Cypriote masdu; and the meska, the womb in Egyptian, and the eschatological place of rebirth, called the purgatory, supplied the calf of the Hebrew cult; the masak for the door of the tabernacle[112]; the Spanish masa for the mouth; Irish mas (of the hill); the Swahili mazika for the burial-place; the Persian mushko, a temple; the Turkish mosque, the Welsh mysg, the middle, answering to the meska as the mid-region or purgatory of the Ritual.

The meskah imaged by the molten calf is represented by the calf and cow in the following languages. Mas, Egyptian, a calf; moschos, Greek, a calf; moschas, a heifer; meusi, Japanese, a cow; mosa, Pahri, cow; mosya, Chopang, cow; maoiseag, Gaelic, a heifer; mosha, Kachari, a cow; musho, Bodo, cow; mesa, Anglo-Saxon, a cow; mashu, Garo, cow; mis-musu, African Bambarra, a cow.

Divine types are found in a vague generalized condition. The Hebrew menchah החנמ is a sacrifice an offering, an oblation to the gods. It was at one time the name of blood-offerings, but under the later legislation the word was applied only to unbloody offerings of meat and drink, in which the drink took the place of blood.

[p.47] Menchah, the offering, is the type of the goddess Menka, Menkat, or Menâ, and Menât, the Egyptian wet-nurse. Menka is mentioned in the Ritual, 'He has engraved a palm on his knee, says Menka.'[113]

According to the present writer's view, this goddess is the earliest form of Maat, the divinity of law, right rule, and true measure, but she was representative of the time of ten months or moons, whereas Ma bears the name of no. 9. Men signifies liquid measure; ment the no. 10. Menkat was the first feminine measurer in relation to the water-period. She is portrayed on the monuments in the act of offering two vases held in her hands[114], the offerer in person, whereas the Hebrew menchah only denotes the offering. Menka (Eg). means to create, form, work, fabricate, clothe; and Menkat was the feminine creator and former who clothed the child as the prenatal nurse. Corn was designated the dry-nurse of Rome and Italy; Menka is the wet-nurse; the twain were personifications of the two truths assigned to the Great Mother in mythology. The one nursed the child with her blood (water), the other with her breath or spirit, she was the quickener of the seed or corn. Menà is a reduced form of her name, and the Babylonian goddess Meni associated with Gad, who was worshipped with drink-offerings, is probably the same divinity.

The Greek magos was a form of maka or menka, the Irish macha, as a title of Artemis, who was imaged in the great temple at Ephesus as the many-breasted wet-nurse. The month of May was likewise dedicated to Magos at Ephesus, and the name of May is a form of Maka (Menka-t), the Hindu Maya and Greek Maia. Maia is called the eldest of seven Pleiades, but the seven stars were not the Pleiades; they belonged to the Great Bear, the earliest form of the genetrix, the wet-nurse found in Menka or Maka. Menka was the first measurer, whose later form was Ma, the luni-solar measurer in conjunction with Taht and Ptah. Ma can be traced in the Greek Themis and Maka in Artemis. In Plutarch's Moralia[115], Meragenes says the Hebrews call the brazen vessels used in their ceremonies the 'Nurses of God.' The vessel imaged the womb or breast, the type of the wet-nurse Menka.

Another reduced deity might be recovered in the person of the prophet Elijah, who will be referred to hereafter.

