iUrrt nrlvv ^ 2L — ^THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, | §7,. Princeton, N. J. | ^^ lnSixha.| ^^^^^ Division......^... |-^A^.25.: %.* The S ^'/|,(^//, Section ;-. which may 1|\ venience of ID BOOh', No, ^ Printed f(^ fe-^^3»^^«e<^^sej^^_^ds^^*^^;f— ft^^. Row. .'£SGao N*^ V SCRIPTURE GAZETTEER; M GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL DICTIONARY PLACES AND PEOPLE, MENTIONED IN THE BIBLE maps; tables of time, weights, measures, and money; and a copious chronological table. By JOHN GRIFFITH 'MANSFORD. LONDON: PUBLISHED BY HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO., PATERNOSTER ROW. 1829. bath: PRINTED BY GEORGE WOOD, UNION STREET. PREFACE. It may be expected that an author little known to the world should give some account of himself, and of his pretensions to notice. Afflic- tion is the first, and in all cases, perhaps, the most powerful claim ; to which, in the present instance, the author with diffidence ventures to add, that he is known to many of his professional brethren as the author of some treatises, the reception of which gratified his utmost ambition, and which, but for the withering influence of disease, would probably have effectually suppressed that of stepping out of the bounds of a science to which he was ardently devoted. Such a work as the present may, indeed, at first sight, appear a laborious undertaking for a sick man ; but that depends on the disposition with which it is set about, and the facilities afforded for its performance by previous habits, and the access to be obtained to the requisite sources of information. Whoever has had the misfortune to be placed in the author's situation, will be able to enter readily into his feelings and views, and to understand that restlessness of mind which prompts it to seek relief, in employments suited to its taste and means, from the tedium of inaction or the gloom of despondency. The following work, then, owes its commencement, above seven years since, to a separation by sickness on the part of the author from the duties of an arduous profession, which it appeared for some time doubtful whether he should be ever able to resume. Nothing, per- haps, in such a situation, conduces more to recovery than a total IV PREFACE. abstraction from accustomed trains of thought, and from the ordinary cares and pursuits of life : nor is any thing so likely to afford such abstraction as that Volume which is alike important to all, and the study of which can be considered as foreign to no profession or con- dition. Subsequent visitations of the same afflictive kind, and inter- vals of leisure in seasons of comparative health, have brought the work to tlie state in which it is now presented to the public. Scripture history and geography embrace a field of research so vast, as well as interesting, that while the desire of information is felt by the curious reader in almost every page of the Sacred Writings, that information is so widely scattered amongst the works of ancient and modern authors, as, generally speaking, to be beyond his reach. There are, it is true, several works on sacred geography ; but they are either too voluminous and costly to be accessible to the great mass of readers, or were written at a time when our acquaint- ance with the East was very imperfect. The works of Bochart and of Wells, invaluable as they are for their critical research, and for all the information to be obtained from antiquity, would assume a new aspect from the lights of modern geography. This remark will be found to affect not merely the site and the topography of ancient cities, but the position and direction of mountains and mountain- chains, the courses of rivers, and the extent and configuration of entire districts. The many editions of different theological dictiona- ries in circulation contain the usual geographical notices embodied in the work ; but they are for the most part copied from one another, and are necessarily very limited. The kind of book wanted was one of moderate price, which should spare the labour of referring to a multitude of volumes in different languages, or to different parts of the same volume, in search of some clear account of a single place or period, by containing in itself every desirable piece of information, and by the obvious mode of alphabetical arrangement. That this want has been supplied by the present volume the author does not presume to say ; but such at least has been his aim. With respect to some of the places mentioned in the Sacred Writings, the stock of information we possess concerning them is so scanty, that the same account is necessarily common to all ; but with PREFACE, V Others, where the materials are more abundant, the author has made a larger and more varied use of them ; selecting from all the authori- ties, ancient and modern, the most interesting and important facts connected with sacred history and geography. Thus the account of some places will necessarily be limited, and cannot differ materially from that contained in the works of preceding authors ; while that of others, and by far the larger part, will be found more diversified and copious. Many places are omitted altogether, as needlessly swelling / the volume, inasmuch as all that is known respecting them, is given in the Scriptures themselves — amounting to little more than the men- tion of the name, with perhaps the tribe or country to which they belonged. The author has added some articles which he has not found in any treatise on sacred geography ; he has enlarged on those which appeared the most interesting ; and has endeavoured to put the reader in possession, in a clear and concise view, of all the important information to be derived from the most recent travellers. Of these the lamented Burckhardt is eminently distinguished, whose researches in some of the countries mentioned in the Old Testament least known, are particularly valuable. On the subject of the prophecies, confessedly the most difficult parts of the Sacred Writings, the author thinks it necessary to say a few words. With respect to those which have already received their final accomplishment, abundant materials ai'e furnished in proof of their wonderful accordance with the events predicted : these have been carefully collected and largely illustrated. And with respect to those whose fulfilment is yet future, or which are receiving their com- pletion at the present day, it is hoped that a strict regard to the pro- phetic style, an attentive observance of the marks given us by which to judge of prophecies in actual progress towards their accomplish- ment, a humble and teachable spirit, and the help of pious and en- lightened expositors, will, by God's grace, enable us rightly to under- stand so much as it is His will that we should understand. At all events, we who live in the present day have eminently the advantage over those who have gone before us. Every age brings both additi- onal evidence of the truth of that which is past, and additional lights to enable us to discern that which now is and that which is to come. Erroneous calculations falsify themselves ; passing events excite the minds of men to more minute inquiry ; while, as the time of the end draws nigh, the Holy Spirit is more largely bestowed, the finger of God is more clearly discerned in his dealing with the nations, and the dark places in the oeconomy of his Providence are made clearer. " Time," says Bishop Newton, " that detracts something from the evidence of other writers, is still adding something to the credit and authority of the prophets." Local prophecies cannot be detached from the places to which they relate ; they form, indeed, the most important and instructive feature in the history of such places. Nor can predictions of a local charac- ter yet unfulfilled, be considered as less important, or less belonging to the subjects of the present work. We would not be wise above what is written, nor presumptuously strive to penetrate the counsels of the Most High ; but as all Scripture is given for our instruction, while we enter on the study of its obscurer parts with suitable awe and humility, we may innocently, if not laudably, seek in what is revealed, and, in that which time is gradually unfolding, the manner and the times of what remains to be accomplished. These observations refer in a particular manner to the predictions relating to the Roman empire, and its oflPspring the Popedom. Nothing is farther from the intentions of the author, than to wound the feelings, or to insult the faith, of any body of Christians : but persons and creeds are different things ; and while the former, of whatever faith, may demand our unfeigned esteem, the latter must be judged, without fear of men, by the standard of truth delivered in the Bible. Concession, unwarranted by Scripture, is not charity : — it may pass for such, or for the liberality, so called, of the day : but it must, in every such instance, have its foundation in either weakness, or ignorance, or hypocrisy. If we be wrong, we are willing to submit our errors to the same test to which we bring the professions of all : and if differences still sub- sist, as they must, and as it was doubtless designed that they should, charity consists in the exercise of mutual forbearance, and in pre- serving, in spite of opposing creeds, the relations of civilized society, and of Christian fellowship. It might wear the appearance of ostentatious display, and would further uselessly extend the pages of a preface, not often willingly read to the end, to detail the multiplied authorities to whom the author is indebted for the materiel of his work. They are respectively specified in the articles on which their researches could throw any light. Amongst the ancients, however, may be particularly mentioned — Herodotus, the father of history, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Phny, Quintus Curtius, Josephus, Jerom, and Eusebius : and among the moderns— Bochart, Wells, Maundrell, Shaw, Usher, Hales, Calmet, Clarke, Vincent, Bryant, Newton, Faber, Shuckford, Prideaux, J. D. Michaelis, Harmer, Bruce, D'Anville, Malcolm, Rennel, Rich, Chateau- briand, Niebuhr, Burckhardt, Buckingham, Richardson, Morier, Ker Porter, JolhfFe, Wittman, Jowett, and Home ; whose great work, fre- quently quoted, is itself a storehouse of theological knowledge. The Ushcrian, or common Bible Chronology, has been adopted, as sanctioned by time, and by general reception ; although that of Dr. Hales is perhaps the most correct. The present work, whose origin and design are thus explained, the author, while he is sensible that it cannot be free from numerous imperfections, ventures to hope, may be found useful as a book of easy reference to the biblical student, or the general reader of the Sacred Volume. Bath; March 27, 1829. SUBSCRIBERS' NAMES, RECEm^D AFTER THE FIRST LIST WAS PRINTED OFF. Crabbe Rev. Geo., T,I,.B., Rector of Tfowhridje Mead Rev. John, Rector of Marston Rous Rev. Geo., Rector of Laverton Ireland Rev. Heo., Lecturer of Plymouth Jolliffe J. T. esq., Aimnerdoiu^ti Newport John, esq., Wells Rolph Win. esq., Hiornburi/ Couucell Mr., ditto Read Mr. J ohu, Trowbridfjc. SCRIPTURE GAZETTEER, ^•c. <^-c. ABA AbANA, a river of Damascus, men- tioned 2 Kings V. 12. "Are not Abana and Pai"pliar, rivers of Damascus, bet- ter than all the waters of Israel?" It was probably one of the branches of the Baradi or Chrysorrous, which, ris- ing in Mount libanus, divides into several streams near Damascus, and waters all the neighbourhood of that city. Naaman may be excused his national prejudice in favour of his own rivers, which, by their constant and bountiful supply, render the vicinity of Damascus, although on the edge of a desert, one of the most beautiful and fertile spots in the w orld : while the streams of Jvidaea, with the exception of the Jordan, are nearly diy the greater part of the year ; and running in deep and rocky channels, convey but partial fertility to the lands through which they flow. ABARIM, Mountains of, a ridge of mountains running nearly north and south, east of the Jordan, between that river and the city Heshbon or Esbus. A part of this ridge, or per- haps a distinct mass of the chain, was denominated Nebo; which is plain from the command of God to Moses, to " get UJ3 into this moimtain Abarim, unto Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, over against Jericho." Pis- gah was also a part of the same assem- blage of movuitains ; and, as appears, of Mount Nebo itself: as it is said, that " Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho." From all Mhich it may be 1 ABE gathered, that Nebo was a conspicuous moimtain in the chain of Abarim, hav- ing two or more distinct summits; one, and perhaps the highest, of which was denominated Pisgah, which com- manded an extensive prospect over great part of the land of Canaan. Abarim signifies passages: whence it is conjectured that these mountains derive their name from the passages or passes leading thi'ough them. ABEL-BETH-MAACAH, a city in the tribe of Naphthali. Here Sheba posted himself after exciting a rebel- lion against David. But the people of the place, in order to avert the horrors of a siege, cut off his head, and threw it over the wall to Joab, David's gene- ral, whfch terminated the affair. (2 Sam. XX. 14 — 18.) About eighty years after this event, it was taken and sacked by Benhadad, king of Syria (1 Kings XV. 20) ; and two hundred years sub- sequently, by Tiglath Pileser, who car- ried the inhabitants captive into As- - Syria. (2 Kings xv. 29.) It was, how- ever, again rebuilt ; and, according to Josephus, under the name of Abila, became the cajiital of the district of ^ Abilene. '^ ABEL-MEHOLATH, a city whose precise situation is not known, but is supposed to have been near the Jor- dan. It is chiefly remarkable for being the birth-place of the prophet Elijah; j> i Near this place Gideon obtained a vic- tory over the Midianites. (Judg.vii. 22.) ABEL-MI ZRAIM.— When Joseph went up out of Egypt with his family, the elders of Egypt, Sic, to burj' his A ABE ABI fiither Jacob in the land of Canaan, he halted seven days at the threshing- floor of Atad to mourn ; from whence the Canaanites termed the place Abel- Mizraim, or, the mourning of the Egyptians. It is remarkable, that from the situation of this place, which is said to have been beyond Jordan, Joseph would appear not to have taken the direct route into Canaan by the sea-coast, but to have made the cir- cuit of the Dead Sea, through the land of the Horites and Moabites, and so over the river Jordan to Hebron. Dr. Wells explains this, by supposing that Moses, when he wrote this account, was on the east of the Jordan ; so that, with respect to him, the plain of Mamre was bevond that river. ABEL-SHlfTIM,orShittim,a town in the plains of Moab, on the east of the Jordan, between which and Beth- jesimoth was the last encampment of the Israelites on that side of the river. The adjunct Abel is rendered in the margin of our Bible the plain of Shit- tim ; but it implies in the Hebrew ?7ioM;vii«^^,as Abel-Mizraim the mourn- ing of theEgj-ptians : from whence Abel- Shittim is also supposed to mean the mourning of Shittim, from the judg- ments which befel the Israelites at this place, as a punishment for their inter- coiurse with the Moabites. (Numb.xxv.) This etymology of the name would appear satisfactory, but is probably not the tnie one. (Jther derivations have been gi^en of the name of this place, as of many more, which proba- bly originating in some trivial or ac- cidental circumstance, can throw no light on its history. Thus, Abel-Shit- tim is said to signify the niourning of the thorius-, or prevarications. But Mr. Faber, in his elaborate researches into the primitive scheme of Phenician or Cutliite theology, finds a happier in- terpretation of the word. Shittim, or Sittim according to this writer, is the plural of Seth; and Seth was a title of llic great father, or Noah. The Sit- tim then, or Baalim, — for, in the Pro- tean forms which the original mytho- logy assumed, the very same deities were endlessly worshipped under dif- ferent names and characters, and with different local rites, — the Sittim, or Baalim, were the arkite gods ; of whom Noah, under the names of Seth, Sit, Sid, or Soth, was the principal. To the degenerate worship of these Sit- tim, the districts of Abel-Shittim and Baal-Peor seem in a particular man- ner to have been dedicated. Balaam accordingly (Numb.xxiv. 17) calls the Moabites "' recesses of the Trachonitis, invaded and pillaged the neighbouring comitries, until they were exterminated by Herod, called the Great ; who, in consequence, had the teiTitories of Zenodoms added to his own dominions by the Emperor Augustus. At the death of Herocl, and the division of his kingdom into three separate goieniments or tetrarcliies between his sons, no mention is made ACCAD. of Abilene; but it was probably in- cluded in that of Philip. In the fif- teenth year of Tiberius, however, we find, in St. Luke (ch. iii. 1), Abilene mentioned as a distinct tetrarchy, un- der another Lysanias ; probably a de- scendant of the prince of the same name, who was put to death by An- tony, and to whom it had reverted. Josephus, indeed, expressly says, that, by appointment of Augustus, a part of the house of Zenodorus paid tribute to Philip : from which it may perhaps be inferred, that Abilene was at this time restored to the family of Lysanias. But it was afterwards again, as it ap- pears, taken away from this family, and given by Claudius to Agrippa. — Joseph. Antiq., lib. xv., ch. x.; lib. xvii., ch.xi.; and lib. xix., ch. v. Prid. Con., an. 36, 22, and 20. ACCAD, or ACHAD, one of the cities founded by Nimrod in the land of Shinar. (Gen. x. 10.) It is called Archad in the Septuagint : whence it is conjectured, that the river Argades, mentioned by Ctesias as near Sittace, derived its name from this city. Mi- chaelis, lamenting the fate of Oriental geography, so often subjected to enrors by the fancies of the learned, contends for Nisibis as the site of Accad. In the geography of Mesopotamia, says this author, the inhabitants of Meso- potamia, Syrians, and Chaldeans, are best to be confided in. He accordingly adduces Ephraem the SjTrian (by whom it is called Achar, and who is follow- ed by Abulfaragius), Hieronymus, and the Targums of Jerusalem and Jona- than, as all agreeing in identifying Accad with Nisibis. — Vide J. D. Mi- chaelis Spicilegium GeographiiB He- braeorum Exteras. But with all the deference due to the opinions of this learned writer, and to those of the authorities which he has brought to his support, they are attended in the present instance with insuperable difficulties ; and we are still directed to a different region in search of Accad. Michaelis himself contends that Canneh was also Nisibis ; and although he has successfully shewn that the place might have borne both names, such a theory is more plausible than conclusive. The other three cities, which, together with Ac- cad, constituted the beginning of Nim- 3 rod's kingdom,namely,Babylon,Erech, and Calneh, it is to be observed, were in the land of Shinar ; which a refer- ence to that article will shew to be pro- bable was limited to Southern Meso- potamia. Here was Babylon; here was Calneh, or Ctesiphon ; and here, with almost equal certainty, was Erech, or Aracca. Here, too, in the absence of all local evidence, we may conclude that the fourth city stood. It is said to have been built in the same hiovni land of Shinar ; and as the other three are found in this land, within about forty miles of each other, we may here with propriety adopt the language of Michaelis, and lament the violence done to Eastern geography, in carry- ing this only remaining one to a dis- tance of four hundred miles, into what was at that time manifestly a different division of the earth. Sittace, errone- ously placed by Ptolemy in Susiana, but which, as we are informed by Xenophon, was found by the Greeks (who paid little respect to ancient names) on the west of the Tigris, agrees well with the view entertained above of the more probable site of Accad. It would scarcely be expected that any thing should now remain to guide us in our search for this ancient city, seeing that Babylon itself, with which it was coeval, is reduced to heaps ; and that it is not mentioned under its an- cient name by any profane author. But the discoveries of modern travel- lers may be brought to aid us in our inquiry. At the distance of about six miles from the modem town of Bagdad, is found a mound, surmounted by a tower-shaped ruin, called by the Arabs Tell Ninu'ood, and by the Turks Nem- rood Tepasse ; both terms implying the HiU of Nimrod. This gigantic mass rises in an irregularly pyramidal or turreted shape, according to the view in which it is taken, 125 or 130 feet above the gently mclined eleva- tion on which it stands. Its circum- ference, at the bottom, is 300 feet. The mound which constitutes its foun- dation is composed of a collection of rubbish, formed from the decay of the superstructure ; and consists of sandy earth, fragments of bvimt brick, pot- tery, and hard clay, partially Wtrified. In the remams of the tower, the dif- ferent lavers of sun-dried larick, of ACE ADM ■which it is composed, may be traced with great precision. These bricks, cemented together by slime, and di- vided into courses varying from 12 to 20 feet in height, are separated from one another by a stratum of reeds, similar to those now growing in the marshy parts of the plain, and in a wonderful state of preservation. The resemblance of this mode of building to that in some of the structures at Babylon, cannot escape observation ; and we may reasonably conclude it to be the workmanship of the same ar- chitects. The solidity and the lofti- ness of this pile, iinfashioned to any other purpose, bespeak it to be one of those enormous pjTamidal towers which were consecrated to the Sabian worship ; which, as essential to their religious rites, were probably erected in all the early cities of the Cuthites ; and which, like their prototype at Ba- bylon, answered the double purpose of altars and observatories. Here then was the site of one of these early cities. Jt was not Babylon : it was not Erech : it was not Calneh. It might l)e too much to say that therefore it must be Accad; but the inference is at least warrantable : which is further strength- ened by the name of the place, Akar- koufi'; which bears a greater affinity to that of Accad than many others which are forced into the support of geogTa- phical speculations bear to their sup- posed originals, especially when it is recollected that the Syrian name of the city was Achar. 1 1 is well known that the Arabians, who have preserved their descent, their independence,their manners and customs, and their lan- guage, unbroken to the present day, when vmder the Caliphs they became masters of Asia, restored the ancient names of places, which had been cor- rupted or entirely changed by succes- sive conquering nations, especially by the Greeks. An instance of such res- toration appears to be afforded in the case before us. ACCHO. See Ptolemais. ACKLDAMA, a piece of ground without the south v\all of Jerusalem, on the other side of the brook Siloam. It was called the Potter's Field, be- cause an (.'iirth or clay was dug in it, of which pottery was made. It was likewise called the Fuller's Field, be- 4 cause cloth was dried in it. But it having been afterwards bought with the money by which the High Priest and rulers of the Jews purchased the blood of Jesus, it was called Aceldama, or the Field of Blood. ACHAIA. — This name is used to denote the whole of Greece, as it ex- isted as a Roman province ; or Achaia Proper, a district in the northern part of the Peloponnesus, on the Bay of Corinth, and in which the city of that name stood. It appears to have been used in the fomier sense in 2 Cor. xi. 10 ; and in the latter, in Acts xix. 21. ACHMETHA. See Ecbatana. ACHOR, Valley of, a valley between Jericho and Ai. So called from the trouble brought upon the Israelites by the sin of Achan ; Achor in the He- brew denoting trouble. ACHSHAPH, a city of the tribe of Asher ; and supposed by some to be the same with Achzib. ACHZIB, a city on the coast of the MediteiTanean, in the tribe of Asher, and one of the cities out of which that tribe did not exjjel the inhabitants. (Judg. i. 31.) It was called Ecdippa by the Greeks, and is at present term- ed Zib. It is sitviated about 10 miles north of Accho, or Ptolemais. Mr. Buckingham, who passed by this place, says that it is small, and situated on a hill near the sea ; having a few palm trees rearing themselves above its dwellings. ACRA. See Ptolemais. ADASA, a place mentioned in the lirst book of Maccabees, and said to have been in the tribe of Ephraim. ADIDA, a place mentioned in the first book of Maccabees as situated in Sephela; by which name, according to Eusebius, the open country about Elutheropolis was called in his time. ADMAH, one of the five cities of the Plain, or ^^ale of Siddim ; four of which, including Adniah, were over- whelmed in the catastrophe of Sodom. It seems probable, either that this eity was not entirely covered by the waters which flowed over the valley, or that the subsequent inhabitjints of the country built a city of the same name on the eastern shore of the lake ; as Isaiah, according to the translation of the LXX, says, "God will destroy the Moabites, the city of Ar, and the ren>- nunt of Adama." — Sec Deab Sea. ALEXANDRIA. ADRAMYTTIUM, a sea-port of Mysia, in Asia Minor. In a ship be- longing to which place,St.Paul was em- barked at Ca;sarea, to take his passage as a prisoner to Rome. (Acts xxvii. 12.) It is at present called Edremit, or Ydramit. ADRIA. — This name, which occurs in Acts xxvii. 