The Hebrew baruk haba (אבה ףורב) 'Blessed, is he that cometh,' is used by the Jews as a salutation to the child when it is brought into the room to be circumcised. The word haba contains various mystic and occult meanings. The value of its letters in Hebrew is considered to amount, by gematria, to the number eight. The eighth is the day of circumcision, and the salutation is connected with the child's coming on the eighth day to be circumcised. By notariqon, these letters, H B A, are held to be initials [p.48] of three words, הילא אב הנה, 'Behold Elijah cometh.'[116] The Jews are said to suppose that Elijah enters the chamber along with the child to take the seat left vacant for him in the double chair, and they exclaim, 'This is the seat of the prophet Elijah.'[117] Elijah is the centre of a large number of Hebrew traditions, and this identification of him with the one who comes and with the number eight, appears likewise to indicate that he is a from of the god Taht, or the earlier Sut-Anubis. Sut was the announcer of the goddess of the seven stars, as the one who came annually. Taht, who superseded him, was the messenger, the voice or logos of the seven gods, the manifestor of the Pleroma and completer of the ogdoad. He was the Lord of the Eight, or eighth to the seven. Haba, 'he that cometh,' is the name of Taht's ibis. Haba is the Egyptian form of ibis. The word also signifies the messenger, and the coming or returning one. Elijah commences as the messenger who announces the prophecy to Ahab[118]. Taht superseded Sut, that is Bar or Baal in Egypt, and Elijah is portrayed as the great opponent of Baal in Israel. Taht was the scribe of the gods, and eight years after his ascension into heaven on a chariot of fire, Elijah sent a letter of reproof to Jehoram, King of Judah.

In the Gospel of Matthew the Christ says of John the Baptist, 'This is (he) of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.'[119] 'And if ye will receive (it), this is Elias which was for to come.' The coming of this messenger is represented as being fulfilled in the advent of John. This contains matter of great moment for a later volume; it may, however, be remarked in passing, that Aan in Egyptian mythology is also the messenger and announcer; first as Anubis (Sut), and next as a form of Taht the lunar god. In a fresco of the second or third century, Elijah is seen ascending on his fiery chariot, and the figure of Mercury (Taht) is present as a part of the picture[120].

The atef crown of Upper Egypt, or of the southern heaven, consists of the white crown and double feathers, set on the solar disc. It is the crown of Osiris and gods of the lower world. In Hebrew the word ףטע (atph) has the meaning of clothing and covering, to clothe as with a garment or with gloom. The hieroglyphic is almost recoverable in Job[121] where he says of God, 'He puts on (hides himself) in the south, and I see not,' which is equivalent to putting on the atef crown with the insignia of the netherworld, the wearer of which becomes the hidden sun of Amenti, overshadowed, obscured, darkened.

[p.49] The hieroglyphic kan is a corner of a building, the corner-symbol held in the hand of the mother of the messiah-child, in the sign of Pisces[122], the one of the four quarters at which the child was brought forth. In Egyptian the article sometimes follows the noun, and kanp would thus be the kan. The word occurs as kanb, kanbet, and kanteb with the sign of a corner. This is extant in Hebrew as kanph, the corner or extremities of the earth. Kanphoth[123] signifies the four quarters or corners of the earth. Kanbut (Eg.) means the corner-place. Kan-put the corner of the circle, that is, one corner of the house of four quarters. Put (Eg.) is the foundation bu (or but), a stone. Thus kan-but is the corner-stone of the foundation.

In this sense the chiefs of the people[124] are designated corners (in the margin). Isaiah[125] makes the princes of Zoar to be the stay of the people, the corners or corner-stones. The Egyptian kanbut (and kanteb) is one who performs service and is the stay and support, whose emblem is the corner, our image of the corner-stone. Kanput and kanteb are synonymous, because teb and put both mean the circle. The Hebrew word is applied to the highest summit of the temple, and in Egyptian teb is the summit, the top; as is the pet. The plural of kanphoth will be explained further on. The hieroglyphic corner has to be built on hereafter. The reader must not think these disquisitions are objectless word-mongering.

There has been no rendering of the Hebrew kiyor that makes out the meaning. The name is applied to a small hearth or oven[126]. The karr is an Egyptian furnace, and oven. Next the kivor is a layer or molten sea. The karua (Eg.) is a lake, pond, or layer. Again, we are told that Solomon made a kiyor of brass, and had it set in the middle of the court, and he kneeled down upon it[127]. This was neither oven nor layer. It has been translated scaffold. The kivor in this instance was five cubits long, five broad, and three cubits high. Egyptian will tell us what this klvor was.