27, is now confined to the gulf lying between Italy on one side, and the coasts of Dalmatia and Albania on the other. But in St.Paul's time, it was extended to all that por- tion of the Mediterranean between Crete and Sicily. Thus Ptolemy says that Sicily was bounded on the east by the Adriatic, and Crete in a similar manner on the west ; and Strabo says that the Ionian Gulf was a part of what, in his time, was called the Adri- atic Sea. ADULLAM, a city in the tribe of Judah, to the west of Hebron, whose king was slain by Joshua." (Josh. xii. 15.) It is frequently mentioned in the history of Saul and David ; and is chiefly memorable from the cave in its • neighbourhood, where David retired from Achish, king of Gath, when he was joined by the distressed and dis- contented, to the niunber of 400, over whom he became captain. (1 Sam. xxii. 1.) Judas Maccabeus encamped in the plain of Advdlam, where he passed the Sabbath-day. (2 Mac.xii.38.) Eusebius says that, in his time, Adul- 1am was a very great town, 10 miles to the east of Eleutheropolis. AI, or HAI, a city three leagues from Jericho, where the Israelites were worsted, in consequence of the sin of Achan ; but Joshua afterwards took it by stratagem. (Josh. vii. & viii.) It was near this place also, that is, be- tween it and Bethel, which were not more than two or three miles apart, that Abraham pitched his tent, both 4t^>-' before and after his going into Egypt. AJALON, a city of the Canaanites ; the valley adjoining to which is me- morable in sacred history from the miracle of Joshua, in arresting the coiu'se of the Sun and Moon, that the Israelites might have sufficient light to pursue their enemies (Josh.x.12,13) : from the relation of which miracle, Ajalon must have been near Gibeon. It afterwards was a Levitical city, and belonged to the tribe of Dan ; who did 6 not, however, drive out the Amorite inhabitants. (Judg. i. 35.) ALEXANDRIA, a famous city of Egypt, and, during the reign of the Ptolemies, the regal capital of that kingdom. It was founded by Alex- ander the Great : who being struck with the advantageous situation of the spot where the city afterwards stood, ordered its immediate erection ; drew the plan of the city himself, and peo- pled it with colonies of Greeks and Jews : to which latter people, in par- ticular, he gave great encouragement : they were, in fact, made free citizens, and had all the privileges of Macedo- nians granted them ; which liberal policy, no doubt, contributed much to the rise and prosperity of the new city ; for this enterprising and com- mercial people knew much better than either the Greeks or the Egyptians how to turn the happy situation of Alexandria to the best accovmt. The fall of TyTe happening about the same time, the trade of that city was soon drawn to Alexandria, which became the centre of conunercial intercourse between the East and the West ; and in process of time grew to such an ex- tent, in magnitude and wealth, as to be second in point of population and magnificence to none but Rome itself. At the death of Alexander, in the the year 323 before Christ, Egypt, with its new capital, fell to the lot of Pto- lemy, the son of Lagus, surnamed Soter ; in whose family it continued 298 years, in the following order : Ptolemy Soter reigned 89 years, and died in the year B.C. 284. Ptolemy Philadelphus reigned 38 years, and died in 246. Ptolemy Euergetes reigned 25 years, and died in 221. Ptolemy Philopater reigned 17 years, and died in 204. Ptolemy Epiphanes reigned 24 years, and died in 180. Ptolemy Philometer reigned 37 years, and died in 143. Ptolemy Euergetes, or Physcon, reign- ed 53 years, part with his brother Philometer, and part alone, and died in 116. Ptolemy Lathyrus reigned 36 years, and died in 81. Cleopatra, the daughter of Lathyrus, and wife of Alexander I., reigned ALEXANDRIA. six months. Alexander I., the nephew of Lathy- nis, was established in 70, and died in (51. Alexander II., son of the former, was dispossessed by the Alexandrians in 55. Ptolemy Nothus, or Auletes, the son of Lathyrus, died in 51. Ptolemy, surnamed Dionysius, or Bacchus, reigned three years, and died in 47. The celebrated Cleopatra surrender- ed to Augustus Cffisar, and finding tliat she could make no impression on him, killed herself in the year B.C. 30. Thus, for nearly 300 years, Alexan- dria, as the capital of the Egyptian empire, was governed by the Macedo- nian successors of Alexander ; which may be considered as embracing the period of its greatest glory. But it was during the reign of the three first Ptolemies, that this glory was at the highest. Their general policy, and their mild and liberal government, rendered Alexandria the centre of sci- ence as well as of commerce. The most eminent men in every department of knowledge were found within its walls ; and the greatest philosophers of other covmtries thought their attainments incomplete without resorting to its schools for instruction. But the re- maining princes of this race, almost without exception, were monsters of profligacy and cruelty ; abandoned to effeminacy, and the indolent enjoy- ment of their lusts, or active only in savage persecutions and wanton mas- sacres. In the havoc which issued from a succession of such reigns, Alexandria was threatened with a to- tal depopulation : its trade langviish- ed, and its men of learning fled in af- fright to other countries. No place, indeed, not blessed with the resources of a boundless commerce, could have suni^ed such a long continuance of misrule. In the hands of the Romans, the suc- cessors of the Macedonians in the go- vernment of l''gypt, the trade of Alex- andria continued to flourish, until lux- ury and licentiousness paved the way, as in every similar instance, for its overthrow. To such a height had these risen, as to become proverbial. " Ne 6 Alexandrinis quidem permittenda de- liciis," says Quinctilian. Alexander has all the glory of found- ing his city, of estimating its advan- tages, and of foreseeing its prosperity. But it was Ptolemy Philadelphus, who, inheriting both the spirit and the wis- dom of Alexander, dared to complete his designs, and did in fact realize his most sanguine schemes. Under this prince, Alexandria rose at once to a degree of wealth and power which as- tonished the rest of the world. The military governments of the time were unable to comprehend how a state, which had risen under their own eyes, could acquire, without violence and without conquest, a degree of wealth which excited their envy, and of power which rendered that envy impotent. The customs of Ptolemy were little short of two millions sterling annually — an amazing sum in that age ; but which, in all probability, arose from easy du- ties ; for it can scarcely be supposed that a prince, who, by his wisdom and policy, had brought such resources to his country, would cramp them by hea- vy and destructive impositions. If such was the wealth of this astonish- ing city, its means of defence, or, if needs might be, of aggi'ession, were not less imposing. Its natiural situa- tion was strong ; its soldiery w ell paid ; and its inhabitants animated by the spirit of possession, and of course of independence ; while its maritime strength consisted of 120 galleys, or large ships of war, with 4000 smaller vessels, armed or commercial ; all of which were capable of being called in to the aid of the government. It was the policy of the three first Ptolemies to give encouragement to men of genius and learning, and every facility for prosecuting their studies. The iirst Ptolemy, or Ptolemy Soter, founded a college, and endowed it in a sufficient manner for the mainte- nance of both professors and students. He also made the first collections to- wards that stupendous library, which, under his successors, grew to be the most i'amovis in the world ; and which, tf)gcthcr with the noble institution of the college, was the means of attract- ing the learned, or those who wished to become so, from every country. So that Alexandria was at once the great ALEXANDRIA. commercial depot, and the general academy, for all the rest of the world. This coUege was built adjoining the palace, in the quarter of the city call- ed Bruchium ; and there the library was placed, until it grew to such a bulk, that it became necessary to di- vide it ; and accordingly, those works which were afterwards collected, were lodged in the Serapeum, or Temple of Serapis : the first contained 400,000, and the latter 300,000 volumes. These libraries must have contained an ines- timable treasure, could they have been handed down to us in their perfect state ; but they were unfortunately both destroyed. The first was burnt by accident, in the wars with Julius Caesar ; a loss which, no doubt, might have been repaired by the other, as duplicates of the most valuable books were lodged in each : but the fate of the Serapean collection was still more affiicting, as it was the wilful act of an ignorant bigot. When Amrou, the general of the Saracen army, took Alexandria in the year 642, Johannes Granunaticus, a famovis philosopher, at that time living there, solicited of him the royal library, that it might be preserved from injury. To which the General replied, that he would do nothing without the sanction of his Caliph : who being applied to, made answer, that if the books contjiined what was in agreement with the Koran, they were unnecessary, as that book alone contained all truth ; and if their contents were contrary to the Koran, they were impious; and accordingly ordered their destruction, which was accomplished by tearing them to pieces, and distributing them amongst the public baths for fuel ; but so great was their niunber, that it was six months before they were all consvimed. At the same time, Alexandria, together with the rest of Egypt, passed from the dominion of the Romans to that of the Saracens. With this event, the sun of Alexandria may be said to have set : the blighting hand of Islamism was laid on it ; and although the genius and the resources of such a city could not be immediately destroyed, it con- tinued to lang-uish until the passage by the Cape of Good Hope, in the fif- teenth century, gave a new channel to the trade which for so many centuries 7 had been its support; and at this day, Alexandria, like most Eastern cities, presents a mixed spectacle of ruins and wretchedness — of fallen greatness and enslaved human beings. Alexandria was about 11 or 12 miles in circumference, and contained, ac- cording to Diodorus Siculus, 300,000 free inhabitants, and about the same number of slaves. It was built on a reg-ular plan, with straight intersecting streets. One of these, 2000 feet wide, began at the gate of the sea, and ter- minated at the gate of Canopus. It was ornamented with magnificent houses, temples, and public buildings, constructed of the most beautiful and costly materials. Tliis street was cross- ed at right angles by another of equal dimensions. Some idea may be form- ed of the extent and grandeirr of Alex- andi'ia, by the boast made by Amrou. " I have taken," said he, " the great city of the West. It is impossible for me to enumerate the variety of its riches and beauty. I shall content my- self with observing, that it contains 4000 palaces, 4000 "baths, 400 theatres or places of amusement," (a pretty good proof of the causes which led to its fall,) " 12,000 shops for the sale of vegetable foods, and 40,000 tributary Jews." Amongst the most celebrated and the most useful of the ancient build- ings of Alexandria, was the famous light-house and watch-tower of Pharos, which was begun by Ptolemy Soter, and finished by Ptolemy Philadelphus, who united the small island on which it stood to the main land by a cause- way, the work of Dexiphanes. This tower was a large square building of white marble, with a fire always kept burning on the top for the direction of sailors. The architect employed in this building was Sostratus, who made use of a singular contrivance to per- petixate his name, and to take the whole glory of the edifice to himself Being ordered to engrave upon it the following inscription — "King Ptole- my, to the gods, the saviours, for the benefit of sailors:" instead of the king's name he substituted his own ; and then filled up the hollow in the mar- ble with a composition. In process of time this being worn off, the following inscription appeared — " Sostratus, ALEXANDRIA. UicCnidian, the son of DEXipirANF.s, to the gods, the saviours, for the bene- lit of sailors." Alexandria makes a conspicuous fi- ^ire in the early ages of Christianity. Its converts were numerous ; and the names of .St. Mark, of Clemens Alex- andrinus, and of Origen, add lustre to its institutions. The Gospel was first planted here by St. Mark himself; who is also said to have been the founder of a Christian catechetical school of great celebrity and resort. But this school, while it nurtured the infant faith, unhappily imbibed at the same time the spirit of the Platonic philo- sophy, which had long been the basis of the systems of education pursued at this place : and the ^ain and argu- mentative disposition of this system, its metaphysical subtleties, and its spe- cious and flexible style, were engi'afted on tlie simple doctrines of the Gospel. Pantsnus was the first, of whom we have any account, who presided in this school ; and who has the merit of in- troducing this amphibious system of Christianity. He was succeeded, both in the school and its doctrines, by his pupil, Clement ; whose sviccessor was the celebrated Origen, who was no less infected with the genius of the Elace, as his writings, in which we ave much to admire and much to la- ment, will shew. From this school a tide of theological disquisition flowed which inundated the Christian world, agitated the councils, unworthily em- ployed the pens of the fathers of the Church, and, by submitting the mys- teries of Revelation to public debate, gave birth to the most furious rancour of party dissension, extinguished all charity, and in tlae end filled the Church with persecution and blood- shed. At Alexandria, at Antioch, at Constantinople, and at Rome, was this anti-Christian spirit exemplified ; and in this latter see, its pride, its uncha- ritableness, and its sophistry, have been faithfully preserved to the pre- sent day. Alexandria was the source, and for some time the principal strong-hold of A nanism ; which had its name from its founder, Arius, a presbyter of the church of this city, about the year 3 15. His doctrines were condemned by a council held here in the year 320 : aud 9 afterwards by a general council of 380 fathers, held at Nice, by order of Con- stantiue, in 325. These doctrines, how- ever, which suited the reigning taste for disputative theology, and the pride and self-sufficiency of nominal Chris- tians, better than the unsophisticated simplicity of the (iospel, spread widely and rapidly notwithstanding. Arius was steadfastly opposed by the celebrated Athanasius, bishop of Alexanckia, the intrepid champion of theCatholic faith, who was raised to the archiepiscopal throne of Alexandria in 326. He was banished by Constantine ; but recalled after five years, when he had the art to give such a confession of faitli to the Emperor as was considered satisfac- tory. Athanasius, however, thought differently on this subject, and refused to admit Arius and his followers to communion. Arius, in consequence, revenged himself on that prelate, by using the influence he had acquired at Constantinople, to procure his de- position and banishment, which had been already pronounced against him by an Ariau council held at Tyre. Still the orthodox church of Alexandiia refused to admit Arius ; who, being sent for by Constantine, again found means to quiet the conscience of the Emperor on the subject of his creed, and to obtain an order for his re-ad- mission into the church. But on the eve of the day on which this ceremony was to take place at Constantinople, the heresiarch died ; as was alleged, by poison. On the death of Constan- tine, Athanasius was restored to his see by his successor, the younger Constantine, in 338. But this resto- ration lasted only three years : in the year 341 he was again degraded, and expelled. Constantius, the successor of Con- stantine in the East, himself embraced the Arian faith, and imposed it by his authority on the Eastern churches. The Trinitarian bishoj>s v\ere ejected from their sees, banished, and even put to death. Athanasius, condemned by a coimcil of Arian l^ishops assembled at Antioch, was a second time banished : and Arianism for a time triiunphed. It is but justice to add, that at this period, and for some time after, the see of Rome, which held the same pri- ority of rank amongst the churches of ALEXANDRIA. the West, as those of Alexandria and Antioch, and subsequently Constanti- nople, did in the East, retained the orthodox faith ; and the bishop of that city became the refuse of the per- secuted and the arbiter of the litigant : an honourable but flattering- station, which, with the removal of the court and the invasions of the barbarians, powerfully assisted to ad\'ance his claims to the supremacy. Athanasius himself fled hither; and enjoyed, du- ring the eight years of his second exile, the friendship aud protection both of the Roman pontiff, and of Constans, the emperor of the West: who at length went so far as to obtain of his brother Constantius the restora- tion of Athanasius, threatening an im- mediate war in case of refusal. But a forced reconciliation could not be expected to outlive the policy which dictated it : the death of Constans was the signal for fresh persecutions, and the Archbishop of Alexandria was a third time driven from his throne. The artful Constantius, fearful of the popularity of Athanasius in Egypt and in the West, to give a shew of justice to the arbitrary exercise of power, svimmoned the councils of Aries and Milan. CorrujJtion and intrigvie, the power of the Emperor, and the argu- ments of the Arians, prevailed in these assemblies over the cause of reason and religion : the Latin bishops were left in a feeble minority ; and Athana- sius was condemned and deposed. The Egyptian primate, strong in the affections of his clergy and of his peo- ple, ventured to remonstrate against this sentence : force was accordingly employed ; and the Christian Church, if Christian it could be called, beheld the extraordinary spectacle of an army of 5000 troops, sent by an Arian mon- arch, to seize the person of a single Trinitarian bishop. The church of St. Theonas, in which the bishop was engaged in the performance of divine service, was surrounded ; the soldiers rushed in, and multitudes of the de- fenceless congregation were slain : but the principal object of this outrage es- caped in the tumult ; and for six years,* from 356 to 362, the persecuted pre- late fomid a precarious asylum with the monks of the Egyptian deserts. During- this interval, the archiepisco- 9 pal throne of Egypt was filled by George, aCappadocian : a man of obscure birth, whose flrst public station was that of contractor to supply the army with bacon. By this contract, and the dis- honest arts employed in it, he ac- cumulated immense wealth ; by means of which, together with the basest servility and flattery, the affec- tation of learning, and the profession of Arianism (a necessary passport to all i^romotion in the reign of Constan- tius), he was, in defiance of all order and decency, installed as the succes- sor of Athanasius. The irregularity of his exaltation appears never to have been atoned by one single re- deeming virtvie. Cruelty marked his episcopal career, and avarice directed his secular transactions. Catholics and Pagans were alike the objects of his indiscriminate persecution ; while, by a monopoly of the principal trades of the country, the primate of Egypt be- came its first merchant. But the death of Constantius, and the accession of Julian, proclaimed his downfall. He was dragged to prison, and shortly after murdered by a Pagan mob, exas- perated by his cruelties, tyrannies, and extortions ; and, incredible as it may seem, the army contractor and Arian archbishop, by a species of transformation conunon enough in times of ignorance and superstition, became a martyr and a saint : in which characters he was introduced by the Crusaders into Europe ; and finally, there is good reason to believe, was the same who was adopted as the tutelary saint of England ! On the death of this intruder, Atha- nasius, under the protection of the toleration professed by the Emperor, returned to his charge. But Julian, who, under the mask of a specious toleration, meditated the extinction of Christianity, being fully aware of the opposition he should ha\e to encoun- ter from the popularity and persever- ance of the Alexandrian bishop, pro- nounced his fourth deposition and banishment ; and at the end of eight months from his return to his see, the venerable Athanasius, who, during this short interval, had improved the common danger and the weight of his own great name and talents to the promotion of peace and concord in B ALEXANDRIA. the Christian Churches, was compelled again to seek safety in his old retreats in the desert. But his exile was not long. The apostate Emperor dying the following year, was succeeded by Jovian, who rescued Christianity from its Pagan oppressors ; and who, altho' he had himself adopted the Nicene Mth, published an act of universal toleration. Athanasius, as might be supposed in this fortunate turn of af- fairs, lost no time in emerging from his concealment ; and was once more welcomed to Alexandria by the joyful acclamations of his people. But the factions which unhappily divided the Christian Church in the East were too powerfiU, and the hostility to Athana- sius and the Nicene Creed too invete- rate, to permit a long repose. The brothers Valentinian and Valens suc- ceeded Jovian, after a short reign of eight months. The former, who reign- ed in the West, presened the liberal system of his predecessor ; but Arian- ism triumphed in the East. The two metropolitan sees of Constantinople and Antioch w ere occupied by Arian bishops; and Valens, who had the Eastern provinces, adopted the faith of the stronger party. Attempts were soon made by this party to get rid of their most formidable antagonist : but the popularity of the bishop, and the fear of a revolt in the most valuable province of the Roman empire, with- held the malice of his enemies ; and Athanasius, although destitute of legal protection, and compelled again to re- treat for a short time from the violence meditated against him, ended his days in the midst of his people, in the year 373, at the age of 80 ; having filled the patriarchal see of Alexandria 47 years. On the death of Athanasius, Lucius, a creature of V alens, was thrust in his Elace : but his reign, as well as that of is party, was short. Valens died in 378 ; and with him expired the Arian interest in the East: which took re- fuge among the Vandals in Africa, and the Goths, and other barbarous nations, which about this time were beginning their invasions of the Roman empire. 'Die reign ol' Iheodosius, who suc- ceeded \ alens in the empire of the East, as he did subsequently (iratian and Valentinian II. in the West, is 10 marked by the subversion of both Ari- anism and Paganism. The Arians were compelled to surrender their churches to the professors of the or- thodox faith of the Trinity, who were instructed to take the name of Catho- lic Christians : while the Pagan tem- ples were shut, the property belonging to them confiscated, the idols destroy- ed, and the sacrifices and augairies in- terdicted. With respect to the temples, it is probable that the designs of Theo- dosius went no farther ; but the greater part of them fell before the blind fury of the people. Amongst these was the splendid temple of Serapis at Alexan- clria; which was levelled with the ground by a fanatical mob, and its valuable library pillaged and dispersed. Arianism, with its mutilated creed and persecuting spirit, gave way in- deed throughout the East, but not to the Catholic faith. The schools had too long been engrossed by the sub- tleties of a vain and chimerical philo- sophy, and the ecclesiastics were too deeply engaged in the strife of contro- versy, to return to the simplicity of an- cient times. The Chiurch was distracted with the most absurd and miintelligible disputes about the nature and person of Christ, and fantastic definitions of mysteries which were never meant for human wisdom to define. Arians, Nestorians, Eutychians, and Mono- pbysites, contended with bitter ani- mosity for their respective tenets, un- til all charity was extinguished, and nothing remained of Christianity but the name. Add to this, the spiritual tyranny of the Patriarchs, as they were termed, of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch; their contentions for ecclesiastical power and wealth ; and the number of superstitious rites and observances, which began to multiply apace ; and we shall be able to form a tolerably correct idea of the state of the Eastern churches about the close of the fourth century. 1 1 is unnecessary to trace further the particular history of the church of Alexandria. Incurably infected with pride and superstition, with the spirit of discord and of endless metaphysical controversy, it aff()rds little to interest the Christian inquirer. Second in rank to that of the Imperial city, it maintained its lofty station, and its AMALEKITES. Monophysite creed, in the midst of the contending churches of Asia and Afri- ca ; until, in the middle of the seventh century, their animosities and their proud mstitutions were swept away together by the Saracens. One event, however, occurs in the primacy of Cyril, or Saint Cyril, about the year 415, which, as it affected the temporal interests of the city, and shews the insolence of power usurped by the Alexandrian patriarchs in the declining fortunes of the Roman em- pire, is worthy of notice. The Jews, who had enjoyed the rights of citizens, and the freedom of religious worship, for 700 years, ever since the foimda- tion of the city, incurred the hatred of Cyril ; who, in his zeal for the exter- mination of heretics of every kind, pidled down their synagogues, pkui- dered their property, and expelled them, to the number of 40,000, from the city. It was in a ship belonging to the port of Alexandria, that St. Paul saUed from Myra, a city of Lycia, on his way to Rome. (Acts xxvii. 5, 6.) Alexan- dria was likewise the native place of ApoUos. AMALEKITES, a people whose country adjoined the southern border of the land of Canaan, in the north- western part of Arabia Petraea. They are generally supposed to have been the descendants of Amalek, the son of Eliphaz, and grandson of Esau. But Moses speaks of the Amalekites long before this Amalek was bom; namely, in the days of Abraham, when Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, devasta- ted their country (Gen. xiv. 7) : from which it may be inferred, that there was some other and more ancient Amalek, from whom this people sprang. The Arabians have a tradition, that this Amalek was a son of Ham ; and when we consider, that so early as the march from Egypt, the Amalekites were a people powerful enough to at- tack the Israelites, it is far more pro- bable that they should derive their an- cestry from Ham, than from the then recent stock of the grandson of Esau. It may also be said, that the character and fate of this people were more con- sonant with the dealings of Providence towards the families of the former. This more early origin of the Amalek - 11 ites, will likewise explain why Balaam called them the "first of the nations." They are supposed by some to have been a party or tribe of the shep- herds who invaded Egypt, and kept it in subjection for 200 years. Tliis will agree with the Arabian tradition as to their descent. Italso agi'ees with their pastoral and martial habits, as well as with their geographical position ; which was perhaps made choice of on their retiring from Egypt, adjoining that of their countrymen thePhilistines,whose history is very similar. It also fur- nishes a motive for their hostility to the Jews, and their treacherous at- tempt to destroy them in the Desert, llie groimd of this hostility has been very generally supposed to have been founded in the remembrance of Jacob's depriving their progenitor of his birth- right. But we do not find that the Edomites, who had just the same ground for a hatred to the Jews, made any attempt to molest them, nor that Moses ever reproaches the Amalekites for attacking the Israelites as their brethren : nor do we ever find in Scrip- ture, that the Amalekites joined with the Edomites, but always with the Canaanites and the Philistines. These considerations would be sufficient, had we no other reasons, for believing them not to be of the stock of Esau. They are, however, to be deduced from a higher origin ; and viewing them as Cuthite shepherds and warriors, we have an adequate explanation both of their imperious and warlike character, and of the motive for exercising these qualities on the Jews in particular. If expelled with the rest of their race from Egypt, they could not but recol- lect the fatal overthrow at the Red Sea ; and if not participators in that catas- trophe, still, as members of the same family, they must bear this event in remembrance with bitter feelings of revenge. But an additional motive is not wanting for this hostility, especi- ally for its first act. The Amalekites probably knew that the Israelites were advancing to take possession of the land of Canaan, and resolved to frus- trate the purposes of God in this re- spect. Hence they did not wait for their near approach to that country, but came down from their settlements, on its southern borders, to attack them AMMONITES. unawares at Kephidim. Be this as it may, the Amalekites came on the Is- raelites, when encamped at that place, little expecting such an assault. Moses commanded Joshua, with a chosen band, to attack the Amalekites ; while he, with Aaron and Hur, went up the mountain (Horeb). Dm-ing the en- gagement, Moses held up his hands to heaven ; and so long as they were maintiiined in this attitude, the Israel- ites prevailed, but when through wea- riness they fell, the Amalekites pre- vailed. Aaron and Hiu* seeing this, held up his hands till the latter were entirely defeated with great slaughter. (Exod. xvii.) The Amalekites were indeed the ear- liest and the most bitter enemies the Jews had to encounter. They laid wait, and attacked them in the Desert; and sought every opportunity after- wards of molesting them. Under the Judges, the Amalekites, in conjunction with the Midianites, invaded the land of Israel; when they were defeated by Gideon. (Judg. vi. !y: vii.) But God, for their first act of treachery, had de- clared that he would " utterly put ovit the remembrance of Amalek from un- der heaven :" a denunciation which was not long after accomplished. Saul destroyed their entire army, vvith the exception of Agag their king : for sparing whom, and permitting the Is- raelites to take the spoil of their foes, he incurred the displeasture of the Lord, who took the sceptre from him. Agag was immediately afterwards hewn in pieces by Samuel. (1 Sam. xv.) It is remarkable, that most authors make Saul's pursuit of the Amalekites to commence from the Lower Euphra- tes, instead of from the southern bor- der of the land of Canaan. (See Havi- LAH.) David, a few years after, defeat- ed another of their armies ; of whom only 400 men escaped on camels (I Sam. XXX.) : after which event, the Amalekites appear to have been obli- terated as a nation. AMMONITES, the descendants of Ammon, or Ben-Ammi, one of the sons of Lot l)y his incestuous inter- course with his daughters. After the destruction of the t:itics of the Plain, Lot went up out of Zoar, \\ ith his two daughters, and d«elt in tlie neigh- bouring mountain, as it appears, for 12 security, either on account of the cha- racter of the people, or from teri'or at the catastrophe which had befallen the adjacent countiy. Here his two sons Moab and Ammon were born ; who, as their posterity increased, spread themselves over the countries to the northward and eastward, Ammon oc- cupying the more northern parts. These countries, it may be observed, lay open to their possession by the invasion and slaughter of the ancient inhabitants, the Emims, Rephaims, and Zuzims, by Chedorlaomer, king of Elam. Tlie kingdom of Ammon, at first, extended from the river Ar- non southward, to the Jabbok on the north, to the Jordan on the west, and eastward a considerable distance into Arabia. But of that portion between the Anion and the Jabbok they were subsequently dispossessed by the Amorites, and were confined to the eastern portion of their territory ; the westeni limits of their kingdom being that branch of the Jabbok on which Kabbah Ammon their capital stood, and the hills which bounded the land of Israel on the east. This is the king- dom of Ammon, understood in the Scripture ; as at the time the Israelites entered the land of Canaan, that por- tion of the country of the Ammonites which was situated betw eeu the rivers Arnon, Jabbok, and Jordan, with the exception of a small part at its south- ern extremity which belonged to the Moabites, was in the possession of Sihon, king of the Amorites, and was afterwards allotted to the tribes of Reuben and Gad, as the adjoining kingdom of Og was to the h;ilf tribe of Mauasseh. The history of this people, as con- nected with that of the Jews, is briefly as follows: — In Deut. ii. 19, God or- ders the Israelites not to distress or meddle with the Ammonites, because he had given their country to the chil- dren of Lot for a possession. There was, however (as obsened above), a considerable portion of their original possession which had been previously seized by the Amorites, and then form- ed a part of the kingdom of Sihon. I'his portion, in fact, consisted of the best of their land ; and formed a com- pact territory, inclosed by the rivers Arnon, Jordan, and Jabbok, and by AMMONITES. the mountains of Gilead: their re- maining territory consisting of less fertile tracts on the east of those moun- tains. Sihon, as is well known, refused to give the children of Israel a passage through his country ; but bringing all his force against them, was entirely defeated, himself slain, and his king- dom taken possession of by the Israel- ites. Three hundred years afterwards, the King of the Ammonites made this capture a plea for war; invaded Gi- lead, and even passed the Jordan ; af- firming, with matchless effrontery, that the Israelites, when they came out of Egypt, took away his land. But an in- strument was prepared by Providence to chastise this aggression. There was a certain Gileadite, named Jephthah, " a mighty man of valour," who being the son of a strange woman, instead of the lawful wife of his father, was expelled the family by his brothers, and took refuge in the land of Tob. But in the hour of danger, his talents being known, this defect in his birth was gladly overlooked, and the elders of Gilead united in a suppliant em- bassy to Jephthah, to request his as- sistance against the invaders of their country. With this request, Jephthali, who appears to have been a man of prudence and piety, as well as courage, complied, on condition of being ap- pointed sole commander : a condition which, as may be supposed, was rea- dily accepted by the Gileadites ; and the event soon determined the wis- dom of -their choice. Jephthah re- turned with them, took the command, and after a just and eloquent remon- strance with the King of the Ammon- ites, attacked his army, and routed it with great slaughter: so that " the children of Ammon were subdued be- fore the children of Israel." — Judg.xi. This transaction involves the affect- ing incident arising out of the vow made by Jephthah previous to the bat- tle— that if God gave him the victory, he would sacrifice to him whatever he should meet coming out of his house on his retiu-n. He obtained his wish, and returned to his home in peace and honour : where the first person he met was his only daughter, coming out to \velcome him. At this sight, the un- happy father "rent his clotlies, and said, Alas! my daughter, thou hast 13 brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me." Some are of opinion, that the young woman was literally sacrificed; but another, and more reasonable opinion is, that in- stead of being offered up as a burnt- offering, which must have been abhor- rent instead of acceptable unto God, she was devoted to a life of celibacy, by which the hopes of posterity on the part of Jephthah were entirely cut off. About a hundred years from this time, the Ammonites, under Nahash their king, made a second descent upon the country east of Jordan, and invested Jabesh-Gilead ; whose inha- bitants offered terms of capitulation, which the haughty Nahash would ac- cept only on condition of being per- mitted to thrust out all their right eyes. To obtain a respite from this hard fate, the men of Jabesh promised that if in seven days they obtained no succovir from their countrymen, they would deliver themselves up to Na- hash. In the mean time, messengers were sent " into all the coasts of Is- rael," representing their condition : some of whom, who had arrived at Gibeah of Saul, were telling their sad tale to the people, when Saul came in from the field, and inquired, " What aileth the people that they weep?" On being informed, he took a method of summoning the tribes of Israel, more persuasive than the appeal of the poor prisoners in Jabesh. This summons was obeyed with a rapidity, and to an extent, which to us are almost incon- ceivable. On the seventh day at farthest, and more probably on the sixth from the issuing his order, as Gibeah was a long day's journey from Jabesh, Saul, who made the affair national, and took the charge of it on himself, found him- self at the head of 330,000 fighting- men ; and the next day attacked and dispersed the Ammonites, so that of those who remained alive no two were left together. About 60 years after this, David sent his servants to Hanim, king of the Ammonites, the son as it woidd ap- pear of another Nahash, who was friendly with David, to condole with him on the death of his father. But Hanun gave a different interprettition to the mission, and aflecting to treat his comforters as spies, cut off their AMM AMP clothes from the middle, and half their beards ; and in this condition* sent them back. The Ammonites fear- ing-, with good reason, that David would resent this gross indignity, hired some mercenary troops of Syria to the amount of 33,000, in addition to their own numbers. As soon as David heard this, he sent Joab against them ; who gjive this combined army so signal a defeat, that, as the Scripture says, " the Syrians feared to help the chil- dren of Ammou any more." From the time of David to the death of Ahab, about 140 years, the kings of Ammon, together with those of Moab, appear to have been tributiiry to the kings of Israel. But during the reign of Jehoshaphat, king of .ludah, the two people conjointly invaded his king- dom, and penetrated as far as Engedi ; but they were miraciUously destroyed, so that none escaped. Another divi- sion of Moabites, who about the same time, or a little before, had singly made an irruption into the kingdom of Israel, were defeated by Jehoram. After this double defeat, the Ammon- ites and Moabites appear to have been in no condition to attack their ene- mies. But when the tribes of Reuben and Gad, and the half tribe of Manas- seh, were carried away captive by Tig- lath Pileser, they seizecl the oppor- tunity to occupy the vacant cities ; for which the prophet Jeremiah is commissioned to declare the judgments that should fall on them. (ch. xlix. 1 —0.) Their crimes were aggravated by their insolent triumph over the Israelites, when the Temple was destroyed, and that people enslaved by Nebuchad- nezzar ; and Ezekiel was ordered to " say to the Ammonites, Thus saith the Lord tiod, Because thou saidst. Aha ! against my sanctuary, when it was profaned; and ;igainst the land of Israel, when it was desolate ; and against the house of Judah, when they went into captivity; behold, therefore, I will deliver thee to the men of tlie east for a possession." "J will stretch out mine hand upon thee, and will de- liver thee for a spoil to the heathen ; and I will cut thee off from the peo- ple, and I will cause thee to perish out of the countries." (I'lzck. xxv. 3, 4, 7.) The first part of this prediction was ac- complished about four years after, when 14 Nebuchadnezzar made war on the na- tions round Judaja: the latter was with equal exactness, though more slowly fulfilled. It was predicted that the captivity of Ammon should be for a time restored (Jer. xlix. fi) : and it is probable that Cyrus gave both this people and the Moabites, who were also promised a restoration, permis- sion to return ; as we find mention made of them both, in their respective countries, during the revolutions in Syria, under its Macedonian kmgs ; when it appears their own adversity had not taught them humanity to their neighbours, as they were again ready to attack the Jews in their low estate, when slaughtered and dispersed by Antiochus Epiphanes. They, how- ever, received their deserts from the hands of Judas Maccabeus. (1 Mac. v.) With this event their power was de- stroyed, and we hear no more of their hostilities. Tliey were soon indeed, in compliance with the prophecy above cited, to cease as a nation. In the course of the ensuing century, they gradually blended with the Arabs, and were totally lost. AMORITES, the descendants of Amori, or Haemorri, or Amorrhaeus (Gen. X. 16), the fourth son of Canaan, whose first possessions were in the mountains of Judaja, amongst the other lamilies of Canaan : but grow- ing strong above their fellows, and impatient of confinement within the narrow boiuidaries of their native dis- trict, they passed the Jordan, and ex- tended their conquests over the finest provinces of Moab and Ammon ; seiz- ing and maintaining possession of that extensive and almost insulated portion of country included between the rivers Jordan, Jabbok, and Anion. ITiis was the kingdom, and Heshbon the capi- tal, of the Amorites,uuder Sihon their king, when the Israelites, in their way li'om Egypt, requested a passage thro' their country. This request, however, Sihon refused ; and came out against them with all his force, when he was slain, his people cxlii-]mted, and his kingdom taken possession of by the Israelites. It was subsequently tlivi- ded between the tribes of Reuben and Gad. — Numb. xiii. 25), Sc xxi. 13, 25; Josh. v. i. , nearly the whole of the city was burnt by accidental fire. Between the years 242 and 260, it was three times taken and plundered, and partially destroyed, by Sapor, king of Persia. In 331, it was afflicted by a dread- fid famine. In 3(i2, the Emperor Jidian spent some months at Autioch ; which were chiefly occupied in his favovu-ite object of renving the Mythology of Paganism. The grove at Daphne, planted by Se- leucus, which, with its temple and oracle, presented, during the reigns of the Macedonian kings of SjTia, the most splendid and fashionable place of resort for Pagan worship in the East, had sunk into neglect since the esta- blishment of Christianity. The altar of the god was deserted, the oracle silenced, and the sacred gTOve itself defiled by the interment of Christians. Julian undertook to restore the anci- ent honours and usages of the place ; but it was first necessary to take away the pollution occasioned by the dead bodies of the Christians, which were disinterred and removed! Amongst these was that of Babylas, a bishop of Antioch, who died in prison in the persecution of Decius, and after rest- ing near a centvu-y in his gra^ e within the walls of Antioch, had been re- moved by order of Gallus into the midst of the gi-o^e of Daphne, where a church was built over it; the re- mains of the Christian saint efl'ectually supplanting the former divinity of the place, whose temple and statue, how- ever, though neglected, remained un- injured. The Christians of Antioch, undaunted by the conspiracy against their religion, or the presence of the Emperor himself, conveyed the relics of their fonner bishop in triumph back to their ancient repository within the city. The immense multitude who joined in the procession, chaunted forth their execrations against idols and idolaters ; and on the same night the image and the temple of the Hea- then god were consumed by the flames. A dreadful \engeance might be ex- pected to have followed these scenes ; but the real or affected clemency of Julian contented itself with shut- ting up the cathedral, and confis- cating its wealth. Many Christians Hi indeed suffered from the zeal of the Pagans; but, as would appear, with- out the sanction of the Emperor. During the same stay of Julian at Antioch, the city suffered from scar- city ; which was increased by the im- politic interference of the Emperor, who endeavoured by legal enactments to fix the price of corn. Popular com- motions followed, as might be expect- ed, and Julian, finding his person, his policy, and his religion, the objects of the contempt and ridicule of the An- tiochians, quitted their city in disgust. In 381, Antioch was visited by both famine and plague. In 387, the citizens exposed them- selves to the resentment of Theodo- sius, by resisting the payment of their taxes, and by pulling down and de- stroying, with circumstances of igno- miny, the statues of the Emperor and his family. The governor, before the will of the Emperor could be known, treated the offenders with great cruel- ty, and put many to death ; while nearly the whole population, appre- hensive of a general massacre, fled to the mountains, or the desert. Theo- dosius, however, contented himself with degrading the city to the rank of a village, under the jurisdiction of Laodicea; shutting up the places of pviblic amusement ; and by appointing a commission to investigate the guilt of individuals, and to punish them ac- cordingly. Many suffered imprison- ment and confiscation of their proper- ty. But at the intercession of their bishop, Fla\ianus, and the celebrated Chrysostom, a general pardon was is- sued, and the city restored to its for- mer rank and privileges. In 458, Antioch was in great part destroyed by an earthquake, which happened on the 14th of September. In 526, the city was entirely over- turned by a similar calamity; when 250,000 persons are said to have pe- rished. From which, and the number of persons forming the Christian church in the time of Chrysostom, the population of the city before this pe- riod is comptited to have been half' a million. It was, however, raised once more, partly by the liberality of Justinian. In 540, in the reign of the same em- peror, it was taken by Chosroes, king ANTIOCH. of Persia ; given up to general slaugh- ter ; plundei'ed ; and afterwards set on lire : such of the inhabitants as es- caped with their lives being sent as slaves into Persia. In 587 it experienced its usual fate, being again overturned by an earth- quake ; in which 60,000 of the inhabi- tants perished. In 611, in the reign of Heraclius, it was again taken and pillaged by the Persians, under Chosroes II. In 637, in the reign of the same Emperor, it was taken by the Sara- cens ; but was saved from violence by a ransom of 300,000 pieces of gold. About 968, it was restored to the Roman, or rather Greek empire, by Nicephonis Phocas and John Zimis- ces ; who carried their arms beyond the Euphrates. But of the Eastern conquests of these emperors, Antioch alone remained till 1084, when it was taken by the Sel- jukian Turks. In 1098, it was taken, with mingled circumstances of treachery, cruelty, and fanaticism, by the Crusaders ; and made the capital of a principality : in which state, under Bohemond and his successors, it continued 170 years ; when. In 1268, it was taken by Bibars, or Bondocdar, sultan of Egypt. The slavighter of 1 7,000, and the captivity of 100,000 of its inhabitants, mark the iinal siege and fall of Antioch ; which, while they close the long catalogue of its public woes, attest, up to this late {)eriod, its prodigious extent and popu- ation. From this time it remained in a ruinous and nearly deserted condi- tion, till, with the rest of Syria, undis- tinguished by splendour or resistance, it passed into the hands of the Otto- man Turks, with whose empire it has ever since iDeen incorporated. It will be interesting to inquire, What were the causes, apparently magical, which, for fourteen centuries, could enable Antioch to survive such a series of revolutions and catastrophes. Causes, however, purely local or poli- tical, may perhaps be found fully ade- quate to the explanation. Amongst these, the lirsl place undoubtedly be- longs to its commerce. Its situation on the Orontes, at the distance of only 18 miles from the sea, with Seleucia 17 for its port, gave it all the advantages of a seaport, without its dangers or its nuisances. The same perennial river, the most beautiful and copious in Sy- ria, afforded abundance of the most essential of all articles in an Eastern climate for domestic pu.rpose and for iiTigation. In addition to the advan- tages arising from its river, which opened the Mediterranean before it, its geographical position with respect to the caravan-trade to the East, and on the high road between the two great capitals of the world, Constanti- nople and Alexandria, and its equidis- tance from both, gave it increased faci- lities of trade, and brought much wealth to its merchants. The citizen of Antioch too, although he saw his house de\'oured by the flames, or pros- trated by an earthquake, while he smarted under the calamity, felt pro- bably that this was the only spot in the wide world which he could call his own. He had property perhaps in the neighboiuhood : his corn-fields or his vineyards were near. These he could not leave ; while, for personal security, it was necessary that he should reside within the walls of the city. And thus, in spite of past experience and future insecurity, he took the first opportunity of physical or political repose to raise his dwelling from its ruins. The associations which more or less ri\'et every man to the soil of his nativity, heightened in the pre- sent instance by a profusion of the beauties of nature, had dovibtless their influence ; and superstition step - ped in to fix the outcast to the spot. Here were the oracles of heaven, and the divinities of his earliest worship, exalted by every thing which in the eyes of a Pagan could ennoble, and surrounded by every thing which could entice ; which the idolaters of less favoured lands came far and near to consult or to supplicate : while the Christians were scarcely less attached to the chief seat of their religion in the East. Lastly, it is to be remem- bered, that almost all the principal cities of the East were founded by con- qvierors, either in commemoration of a victory, or in honour of a wife or a mistress, or a patron monarch, or a friend, or to perpetuate their own name. They consequently strove to C' ANTIOCH. couple with the foundation of the new city some act of unusual liberality or generosity, which should have the double effect of inviting settlers and of raising a lasting monument to the munificence of the founder. The lar- gesses thus conferred, generally con- sisted in particular privileges and im- munities ; in exemptions from taxes, or from military service ; the mstitu- tion of festivals and public games; particular and local jurisdictions; popu- lar assemblies ; monopolies in trade, or in contracts. Sec. ; which alone, in an age of almost universal oppression, would fix a popvilation to the charter- ed city. This was one of the few places in which the poor Jews were permit- ted to enjoy the rights of citizenship, which were granted them by Seleucus, in common with the Greeks; and which, no doubt, from the superior commercial enterprise of this people, contributed, as in the case of Alex- andria, to the growth and prosperity of the city. To distinguish it from other cities of the same name, the capital of Syria was called Antiochia apud Daphnem, or Antioch near Daphne, a village in the neighboiuhood, where was a temple dedicated to the goddess of that name : though, in truth, the chief deity of the place was Apollo, under the fable of his amorous pursuit of the nymph Daphne ; and the worship was worthy of its object. The temple stood in the midst of a grove of laurels and cy- presses, where every thing was assem- bled which could minister to the senses ; and in whose recesses, the juvenile devotee wanted not the coun- tenance of a libertine god to abandon himself to voluptuousness. Even those of riper years and graver morals could not with safety breathe the atmosphere of a place where pleasiu'e, assuming the character of religion, roused the dormant passions, and svibdued the firmness of virtuous resolution. Such being the source, the stream can scarcely be expected to be more pure ; in fact, the citizens of Antioch were distinguished only for their luxury in life and licentiousness in manners. This was an unpromising soil for Christianity to take root in. But here, nevertheless, it was planted at an early period, and flourished vigorously. It 18 should be observed, that the inhabi- tants of Antioch were partly Sjnrians, and partly Greeks ; chiefly perhaps the latter, who were invited to the new city by Seleucus. To these Greeks in particular, certain Cypriot and CjTe- nean converts, who had fled from the persecution which followed the death of Stephen, addressed themselves ; "and a great number believed, and turned unto the Lord." When the heads of the Church at Jerusalem were informed of this success, they sent Barnabas to Antioch, who encouraged the new disciples, and added many to their number ; and finding how great were both the field and the harvest, went to Tarsus, to solicit the assist- ance of Paul. Both this apostle and Barnabas then taught conjointly at Antioch ; and great numbers were, by their labours during a whole year, added to the rising church. (Acts xi. 19 — 26 ; XV. 22 — 35.) Here they were also j oined by Peter ; who was reproved by Paul for his dissimvdation, and his concession to the Jews respecting the observance of the Law. (Gal.ii. 11—14.) Antioch was the birthplace of St. Luke and Tlieophilus, and the see of the martyr Ignatius. It was the metro- politan see of the East; and its bishops, or patriarchs as they were termed, held the same rank amongst the churches of Asia, as the bishops of Alexandria did in Africa, and those of Rome in the West. In this city, the followers of Christ had first the name of Christians given them : not as a term of honour, or of simple distinction from other sects, but of reproach, the most opprobrious indeed that could be bestowed. To be wise, to be learned, to be valiant, to be generous, to be every thing which could add lustre and dignity to human natiure, availed but little, if it could be added that the possessor of these qua- lities was a Christian. Notwithstand- ing, however, the opprobrium which inevitably attended a profession of the new faith ; notwithstanding, also, the extreme profligacy of the place ; Chris- tianity continued to spread, and its followers shewed that they had some- thing better than the name : they had exchanged the selfish principles of idolaters, or of cold religionists, for the open and unlimited philanthropy ANT APP of real Christians, lliey raised con- tributions amongst themselves, though in all probability not wealthy, and sent them by the hands of Barnabas and Saiil to their brethren in Judaea, as a provision against the famine foretold byAgabus. (Acts xi. 27 — 30.) We have likewise the testimony of Chrysostom, both of the vast increase of this illus- trious church in the fourth century, and of the spirit of charity which con- tinued to actuate it. It consisted at this time of not less than a hundred thousand persons, three thousand of whom were supported out of the pub- lic donations. It is painful to trace the progress of declension in such a church as this. But the period now referred to, name- ly, the age of Chrysostom, towards the close of the fourth century, may be considered as the brightest of its his- tory subsequent to the apostolic age, and that Irom which the church at Antioch may date its fall. It conti- nued indeed outwardly prosperous; but superstition, secular ambition, the pride of life, — pomp and formality in the service of God, in place of humi- lity and sincere devotion, — the growth of faction, and the decay of charity, — shewed that real religion was fast disap- pearing, and that the foundations were laid of that great apostacy, which, in two centuries from this time, over- spread the whole Christian world ; led to the entire extinction of the Church in the East ; and still holds domiiiion over the fairest portions of the West. Antioch, under its modern name of Antakia, is now but little known to the Western nations. It occupies, or rather did till lately occupy a remote corner of the ancient enclosure of its walls. Its splendid buildings were reduced to hovels ; and its population of half a million, to 10,000 wretched beings, living in the usual debasement and insecurity of Turkish subjects. Such was nearly its condition when visited by Pocock about the year 1738, and again by Kinneir in 1813. But its ancient subterranean enemy, which since the destruction of 587 has never long together withheld its assaults, has again triumphed over it : the convul- sion of the 13th of August, 1822, laid it once more in ruins ; and every thing relating to Antioch is past 19 ANTIOCH, of Pisidia.