The hieroglyphic kharu is a shrine, a tavern, the place of refreshment. The Hebrew kivor was evidently the table or shrine of the eucharist, what is now termed the communion-table. The Egyptians had a kind of bread named kharupus[128], that is, bread baked for the shrine or altar. This would be baked in the karr, or oven. The raised kar represented the upper of the two kars, the layer, the lower; both were shrines in Egypt. The upper held the bread-symbol of the highest truth; the other, the waters, emblematical of the lower. Both symbols still meet in the bread and wine of the Eucharist.

The Hebrew kallah, a technical term for the highest school, has, [p.50] according to Deutsch[129], long been a crux for etymologists, so the Jews know of their own origins. It comes from the kha book-library and altar; ru, discourse, word, mouth. Whence kh, the sacred shrine, the cell of learning; kher, speak, speech, the word and the karheb, a kind of Egyptian priest. Ah (Eg.), would the house of, to kher or khal.

The Hebrew yod (די) for the hand, is the Egyptian 'it,' to figure forth, with the hand of the artist for determinative. It has a variant in at, a type, to work, build, form, image, the hand-worker, an handiwork. The female as the shaper is the at. 'It' therefore includes the work of the hand as well as the member, whilst the organ of working and figuring forth is not limited to the hand itself; which is but one of various yods or types of working. This alone will make sense of the passage[130], and Israel saw the great yod which the Lord did upon the Egyptians. Hand does not render it, the hand was hieroglyphic for the work done, not literal: at or kat (Eg.) is work. The word yod, hand, is used for ability[131], just as we say a 'handy man,' which shows the typical use of the hand. Only in the absence of the symbols the yod has been chiefly confined to one type as the hand, whereas in the original it may also be the womb, the circle, a boat, the heaven round, a house, a place, and twenty other things according to the determinatives. Yod is a place in Hebrew; 'every man in his yod,'[132] but the hand is not the only place. At (Eg.) to build, is applied in the Hebrew name of the 'tenons' yod, used in building[133]. The hand is a type of holding, so is the tenon, but as the reader will apprehend there may be any number of yod, whereas the translators have only known of one chief type. Yod also means to consecrate but not by 'filling the hand.' Of course the hand was used in consecration, but it was laid on the head typically, a mode of figuring forth and constituting sacred handiwork as in it (Eg.), to figure with the hand.

It is not a part of my work to revise the Hebrew testament the oldest portions of which would have to be rewritten hieroglyphically before it could be rightly restored, but two or three applications of the Egyptian 'it,' or 'at' may be made. We read that 'Saul came up to Carmel and behold, he set him up yod,'[134] rendered a place. 'At' (Eg.) is a shrine, a monument, and in Assyrian 'it' is a carved stone. When God came from Teman he had horns or emanations coming out of his yod[135]. Here the yod translated hand or side. Had the determinative been present it would have shown the at (Eg.) as the solar circle or disk, the image of Adonai, God of Israel. 'At,' the circle of the sun, was the yod whence issued the fiery-hornedness, there was the hiding and [p.51] manifesting of his power. 'At' signifies doing, and the yod [136] means deeds. Lastly, the hand is frequently used for the mouth. 'At' is to utter, put out, it is also that which is uttered. Hence 'at' the word, to speak. But we are told that the Word of the Lord came by the yod of Malachi[137], and by the hand of the prophets. This may be supposed to indicate the written word, which has no meaning. The word was oral. Besides we find[138] the Lord had spoken by the hand of Moses. In these instances the yod signified is not the hand but 'at,' the word, mouth, or type that needs interpreting by aid of the hieroglyphics, but which never has been interpreted.

In the work of Tabari[139] it is related that two animals came out of the Ark which did not enter; they were produced within it. These were the hog and cat, created as scavengers and to keep down the rats. The elephant gave birth to the hog, and Noah produced the cat from the sneeze of the lion by passing his hand down its back.