— Besides the Syrian capital, there was another An- tioch visited by St. Paul when in Asia, and called for the sake of distinction Antiochia ad Pisidiam, as belonging to that province, of which it was the capi- tal. Here Paul and Barnabas preach- ed ; but the Jews, jealous as usual of the reception of the Gospel by the Gentiles, raised a sedition against them, and obliged them to leave the city. (Acts xiii. 14, to the end.) — There were several other cities of the same name (16 in number) in Syria and Asia Minor, built by the Seleucidse, the successors of Alexander in these countries ; but the above two are the only ones which it is necessary to de- scribe, as occurring in Scripture. ANTIPATRIS, a town not far from Caesarea, formerly called Capharsa- lama ; but being rebuilt by Herod, was called Antipatris by him in honom* of his father Antipater. To this place St. Paul was brought by the soldiers in his way to the governor of Judaea at Caesarea. (Acts xxiii. 31.) Josephus makes it 150 furlongs, or 17 miles, from Joppa. APhAcREMA, a place mentioned in 1 Mac. xi. 34. It was situated in Judaea, on the borders of Samaria; and was so called, because it was taken from the latter, and added to the former. APHEK. — ^There were three, if not more cities of this name. — Aphek, in the tribe of Judah, not far from Ebenezer, where the Israelites were defeated by the Philistines, and the ark, recently brought from Shiloh, was taken. (1 Sam. iv.) — Aphek, in the val- ley of Jezreel, where the Philistines encamped, while Saul and his army were on the momitains of Gilboa. (1 Sam. xxix. 1.) — Aphek, in the tribe of Asher. (Josh. xiii. 4, & xix. 30.) This is supposed to be the same with the city of Syria of the same name, where the battle was fought between Ahab and Ben-Hadad. (1 Kings xx. 26.) APPII FORUM, a place about 50 miles from Rome, near the modem town of Piperno, on the road to Naples ; which is thought to have been so called from the same Appius who gave his name to the Appian Way. An abbey, called Fossa Nuova, now stands on the ruins of the ancient ARABIA. town. Here St. Paul, when on his way as a prisoner to Rome, was met by some of the Christians of that city. (Acts xxviii. 15.) • APOLLONIA, a city of Macedonia, thi'ough which St. Paul passed in his way to lliessalonioa. (Acts xvii. 1.) It was situated in that part of Mace- donia, called Macedonia Prima. — See Philippi. AQU^ SALVIyE, a place 3 miles distant from Rome, rendered memora- ble as the scene of St. Paul's martjT- dom ; who here terminated his glori- ous career, by submitting to the axe, or sword of the executioner. yVR, the capital city of the Moabites, sitiiated in the hills on the south of the river Anion. This city was like- wise called Rabbah or Rabbath Moab, to distinguish it from the Ammonite Rabbah. It was afterwards called by the Greeks Areopolis ; and is at pre- sent termed El-Rabba. — See Rabbah. ARABIA, a vast country of Asia, extending 1500 miles from north to south, and 1200 from east to west; containing a siu'face equal to four times that of France. It is boiuided on the north by part of Syria, Diar- beker, Irak, and Khuzestau ; on the east, by the Eujjhrates and the Per- sian Gulf; on the south-east and south, by the Erythrean Sea, or Indian Ocean ; and on the west, by the Gulf of Arabia, or Red Sea, Palestine, and part of Syi'ia. The near approach of the Euphrates to the Mediterranean constitutes it a peninsula, the largest in the world. It is called Jezirat-el- Arab by the Arabs ; and by the Per- sians and Tui'ks, Arebistan. This is one of the most interesting countries in the world. It has, in agreement with prophecy, never been subdued ; and its inhabitants, at once pastoral, commercial, and warlike, are the same wild, wandering people as the immediate descendants of their great ancestor Ishmael are represent- ed to have been. But although in the tribes of the Desert we recognise the descendants of the first-bom of Abraham, Arabia was not first peopled by him ; and for want of an accurate discrimination of the historical facts relating to this sin- gular country, the accoimts we have of it by different authors are various 20 and perplexed. Arabia, or at least the eastern and northern parts of it, were first peopled by some of the numerous families of Cush ; who ap- pear to have extended themselves, or to have given their name as the land of Cush, or Asiatic Ethiopia, to all the country from the Indus on the east, to the borders of Egypt on the west, and from Armenia on the north to Arabia DeserUi on the south. By these Cushites, whose first plantations were on both sides of the Euphrates and Gulf of Persia, and who were the first that traversed the Desert of Arabia, the earliest commercial communica- tions were established between the East and the West. But of their Ara- bian territory, and of the occupation dependent on it, they were deprived by the sons of Abraham, Ishmael and Midian : by whom they were oblite- rated in this country as a distinct race, either by superiority of numbers after mingling with them, or by oblig- ing them to recede altogether to their more eastern possessions, or over the Gulf of Arabia into Africa. From this time, that is, about 550 years after the Flood, we read only of Ishmaelites and Midianites as the shepherds and carriers of the Deserts : who also ap- pear to have been intermingled, and to have shared both the territory and the traffic, as the traders who bought Joseph are caUed by both names, and the same are probably referred to by Jeremiah (ch. xxv.) as " the mingled people that dwell in the desert." But Ishmael maintained the superiority, and succeeded in giving his name to the whole people. There is one tribe or family, however, more particularly mentioned as travelling merchants through these countries, called by Isaiah the " travelling companies of Dedanim," and by Ezekiel " the men of Dedan," in conjimction with the merchants of many isles, bringing ivory and ebony. This evidently re- fers to the merchandize of the East: and although it cannot now be decided whether the Dedan here meant be the grandson of Cush or of Abraham, it is probable the former ; the situation of the people refen-ed to being evidently on the eastern or south-eastern side of Arabia, on the coasts of Omar, where a city is found in Ptolemy by tlie name ARABIA. of Dadena, and another by that of Rhegma, answering to Raamah, the son of Cush and father of Dedan ; and it is more than probable, that these descendants of Cush would continue in after-ages to convey the produce of their own country, or that which they received from India, into Iduma;a and Phenicia, until the Ishmaelites, in course of time, by spreading over the whole country, superseded them. f> Arabia, it is well known, is divided by geographers into three separate regions, called Arabia Petra;a, Arabia Deserta, and Arabia Felix. The first, or Arabia Petreea, is the north-western division ; and is bound- ed on the north by Palestine and the Dead Sea, on the east by Arabia De- serta, on the south by Arabia Felix, and on the west by the Heroopolitan branch of the Red Sea and the Isthmus of Suez. The greater part of this divi- sion was more exclusively the posses- sion of the Midianites, or land of Midian ; where Moses, having fled from Egypt, married the davighter of Jethro, and spent 40 years keeping the flocks of his father-in-law : no humiliating occupation in those days, and particvdarly in Midian, which was a land of shepherds ; the whole people having no other way of life than that of rearing and tending their flocks, and employing a part of them in car- rying the goods they received from the East and South into Phenicia and Egypt. The word flock, used here, must not convey tlie idea naturally entertained in our own country of sheep only, but, together with these or goats, homed cattle and camels, the most in- dispensable of animals to the Midian- ite. It was a mixed flock of this kind which was the sole care of Moses, during a third part of his long life ; in which he must have had abundance of leisure, by night and by day, to reflect on the unhappy condition of his own people, still enduring all the rigours of slavery in Egjpt. It was a similar flock also which the daughters of Jethro were watering, when lirst en- countered by Moses : a trifling event in itself, but important in the history of the future leader of the .lew s ; and shewing, at the same time, the simple life of the people amongst whom he was newly come, as well as the scanty 21 supply of water in their country, and the strifes frequently occasioned in obtaining a share of it. Through a considerable part of this region, the Israelites wandered after they had escaped from Egypt ; and in it were situated the moimtains Horeb and Sinai. Besides the tribes of Midian, which gradually became blended with those of I shmael, this was the country of the Edomites, the Amalekites, and the Nabathaji, the only tribe of pure Ish- maelites within its precincts. But all those families have long since been confounded under the general name of Arabs. I'he Midianites, the Amalek- ites, and the Edomites were earlier lost sight of; but the Nabathaei, whose commercial enterprise had rendered them w ealthy and powerful, preserved their independence until the second century of the Christian tera; when their capital, Petra, the Joktheel of Scripture, was taken by Palma, the lieutenant of Trajan. The greater part of this district consists of naked rocks and sandy and flinty plains ; but it con- tained also some fertile spots, particu- larly in the peninsula of Mount Sinai, and through the long range of Mount Seir. The second region, or Arabia De- serta, is bounded on the north and north-east by the Euphrates, on the . east by a ridge of mountains which separates it from Chaldsea, on the south by Arabia Felix, and on the west by Syria, Judaea, and Arabia Petraea. This was more particularly the coun- try first of the Cushites, and after- wards of the Ishmaelites ; as it is still of their descendants, the modem Be- douins, who maintain the same pre- datory and wandering habits. It con- sists almost entirely of one vast and lonesome wilderness, a boundless level of sand, whose dry and buming sur- face denies existence to all but the Arab and his camel. Yet widely scat- tered over this dreary waste, some spots of comparative fertility are to be found, where spread around a feeble spring of brackish water, a stunted verdure, or a few palm-trees, fix the principal settlement of a tribe; and aff'ord stages of refreshment in these otherwise impassable deserts. Here, with a few dates, the milk of his faith- ARABIA. fill camel, and perhaps a little corn, brought by painful journeys from dis- tant regions, or plundered from a pass- ing caravan, the Arab supports a hard existence, until the failure of his re- sources impels him to seek another oa^is, or the scanty herbage furnished on a patch of soil by transient rains ; or else, which is frequently the case, to resort, by more distant migration, to the banks of the Euphrates ; or, by hostile inroads on the neighbouring countries, to supply those wants which the recesses of the Desert have denied. The numbers leading this wandering and precarious mode of life are incre - dible. From these deserts Zerah drew his army of a million of men ; and the same deserts, 1500 years after, poured forth the countless swarms, which, under Mahomet and his successors, devastated half the then known world. The third region, or Arabia Felix, so denominated from the happier condi- tion of its soil and climate, occupies the southern part of the Arabian penin- sula. It is bounded on the north by the two other divisions of the coun- try ; on the south and south-east by the Indian Ocean ; on the east by part of the same ocean and the Persian Gidf ; and on the west by the Red Sea. This division is subdivided into the kingdoms or provinces of Yemen, at the southern extremity of the penin- sula; Hejaz, on the north of the for- mer, and towards the Red Sea ; Nejed, in the central region ; and Hacb'amant and Oman, on the shores of the Indian Ocean. The four latter subdivisions partake of much of the character of the other greater divisions of the coun- try, though of a more varied surface, and with a larger portion capable of cultivation. But Yemen seems to be- long to another country and climate. It is very mountainous ; is well water- ed with rains and springs ; and is blessed with an abundant produce in corn and fruits, and especially in cof- fee, of which vast quantities are ex- ported. In this division were the anci- ent cities of Nysa, Musa or Moosa, and Aden. This is also supposed to have been the country of the Queen of Sheba. In Hejaz are the celebrated cities of Mecca and Medina. Arabia Felix is inhabited by a peo- ple who claim Joktan for their father, 22 and so trace their descent direct from Shem, instead of Abraham and Ham. They are indeed a totally different people from those inhabiting the other quarters, and pride themselves on be- ing the only pure and unmixed Arabs. Instead of being shepherds and rob- bers, they are fixecl in towns and cities ; and live by agriculture and commerce, chiefly maritime. Here were the people who were found by the Greeks of Egypt enjoying an entire monopoly of the trade with the East, and possessing a high degree of wealth and consequent refinement. It was here, in the ports of Saba;a, that the spices, muslins, and precious stones of India were for many ages obtained by the Greek traders of Egypt, before they had acquired skill or courage suf- ficient to pass the Straits of the Red Sea ; and which were long considered by the nations of Europe to be the pro- duce of Arabia itself. These articles, before the invention of shipping, or the establishment of a maritime inter- course, were conveyed across the De- serts, by the Cushite, Ishmaelite, and Midianite caniers. It was the produce partly of India and partly of Arabia, which the travelling merchants, to whom Joseph was sold, were carrying into Egypt. The bahn and myrrh were probably Arabian, as they are still the produce of the same country ; but the spicery was undoubtedly brought farther from the East. In the 30th chapter of Exodus, we have distinct mention of the same produce of both countries; namely, myrrh, frankincense, galbanum, with other gums, calamus, cassia, and cinnamon. The myrrh, and other gums, were most likely Arabian ; the calamus and cassia, that is, the inferior cassia, or cassia lignea, might be either Indian or African; but the cinnamon, the khinemon besem, or cassia fistula, was to be had nowhere but in India or Ceylon. The chief mart for this arti- cle, in the time of the Ptolemies, was Mosyllon, a port belonging to the Ara- bians on the coast of Africa ; whence it obtained the name, in the market of Alexandria, of Kacrcna MocrvWiriKT^, and was imported from India: the neigh- bouring country, called the reffio cin- namomifera by Ptolemy, producing no other than the coarser sort, or cassia ARABIA. lignea. (Consult, on this subject, Dr. Vincent's Periplus of tlie Erythraean Sea.) These circumstances are adverted to, to shew how extensive was the com- munication, in which the Arabians formed the principal link ; and that in the earliest ages of which we have any account, in those of Joseph, of Moses, of Isaiah, and of Ezekiel, " the min- gled people" inhabiting the vast Ara- bian Deserts, the Cushites, Ishmael- ites, and Midianites, were the chief agents in that commercial inter- course, which has, from the most re- mote period of antiquity, subsisted between the extreme East and West. And although the current of trade is now tvimed, caravans of merchants, the descendants of these people, may still be found traversing the same deserts, conveying the same articles, and in the same manner, as described by Moses ! The singular and important fact that Arabia has never been conquer- ed, has already been cursorily advert- ed to. But Mr. Gibbon, unwilling to Eass by an opportunity of cavilling at levelation, says, " The pei'petual in- dependence of the Arabs has been the theme of praise among strangers and natives ; and the arts of contro- versy transform this singular event into a prophecy and a miracle in fa- vour of the posterity of Ishmael. Some exceptions, that can neither be dissem- bled nor eluded, render this mode of reasoning as indiscreet as it is super- fluous. The kingdom of Yemen has been successively subdued by the Abyssinians, the Persians, the Sultans of Egypt, and the Turks ; the holy cities of Mecca and Medina have re- peatedly bowed under a Scythian ty- rant; and the Roman province of Ara- bia embraced the pecidiar wilderness in which Ishmael and his sons must have pitched their tents in the face of their brethren." But this learned wri- ter has, with a peculiar infelicity, an- nulled his own argument; and we have only to follow on the above pas- sage, to obtain a complete refvitation of the unworthy position with which it begins. " Yet these exceptions," says Mr. Gil)bon, " ai'c temporary or local; the body of the nation has escaped the yoke of the most powerful 23 monarchies : the arms of Sesostris and Cyrus, of Pompey and Trajan, could never achieve the conquest of Arabia ; the present sovereign of the Turks may exercise a shadow of juris- diction, but his pride is reduced to solicit the friendship of a people whom it is dangerous to provoke, and fruit- less to attack. The obvious causes of their freedom are inscribed on the character and country of the Arabs. Many ages before Mahomet, their in- trepid valour had been severely felt by their neighbours, in offensive and defensive war. The patient and active virtues of a soldier are insensibly nursed in the habits and discipline of a pastoral life. The care of the sheep and camels is abandoned to the women of the tribe ; but the martial youth, under the banner of the emir, is ever on horseback, and in the field, to practise the exercise of the bow, the javelin, and the scimitar. The long memory of their independence is the firmest pledge of its perpetuity ; and succeeding generations are animated to prove their descent, and to main- tain their mheritance. Their domes- tic feuds are suspended on the ap- proach of a common enemy ; and in their last hostilities against the Turks, the caravan of Mecca was attacked and pillaged by fourscore thousand of the confederates. When they advance to battle, the hope of victory is in the front, in the rear the assurance of a retreat. Their horses and camels, who in eight or ten days can perform a march of four or five hundred miles, disappear before the conqueror; the secret waters of the Desert elude his search ; and his victorious troops ai'e consumed with thirst, Ininger, and fatigue, in the pursuit of an invisible foe, who scorns his efforts, and safely reposes in the heart of the l)urn- ing solitude. The arms and deserts of the Bedovveens are not only the safeguards of their own freedom, but the barriers also of the Happy Arabia, whose inhabiUmts, remote from war, are enervated by the luxury of the soil and climate. The legions of Augustus melted away in disease and lassitude ; aud it is only by a naval power that the reduction of Yemen has been suc- cessfully attempted. When Mahomet erected his holy standard, that king- ARABIA. doin was a province of the Persian empire ; yet seven princes of the Homerites still reigned in the moun- tains ; and the vicegerent of Chosroes was tempted to forget his distant country and his unfortvuiate master." Yemen was the only Arabian pro- vince which had the appearance of submitting to a foreign yoke ; but even here, as Mr. Gibbon himself acknowledges, seven of the native princes remained unsubbued : and even admitting its subjugation to have been complete, the perpetual inde- pendence of the Ishmaelites remains unimpeached. For this is not their country. Petra, the capital of the Stony Arabia, and the principal set- tlement of the Nabathsei, it is true, was long in the hands of the Persians and Romans ; but this never made them masters of the country. Hover- ing troops of Arabs confined the in- truders within their walls, and cut off their supplies ; and the possession of this fortress gave as little reason to the Romans to exult as the conquerors of Arabia Petraja, as that of Gibraltar does to us to boast of the conquest of Spain. The Arabian tribes were confounded by the Greeks and Romans under the indiscriminate appellation of Sara- cens : a name whose etymology has been variously, but never satisfactorily explained. This was their general name when Mahomet appeared in the beginning of the seventh century. Their religion at this time was Sabian- ism, or the worship of the Sun, Moon, &c. ; variously transformed by the dif- ferent tribes, and intermingled with some Jewish and Christian maxims and traditions. The tribes themselves were generally at variance from some hereditary and implacable animosi- ties ; and their only warfare consisted in desultory skirmishes arising out of these feuds, and in their predatory excursions, where superiority of num- bers rendered courage of less value than activity and \'igilance. Yet of such materials Mahomet constructed a mighty empire ; converted the re- lapsed ishmaelites into good Mussel- men; united the jarring tribes under one banner ; supplied what was wanting in personal courage by the ardour of religious zeal ; and out of a banditti, 24 little known and little feared beyond their own deserts, raised an armed multitude, which proved the scourge of the world. Mahomet was born in the year 569, of the noble tribe of the Koreish, and descended, according to Eastern his- torians, in a direct line from Ishmael. His person is represented as beautiful, his manners engaging, and his elo- quence powerful ; but he was illite- rate, like the rest of his comitrymen, and indebted to a Jewish or Christian scribe for penning his Koran. What- ever the views of Mahomet might have been in the earlier part of his life, it was not till the fortieth year of his age that he avowed his mission as the apostle of God : when so little credit did he gain for his pretensions, that in the first three years he could only number 14 converts ; and even at the end of ten years, his labours and his friends were alike confined within the walls of Mecca, when the designs of his enemies compelled him to fly to Medina, where he was favourably re- ceived by a party of the most consi- derable inhabitants, who had recently imbibed his doctrines at Mecca. This flight, or Hetjira, was made the Maho- metan ajra, from which time is com- puted, and corresponds with the 16th July, 622, of the Christian sera. Maho- met now foimd himself sufficiently powerful to throw aside all reserve ; declared that he was commanded to compel luibelievers by the sword to receive the faith of one God, and his prophet Mahomet; and confirming his credulous followers by the threats of eternal pain on the one hand, and the allurements of a sensual Paradise on the other, he had, before his death, which happened in the year 632, gain- ed over the whole of Arabia to his im- posture. His death threw a temporary gloom over his cause, and the dis- union of his followers threatened its extinction. Any other empire placed in the same circumstances would have cnimbled to pieces : but the Arabs felt their power ; they revered their foun- der as the chosen prophet of God ; and their ardent temperament, animated by a religious enthusiasm, ga^e an earnest of future success, and encou- raged the zeal or the ambition of their leaders. The succession after some ARABIA. bloodshed was settled, and unnum- bered hordes of barbarians wci'e ready to tarry into execution the sanjiuinary dictiites of their Pro])het, and, with " The Koran, tribute, or death," as their motto, to invade the countries of the Infidels. Durint,^ the whole of the suceeedinf>- century, their rapid career was unchecked : the disciplined armies of the Greeks and Romans were unable to stand against them ; the Christian churches of Asia and Africa were annihilated ; and from In- dia to the Atlantic, throuj^h Persia, Arabia, Syria, Palestine, Asia Minor, Egypt, with the whole of northern Africa, Spain, and part of France, the Impostor was acknowleged. Constan- tinople was besieged ; Rome itself was plundered ; and nothing less than the subjection of the whole C'hristian world was meditated on the one hand, and tremblingly expected on the other. All this was wonderful ; but the avenging justice of an incensed Deity, and the sure word of prophecy, relieve our astonishment. It was to punish an apostate race, that the Saracen locusts were let loose upon the earth ; and the countries which they were permitted to ravage, were those in which the pure light of Revelation had been most aliused. The Eastern church was sunk in gross idolatry ; vice and wickedness prevailed in their worst forms ; and those who still call- ed themselves Christians, tnisted more to images, relics, altars, austerities, and pilgTimages, than to a crucified Saviour. The Arabian scourge was to last five prophetic months, or 150 years (Re^'. ix.) ; and although there may be some difliculty, from the inaccuracy of his- toi'ians, in fixing the exact correspon- dent dates, yet, in eveiy mode of com- putation, the predicted period of 150 years will ])e Ibund to limit the dura- tion of the Saracen conquests. These conquests were first successfully re- sisted by the celebrated Charles Mar- tel in the year 732, who ga\ c the Ma- hometans so signal a defeat near Poic- tiers, in France, that they were glad to withdraw irom that country across the Pyrenees. In the year 7()2, the Caliph Almansor founded Bagdad, called it the City of Peace, and made it the seat of the Saracen empire, which 25 then began to assume the form of a regular monarchy ; and although it continued some time longer to harass the Roman empire, its own extension was complete. A ri^■al caliph had risen in Spain, and the inhabitants of the dist^uit provinces detaching them- sehes from their allegiance to tlie " commander of the faithful," did not hesitate, by the hope of phuider, or the thirst of revenge, to make war for themselves. The latter year, dated from () 1 2, when Mahomet first began to make proselytes, gives so exact a period of 150 years, that we may be satisfied with its agreement with the prophecy, and abstain from any fur- ther curiosity on the subject. Rut there are one or two circumstances in the same prophecy, so singailar in their character and fulfilment, as to deserve a particular notice. The commission given to the locusts was not to " kill" or destroy the Christian powers, but to "torment them five months." It was not to be inferred from this that no li\'es should be lost in the terrible conflict which was to ensue : the apos- tate Christians, who " had not the seal of God on their foreheads," and whose abominations brought this scourge upon their countries, were individu- ally slaughtered, or dri\en from their homes, or compelled to receive a strange faith ; but both the Eastern and the Western Empire, although grievously " hurt," and despoiled of extensive provinces, survived the in- fliction many centuries, and were re- served for other instruments of Divine vengeance. But a stiU more extraor- dinary instance of the particular fulfil- ment of ])rophecy occvus in the his- torj' of these events. It commonly happens that the progress of an invad- ing army is marked by unsparing deso- lation ; war is extended to vegeUiblc as well as animal life ; the herbage is quickly consumed, aiul the trees are felled for fuel, for defence, or for mis- chief: but the "locusts" were com- manded " that they should not hurt the gi'ass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree," a com- mand which Abubeker, the successor of Mahomet, little thought he was repeat- ing, when he enjoined his Cieueral, Yezid, on setting out for the inva- sion of Syria, to " cut down no palm- U ARABIA. trees, nor bum any fields of com ; to spare all fruit-trees ;" &c. About 180 years from the founda- tion of Bagdad, during which period the power of the Saracens had gradu- ally declined, a dreadful reaction took place in the conquered countries. The Persians on the east, and the Greeks on the west, were simultaneously roused from their long thraldom, and assisted by the Turks, who, issuing from the plains of Tartary, now for the first time made their appearance in the East, extinguished the power of the Caliphate, and virtually put an end to the Arabian monarchy in the year 936, after it had continued about 800 years. A succession of nominal caliphs continued to the year 1258 : but the provinces were lost ; their power was confined to the walls of their capital ; and they were in real subjection to the Turks and the Persians until the above year, when Mostasem, the last of the Abbassides, was dethroned and murdered by Holagou, or Hulaku, the Tartar, the grandson of Zingis. This event, altho' it terminated the foreign dominion of the Arabians, left their native independence untouched. They were no longer, indeed, the masters of the finest parts of the three great divisions of the ancient world : their work was finished ; and returning to the state in which Mahomet found them three centuries before, with the exception of the change in their reli- gion, they remained, and still remain, the unconquered rovers of the Desert. It is not the least singular circum- stance in the history of this extraordi- nary people, that those who, in the enthusiasm of their first successes, were the sworn foes of literature, should become for several ages its ex- clusive patrons. Abnansor, the foun- der of Bagdad, has the merit of first exciting this spirit ; which was encou- raged in a still greater degree by his grandson Almamon. This caliph em- ployed his agents in Armenia, Syria, Egjpt, and at Constantinople, in col- lecting the most celebrated works on Grecian science, and had them trans- lated into the Arabic language. Phi- losophy, astronomy, geometry, and medicine were thus introduced, and taught ; piiblic schools were establish- ed; and learning, which had altoge- 2H ther fled from Europe, found an asy- lum on the banks of the Tigris. Nor was this spirit confined to the capital : native works began to appear ; and by the hands of copyists were multiplied out of number, for the information of the studious, or the pride of the weal- thy. The rage for literature extended to Egypt and to Spain. In the former coimtry, the Fatimites collected a libra- ry of a hundred thousand manuscripts, beautifully transcribed, and elegantly bound ; and in the latter, the Ommi- ades formed another of six huncb'ed thousand volumes, forty-four of which were employed in the catalogue. Their capital, Cordova, with the towns of Malaga, Almeria, and Murcia, pro- duced 300 writers ; and 70 public libraries were established in the cities of Andalusia. What a change since the days of Omar, when the splendid library of the Ptolemies was wantonly destroyed by the same people ! A retri- bution, though a slight one, was thus made for their former devastations ; and many Grecian works, lost in the original, have been recovered in their Arabic dress. Neither was this learn- ing confined to mere parade, though much of it must undoubtedly have been so. Their proficiency in astro- nomy and geometry is attested by their astronomical tables, and by the accu- racy with which, in the plana of Chal- daea, a degree of the great circle of the earth was measured. But it was in medicine that, in this dark age, the Arabians shone most: the works of Hippocrates and Galen had been trans- lated, and commented on ; their phy- sicians were sought after by the princes of Asia and Europe ; and the names of Rhazis, Albucasis, and Avicenna, are still revered by the members of the healing art. So little indeed did the physicians of Europe in that age know of the history of their own science, that they were astonished, on the revival of learning, to find in the ancient Greek authors those systems for which they thought themselves indebted to the Arabians ! The last remnant of Arabian science w as found in Spain ; from whence it was expelled in the beginning of the 17th century, by the intemperate bigots of that coimtry, who have never had any thing of their own with which to supply its place. ARABIA. The Arabians are the only people \>ho have preserved their descent, their independence, their lanniiajje, and their manners and cnstoms, from the earliest aj^es to the present times ; and it is amongst them that we are to look for examples of patriarchal life and manners. A very lively sketch of this mode of life is given by Sir R. K. Porter, in the person and trilje of an Aral) sheik, wliom he encountered in the neighbourhood of the Eujjhrates. " I had met this warrior," says Sir R. P., " at the house of the British resi- dent (at Bagdad) ; and came, accord- ing to his repeated w ish, to see him in a place more consonant witli his habits, the tented field; and, as he expressed it, ' at the head of his chil- dren.'— As soon as we arrived in sight of his camp, we were met by crowds of its inhabitants, who, with a wild and hurrying delight, led us towards the tent of their chief. The venerable old man came forth to the door, attended by his subjects of all sizes and descrip- tions, and greeted us with a coiuite- nance beaming kindness ; while his words, which our interpreter explain- ed, were demonstrati^ e of patriarchal welcome. One of my Hindoo troopers spoke Arabic ; hence the substance of our succeeding discourse was not lost on each other. Having entered, I sat down by my host ; and the whole of the persons present, to far beyond the boundaries of the tent (the sides of which were open), seated themselves also, \N ithout any regard to those more civilized ceremonies of subjection, the crouching of slaves, or the standing of vassalage. These persons, in rows be- yond rows, appeared just as he had described, the offspring of his house, the descendants of his fathers, from age to age ; and like brethren, whether holding the highest or the lowest rank, they seemed to gather round their common parent. But perhaps their sense of perfect equality in the mind of their chief, coidd not be more forci- bly shewn, than in the share they took in the objects which appeared to inte- rest his feelings ; and as 1 looked from the elders or leaders of the people, seated immediately aromid him, to tlie circles beyond circles of brilliant faces, bending eagerly towards him and his guest (all, from the most re- 27 spectably clad, to those with hardly a garment covering their active limbs, earnest to evince some attention to tlie stranger he bade welcome), I thought I had ne^er before seen so complete an assemblage of fine and animated countenances, both old and young: nor could I suppose a better specimen of the still existing state of the true Arab ; nor a more lively picture of the scene which must have presented it- self, ages ago, in the fields of Haran, when Terah sat in his tent-door, sur- rounded by his sons, and his sons' sons, and the people bom in his house. I'he venerable Arabian sheik was also seated on the ground, with a piece of carpet spread under him ; and like his ancient C'haldean ancestor, turned to the one side and the other, graciously answering, or questioning the groups around him, with an interest in them all, which clearly shewed the abiding simplicity of his government, and their obedience. On the smallest computa- tion, such must have been the man- ners of these people for more than 3000 years ; thus, in all things, verify- ing the prediction given of Ishmael at his birth, that he, in his posterity, should 'be a wild man,' and always continue to be so, though ' he shall dwell for ever in the presence of his brethren.' And that an acute and active people, surrounded for ages by polished and luxurious nations, should, from their earliest to their latest times, be still found a wild people, divelling in the presence of all their brethren (as we may call these nations), unsubdued and unchangeable, is, indeed, a stand- ing miracle : one of those mysterious facts, which establishes the truth of prophecy." But although the manners of the Arabians ha\e remained unaltered through so many ages, and will pro- bably so continue, their religion, as %\e have seen, has sustained an im- portant change ; and must again, in the fulness of time, give place to a faith more worthy of the people. Mr. Faber supposes the Mohammedan, or Saracenic empire, prolonged under that of the Euphratean horsemen, or Turkish empire, to be prefigiured by the little honi of the he-goat in the vision of Daniel (ch. viii.) ; as the great Western apostacy was by the ARARAT. corresponding little horn of the ten- homed Roman beast. He supposes also, that the intimations of prophecy are precise as to their joint diu'ation for 1260 days, or years; that as they rose together, they shall fall together. These 1260 days he dates, with much apparent propriety, from the year 606 : when Mahomet, in the East, first re- tired to the cave of Hera, to fabricate his imjjositions ; and when also, Boni- face the Third, in the West, first received the title of Universal Bishop. See Rome. ARAD, a city in the southern part of the land of Canaan, whose king being alarmed at the approach of the Israelites, came down through the Desert of Zin, attacked them at Mount Hor, and took some prisoners ; but he ■was quickly defeated, and destroyed with his whole army. (Numb. xxi. 1, 2, 3.) It is also said that the Israelites destroyed the cities of Arad : from which it may be inferred, that, during the encampment at Mount Hor, a party was detached on this expedition, as it does not appear that the main body of the Israelites quitted this posi- tion until they broke up from, it to di- rect their march southwards, towards the plain of Ezion-geber, instead of northwards, towards Canaan. Some writers have confounded Arad with Haradah ; but the former was evident- ly within the land of Canaan, and the latter in the Desert of Paran. This mistake is made by the editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, who sup- pose also that the punishment was not inflicted on the cities of the Arad- ites until the Israelites became mas- ters of the land of Canaan. But this supposition is contrary to the narra- tive, which expressly implies that the whole transaction took place before the departure from Mount Hor. Euse- bius places Arad 20 miles to the south of Hebron. ARADUS, a small and rocky island on the coast of Syria, at the mouth of the river Eleutheinis, to the north of Tripolis. It is about a mile in cir- cumference, and two miles from the shore. Aradus is the Greek name for this place, which is so called in the Maccabees ; but its Hebrew name was Arvad, or Aruad, to which its modern one of Ruad bears a striking resem- 28 blance. The Hebrew name is sup- posed to be derived from one of the sons of Canaan, ]>y whom it was peo- pled, and who probably made it their place of strength, for which it was very well adapted. The diff'erent names of Ai-pad, Arphad, and Arvad, occurring in the books of Kings, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, appear to be the same. Arvad, or Aradus, in the latter pro- phet (ch. xxvii.), is mentioned in con- junction with Sidon, as supplying Tyre with mariners; by which it may be inferred, that this little island had a share in the trade of both cities. Strabo represents this island as cover- ed with buildings more lofty than those of Rome ; but of these nothing now remains. ARAM, the name given in the writ- ings of Moses to that extensive tract of cotmtry better known under that of Syria, and peopled by Aram, the son of Shem. See Syria and Mesopotamia. ARAM NAHARAIM, a Hebrew name, implying Aram or Syria be- tween the risers, being the same with Mesopotamia ; which see. ARARAT Mount, or Mount,700 feet above the level of the sea ; and Ararat is generally considered to be higher. .\ celcl)rated Mncyclopaxlia gra\ely st^ites, that one- half of the apparent height of this mountain above the plain being cover- ed with snow is no proof of its eleva- tion, as ice is sometimes found in the month of July in some p;irt of the neighbouring country ol Armenia. The writer of this remark did not seem to be aware that this circum- stance alone, in such a latitude (39), was the plainest proof that could be required of an immense ele\ation, in the country w here such a phenomenon could happen : and it is not the appa- rent height of the mountain above its base, but its entire elevation above the sea, which we are most interested in determining, as wiU be seen in a subse- quent article. It does not appear that the summit of Ararat has ever been visited. Mr.Mo- rier says, he w as assiu-ed " that the im- possibility of reaching its extreme sum- mit, even on the side where it is appa- rently most easy of access, was decided some years ago by the Pasha of Beya- zid. He departed from that city with a large party of horsemen, at the most favourable season, and ascended the momitain on the Beyazid side, as high as he could on horseback. He caused three stations to be marked out on the ascent, where he built huts and collected provisions. The third sbition was the snow. He had no dirtlculty in crossing the region of snow ; but when he came to the great cap of ice that covers the top of the cone, he ccjuld proceed no farther, be- cause several of his men were there seized with violent oppressi(ms of the chest from the great rarefaction of the air. He had before offered large re- wards to any one who should reach tlie tr)p ; but although many t'oiu'ds, who live at its base, have attempted it, all have been equally unsuccessfid. Besides the great rarefaction of the air, his men had to contend with dun- •20 gers from the falling ice, large pieces of which were consUintly detaching themselves from the main body, and falling down. During the summer, the cap of ice on its summit is seen to shine with a glow quite distinct from snow ; and if the old inhaljit^mts may be belie\ed, this great congealed mass has visiljly increased since they first knew it." It is probable, however, that some enterprising European would find the dangers and difficulties of this ascent less formidable : and in ascer- taining the exact elevation of this mountthe river Eleu- therus, on the coast of ^henicia ; and doubtless also dn the neighbouring coast. ASHDOD, called by the Greeks Azotus, by the Arabs Mezdel, and by the Syrians Ezdoud; a city on the summit of a grassy hill, near the coast of the Mediterranean, between Gaza and Joppa. This was one of the five cities of the Philistines ; and is memorable for having sustain- ed the longest siege mentioned in his- tory, when Psammetichus, king of Egypt, took it after a siege of 29 years. It is represented as having been a place of great strength, and sustain- ing repeated sieges from the kings of Egypt and Assyria ; by both of whom it was desired as a frontier town. It was made an episcopal see by the early Christians, and is described by Jerom as a fair village ; but it is at pre- sent an inconsiderable place, being provided with two small gates, and having in the centre a mosque with a beautiful minaret. It also aboimds with fragments of columns, capitals, cornices, &c. in marble. Here the Ark of Jehovah triumphed over the Philistine idol Dagon (1 Sam. v. 2) ; and here Philip the evangelist was found after he had baptised the Ethio- pian eunuch. ASHDOTH-PISGAH, or ASH- DOD-PISGAH, caUed simply Pisgah by Eusebius and Jerom, a city of the Amorites, afterwards belonging to the tribe of Reuben. It was situated near the momitain of the same name. ASHER, Tribe of. The province allotted to this tribe was a maritime one, stretching along the coast from Sidon on the north to Mount Carmel on the south; including the cities Abdon, Achshaph, Accho, Achzib, Sarepta, Sidon, and Tyre. But of the northern half of this territory, that is, from Tyre northward, this tribe never becanic possessed, not being able to r-^ //. A i/^Y n ASH A8I expel the Phonician inhabitants ; who arc supposed not to have ])cen pure C';inaanitcs, but a mixture of this people with a Cuthite cohtny from Egypt: Asher was the most northerly of the tribes; and had that of Naph- tiili on the west, and Zebulun on the south. ITiere were, it is w ell known, eleven other tribes besides this of Asher, namely, Benjamin, Dan, Ephraim,Gad, Issachar, Judah, Manasseh, Naphtali, Reuben, 8imcon, and Zebulun. But as the situation and boundaries of their respective cantons or provinces are much better defined on a map than by description, the reader is re- ferred to the map at the commence- ment of this work. It may be observed, however, that, properly speaking, the territories assigned to the twelve tribes were divided into thirteen provinces ; of which, those of Reuben, and Gad, and one-half of the tribe of Manasseh, were situated on the east of the Jor- dan, in the conquered countries of Bashan and the Amorites, and those of the other nine, with the other half of Manasseh, on the west of Jordan, in the land of Canaan Proper. ASHKENAZ, one of the sons of Gomer, and grandson of Japheth, who gave his name to the coiuitry first peopled by him in the north and north-western part of Asia Minor, an- swering to Bithynia ; where were traces long after of his name, parti- cidarly in that of Ascanius, applied to a bay and city, as well as to some islands lying along the coast. It was also from this country, most probably, that the king Ascanius, mentioned by Homer, came to the aid of Priamus at the siege of Troy. From the same source, likewise, the Pontus Euxinus, or Black Sea, derived its name. It may further be remarked on the iden- tity of these coimtrics, that the pro- phet Jeremiah, predicting the capture of Babylon, and calling by name the countries which were to rise against it, exclaims, " Call together against her the kingdoms of Ararat (or Arme- nia), Minni, and Ashkenaz :" which was literally fulfilled; as Xenophon informs us, that Cyrus, after taking Sardis, became master of Phrygia on the Hellespont, and took along with him many soldiers of that couutrv. ■37 ASHTAROTII, or ASHTAROTH- CARNAIM, one of the capital cities of the kingdom of Bashan, Edrei l)e- ing the other. The adjunct Caniaim implies, in the Hebrew, two-horned; and the city is supposed to ha\e de- rived both names from the worship paid to the goddess AshUiroth, wIkj was represented like the Egyptian Isi.s with two horns, or a homed moon. It was sometimes also known by the name of ('aniaim singly, or Camion, both which occur in the Maccabees. Ashtaroth was the chief goddess of the JSidonians, and was much wor- shipped in Syria and Phenicia under that name, as well as those of " the host of heaven," of which she was the representative, and another, since con- ferred by the Romanists on the Virgin Mary, namely, the " queen of heaven." She is also supposed to be the same as the Diana of tlie Greeks; but the worship paid to her was more that of Venus. Her original temples were woods and groves, as were those of Baal, with whom she is generally men- tioned in Scripture : and in these groves the most infamous orgies were practised. Solomon, to please his strange wives, introduced the worship of this goddess amongst the Jews ; but it was reserved for Jezebel to establish it, as we read in 1 Kings xviii. that 400 of her priests, termed prophets of the groves, who ate at the table of Jezebel, were sum- moned, together w ith 450 of the priests of Baal, to Mount Carmel by Elijah. Some idea may be formed from this piece of information, of the extrava- gance both of Jezebel and of the form of worship of her goddess Ashtaroth. These 400 prophets were her domes- tic priests, who fed at her table, and probably were employed in the cere- monial of a single temple ; as there was one in after-ages at Hierapolis, in Syria, where 300 priests were (Con- stantly engaged in the service of the same goddess, who was adopted by the eastern Greeks under the name of Astarte. Jerom informs us, that Ash- taroth was called Carnca in his time, and was tiien a considerable city, six miles iiom Edrei. It is supposed to have stood where the Castle of Meza- reib is now found. ASIA, is used iu a threefold sense. ASSYRIA. 1. As one of the four jTi'eat divisions of the earth. 2. Asia Minor, or Ana- tolia. 3. In which sense only it is used in the New Testament, Asia Proper, which Attalus bequeathed to the Ro- mans, comprehending Phrygia, Mysia, Caria, and Lydia. This was the Roman pro-consular Asia, in which the seven churches, of Asia were situated. ASKELON, called by the Greeks and Latins Ascalon, one of the five great cities or lordships of the Philis- tines ; situated on the coast, between Gaza on the south and Ashdod on the north. It appears at that time to have been the chief of those cities : and so we find it at the time of the Crusades, when, from its strength and position, it was the object of much contention, and w as the last of the maritime towns which fell into the hands of the Chris- tians. It is chiefly rendered memora- ble in the history of those wars, from the defeat of the Caliph of Egypt, in 1099, by Godfrey of BouiUon ; and of the Emperor Saladin, and the slaugh- ter of 40,000 of his united anny of Saracens and Turks, in 1192, by the English king, Richard the First, and the subsequent capture of the place itself. Ascalon, now in ruins, was close to the shore; but enjoyed few advantages of a sea-port, as the coast was sandy, and difficult of access. A small stream rising in the mountains of Judaea flows into the sea close by the town, now called Scalona. This was the birthplace of Herod the Great. ASPHALTITE LAKE. See Dead Sea. ASSOS, a city of the province of Troas, in Asia Minor, whither St. Paul went on foot from the city Troas ; and where he again embarked with his companions, who had gone by sea, to proceed to Mitylene or Lesbos. (Acts XX. 13, 14.) ASSYRIA, one of the first and great- est empires of Asia, and intimately connected with the history of the Jews. It is generally supposed to have been founded by Ashur or Assur, son of Shem, who went out of Shinar, driven out, as it appears, by Nimrod, and founded Nineveh, not long after Nim- rod had established the Chaldaean monarchy, and fixed his residence at Babylon. This is the commonly received ac- 38 count of the origin of this empire, foxmded on the Mosaic history as given in the text of our Bible ; but Bochart adopts the marginal translation, which, instead of " Out of that land went forth Assur, and builded Nineveh," reads, " Out of that land, he (Nimrod) went forth into Assiur, or AssjTia, and built Nineveh." It is impossible, in this work, to go into the whole of this lengthened question ; but a sum- mary of the arguments which have been, or may be, used on both sides, is desirable for the information of the reader not acquainted with them. The first and principal objection of Bochart to the common version is, " that there is an impropriety in in- troducing Assur, the son of Shem, in the midst of the genealogy of the sons of Ham." To which it may be an- swered, that if this be an impropriety, it is not without a parallel, for nearly the same thing occurs in the preced- ing chapter (verse 18), where Canaan is introduced out of the order of the narrative. But this notion of an im- propriety is rejected by the advocates for the common reading; as Moses, according to their scheme, is relating the history of the rebel Nimrod, with his Cushites, who had invaded the territories already occupied by Shem, and driven Ashur, one of his sons, to seek a country for himself elsewhere. The fortune of Ashur, it is further said, is so intimately connected with the history of Nimrod, that the impro- priety would have been in disjoining them, particularly in this place, where Moses was describing the fomidation of the first great cities after the Flood. The same arguments will furnish an answer to Bochart's second objec- tion, namely, " that it is contrary to order that the operations of Assur should be mentioned in the eleventh verse, and his birth not till afterwards, in the twenty-second." It would cer- tainly be contrary to order, if these operations stood insulated in the text; but it is urged, the context removes all difficulty, as these very operations of Assur were a part of the history of Nimrod himself. " What would there be objectionable," (says Michaelis, in his Spicilegium Geographiae Hebrae- omm Exterae), " if, for example, in giving an accoiuit of the affairs of Swe- ASSYRIA. deA) you should relate that Charles made war on Peter the Great, before the birth of that monarch had been intro- duced ; which would very properly be left till you came to treat of the affairs of Russia?" " It is wonderful," adds Michaelis, " what laws for the writing of history the interpreters of the Sacred Volume are wont to invent." The third objection of Bochart is, " that there is nothing particular in saying that Assur went out of the land of Shinar, as the same departure from that country was common to all man- kind ; who were from thence dispersed over the earth." This is begging the question ; as it is not certain, say the op- ponents of Bochart, that the dispersion at Babel extended to any of the fami- lies of Noah but the usurping Cush- ites, who were opposing the decrees of the Almighty. There is another dis- persion, or migration, of a different kind, spoken of in the days of Peleg, •when the earth is said to have been divided, that is, when different quar- ters were assigned to the then princi- pal divisions of mankind ; and this country, in which Nirarod formed the impious design of strengthening him- self by a city and fortress, which should resist the powers of heaven and earth, was in the portion of Shem, ■which had been previously occupied by him, and, as it appears, by that branch of his family of which Assur was the chief. And it is here to be ob- sen'ed, that the retreat of Assur is not mentioned in connection with the dis- persion at Babel, but as a distinct transaction which occurred before that event. It is further asked, if the egression is to be understood of Nimrod instead of Ashur, what was it that induced the former to leave his city unfinish- ed ; for it is expressly said, that they *' left off to build the city ;" and to go and found other cities at such a dis- tance, and that