Remote as this is, it can be partially read by the Ritual, where the sun is said to transform into the cat or 'it is Shu making the likeness of Seb.' The alternative shows Shu making his transformation into a cat. Shu was the lion-god and one of the two lions was the cat which dealt with the 'abominable rat of the sun,' a type of the enemy Apophis. Now when we know that Shu represented breath (Net) or spirit, we can see how it may be said the cat was evoked from the nose of the lion. We see further that the root of this strange rabbinical and Haggadistic matter is Egyptian, which is the object of the present investigation.

In the Egyptian pantheon the seven Hathors are the Parcae or Fates, the prognosticators and foretellers of coming events, and these in the funeral Ritual are represented in the form of seven cows. Thus the seven kine of Joseph's dream which indicate the seven years of plenty and the seven years of famine correspond to the seven cows or Hathors who fulfil their character as the foretellers of events to come assigned to them by the Egyptians. The seven cows are also the givers of plenty who are invoked for food. 'He has known the seven cows and their bull, who give of food and of drink to the living, and who feed the gods of the west. Give ye food and drink to the Osiris; feed him.' 'Give ye to him daily food and drink, oxen, geese, and all good things.'[140]

Of Behemoth, the hippopotamus[141], we read in the English version 'He is the chief of the ways of God; he that made him can make his sword to approach unto him.' The word rendered sword is chereb (ברח). The chereb is a sword or some other kind of [p.52] cutting instrument, the Chaldee cherba, Phoenician harba, and Greek αρπη, but the reading is more than doubtful. The passage is followed by 'Surely the mountains bring him forth food.' The context shows the meaning to be that, mighty monster as he is, the power which created can feed and sustain him. Therefore it appears probable the word chereb represents the Egyptian kherpu which denotes supply, sufficiency, or enough. The sense of the passage would then be, 'He that made him can supply him with provisions.' Surely the mountain (can) bring him forth food. In a sense he has all the mountains for grazing-ground, though not because these were the particular pasture of the hippopotamus. The imagery is thought of in relation to the typical hippopotamus, the Great Bear of the Egyptians. For this reason the rabbinical writers consider the 'cattle upon a thousand hills'[142] also refers to Behemoth whose celestial type was Ursa Major. It is said of Behemoth in the Authorised Version[143]: 'Behold he drinketh up a river and hasteth not.' The Seventy have it 'if there should be an inundation,' and this sense is recoverable by aid of the word aaseh (Eg.) which means a flood or a deluge of water, and may be derived from aa great, and sekha flood-time; aasekha being equivalent to קשע. Thus the passage would mean, 'Behold in time of a great flood he hastens not, he does not mind an inundation and as for Jordan he could swallow it.'

The particular idea expressed by the word thachash has never been determined. It is the name given to the skins used for the exterior covering of the tabernacle[144]. The same thing is named in the Bull Inscription of Khorsabad Sargon says: 'I constructed palaces of skins of taakhash, of sandalwood, of ebony.'[145] M. Oppert characterizes the word as most obscure.

According to Rashi[146] the takash may be a badger, a sea-dog or dolphin; the Talmud says a marten, others identify the name with the colour rather than the animal. The Arabian Jews call the red-dyed hide of the ram thachash[147], and this is the sense corroborated by Egyptian when we find the word worn down to tesh. Tesh is blood, red. It is applied to the red Nile, the red crown, and to the planet Mars, Tesht. Tesh-tesh is an epithet of Osiris in his inert feminine form, and red phase, the great mystery. Tesh means to separate, leave, be left destitute, set apart. This in relation to the mystical sense which first made it sacred. Teshru is the red calf, red land, a red bird. Tesh, earlier takash, means red, blood (hence the dyed ram skins), and may of course be applied to anything of that colour: it does not otherwise represent an animal, and cannot represent the grey badger.