still in the portion of the family of Shem ? There is also a circumstance which renders the going forth of Assur from Shinar very par- ticular, which is, that he founded a city whose history was to be closely interwoven with that of the people of God. The question, it may be presumed, is thus fairly stated. iTie opinion of 3S> Bochart is espoused by Mr. Fabcr, the converse by Michaelis and Bryant ; and between such learned men who shall decide ? The decision is indeed difficult; but if weight of authority can avail, the question will be speedily determined in favour of the marginal translation of the Bible, which repre- sents Nimrod as the founder of Nine- veh. This translation is supported by the Targuras of Onkelos and Jerusa- lem ; by Theophilus,bishopof Antioch, and.lerome, among the ancients ; and, in addition to Bochart and Faber, by Hyde, Marsham, Wells, Le Chais, the writers of the Universal History, and Hales, among the modems ; though the latter has adopted Mr. Bryant's hypothesis respecting a dispersion pre- vious to the building of Babel, and the Cuthite architects of that city. Admit- ting, then, the force of these united authorities, Nimrod, when driven from Babel, still attended by a strong party of military followers, founded a new empire at Nineveh ; which, as it was seated in a country almost exclusively peopled by the descendants of Ashur, was called Assyria. The crown of this new universal empire continued in the family of Nimrod for many ages, pro- bably till its overthrow by Arbaces, which introduced a Median dynasty ; while Babel remained in a neglected state until the same sera, when Na- bonassar became its iirst king. This kingand his successors, it maybe sup- posed, did something towards rescu- ing Babylon from the neglect and niin in which it had lain for so many cen- turies. But it was evidently a place of no consideration till the time of Ne- buchadnezzar, when, in its turn, it became the seat of universal empire. The question of the double dispersion will be found fully discussed under the article Babel. Whether there was an uninterrupt- ed line of kings from Assur, or Nim- rod, to Sardanapalus, or not, is un- known. At all events, through the long period of a thousand years, Elam first, and afterwards Assyria, notC'hal- dffia, appear to have been the ruling powers. We have no accounts of the Assyrian empire in the Scriptures, until the mission of Jonah to Nineveh. Tliis was about the year of the world 3180, and 624 before Christ. But who ASSYRIA. the reigning monarch at that time was, we are not informed. Between 40 and 50 years after this, we find an Assyrian king, named Pul, invading the king- dom of Israel, in the days of JNIenahem. Pul is supposed to have been the father of Sardanapalus, in whose reign the history of Assyria begins to assume a more clear and intelligible I'orm. Sar- danapalus was the last of the ancient Assyrian kings. Arbaces, governor of Media, together with the Persians and other allies, taking advantage of the weakness and effeminacy of the mon- arch, being also encouraged by Helesis, a Chaldasan priest, who undertook to engage the Babylonians in the work, revolted, and, after much opposition, at length prevailed ; defeated the As- syrian army ; and besieged Sardana- palus in his capital of Nineveh ; who seeing himself close pressed, with no hope of escape, set fire to his palace, and thus consumed himself with all his women and attendants. This pre- cipitate termination of the siege, which would perhaps otherwise have been hopeless, considering the prodigious strength of the city, is said to have been brought about by a sudden inun- dation of the Tigris, which forced down the city walls to the extent of two miles, and thus gave a ready en- trance to the besiegers : in which event, the prophecy of Nahum (i. 8 — 10 and ii. 6) was literally fulfilled. To this period, at least, it is referred by some respectable chronologists ; but it will appear probable, from further investigation, that the overflow of the ligris, and the demolition of the wall, belong to another capture and another age. Bishop Newton, and more re- cently Mr. Home, following the autho- rity of Ctesias and Diodorus Siculus, fix these events at the capture by Arbaces. Diodorus, indeed, is very express : he describes the siege by Arbaces; the negligence and drunkenness of the Assyrians ; the flood of the 'ligris ; the overthrow of the wall ; the capture of the place, and its total destruction (Arbaces having levelled it with the ground), and his carrying away the treasures with him to Ecbatana. (Diod. Sic. lib. ii.) Usher and Prideaux refer these events to the second capture of >fineveh by Cyaxarcs, 1.35 years after- wards, when, and when only, its dcmo- 40 lition was complete. Bishop Newton, contending for the fulfilment of the prophecy of Nahum by Arbaces, ob- serves, that " it is not likely that the same city should be tw ice destroyed, ai)d the same empire twice overthrown, by the same people twice confederated together." There is certainly something very extraordinary in such a coinci- dence ; but history is very express in relating these transactions, and the names of the parties concerned in them. The first confederacy was that of Arbaces the Mode and Belesis the Babylonian, in the reign of Sardana- palus, and the year 747 before Christ ; ;ind the second, that of Cyaxares the Mede and Nabopolassar theBabylonian, in the reign oi'Saracus or Chyniladauus, and in the year {)12 before Christ. It is indeed extremely improbable that the besieging armies in both instances should be favoured by an inundation of the river, the falling down of the wall, and the feasting and careless- ness of the Assyrians. Nor would such a repetition of astonishing events be consistent with the precision of pro- phecy ; whose proper application would thereby be rendered ambiguous, and which, to use a vulgar phrase, might be said to be made t(iO cheap. We have, in fact, in order to decide the controversy, only to seek the age m which this prophecy was deli\ered; for it will not be pretended, whatever else might previously have happened to Nineveh, that Nahum would de- scribe, with all the majesty of pro- phecy, a preternatural event about to take place, which had once already happened in a similar manner, and which thence might be justly ascribed to causes merely natural. There is some uncertainty in fixing the precise age of Nahum. Josephus says, that he flourished in the time of Jotham, kingof Judah, who wascotem- porary with Sardanapalus. He says also, that the things which he foretold concerning Nineveh came to pass 115 years after ; which comes within a few years of the time when the city was taken by Cyaxares, and to which it is plain that he must refer, and not to tlie first capture by Arbaces, which happened about the lime in which he says Nahum li\ed. St. Jerom places Nahum under Hezekiah, wh«re also ASSy«lA. he is placed l)v Mi'- f Ionic, about the year 716 belore the Christian a'ra; IbrgetliU, as it woiikl seem, ol" his havinof assigned the i'ullilment of his propliecy to Arbaces, 32 years before. JNalnun himself, however, alibrds us the best key to our inquiry, lie al- ludes, in the third chapter, to the de- struction of No, as a thing past ; and which could ha\e happened at no time so likely as that in which Sen- nacherib invaded llgypt for three years together, and which lixes the destnic- tion of No about the year 712 before (Jlirist. Nahum, alluding to this de.so- laliou of No, says, it happened when " Egypt and Ethiopia were her strength ;" which relers to the same time, namely, when Sevechus, the son of .Sabachon, or .So, the Ethio- pian, was king of Egypt and Ethiopia conjointly. 1 1 may further be observed, that the whole prophecy of Nahum ])lainly alludes not to two, but to one transaction. I'roni the foregoing ai'guments and historical testimonies, the conclusion is irresistible that Nineveh was twice taken ; but that the inundation of the TigTis, with its eftect upon the wall, with the whole of the prophecy of Nahum, relate to the second capture by Cyaxares and Nabopolassar, in the reign of the Assyrian king Sara- cus or Chyniladanus : to w hich the account of Diodorus Siculus, which agrees so remarkably with the parti- culars of the pro])hecy, evidently re- fers, although he has erred in the period at w hich he has iixed it : a cir- cumstiince which has happened to other historians besides Diodorus, in relating events high up in antiquity. Alter the death of .Sardanapalus, the Assyrian empire was by this event divided into the Assyrian, jiroperly called, and ]?aby Ionian kingdoms : the Assyrian being the most powerful. Belesis received the government of Babylon, and took the name of Nabo- nassar ; and Arbaces Iixed his seat of government at Nineveh, and is sup- posed to be the same who in Scripture is called Tiglalh-l'ileser. A third perscm, called Ninus junior, is introduced among these transac- tions by some writers. By these, Ar- baces, after the seizure of Nineveh, is said to have retired to his own king- 41 dom of Media ; Belesis, or Nabonas- sar, to that of Babylon ; while Ninus is made king of Assyria, and the Tig- lath-1'ilcser of the .Scriptures. But in the present history the author has fol- lowed the authority of Dean Brideaux, which in this, as in many other in- stances, he considers the best. Where- ever the name of Ninus occurs, it raises some iu\oluntary sus])icions of legendary tales, rather than of authen- tic history ; and in the present in- stance, ho may be stispected to be an imaginary personage in the drama, at least as king of Assyria, which the fol- lowing argument of Brideaux's fully eonlinns. Tiglath-Pileser ha\ing in- vaded the land of I srael, carried away captive the Beubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Mauasseh, and placed them in llalah, and Habor, and Hara, cities of Media, and on the river Gozan, in the same country. (1 Chron. v. 26.) Now " the planting of the colonies by Tiglath-Bilescr in those cities of the Mecles," says Prideaux, " plainly pro\es Media then to have Ijcen under the king of Assyria. Eor otherwise what had he to do," [sup- posing him to have been Ninus, king of Assyria only,] "to plant colonies in that comitry? and therefore Tiglath-Pile- ser and Arbaces were not two distinct kings, whereof one had Media, and the other AssjTia, as Archbishop Usher supposes, but must both be the same person expressed under these two distinct names. And Diodorus Siculus positixely tells us, that Ar- baces had Assyria, as well as Riedia, for his share in the partition of the fonuer empire ; and theref(jre thei'c is no room for a Tiglath-Pileser, or a Ninus junior, distinct from him, to reign in Assyria during his time, but it must necessarily be one and the same person that was signified by all these different names." It was during that period of this second Assyrian empire, which inter- \enes between Tiglath-Pileser and .Saosduchiuus, called in the book of .)udith Nabiuhodonosor, from 747 to (ioo before Christ, including the reigns of Salmancser and Sennacherib, that nearly all the events occurring iii .Scripture history as connected with the Assyrians took ])lace; all in fact, it mav be said, excepting e able to hold out against him, sent to him while besieging Lachish, saying, " I have offended ; return from me ; that which thou puttest on me will I bear." Upon which, Senna- cherib, whose object appears to have been plunder as much as conquest, agreed to receive as a ransom 300 ASSYRIA. talents of silver and 30 talents of gold, equal to 351,000/. sterling: to pay w'hich, Hezekiah was obliged to strip the Temple and his own house of all their treasiu-es, even the gold from off the doors and piUars of the former. By this sacrifice, Hezekiah obtained a truce, but nothing more ; for the insatiable and treacherous Sennache- rib did not even withdraw his armies from the country, but leaving them, or a part of them, under the command of Rabshakeh, advanced into Egypt, to punish Sevechus for his coalition with Hezekiah, having sent forward Tartan to secure Ashdod, which lay in his way. (Isaiah XX. 1.) In this expedi- tion of Sennacherib into Eg-j'pt it was, that the destruction of No, mentioned by Nahum (ch. iii 10), is sujjposed to have taken place. But while he was besieging Pelusium, Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia, came against him with a great army (Joseph, lib.x.), and obliged him to retreat iuto Judaea ; where he encamped again at Lachish, and re- newed the war with Hezekiah, not- withstanding the treaty of peace exist- ing between them. From this place he sent Tartan, and Rabsaris, and Rab- shakeh, his principal generals, with that proud and blasphemous message recorded in 2 Kings xviii. and Isaiah xxxvi. This message was delivered from luider the walls of the city, in the Hebrew lang-uage, and in the hear- ing of all the people, who it was hoped w'oidd thereby be intimidated, and excited to revolt. But the scheme fail- ed; and the three commanders were compelled to return foiled to Senna- cherib, who had then left Lachish, and laid siege to Libnah. Ihe spokes- man on this occasion was Rabshakeh, who appears to have been an apostate Jew. Hezekiah, on this trying occa- sion, after humbling himself before God, sent Eliakim and Shebna, with the elders of the priests, in penitential reverence to Isaiah, to intercede for him: who was directed by the Lord to say to them, " Thus shall ye say to your master, thvis saith the Lord, Be not afraid of the words which thou hast heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me. Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour, and shall return to his own land ; and I 44 will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land." (2 Kings xix. t?, 7.) In the mean while, Sennacherib re- ceived intelligence that Tirhakah was stiU pursuing him ; when it is proba- ble, though it is not mentioned, that not thinking it safe to wait his coming up, he advanced some way towards Egypt, and defeated him, as we hear nothing more of the Ethiopian and his army. But before he set out on this expedition, Sennacherib sent a letter to Hezekiah, repeating the blasphe- mies contained in his former message, which Hezekiah, when he had read it, took with him into the Temple, " and spread it before the Lord," pleading earnestly for a partictilar display of His power; when Isaiah was sent to him with fresh assurances of deliver- ance. This deliverance was nigh : for that same night, as it appears, " an angel of the Lord w ent out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hun- dred fourscore and five thousand ; and when they arose in the morning, be- hold, they were all dead corpses." Berosus, the Chaldrean historian, and Herodotus, both relate this de- struction of the Assyrians. The ac- count of the former, in a fragment preserved by Josephus, agrees almost exactly with that of the Scripture. Bvit Herodotus, deceived by a fabidous relation of the Egyptian priests, as- cribes the deliverance from the Assy- rians to the Egyptians instead of the Jews, and fixes the scene at Pelusium instead of Jerusalem. He says that while Sennacherib was besieging that city, Sethon, king of Egypt, v. ho was also a priest of Vulcan, prayed to his god for assistance, when an infinite number of rats were miraculously sent into the enemy's camp, who in one night devoured their quivers, bows, and the thongs of their shields. So that finding themselves in the morn- ing entirely defenceless, they were obliged to make a hasty retreat. But in this story, both the real transaction, and the origin of the fable under which it is disguised, are sufficiently discernible. It is to be remembered, that the Egyptians had just smarted imder the lash of Sennacherib, and were deeply interested in liis fate ; that he had recently quitted Pelu- sium ; and that the destruction of his ASSYRIA. army occurred at no great distance from the frontier. Add, that national vanity, and their aversion to the Jews, would naturally induce the Egyptian priests to refer so reraarkahle a cir- cumstance to their own history, rather than to that of a people whom they held in extreme contempt ; and we shall have no ditHculty in extracting the truth from the legend of Hero- dotus: while the mention of Senna- cherib by name, removes any remain- ing doubt. It has been made a subject of in- quiry, what was the particular instru- ment of destruction employed in this instance. Berosus says it was a plague ; the Babylonish Talmud, that it was lightning; but Prideaux thinks it more likely to have been the hot wind of the Desert. With respect to the first of these opinions, it is scarcely to be reconciled w ith the suddenness of the mfliction, which began and ended in one night, which in that climate could not exceed twelve hours. When God condescends to employ natural agents in the execution of his purpose, the mode is generally conformable to the usual operation of such agents. Now although there are instances of the plague terminating life within twelve hours of its first accession, its more common duration is to the third, fourth, seventh, and even fourteenth day; while, in an infected army, there would be many days, and e\'en weeks, pass by, before the disease reached its greatest \-irulence and mortality : there is no instance in the history of the plague of 185,000 dying within such a space of time. Lightning may cer- tiiinly be c(jnsidered an instrument sufficiently powerful and terrific. But the oi)inion()f Dr. Prideaux seems the most prol)able, and accords with the prophetic intimation before given, that " fiod would send a blast'"' upon the army of the Assyrians. (Isaiah xxxvii. 7.) But be it which of these it might, (if indeed it w ere either of them), the miracle is the same, lliat plague, lightning, or the simoom should limit their eflects to a particular body of men, while all around escaped un- toiiclicd, could 1)0 nothing less than miraculous. After all, these are but unprofitable speculations ; and it might have pleased the Almighty to 45 bring to pass this event by s]>ecial means, without the aid of natural causes. " An angel of the Lord went forth, and smote the camp of the Assyrians." After the destruction of his army, Sennacherib returned in disgrace to Nineveh, where he vented his rage on his unhappy subjects, particularly on the Jews, many of whom were slain, and their bodies thrown about the streets. (Tobit i. 18.) At length two of his sons, named Acbammelech and Sharezer, wearied probably with his tyranny, slew him as he was worship- ping in the temple of his god Nisroch. But before this event, the Modes, Uik- ing advantage of the weakness to which Sennacherib was reduced by the loss of his army, seized the oppor- tunity of shaking off the Assyrian yoke, and declaring themselves inde- pendent. Esarhaddon, the third son of Sen- nacherib, succeeded his father, about the •22d year of the reign of Ilezekiah ; during the remainder of whose life, about seven years, there appears to have been peace between the kings of Assyria and Judah. But his son and successor, Mauasseh, proving the most wicked of his race, fresh judgments were prepared, to be inflicted by the hands of the Assyrians ; but not till the measure of his iniquity was filled by the accumulated guilt of more than *2b years. Esai'haddon is called Asar- Adiiuis by Ptolemy, and Asuappar ])y the author of the Ijook of Ezra, who adds the epithets of Great and Noble to his name; from which it appears that he was a very different character from all his predecessors. In the 2()th year of the reign of this prince over Assyria, and the year (JSO before Christ, an interregiium, and conse- quent state of anarchy, occurring at Babylon on the death of Mescssimor- dacus the king, he took advantage of tlie occasion to seize on that city and kingdom, and add them to his own : over both of which he reigned 13 years. Hence it is, that this king is spoken of in Scripture as king of Babylon and Assyria conjointly. He is said, in the 2d book of Kings (ch. xvii. 24) and in Ezra (ch. iv. !>, 10), to ha\ c brought a colony out of Baby- lon into Samaria ; and in the 2d book ASSYRIA. of Chronicles (ch. xxiii. 1 1) he is said also, as king of Assyria, to have taken Manasseh prisoner, and to have car- ried him to Babylon : neither of which he could have done, if he had not been king of both countries. It was not till the 22d year of Manasseh, which was the 29th of his own reign over Assyria, and fourth over Babylon, that Esarhaddon direct- ed his attention to the affairs of Judaea: when, being established in his extensive empire of Assyria and Chaldaea, and having no enemy to contend with, he first entered the land of Israel, left desolate by the invasion of Salmaneser ; removed those few who had escaped the gene- ral captivity ; and in order to supply the country with inhabitants, and the better to secure his own interests in it, he " brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria, instead of the children of Israel." Having thus ensured a safe possession of the fallen kingdom of Israel, his next step was to send an army into that of Judah, which over- came Manasseh in battle, and carried him bound in fetters to Esarhaddon, who took him with him a prisoner to Babylon. Here his confinement and his chains brought him to a due sense of his sins : " And when he was in af- fliction, he besought the Lord his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers; and prayed mito him; and he was entreated of him, and brought him again to Jeru- salem into his kingdom." In fact, Esarhaddon, who does not appear ever to have been cruel or obdurate, being fiurther moved by the special inter- position of God himself in behalf of Manasseh, entered into a treaty with the captive monarch, and restored him to his throne, which he filled during a piovis and peaceful life of upwards of 30 years from this period ; making in the whole a reigii of 55 years, the longest of any of the Jewish kings. The exact term of the captivity of Manasseh is not known ; but it is sup- posed not to have been long, as the 55 years of his reigii are reckoned without any chasm. The capture of Manasseh, and the 46 subjugation of Judaea, rendered Esar- haddon undisputed master of all the country from Persia to the frontiers of Egypt. At this period, the latter kingdom was divided amongst several princes, and in a state of civil war. But when Psammetichus united the whole monarchy under himself, about seven years afterwards (when it may be supposed that Manasseh, although restored to his kingdom, was retained in the interests of Esarhaddon), he thought it time to look to his own safety, and to strengthen his frontier against the encroachments of his pow- erful neighbom'. For this purpose, he marched with an army into Palestine, or land ofthe Philistines, whose strong towns forming the best defences on this side to either power, rendered this country the frequent scene of con- tention between the kings of Egypt and AssjTria, as it was afterwards be- tween those of the former kingdom and the kings of Syria. But here his operations were checked by the strong fortress of Ashdod, which appears to have been occupied by an Assyrian garrison ever since it was taken by Tartan, in the time of Sennacherib. This place cost Psammetichus a siege of 29 years before he became master of it. But while part of his army was thus occupied, he was enabled with the rest, although he could do nothing eff"ective, to harass the adjoining coun- try, and to threaten the cities of Judaea; which obliged Manasseh to strengthen the fortifications of Jerusalem, and to " put captains of war in all the fenced cities of Judah." It was probably at this period, that Manasseh, to enable him to oppose a larger force to the progress of the Egyptians, and at the same time to fix him in his alliance with Assyria, obtained from Esarhad- don a gi'ant of the land of Israel ; as we subsequently find the whole of it in the possession of his grandson Josiah. (2 Chron. xxxiv. 6, 33.) The preparations of Manasseh, and the ac- quisition of Ashdod, were perhaps suf- ficient reasons to induce Psammeti- chus to give up this tedious contest, as we hear no more of him on this occasion. Esarhaddon died in the 31st year of Manasseh, after he had reig-ncd 39 years over the Assyrians, and 13 over ASSYRIA. the BabylonLuis. The little we know of him represents him in a favourable light ; and he appears to stand alone, amongst a race of debased and san- guinary tyrants, as a just and enlight- ened prince. He wius succeeded by his son Saosduchinus, who inherited none of the virtues of his father. He is the same, who, in the book of Judith, is called Nabuchodonosor : who, elated with pride, and impatient of a rival, summoned his allies and tributaries, from Persia to Egv'pt, to attend him in a war which he undertook, in the 12th year of his reign, against Ar- phaxad or Dejoces, king of Media. This summons from many of the nations met with a contemptuous refusal. He marched however into Media; defeat- ed Dejoces in a great battle in the plains of Ragau, and pursuing him to the mountains, killed him, and dis- persed his army. After which, fol- lowing up his successes, he took and plundered the capital, Ecbatana, with many other cities ; and returning in triumph to Nineveh, " banqueted both he and his army a hundred and twenty days." What time was spent in this war is not known ; but it was not till six years after he entered upon it, that he found himself at leisure to wreak his vengeance upon those na- tions w ho had refused to assist him in it: when having, in impious an'o- gance, "decreed to destroy all flesh that did not obey the commandment of his mouth," he sent Holofemes with an army of 120,000 foot and 12,000 horse against the nations of the West, particularly the Egyptians, Jews, Moab- ites, and Ammonites, who appear to have offended him the most. This com- mander having speedily reduced all Syria, with the countries of Moab and Ammon, invaded the land of Israel, and laid siege to Bethidia ; where he was killed, and his army destroyed, by the courage of the Israelites, and the stratagem of Judith, as related in the book bearing her name. Saosduchinus died after a reign of 20 years, in the 51st year of Manas- seh ; and w as succeeded by Chynila- danus, or Saracus, as he is otherwise called. This monarch very much re- sembled Sardanapalus, both in his character, and in the catastrophe which terminated at once his life and 47 his empire. In the 13th year of his reign, and the sixth of Josiah, king of Judah, Pluraortes, who had succeed- ed his father Dejoces in the kingdom of Media, having brought Persia (be- fore the tributary of Assyria) and other neighbouring countries under subjection, resolved to take his revenge on the Assyrians for the death of his father, and the loss of his army at Ragau. He accordingly invaded As- syria, and besieged Nineveh ; where he met with the same fate as his father, being cut off with all his army. It may be supposed, that the animosi- ties of two generations, and the slaugh- ter of both his grandlkther and father by the Assyrians, did not favour any peaceable dispositions on the part of Cyaxares, the son and successor of Phraortes, towards that people. No sooner indeed was he in a condition to take the field with a new anny, than he renewed the enterprise of his fatlier by invading AssjTia, and leading the Medes the second time to the siege of Nineveh. The Assyrians, who were inspired with confidence by their for- mer successes over the Medes, expect- ed to save their city from this extre- mity by meeting their enemy in the field. Bvit a decisive battle reduced them to take shelter within its walls : from which they were freed on this occasion by an iniiption of the Scy- thians, which obliged the Medes to abandon their operations against Nine- veh for defensi\e measures at home ; the urgency of which admitted of no delay, and by which they were re- strained from executing their purpose on Nineveh (whose time was not yet come) for several years. In the 2 1st year of Chyniladanus, and the 15th of Josiah, Nabopolassar, a general in the army, and a Baby- loiiian by birth, taking advantage of the weakness and effeminacy of the monarch, and of his own interest at Babylon, set up for himself, and was proclaimed king: thus separating again the two kingdoms, after they had formed one monarchy 54 ye.ors, from their union by Esarhaddon. During this time the kings of Ass>Tia had resided sometimes at one capital, and sometimes at the other, though Nineveh was considered the principal scat of empire. ASS ATH 111 the 35th year of Chyniladaniis, the 29th of Josiah, and the 23d of Cyaxares, kuig of Media, Nabopolas- sar, king of Babylon, having formed an alliance with Cyaxares, by the mar- riage of his son Nebuchadnezzar with Amytis, the daughter of Astyages, the son of Cyaxares, entered into a con- federacy with the latter against the Assyrians. Nabopolassar himself led the Babjdonians, and Astyages the Medes, when the united armies ad- vanced to the third aud final siege of Nineveh, which they took ; killed (Sara- cus or Chyiiiladanus, the king; and thus put an end to the Assyrian em- pire in the year 612 B.C. With this event, the prophecies of Jonah, Zephaniah,and Nahum, against Nineveh were fulfilled; and to the same period the particular descrip- tions of the latter, which relate to the circumstances of the siege, and the overflow of the 'I'igris and demolition of the wall, above mentioned, are to be refeiTed. ~ It is projier to observe, that, in the last verse of the book of Tobit, Nine- veh is said to have been taken by Nabuchodonosor and Assuerus. Na- buchodonosor was a name common to the kings of Assyria and Babylon, and in this instance could be none other than Nabopolassar: which further ap- pears from Josephus, who, in his Anti- quities (lib. i.), calls him, in a quota- tion out of Berosus, Nabuchodonosor ; and in his book against Apion, he calls him, in the same quotation, Na- bulassar, the same by contraction with Nabopolassar. And that Assuerus was Astyages, is proved by Daniel ; who (ch. ix. 1) calls Darius the Mede, who was Cyaxares the Second, the son of Astyages, "the son of Ahasvierus." There is some difficulty with a reader, not conversant with ancient history, in understanding the proper and distinct meaning of the terms Assyrian, Syrian, and Babylonian or Chaktean ; and it must be confessed that profiine writers have often used these terms very carelessly, and con- founded them in such a way as very much to perplex their true applica- tion. But this is never the case in Scripture, where, by the Assyrians, is universally meant the people of the empire either founded or peopled by 48 Assur, of which Nineveh was the capi- tal ; by the Babylonians or Chaldees, the people of the country of which Babylon was the capital, which was sometimes tributary to Assyria, or formed a part of that empire, but which, in the time of its mention in the Old Testament transactions (with the exception of what is said of Bala- dan in the reign of Hezekiah), was itself the ruling power ; and by Syria, and the Syrians, the people and coun- try of which Zobali first, and after- wards Damascus, was the capital, and whose boundary on the south and south-east joined that of the Holy Land. In the times of the events recorded in the New Testament, Assy- ria and Babylon were swallowed up in the Persian monarchy, and Syria was become a province of the lloman empire. The only instances which can appear like an exception to this rule of the absolute use of the teniis Assyrian and Babylonian, are those above mentioned, where the king of Assyria is said to have Ijrought a colony out of Babylon into Samaria ; and where the same king is also said to carry Manasseh prisoner to Baby- lon. But these only shew the extreme exactness of Scriptiu'e history, as Esar- haddoii, the Assyrian king alluded to in those passages, was become king of Babylon also by recent conquest. ATAD. See Abel-Mizraim. ATHENS, a celebrated city and commonwealth of Greece. The situa- tion and history of this place are too well known, and the latter far too copious, to enter further into in this work than is requisite to elucidate the circumstances of St. Paul's visit, A.D. 32. Athens was famed for its power, its laws, its arts, its literature, and its learned men. These, at least at the time now referred to, divided into sects, diflering in opinion on religion and happiness, spent their time in giving or hearing lessons on philoso- jshy, rhetoric, and metaphysics ; or in vain and fruitless speculations on the nature of the gods, the perfection of human nature, and the attainment of the chief good. The rest of the inha- bitants spent theirs " in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing." An incurable idleness at this period possessed all : the academy, ATH ATH llie lyceiini, the garden, the portico, the temple, and the theatre, afforded to every sect and class, in unceasing round, the means of severally gratify- ing their thirst for inquiry, supersti- tion, or dissipation. Athens, it is tnie, was once renowned for the wisdom of her institutions, and the courage, fru- gality, and industry of her citizens : she was the school and pattern for the rest of the world. But the days of iSolon were gone. IShe was even still the nursery of learned men, and the centre of elegance and the arts ; hut these in Athens, as every where else, gave little scope for the simple and humiliating doctrines of Christianity, and the eloquence even of Paul might here l)e expended in vain. Had the Apostle brought some new scheme of philosophy or of ethics, or some new god to add to the many the Athenians pretended to venerate, and which might ha\e amused them with new rites or an additional pageant, he had been well received. Under some ideas of this sort, the people carried St. Paul to the Areopagus, that he might explain to them " the new doctrine of which he spoke." The Areopagus, or Hill of Mars {Apewsr Uayor), was an insulated precipitous rock, in the cen- tre of Athens, where a celebrated tri- bunal was held, the judges of which were called Areopagites, of whom Dionysiiis was one. This court took cognizance chiefly of matters of reli- gion, namely, blasphemies against the gods, the consecration of new ones, or of new ceremonies in their worship, the building of temples, 8<:c. This was the place to which Paul was brought, as " a setter forth of strange gods:" and where, boldly standing uj') " in the midst of Mars hill," he re- proved the Athenians for their absurd idolatries, and preached Christ and the resun'ection ; which to some was foolishness, to others a matter of fur- ther curiosity, while a few, amongst whom was Dionysius the Areopagite, were converted. — Acts xvii. 8t. Paul, in this address, tells the Athenians, that, as he passed through their city, and beheld the objects of their worship, he foimd an altar with this inscription — to thk unknoavn GOD. And although the researches of antiquaries have failed to disco\er an 49 altar bearing such an inscription, we have the express testimony of I^ucian, that sucli really did exist at Athens ; while we learn from Diogenes Lacrtius the occasion of several such altars be- ing erected. It appears that the Athe- nians, being aflUctcd with a pesti- lence, invited Epimenidcs to lustrate their city. The method adopted by him was to carry several sheep to the Areopagus, whence they were left to wander as they pleased, under the ob- servation of persons sent to attend them. As each sheep lay down, it was sacrificed on the spot to the pro- pitious god. By this ceremony, it is said, the city was relie\ ed. But as it was still unknown what deity was pro- pitious, an altiir was erected to the unhiown god on every spot where a sheep had been sacrificed. — Diog. Laert. in Epimenide, 1. i., c. 10. The Areopagus is thus described by Dr. Clarke : " It is not possible to con- ceive a situation of greater peril, or one more calculated to prove the sin- cerity of a preacher, than that in which the Apostle was here placed ; and the truth of this, perhaps, will ne\ er be better felt than by a spectator, who from this eminence actually beholds the monuments of pagan pomp and superstition by which he, whom the Athenians considered as the setter forth of stram/e c/ods, was then sur- rounded: representing to the imagi- nation the disciples of Socrates and of Plato, the dogmatist of the porch, and the sceptic of the academy, ad- dressed by a poor and low ly man, who, 7mde in speech, without the enticing words of viands tt^isdom, enjoined pre- cepts contrary to their taste, and very hostile to their prejudices. One of the peculiar pri\ileges of the Areopa- gitrc seems to have been set at defi- ance by the zeal of St. Paul on this occasion ; namely, that of inflicting extreme and exemplary punishment upon any person who should slight the celebration of the holy mysteries, or blaspheme the gods ol" (ireece. VV'e ascended to the summit by means of steps cut in the natural stone. The su1)lime scene here exhibited, is so striking, that a brief description of it may prove how truly it offers to us a commentiiry upon the Apostle's words, as thev were delivered upon the spot. G AVA AZZ He stood upon the top of the rock, and beneath the canopy of heaven. Before him there was spread a glori- ous prospect of mountains, islands, seas, and skies ; behind him towered the lofty Acropolis, crowned with all its marble temples. Thus every ob- ject, whether in the face of nature, or among the works of art, conspired to elevate the mind, and to fill it with re- verence towards that being who made and governs the world (Acts xvii. 24, 28) ; who sitteth in that light which no mortal eye can approach, and yet is nigh unto the meanest of his crea- tures ; in whom we live and move and have our being." ATTALIA, a city on the sea-coast of Pamphylia, which was visited by Paul and Barnabas. It obtained its name from Attalus its founder ; and was afterwards the residence of the Roman prefect of the province. AVA, supposed to be the same with Ivah, a city of Assyria, from whence Salmaneser brought people to inhabit Samaria after he had carried the Is- raelites away captive. The precise situation of tjie city is not known ; but it is supposed to have been on the river Diava or Adiava, in Adiabene, where Ptolemy places a city called Abane or Aavane. AVEN. See On. AVI MS The, are supposed by some to be the same with the Hivites. But the dwelling of the latter was in the north-west of Canaan, while the Avims are plainly understood to have dwelt in the southern part, from Hazerim (perhaps Hazeroth, in the Desert,) to Azzah, which is Gaza ; from whence they were driven by the Caphtorims, the descendants of Mizraim. (Dent, ii. 23.) They were probably of the family of Cush. AZEKAH, a city in the tribe of iudah. See Bethoron. AZOTUS. See Ashdod. AZZAH. See Gaza. See Hermon. BAA Baal-gad. ) ^^ baal-hermon. s BAAL-PEOR Peor is supposed to have been a part of Moimt Abarim ; and Baal was the great idol or chief god of the Phenicians, and w as known and worshipped under a similar name, with tumultuous and obscene rites, all over Asia. He is the same as the Bel of the Babylonians. Baal, by itself, signifies lord, and was a name of the solar or principal god. But it was also variously compounded, in allusion to the different characters and attributes of the particular or local deities who were known by it, as Baal-Peor, Baal- Zebub, Baal-Zephon, &c. Baal-Peor, then, was probably the temple of an idol belonging to the Moabites, on Motmt Abarim, which the Israelites worshipped when encamped at Shit- tim: which brought a plague upon them, of which 24,000 died. (Numb. XXV.) Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, to whom Solomon erected an altar (1 Kings xi. 7), is supposed to have been the same deity. Baal-Peor has been further sup- posed by some to have been Priapus ; ' 50 BAA by others, Saturn ; by others, Pluto ; and by others again, Adonis. These several identifications of the Moabite idol with Grecian divinities, are how- ever not easy to determine. Selden imagined that this idol was the same with Pluto ; foimding his conjecture on Psalm cvi. 28, They joined them- selves unto Baal-Peor, and ate the sam- Jices of the dead. But Vossius and Home suppose, that by this passage nothing more is meant than the sacri- fices and offerings made to idols, or false gods, who are properly termed the dead in opposition to the true God, styled in the Scriptures, emphatically, the living God. Mr. Faber, however, has given an interpretation of the same passage, in more exact accord- ance with the Scriptiu'e and the tradi- tional character of the idol, and with the principles of the primitive mytho- logy. He agrees with Calmet, in mak- ing Baal-Peor the same with Adonis ; a part of whose worship consisted in bewailing him with funereal rites, as one lost or dead, and afterwards wel- coming, with extravagant joy, his ficti- tious return to life. Adonis is thus BABEL. identified with Osiris ; and both Ado- nis and Osiris Mere, in fact, but one person, venerated, alike in Egypt and in Phenicia, with rites first gloomily funereal, and afterwards tumultuously joyful : this part of the mysteries be- ing celebrated at Pcor with more than usual profligacy. ITiese rites, which had their origin in the earliest scheme of mythology, however subsequently disguised, typified the seclusion or death of the Great Father in his pas- sage from one world to another ; which Great Father, among the many titles by which he is recognised, was like- wise denominated Seih. We can have no difficulty now in understanding what is meant by eating the sacrifices of the dead. "As the mysteries of Osiris," says Mr. Faber, " were the same as those of Seth, or Typhon, or Baal-Peor, the mysteries of Adonis must also be iden- tified with the orgies of that god. Tlie sacrifices, therefore, of the dead, which the Israelites partook of in the wor- ship of Baal-Peor, must have been those that were offered up to him during the time of his supposed death, or disappearance. To this species of idolatry, which prevailed alike in Eg\-pt and Phenicia, they continued to be pertinaciously attached long af- ter the death of JVIoses ; for Ezekiel speaks of women weeping for Tham- muz, as one of the many abominations of his degenerate countPtmen. (Ezek. viii. 4.) The mournful rites of Adonis were well known likewise at Argos, so famous for its many memorials of the Deluge ; in which place, as elsewhere, his loss was statedly bewailed by the females. He was equally venerated in the island of Cj'prus, where, if I mis- take not, he was known by his Scrip- tural name of 'ITiammuz ; for the sa- cred peculium of the temple, which was dedicated in that country to his paramour Venus, was denominated Tamaseum." — Orig. Pag. Idol.,b.iv. c.4. Without insisting, however, on an exact correspondence of character, or of rites, between Baal-Peor and any other deity, Egyptian or Grecian, what appears certain respecting him is, that he was in an eminent degree the god of impurity. Hosea,speakingof the wor- ship of this idol, emphatically calls it " thai shame:' (Ch. ix. 10.) Yet in tlie 51 sacrifices to this deity it was, that the MoabiteandMidianite women seduced the fsraelites to join. What followed, can be no matter of wonder. BAAL-ZEPHON, or The god of the watch-tower, was probably the temple of some idol, which served at the .same time for a place of observation for the neighbouring sea and coun- try, and a beacon to the travellers by either. It was situated on a cape or promontory on the eastern side of the western or Heroopolitan branch of the Red Sea, near its northern extremity, over against Pihahiroth, or the open- ing in the mountains which led from the Desert, on the side of Egjpt, to the Red Sea. Mr. Bryant supposes Neptune to have been the deity to whom this tower or temple of Baal- Zephon was dedicated as the god of the sea, from which it served as a bea- con to mariners ; and that the Posi- dium of Artimedorus and Strabo, a Grecian name implying the same thing, stood on the same spot, instead of the promontory Pharan or Ras Mo- hammed, at the bottom of the penin- sula, where d'Anville has placed it. This is very probable, as the term Baal was extended to the chief or presiding deity of any nation or district; and Neptune was the most suitable for sucn a situation and purpose. BABEL. — The first postdiluvian citj', founded by the several families of the then human race, assembled in the plain of Shinar. This is the plain Scriptvure account of the transaction ; and in this sense it was generally re- ceived until the late Mr. Brj'ant offer- ed a new hj-pothesis, which, like every thing else proceeding from that emi- nent scholar, attracted much atten- tion, and made many converts. ITiis hypothesis contends for two separate di.spersions of mankind: the first, general .and orderly, from Armenia; the second, partial and disorderly, from Babel. It supposes, that when men had sufficiently multiplied to carry into effect the great design of colonising the earth, they took their departure from Armenia, accord- ing to their families and tribes, to take possession of the several allotments assigned to them by the great patri- . arch himself 'Fhis was the first dis- persion, mentioned in Gen. x., as oc- BABEL. ciUTing in the days of Pcleg. There was one family, however, that of Cush, which, either dissatisfied with the por- tion assigned to them, or actuated by a roving and unsettled disposition, un- der the command of the rebellious and ambitious Nimrod, struck off through the defiles of Mount Taurus, and along the southern coast of the Caspian, towards the east ; when, af- ter a long period spent in wandering, they retrograded towards the west, and arrived in the plain of Shinar, as stated in our Bible translation, " from the east," a few years, as supposed by Mr. Bryant, before the birth of Abra- ham. Here they foiuid the country already occujned by the peaceable children of Shem ; whom, being join- ed by many dissatisfied partisans from the other fiimiiies, and being of more martial habits, they were sufficiently powerful to expel, and compelled them to tiike refuge in Assyria, where, un- der their leader Ashur, they founded Nineveh. The Cuthites, now settled in undisputed possession of the fertile country of Babylonia, began to con- cert measures for perpetuating their power, and frustrating the threatened dispersion, by founding a great em- pire, and by making them a name, or rather by instituting a mark which should serve as an ensign or token of imion. They accordingly commenced building the city and tower; when the work was suddenly stopped by a mii'aculous confusion of their speech or pronunciation, and the rebels were broken and scattered over the whole earth. This is the second dispersion, mentioned in the 11th chapter of Genesis. To this hypothesis, several weighty, and, as appears to the author of the present work, unanswerable objections present themselves. These objections are ably stated by Mr. Faber, in his work on the Origin of Pagan Idolatry, and are in substance as follows. In the first place, it is not likely that the family of Cush, in its nomade state, should increase in an equal propor- tioii with those others who had quiet- ly settled and organised themselves in their respective countries. But grant- ing that they might have done so, or that even, with smaller numbers, they might, with their hardier habits, 52 have been more than a match for the peaceable Ashurites ; still, their sub- sequent history, as involved in the hypothesis, is romantic in the extreme. Mr. Bryant himself admits, on the au- thority of pagan writers, the alarm and confusion which prevailed among the rebels, when supernaturaUy con- founded and cUspersed. " Now," says Mr.Faber, " under such circumstances, is it credible, that these poor, dispirit- ed, panic-stricken, disjointed fugitives should immediately attack the sur- rounding well-settled nations ; not only attack, but universally subdue them ; not only subdue them, but compel the vanquished to renounce the patriarchal religion of Noah, and to adopt instead of it the idolatrous superstition invented by the conquer- ors?" For all this it was necessary to the hypothesis of Mr. Bryant that they should do, to explain the univer- sality of that system of idolatry which undoubtedly had its origin at Babel. In order to support this hj-jjothesis, its atithor has given an accommodat- ing gloss to his translation of the first nine verses of the eleventh chapter of Genesis, by variously rendering the Hebrew words Col Aretz, every region, or the whole earth. In the first and eighth verses, and in the last clause of the ninth, he interprets these words in their visual sense ; but in the first clause of the same verse, which de- scribes the confusion of language, he renders them the ichole land, meaning the land of .Shinar only, or the Cuthite builders of Babel. But if Col Aretz implies the whole earth in the other three passages, which it evidently does, and is so admitted by Mr.Bryant himself, it must have the same mean- ing ui this ; that is, all the inhabitants then living on the earth assembled at Babel. Hence the conclusion is irre- sistible, that all mankind were assem- bled at Babel, and were all concerned in building the tower, and not a par- ticular people ; that all w ere affected by the confusion of tongues ; and that such confusion took place before this the first and only dispersion. Mr. Bryant, further to maintain his argument, renders the passage in the second verse of the same chapter, "And it came to pass as they jour- neyed," '■'■It came to pass in the journey- BABEL. i>h(/ of the peopled But the pronoun t/tei/ in tliis pussaj^e, clearly refers, not to a particular or newly-mentioned people, but to the same Col Aretz of the lirst verse — the whole earth or all mankind. These are said, in our Bible translation, to have journeyed " from tlie east;" whereas, if the Ark rested (m a mountain in Armenia, the jour- ney was not from the cast, but from the north. To explain this, Mr. Bryant makes his Cuthites take a lon<>' detour, first eastwards, and then westwards ; and Dr. Shuckford and Mr. ^Vilford, for the same reason, place the Ararat of Moses in Cashgar; which, as lying to the east of Babel, makes the jour- ney, either of the Cuthites or of all the descendants of Noah, " from the east." But this phrase, as shewn both by Mr. Faber and Mr. Penn, admits of a dif- ferent constructiini. The Hebrew word rendered the east, denotes priority ei- ther of place or time ; and it obttiined the first sionification from a general opinion of the ancients, that the east was the front or fore part of the world. Hence the passage, instead of " as they journeyed /V(»rt the east,^' maybe more correctly rendered "as they /i'/-i< jour- neyed." (See Ararat.) Mr. Penn sup- poses, that the emigrants from Ar- menia were guided in their route by the course of the river Euphrates : a very happy conjectm'e. What was the cause that determined them to under- take this migi-ation in a body does not appear ; but it is probable, that the labour of cultivating the rugged siu*- face of Armenia, and of making it yield an easy subsistence for their accumulating numbers, was the true cause ; and that the seaixh of a liner climate, and a more fertile soil, was the temptation w hich induced them to wander southwards: in which search, it was far more natural that tliey shoidd follow the valley which the Euphrates opened for them, than that they should trust themselves to the difficult, sterile, and unknown regions of the Tauric range. This route will also corresjjond with the description given of it by Berosus ; who expressly says that it was circuitous. To render this conjecture still more probable, tlie eastern name of the Euphrates is Phrat; which is the na.mc used by Moses. Now Vratta in Ihc Sanscrit 53 (pronounced Vrat), denotes a circle. Hence, as Mr. Faber conjectures, the holy stream of the Babylonians was called Phrat or \'rat, from the well- known form of its course. Hence also it is, with equal felicity, conjectured, that the Greek translator of Berosus, mistaking, as was common w ith all of that nation, a proper for a common name, rendered it peri.v, or circularly ; while the Chalda'an historian really described the route along the course of the Phrat or \'rat. Mr. Bryant, observmg that Abraham tra\elled all the way from Chaldaja to I'^gypt, and found nt) diiiicidty in mak- ing himself understood in all the coun- tries through which he passed, w ithout the aid of an interpreter, concludes that language was not the thing that was confounded. But in the whole of this route, w ith the exception of Meso- potamia, where nothing is said of his intercourse with the people of the land, one language, or dialects of one langoiage, Hebrew, Chaldee, Sy- riac, or Arabic, were generally spoken. Canaan, Philislia, antl Egypt, were all peopled by the childi'en of Ham ; and in his converse with the sons of Heth at Hebron, with the Philistines at Gerar, and with the Mizraim in Egypt, Abraham had no occasion for any other language than his own native Chaldee. That the confusion at Babel was a real confusion of language, and not a temporary one of pronunciation mere- ly ; and that all the three great fami- lies were implicated in it ; and conse- quently, that all were equally the sub- jects of the dispersion; are strongly confirmed by the researches of Sir William Jones : who traces three pri- mary languages, into which all others ultimately resolve themselves, and which differ so essentially and radi- cally from each other in words, gram- mar, and construction, that no two of them could ha\ e originated from the third. These three primary languages are the Sanscrit, the Arabic, and the Sclavonic. But the most conclusive argument in favour of the assembly of all the human race in a single connnunity at Babel, and their common dispersion from thence, is derived from the uni- formitv di.suovcrablc in the mytholo- BABEL. gies of the whole pagan world. This iiniformity can be explained in no other way. It is absolutely impossible that systems so analogous, and at the same time so preposterous, should have been separately contrived by a multitude of nations; or that these, widely separated, should have copied from each other. There could then have been no prior dispersion from Armenia, before men had apostatized from the patriarchal religion ; for that such apostacy began at Babel, will be made appear, and is indeed admitted by all. Mr. Bryant, to reconcile this difficulty with his hypothesis, sup- poses the Cushim, who first set up a false religion, to have enforced it, after their dispersion from Babel, by con- quest, on all the other families pre- viously settled in their respective com- munities : a wild and romantic idea, so contrary to reason and experience, as to require no serious confutation. Mr. Faber supposes the same Cushim to have acquired the ascendancy over the other families ; that they instituted the division of society into castes, usurping to themselves the orders of the military and priesthood ; that at the dispersion, they mingled in