The 39th chapter of Job[148] contains allusions which prove a knowledge of the hieroglyphics. One of these is especially intimate. [p.53] 'Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow, or will he harrow the valleys after thee? Wilt thou trust him, because his strength is great?' The allusions like those referring to the peacock and ostrich are made in mockery. The unicorn was the type of Typhon. The mythical unicorn is the ramakh, the hippopotamus that dragged and drew round the starry system all night, till men were once more drawn out of the deluge of the darkness. Will this puller above pull for you here below, that you worship the image of Typhon? One name of the animal itself is apt, and apt (Eg.) is the name of the crib or manger. The question in Egyptian is, 'Will apt (the unicorn) abide by the apt (crib)?' 'Will he plough for you?' is the gist of one question, and kheb (Eg.) is both a name of the plough and of the unicorn. Also this constellation of Typhon is called the Plough. These queries show great familiarity with the hieroglyphic symbols; a convincing proof of this is afforded by an assault on the character of the ostrich[149], 'which leaveth her eggs in the earth.'

The ostrich-feather is one of the hieroglyphics, and reads either mau or shu, that is, light or shade. Horapollo says it was adopted because the wing-feathers of the ostrich are of equal length[150]. This feather is the especial symbol of Ma, the goddess of truth and justice. It was the sign of the Two Truths and total wisdom of Egypt. The writer of the Book of Job is aware of the sacred character of the wing-feathers of the ostrich, and asks in effect, Is she either true, just, or wise, or pious? Does she sustain the character of her wing-feathers? Does not she leave her eggs in the sand for the earth to warm them or the passing foot to crush them? He asserts with the Arabs that the bird is impious. This is the modern realism opposed to the symbolic character of the bird, and even that can only be read as it is written, hieroglyphically.

The tip of the crocodile's tail is the ideograph of kam, black, darkness, because the crocodile left the land for the water at night, and the tip of the tail was the vanishing point.* To express sunrise, says Horapollo, they depict the two eyes of a crocodile, because, of the whole body, these are seen glaring conspicuously from the deep[151]. This is the imagery of Job. 'By his neesings a light doth shine, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning.' The writer uses the Egyptian symbol of the morning, hence the sole sense of sorrow being turned into joy before such a thing as the crocodile.

* Horapollo gives another reason. He says the tail denotes darkness because with a blow of it the animal will inflict death[152].

'He—the Lord—stretcheth out the north over the empty place.' 'Hell is naked before him.'[153] That is the 'bend of the great void' [p.54] found in the north, the open abyss, the place of the waters, the region of the hells, in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. This is the quarter where the 'Dead things {ghosts and evil spirits} are born beneath the waters, and are the inhabitants thereof,'[154] as in the Ritual. 'Though they be hid from my sight in the bottom of the sea, thence will I command the serpent, and he shall bite them.'[155] That is the Apophis serpent of Egypt, the dweller in the deep, the dragon of the waters, who lives off the blood of the condemned, and executes vengeance on the wicked. The Apophis is depicted as a crooked serpent set all along with sword-blades, typical of destruction.

On the sarcophagus of Meneptah in the Soane Museum may be seen, amongst various scenes of the valley and shadow of death, one in which a crooked serpent keeps the door of death. This is Job's crooked serpent and doorkeeper. 'Have the gates of death been opened unto thee? or hast thou seen the door-keepers of the shadow of death?'[156]

The Hebrew word apap, to encompass round, in the passages, 'the waters compassed me,'[157] and 'the waves of death compassed me,'[158] is the name of the dragon of the deep, the Apophis monster, that strangled within its coils.

The great serpent of the later Hebrew mythology, called the Bariak Nachash, may be explicated by means of the hieroglyphics. It is called the crooked serpent[159] and the piercing serpent[160]. The typhonian dragon, to whose influence tempests were attributed, is certainly intended; the Apophis or akhekh serpent, whose heaving, rolling, writhing body is set with sword-blades. Akh (Eg.) means fire; pra (Eg.; Hebrew, bra) is to manifest, emane, fulminate. This would make the Bariak-Nachash the fulminator of fire. In Egyptian ful-garavit, fulsit, is expressed by buireka. This corresponds to the Hebrew form baraq (קרב), to 'cast forth,' lighten, or fulminate. The only difference in the Hebrew is the substitution of the letter cheth for qoph. Another name of this serpent in the hieroglyphics is the destroying serpent, and the Hebrew barak was called the 'thunderbolt.' Another title of the serpent is 'brass of earth,' which tallies with the Hebrew nachushta; 'Nachush' meaning brass, whilst ta is the Egyptian word for earth. This will suffice for identifying the Hebrew serpent of evil with the typhonian serpent of Egypt.