par- ties, and, by consent, with the other families, who had no similar orders of their own, for national protection and the services of religion. This, though all here must be conjecture, is a far more rational scheme than that of Mr. Bryant. But some at least of every family might have been suffici- ently infected with the Babylonian apostacy, to carry it with them, and to preserve it, without the aid of the Cushim. It is however incontestable, that the Cuthites did acquire the ascendancy over the rest of the children of Noah ; that they conunenced establishing the first universal empire after the Plood, under Nimrod, the beginning of whose kingdom was Babel; and that they were the first apostates from the true religion, in setting up a mixed system of Hero worship and Sabianism, or the worship of the host of heaven. This earliest and most simple form of idolatry long prevailed throughout the East; until, in the natural pro- gTess of declension, it degenerated into idolatry more properly so called, 54 or the worship of material representa- tions of celestial objects. This inevit- able result of forsaking the true God, if it did not first shew itself among the Mizraim in Egypt, was consum- mated by them, and wrought into that complex system of Polytheism which was speedily ingrafted on the primi- tive mythology of the Western nations. Associated with the Cuthite worship of their hero-gods, who were at once the first parents of mankind and their own postdiluvian ancestors, the one, according to their system, a tjansrai- gratory re-appearance of the other, were the principal features in the his- tory of the Creation and the Deluge, which were also blended together in one and the same scheme. Thus, the chief hero god, or Noah, was the same personage as Adam; Paradise and Ararat were supposed, geographically, to coincide with each other, to be both lofty and both insular: so that the world was renovated from the same spot where it had begun. The waters of Eden, and the sea-girt Ararat, were equally venerated in some holy stream, or were converted into some fabulous passage to a future state ; and the Ark was at once the ship of Noah, and the earth — the dark womb of both the first and second races of mankind, and the mystical tomb of the great father, in which he was feigned to have been shut up, and to have emerged again from his temporary prison or coffin into a new existence. Agreeably to these doctrines, which entered into every scheme of pagan mythology, and which were the real anti-types of the scenic rites in all the ancient myste- ries,— moimtains, islands, lakes, rivers, and caverns (which represented the interior of the Ark), became objects of superstitious veneration ; and when nature did not furnish them, they were, as necessary emblems of the Cuthite mythology, constructed arti- ficially. We may hence obtain the origin of the projected tower of Babel, a huge pyramidal structure, which, like its copies in Egypt, the work of the sai^^e architects, was an imitative Ararat; which, like these, stood on the banks of a sacred river, by which it was probably insulated; and which, like these also, it is more than conjectural, had its central cavern. BABEL. These were the nidiments of idohi- try discoverable in every pagan sys- tem— that first departure from the true religion after the Flood, which, as has been observed, began with the sons of Ham at Babel, from whence, as from a centre, it spread itself over the whole world. On this subject Mr. Faber well observes, " The prophet of the Apocalypse styles Babylon or Babel the mother of harlots ami abominatioius of the earth : by which, it need scarce- ly be observed, is meant, in the figxi • rative language of Scripture, that all the abominations of apostate idolatry originated from that city, as from a common parent. St. John is indeed speaking of a mystic Babel ; but unless the type actually correspond with the anti-tj-pe, the whole propriety of the allusion is destroyed. What the figu- rative Babel, therefore, has been in the Christian world, we may be sure that the literal Babel was in the patri- archal world. But, in the Christian world, the figurative Babel has been the mother of an idolatrous apostacy, which, reviving under a new name, the ancient Pagan demonolatry, or wor- ship of deified men, long disfigured, in almost exery part of the Church universal, the pure simplicity of the Gospel. Therefore the literal Babel must have been the mother, in the patriarchal world, of that mixed sys- tem of demonolatry, which seduced men from the truth, and which was thence diffused throughout every part of the habitable globe. This conclu- sion seems to me to be inevitable from the language used by the Apostle: and, in the abstract, it must be equally drawn both by Papist and by Protest- ant ; for, whatever community may be meant by the mystic Babel, since its characteristic is that of being the parent and author of an idolatrous system which spreads itself over tlie earth, its prototype, the literal Babel, must necessarily have been distin- guished by a similar characteristic. In other words, the one idolatrous sys- tem, which, with certain modifications, prevailed alike in every pagan nation, must have originated at Babel, and must, from that first postdiluvian city, ha\ e been carried into all quarters of the globe by them of the dispersion, 'lliis character of Babel agrees very 55 exactly with what we read of it in various parts of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is uniformly represented as being given up to the vain imaginations of a gross idolatry : and there are two pas- sages in particular, which, if I mis- take not, decidedly and literally con- firm the opinion, that must apparently be tlrawn from the language employed by St. John respecting the antitypical and mystic Babel. The literal city of Nimrod is said by Jeremiah to have been a golden cup, that made all the earth drunken: the nations hare drunken of her vine, therefore are the nations mad. (Jer. li. 7.) If we inquire what is intended by this intoxicatinfi potion, which Babel figuratively administered to aU the nations of the earth, and which produced the effect of complete- ly disordering their spiritual under- standing, we are afterwards jilainly told that it was idolatry. (Cli. li. 17, 18, 19.) In a similar strain we find the same city addressed by the pro- phet Isaiah. Persist now in thine en- chantments and in the multitude of thij sorceries, in which thou hast laboured FROM THY YOUTH ; if peradventure thou mayest be projited, if thou mayest be strengtheiud by them. Behold, they shall be as stubble, the fire shall burn them up. Such shall these be unto thee, with whom thou hast laboured; thy negoci- ators, with whom thou hast dealt from THY YOUTH. (Isaiah xlvii. 12, 14, 15.) Sorcery and enchantment formed a con- stituent and essential part of the false theology of the Gentiles ; that theo- logy, with the fumes of which Babel made ALL the earth drunken. But in such 5)ractices Babel is here said to have aboured from her youth. Now the allegorical youth of an empire is the earliest period of its existence. Tliere- fore Babel must have been idolatrous from the very first." The next question of importiince connected with the history of Babel, is the a;ra of the tower. This, accord- ing to some, is fixed in the year 101 after the Flood; which was the year, according to the chronologj- of* the Hebrew Pentateuch, in which Peleg was bom : in whose days the earth is said to ha\ e been divided : and as the name of this patriarch signifies divi- sion, it is contended by the authors of this opinion, that such name was given BABEL. from the remarkable occurrence which attended his birth ; and consequently, that this, namely, the year 101, was the precise sera of the Babylonic dis- persion. But a short investigation will prove this to have been impossi- ble. In the first place, the name of Peleg, if it had any thing to do with the division of the earth, might have been given, as was sometimes the case, by prophetic anticipation. Se- condly, in the list of the several patri- archs, in the 10th chapter of Genesis, amongst whose children the earth was divided, and who must have been bom previous to the division, there are men- tioned 13 sons of Joktan, the younger brother of Peleg ; who, as Archbishop Usher remarks, must have been born many years after Peleg's birth. Lastly, we have seen that the idolatry of the whole earth originated at Babel ; and we have also seen that the leading fea- ture in this primitive scheme of idola- try, was the worship of the deified Noah and his three sons. Now it is obvious, that such a scheme could not have been contemplated while these personages were still alive. But Noah lived 350, and Shem 502 years after the Flood ; which was probably about the limit of the lives of Ham and Japheth also ; consequently, their canonization could not have taken place before this latter period. It could not indeed have been till long after ; for it is absurd to siippose that the generation then living could have been brought at once to venerate their deceased ancestors as gods. The pro- gress of idolatry, infatuating as it is, is never so rapid as this. Still the dif- ficulty recurs, that the division of the earth, and consequently the comple- tion of this scheme of idolatrj', took place in the days of Peleg. Now ad- mitting this statement to refer, as it may, to any part of the life-time of Peleg, that patriarch died, according to the Hebrew chronology, in the year 340 after the Flood, 10 years before Noah, and 160 before Shem. How is this ? All is here thrown into con- fusion ; from which we may best trust to Mr. Faber, from whom we have already so largely quoted, to extricate us. " The more I have considered the early postdiluvian chronology of the Hebrew Pentateuch," sjiys tills iutelli- 56 gent writer, " the more convinced I am that the Oriental Christians did wisely in rejecting it as palpably cor- rupt and erroneous. If we adopt it, we shall find ourselves hampered on every side with invincible difficulties and contradictions. We must believe, that when the awful catastrophe of the Flood was but an event of yester- day, a general apostacy, itself always a gradual work of time, took place from pure religion. We must believe, that Noah and his three sons were translated to the sphere and erected into demon gods, while as yet they were living mortals upon the face of the earth. We must believe, that, notwithstanding they were extrava- gantly venerated as gods, they were yet disobeyed as men and as princes ; for we mvist admit that all their chil- dren rebelled against them, threw off with a high hand the yoke of their patriarchal authority, and marched away in a body under the command of Nimrod. We must believe, that they accomplished this feat, and built a stupendous pyramid of brick, each side of which measured a furlong, at so early a period, that it seems phy- sically impossible for an adequate number of persons to have been then produced from only three original pairs. We must believe, that they were not only equal to such enter- prizes, but that the mere beginning of their empire comprised four cities ; and that four others, one of the least noted of which is styled a great city, were soon afterwards erected. (Gen. X. 10, 12.) We must believe, that a great grandson of Noah, evidently the youngest of the children of Cush, ac- quired the wonderfiU influence, which we have seen him exerting, not only while the sovereign jjatriarch and his triple offspring were all living, and while the latter were in their full strength and vigour, but diu"ing his own mere boyhood : so that a raw stripling shotild have been the conductor of a successful rebellion against the deep- rooted and prescriptive authority of those, whom yet, though he had thrown off their rule as princes, he persuaded his lawless followers to worship as gods. We must believe, that Abraham, who is described as dying in a good old age, an old man BABEL. full of years, as the term of human life then \\ as, — that this identical aged Abraham yet died 35 years before his remote ancestor Sliem, three years be- fore iSelah, and no less than 75 years before Eber. (Gen. xxv. H.) We must belie>'e, that he survived his own father 'ferah no more than 40 years : when yet we are assured, that he was 75 years old when he lelt Haran, w here Terah had died ; and that he himself died at the a^e of 1 75 years ; which of course wovild make him siu*- \ive his father a whole century. (Gen. xi. 31, 82, xii. 4,,iS: xxv. 7.) We must, iinally, believe, in addition to all these palpable contradictions, that Abraham was contemporary with Noah for the space of 58 years, and with .Shem du- ring- his whole life ; that Isaac was born only 42 years after the death of Noah, and that he was contemporary with JShem 110 years ; and, as not the least mention is made of any inter- course between Abraham or Isaac and those \ enerable patriarchs, that both Abraham and Isaac, and the various nations among which they sojoimied, were alike ignorant of, and indifl'erent about their very existence. All these matters, to say nothing of the rise of various comparatively powerful mon- archies within the four first centuries after the Flood, we must believe, in some instances, contrari/ to the parallel testimony of the Pentateuch itself, if we choose to abide by the Hebrew chronology. Hence I have no scruple in rejecting it: if not for other more consequential reasons, yet for this pal- pable and direct one — the chronoloiji/ makes Abraham survive his father only 40 years ; the history/ makes him survive him a whole century." Mr. Faber then goes on to shew, that the chronology of the Samarit;m Pentateuch reconciles every date and surmoimts e\ery difficulty. It repre- sents >Shem as dying nearly a century and a half before the death of Peleg, instead of more than that number of years afterw ards, and almost four cen- turies and a half Ijefore the death of Abraham ; whom, in accordance with the history, it makes to survive his father Terah precisely 100 years. It removes the difliculties with which the Hebrew chronology invests the whole history, by giving time, while it 57 allows the dispersion to ha\c taken place in the latter part of Peleg's life, for the 13 sous of his younger brother Joktan to \u\c becimie heads of iiuni- lies: for Noah and his sons to have died, as it is pro\ed they must have done, prior to the emigration from Armenia; for Nimrod, instead of be- ing a boy, to ha\e been of an age suit- able to his exploits, and to have ac- quired the sovereign command, not, in the lace of all proljabilily, while the four great patriarchs were living, but after their decease ; and for the I'ami- lies of mankind to have multiplied sufficiently to undertake the stupend- ous work of the tower. It explains also the silence respecting iShem in the history of Abraham, by making the former die in Armenia 440 years be- fore the latter was born, instead of surviving him 35 years. And, lastly, it makes sacred history accord with pro- fane : the Babylonic history of Berosus, and the old records consulted by Epi- phanius, both placing the death of Noah and his sons before the emigra- tion from Armenia. The sum of the whole argiiment is as follows: All the descendants of Noah remained in Armenia in peace- able subjection to the patriarchal reli- gion and government during the life- time of the four royal patriarchs, or till about the beginning of the sixth century after the Flood ; when, gradually falling off from the pure worship of God and from their allegiance to the respective heads of families, and seduced by the schemes of the ambitious Nimrod, and further actuated by a restless dis- position, or a desire for a more fer- tile country, they migrated in a body southwards, till they reached tlie plains of .Shinar, probal)ly about GO years after the death of Shem. Here, under the command of their new leader, and his dominant militury and sacerdotal Cuthites, by whom the ori- ginal scheme of idolatry, the ground- work of which was probably laid in Armenia, was now perfected ; and, with the express \iew to counteract the designs of the Almighty in their dispersion into different countries, they began to build the city and tower, and set up a banner which should scr\e as a mark of national miion, and concentrate them in one H BABYLON. unbroken empire: when they were defeated and dispersed by the mira- culous confusion of tongues. All this probably occupied the further space of 20 or 21 years ; making 81 from the death of Shem, and 583 after the Flood. All of which also will come within the life of Peleg, who, accord- ing to the Samaritan Pentateuch, died in the year 640. The Hebrew and Samaritan chro- nologies are given at the end of the work : by which the reader will have an opportunity of comparing, at a view, the dates above men- tioned. With respect to the tower, as a solid pile of such stupendous dimensions would, in the course of ages, be re- duced to the condition of a natural mound, and thus its further progress towards dissolution be arrested — it probably remained in this state until it re-appeared in something like its original form and destiny in the tower of Belus of the second Babel, or Baby- lon ; the mound, which was perhaps traditionally looked upon as sacred, while it saved much labour, affording a convenient basement for the succes- sive stages of the superstructure. The remains of this tower are now found in the ruin termed the Birs Nemroud, on the west of the Euphrates. See the next article. It may further be remarked, that the badge, or banner, set up at Babel, which in our translation of the Bible is called a " name," is, in the original, Sem, a token. The corresponding Syrian word Sema, in the Syrian lan- guage, was the name given to the female image in the temple of Hiera- polis, having a dove upon her head. Now there is a tradition respecting Semiramis, that her standard was a dove, and that she herself was trans- formed into a dove. Hence Mr. Faber conjectiures, that from Sema Rama, or the lofty token, came the name of Semiramis, the fabulous consort of Ninus or Nimrod. And hence it is to be inferred, that the name, or token, which the people of Babel made for themselves, was not a name merely, which has little meaning, and could be of little use, but a national ensign, having emblazoned on it the figure of a dove. 58 BABYI-ON,the capital of Babylonia or Chaldaea, seated on the river Eu- phrates, in 32° 25' north latitude, and 44° east longitude. This was probably the first city built after the Flood ; and is supposed to have been founded by Nimrod, afterwards worshipped under the name of Belus, on the same place where the tower of Babel was already begim. But it must have been long before it attained its subsequent size and splendoiu". It is most reasonable to suppose, that after the confusion of langTiage, and the dispersion which took place at Babylon, on which Nim- rod and his Cuthites were expending all their efforts, the city was left in an unfinished state, and formed an ap- pendage to some other state belonging to the family of Shem ; to whom all this country was more particularly al- lotted. What was its exact condition and fate after this event we can never know. We find, however, that in the time of Abraham, Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, was the greatest potentate of these countries ; and it probably was at that time in his possession. Cer- tain it is, that we hear nothing more of Babylon until the time of Belesis or Nabonassar, who in Scripture is called Baladan ; under whom, and his suc- cesssors, it is probable that the city acquired some degree of importance. But in the interval between Chedor- laomer and Baladan, Babylon had passed into the hands of the Assyrians, who had acquired the greater power, and had swallowed nip this country, as in aU probability that of Elam also. To supply the want of authentic in- formation of the state of Babylon during this long interval, we are natu- rally led to examine into the accounts given in profane history : but there all is darkness and confusion. Much is related of the exploits of Ninus and Semiramis; but so extravagant and contradictory are the accounts given of them, that we are glad to take shel- ter under the opinion of Mr. Bryant, that these personages were altogether fictitious, and that Babylon, from the time of Nimrod to that of Baladan, possessed neither power nor note. It was under Nebuchadnezzar that Babylon, then become the seat of uni- versal empire, is supposed to have acquired that extent and magnifi- BABYLON. cence, and those stupendous works were completed, which rendered it tlie wonder of the world and of" pos- terity: and accordin;3 " the poorest sort of the people" be- hind. He took also from the rest of the land se\en thousand mighty men, and one thousand artificers. (2 Kings xxiv.) In this captivity, Ezekiel the prophet was carriect to Baljylon. J ehoi- akin being removed from his king- dom, Mattaniah his uuch: was appoint- ed by Nebuchadnezzar to succeed him, who changed his name to Zedekiah. This prince reigned II years in Jeru- salem ; but imitating the evil ways of his predecessors, he called for those fresh judgments which involved him- self, his city, and his people, in one common destruction: all which was foretold by Ezekiel, then at Babylon. In the seventh year of his reign, Zedekiah, impatient of bearing any longer the Babylonian yoke, adopted the usual expedient of the kings his predecessors, when they wished to break through their oaths of allegi- ance, by sending ambassadors to the king of Egypt for assistance ; although the Jews had been repeatedly warned against putting their trust in the Egyptians, and had found by experi- ence that their alliances with this treacherous people, who were as a staff" of reed to lean upon, had led to nothing but confusion and ruin. The king of Egypt at this time was A pries, or Pharaoh Hophra, as he is called in Scripture. It was not probably till the follow- ing year that Zedekiah openly de- clared his intentions, and that Nebu- chadnezzar was apprised of his defec- tion, and of the hostile preparations of his new ally, the king of Egj-pt. And e\ en then, he could not be imme- diately prepared to meet so formidable a coalition ; for the Ammonites had also rebelled, and joined themselves to the Jews and Egyptians. It was not, in fact, till the sul)sequent year, which was the ninth of Zedekiah, that having assembled a great army, Nebu- chadnezzar, passuig by the Ammon-' ites for the present, marched into Judiea ; and overcoming every thing that opposed him, set down before Jerusalem, on the tenth day of the tenth month, which answers to our December : in memory of which, this day has ever since been obsened by the Jews as a solemn fast. This event was revealed on the same day to Ezc- BABYLON. Mb\ at Babylon, under the type of a boiling pot (Ezek. xxiv.) : and at the same time, his wife, the desire of his eyes, was taken from him; for which he was forbidden to mourn, as a loss which, in comparison with the cala- mities which were about to ensue, was to be considered as nothing. When Zedekiah became sensible of his danger, he relented a little, and issued a proclamation, giving liberty to the people, and commanding every man to let his man-servant or his maid- servant, who was a Hebrew or Hebrew- ess, go free ; that no Jew might serve a Jew. But now, Pharaoh Hophra, having comjileted his preparations, advanced with a numerous army to his relief. On which Nebuchadnezzar was obliged to raise the siege for the present, to march against the Egyp- tians ; when Zedekiah and his peo- ple, supposing his defeat to be certain, and that he was gone for good, broke the covenant they had entered into, and reduced their fellow -citizens again to servitude. For this unjust and in- human act, the prophet Jeremiah was commissioned to declare the terrible judgments which should fall on all concerned in it. — Jer. xxxiv. 17 — 22. Pharaoh Hophra did not wait the coming of Nebuchadnezzar, but trea- cherously leaving the Jews to their fate, retreated, without a contest, to his own country : when Ezekiel, re- proaching the Egyptians for their bad faith to those whom they had led to confide in them, denounced against them Vhe prophecy contained in his 29th chapter ; that their country should be a prey to war and desolation forty years, and afterwards become a base kingdom, no more ruled by a prince of her own. On the retreat of the Egyptians, Nebuchadnezzar retvirned to Jerusa- lem, and again invested that place ; which, after a year from this renewal of the siege, fell into his hands on the ninth day of the fourth month of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, and in the year 588 before Christ. This was the third and final captvire of the city by this prince. : And now all the fearful denunciations against it were to be accomplished. The impenitent Zede- kiah, who, during the siege, had re- peatedly sent for Jeremiah, to inquire 64 of him the word of the Lord respect- ing his fate, and as often returned him to prison for his faithfuhiess, eudea- vovu-ed to make his escape ; but was overtaken in the plains of Jericho, and carried before the king of Baby- lon, then residing at Riblah, in Syria, where, his sons being slain before his face, and his eyes put out, he was bound with fetters, and in this condi- tion sent a miserable captive to Baby- lon, where he died in prison : thus fidfiUing the prophecy of Ezekiel, which declared that he should be car- ried to Babylon, but should not see the place, though he should die there. Ezek. xii. 13. On the seventh day of the fifth month (which was towards the end of Jidy), and in the 19th year of Nebu- chadnezzar, Nebuzaradan, captain of the guards, came to Jerusalem, and " burnt the house of the Lord, and the king's house, and all the houses of Jerusalem." After which, he razed the walls to the ground, and sent the inhabitants prisoners to Babylon. Thus was accomjjUshed one of the great purposes for which Nebuchad- nezzar had been raised up. But there remained other idolatrous and disobe- dient nations, on which he was yet to execute the vengeance of the Almigh- ty. In the mean while, being returned to Babylon, out of the spoils which he had taken in his late expedition, he made the golden image, which he consecrated to his god Bel, in the plain of Dura ; as related by Daniel. Tyre, for her pride, and her insulting over the fallen state of the Jews, was to be the next subject of Divine chastise- ment, as predicted by Ezekiel (ch. xxn., xxvii., fk xxviii.) ; and accordingly, in the 21st year of his reign, according to the Jewish account, the 19th according to the Babylonian, and in the second year after the destruction of Jerusa- lem, Nebuchadnezzar commenced the siege of that city ; Ithobal being then king. This celebrated siege, one of the longest recorded in history, lasted thirteen years : " till every head was bald, and every shoulder peeled," by the severity of the service, and con- stant exposure to the weather during so long a time. And when at last the Babylonians became masters of the place, instead of the plunder they BABYLON. had promised themselves in this weal- thy city, they found nothinjif to reward their Libours ; the Tyrians havinc;' re- moved their cflbcts to the adjoining- island, beyond their reach, where the second or insidar Tyre was founded. To remunerate the Babylonian army for this disappointment, Uod promised them, as they were employed in his service, the spoils of J^gypt. — Ezek. xxix. 18 — 20. ^^'hile this sie