The plural Bariakim employed by Isaiah[161] is founded on another Egyptian word. He uses it for ships, and ban (Eg.) is the bark, of which bariakim is the plural.

The mythological and symbolic character is mixed up with these [p.55] typical beasts, which cannot be simply understood apart from their hieroglyphical nature. Many names of mystic meaning have been rendered by translators who were in the dark and thoroughly ignorant of the thing signified by the word. No Hebrew scholar ever yet knew what was intended by the words 'Tan' and 'Tannin,' which include the whale that swallowed Jonah, the serpent that tempted Eve, the leviathan of Job, the piercing serpent, the crooked serpent, and the dragon of the deep[162], the dragon that Job claimed to be his brother; Pharaoh, king of Egypt[163], and the rod of Moses in its serpentine transformation[164]. It is applied to creatures of the desert and monsters of the deep, also by comparison to the wild she-ass of the wilderness, snuffing up the wind at her pleasure[165], and lastly, it is used to indicate the old serpent called the Devil and Satan[166]. Thus philologically the serpent that tempted Eve is one with the serpent into which Moses' rod was changed, and the whale which swallowed Jonah is one with the leviathan whom Job wishes had swallowed him[167] rather than he should have been born, and these are all one with the dragon of the waters, who was the cruel pharaoh drowned for the time being in the Red Sea, but who emerges once more as the Satan of the Apocalypse.

The primary question for us is not, What is the tan? There is no the in the case where there are so many. The question is, What does tan mean as a principle of naming applied to the various illustrations? Now, tan in Egyptian means division, cutting in two, to cut off, to divide, turn away, make, become, or be separate. The serpent covered with sword-blades was the piercing or severing serpent. Worms, or destructive animals of the waters, in Egyptian, are tan-mu, the tan of the waters; they pierce and sever in destroying. The River Tan (Iarutan) of the waterman is the river that divides. The period of mourning desiderated by Job was the dividing period opposed to gestation. The wild beasts cut off in remote deserts and isolated on desolate isles are the Tannin on that account[168]. Islanders are the tena in Egyptian. Lunar eclipses are tennu; they cut off the light, and occur at the dividing-place. Tenu is the joint or break, as is the number ten. Tane is one of the Polynesian great gods, the divider of the heaven from the earth personified. Egypt as the tan, whether celestial or geographical, was the divided heavens or countries.

'Tenny' is the name of lines that give the waved barry look to the shield of a coat of arms. The heraldic colour and blazon of tenny is yellow; the jacinth in stones, and the dragon's head in the planisphere.

Having the principle of naming, the hieroglyphics supply the means of applying it by determinatives of the different ideas that [p.56] have to be expressed by one word. Once cut adrift from these, we have no philological anchorage anywhere. But the hieroglyphic language is like an old sea-bottom, still intact, and rich with the lost treasures of a myriad wrecks.

Leviathan as one of the mythical monsters, or tannin, is probably the Egyptian ref, or refi, a form of the Apophis serpent, from ref, or ru, as the typical reptile, viper, snake, worm, scorpion, or dragon, and tan, to cut in two, whence the cutting, destroying akhekh, serpent of night, armed with piercing blades, which represented the power of the darkness and death to sever the circle of light and life in the 'bend of the great void'[169] where it lurked. Job's[170] description of leviathan, simply supposed by commentators to be a veritable dweller in the sea, includes all the clothing of the monster of mythology.

Max Muller[171] has shown how the fleets of Solomon must have been to India to obtain the monkeys, on account of the name, which is qoph, because in Sanskrit the ape is kapi. 'Qoph,' he says, 'is foreign in Hebrew, and the land in which that word is indigenous must be the Ophir of the Bible; therefore it was India.' Kafi is the original word, and it is Egyptian; kepi in Persian; kapi in Sanskrit; kepos in Greek; ape in English. The kafi, a monkey of a peculiar kind, appears in the tombs of the fourth dynasty as early as the time of Kufu, with the name of kafi written over it, about 3733 BC. It is the dog-headed ape, or cynocephalus, made so much of in Egypt that it was a co-personification with Taht, of the word (logos) itself. It represented the moon and periodicity in its feminine phase, and was therefore a feminine logos. Iamblichus[172] tells us this cynocephalus was honoured in the temples on account of certain changes it underwent in common with the moon, by which time could be reckoned! The truth is, the kaf is a menstruating monkey, and suffered eclipse (khab) periodically like the moon, and was adopted in the mysteries, where it took the place of the Q'deshoth, the human demonstrators of primary facts in nature. This kaf belongs solely to Africa, which is Kafrica, the ka, inner land, of the kaf, or af (born of) the first (ap) land, and therefore Ophir was in Africa.

It has likewise been argued that Solomon's םייכת (peacocks)[173] were brought from India, because toki is the Tamil name for the peacock, and togei in Malabar. But the original of both is the Egyptian tekh, or tekai, a symbolic bird. Tekh is a name for the ibis of Taht; tekai is the Otis Tetrax. The name applied to the peacock is full of significance. Teka is to see, behold with the symbolic eye. Tekhen is to open and shut the eyes, wink, sparkle, illumine, and the techi, as peacock, is the bird with the eyes that open and shut with [p.57] their winking splendours. Nothing could be more happy than the name Tekhi, from the Egyptian tekh. Not only is the name of the peacock Egyptian, it exists, without the article prefixed, as the akh, or khu, the splendid, illuminated, coloured bird; a sun-bird, the symbol of spirit, lustre, and light.

The ivory in Hebrew is called shen habbim, ivory, or elephant's teeth (margin). This habbim, says Max Muller, is without a derivation in Hebrew, but is most likely a corruption of the Sanskrit name for elephant, ibha, preceded by the Semitic article[174]. Again, there is no need of corruption as in Egyptian ab is the name both for the elephant and the ivory. The ab had earlier forms in hab and kab, so that the names of the peacock, ape, and ivory, may be foreign in Hebrew without being derived from Sanskrit, or Ophir being in India, or a navy of a King Solomon having existed that traded with India. The first India known to the Greeks was in Africa, and the earliest Indians were Ethiopic. When Eustathius[175] states that the Ethiopians came from India he means the African India. When Claudius Claudianus, the last of the Latin classic poets, at the end of the fourth century, speaks of the 'India, which is painted on Jewish veils,'[176] the India meant is Ethiopic and not Asiatic. Tacitus[177] says many considered the Jews to be the progeny of the Ethiopians, but they would mean the Indians of Africa. India in other classical writers is a name of Ethiopia or the land of Kush. Virgil describes the Nile as coming from the land of the coloured Indians[178], and Diodorus[179] calls the black Osiris an Indian by extraction. The conquest of India by Osiris or Bacchus is allegorical, and belongs to the sun in the southern heaven. Horus-Khenti-Khrati[180] is a form of this sun of India or the south, the Harpocrates of Khent, the southern heaven. This leads to the derivation of the name of India as a developed form of khentu (Eg.), the inner, interior, southern land; extant as far south as U-ganda, the patriarch of which was named Kintu, and who, according to Stanley, came and went and was expected to return[181]. Khentu modifies into the Zend hendu, Pahlavi hendo, and India.

Thus Khebta-Kheftu is Egypt south, the earliest Hindu-Kush is Southern Ethiopia, and the final, the original form of the Sanskrit sapta-sindhu and Zend hapta-hendu, is the Egyptian khabta-khentu, or Egypt north and south.

India may or may not be named as the land of the Seven Streams from Sapta-sindhu, the Seven Rivers. But if it were, the celestial Egypt was also the land of the seven streams[182], and seven mouths were assigned to the Nile. The Romans reckoned the branches of the Nile to be seven in number, Septemplicis ostia Nili. It can be shown, [p.58] however, that the typical seven of naming are the seven stars of Khepsh (Kush) not seven streams. The Indian Ocean, if named from the African India, or Ethiopia, certainly was not called after the seven streams. It would then be the ocean of those who had sailed south by the Red Sea, and khentu (Eg.), means the south, and going south. The ocean would be named first and the land last, as that of the Southern Sea.

The rabbis say the world is like an eye, and the pupil of it is Jerusalem. The image seen in it is the sanctuary. This belongs to the Ritual where the god is visible in his disk, which is also the eye. The eye, or its pupil, is the ar, and the eye is made at the place of reproduction, the eye being the symbol of mirroring, making the likeness, conceiving, and it is full when the circle of the year, the round, is completed. Jerusalem represented this centre of the eye, or the place of juncture in the ring, the gem of it.

One meaning of םלש (shalem) is to complete, form the whole, be full. This does not supersede the high place, the summit. But if we take the eye, aru, and shalem, in the sense of to fill, complete the whole, we see that Aru-Shalem is just the place of making or filling the eye. As a constellation the eye, a sign of Horus the child reborn every spring, is figured at the place of the vernal equinox, where the hill of the horizon was fixed, and the birthplace of the child, the sanctuary, is found.

The Egyptian makha supplies a sense missing in Hebrew, where the word אחמתא (ithm'cha) signifies to be fixed or affixed to a cross, be crucified. The machba (אבחמ) is a junction, the place of uniting and dovetailing. Machaneh (הנחמ) in the plural form of machanim, denotes a dual dance, the up and down of it. Mak (Eg.) means the dance. Macbar (רחמ) is the morning time, the time of light on the horizon. Makôn (נוכמ) means a stand, a dwelling-place, the heavenly seat, the dwelling-place of deity, the foundation or basis of a throne. In the feminine form, makônah (הנוכמ) is a stand, support, pedestal, a foundation for the world.

Makba (Eg.) is the balance, the equinoctial level, the place of the horizon. Ma is place, and akh is the horizon. Har-Makha was the sun of both horizons, or the level. The first foundations were laid in the four corners; at the chief of these, the place of the spring equinox, was the solar birthplace. Here is the Tser Hill, or rock of the horizon, on which the gods landed from the waters. This was the place of juncture or conjunction of sun and moon, and the birthplace of their son, and from the crossing was derived the symbol of the cross, and the imagery of the crucifixion.

There is a mystery about the use of the Hebrew mem. The meaning of this addition to words as modifying the idea, says Fuerst[183], has not been ascertained as yet. The Egyptian m will illustrate the Hebrew mem. Ma, as place, explains the mem prefixed in הערמ for [p.59]  pasture, and the time at which an action takes place as in בשומ (ma)[184], the place, and akha, the horizon, yield makha the level, balance, or equinox.

The heroic exploit of Samson is connected etymologically with a place called Maktesh, a name applied to Jerusalem by the Samaritans. Tesh (Eg.) is a nome or division of land; mak-tesh is the equinoctial division or level. As this was the place of the mount we may infer that Jerusalem is the aru (Eg.), the ascent, steps or mount of peace, representing the hill of the horizon in the solar scheme. Tabariyya is also called Maktesh in the Midrash. Tab (Eg.) is the point of commencement in the circle; an (Eg.) again is the mount. The Hebrew chag is a festival, a feast which was celebrated with dancing[185]. It means particularly the feast of harvest[186] or the Passover[187]. The harvest and the Passover were the two equinoctial tides. Khekh (Eg.) is the horizon and the balance, ergo, the equinoctial level. Skhekh (Eg.) means to adjust the balance. Khekh modifies into hakh, a festival, a time, determined by the twin lions of the horizon, and by the double-seated boat; two ideographs of the sun upon the horizon, at the time of the equinox. This chag or hak is the same as the English Hock-tide, celebrated twice a year, after Easter and at