original name; and mentioned as coeval with that of Ethiopia or Cush: and an early name of Egypt must be almost prior to Greece and its language; at least, it could not be borrowed from it. It was one of the names, περι ὧν πολλοι των παλαιων isogast, "mentioned in the antient histories of the

country:" its meaning must not be looked for in Greece. The Greek writers thought Aur to be the same as ang; and thence formed agia, through ignorance of the true meaning of the word. The same mistake prevailed among the Romans. Hence arose the error of 20 Julius Firmicus; who, in speaking of the antient Chaldeans and some of the Africans, says that, "of all the elements, they

paid the greatest deference to the air:" Assyrii et pars Afrorum aërem ducatum habere elementorum volunt: wherein he was misled by the sound. It was not the air (Aër or Ang), but "N, Aur, fire, quite a different element, that was the principal object of their worship. The people whom Eustathius alludes to under the name of Ethiopians, Tacitus mentions as Assyrians. "Sunt qui tradant Assyrios convenas, indigum agrorum populum, parte Ægypti potitos, ac mox proprias urbes Hebræasque terras et propiora Syriæ coluisse. Eusebius calls them, as Eustathius has done, Ethi

20 De Errore Prof. Relig. pag. 5. edit. Argent. 1562. 21 Tacit. Hist. lib. 5. cap. 2. Marsham. sec. XIII. pag. 335.

22

opians (a name I have shewn the Cuseans to be often denominated by); and says they came from the Indus, and took up their habitation in Egypt : 23 Αιθίοπες απο 23 Ινδε ποταμε αναςαντες προς τη Αιγυπτῷ ᾤκησαν. There is a passage of the same author as translated by St. Jerome which is very short, yet contains an epitome of all I have been saying. 24 Sub Acherre in Egypto regnavit Telegonus, Oris Pastoris filius, septimus ab Inacho. Telegonus is here put as a proper name of the prince who reigned. But it is not so: it is a Greek compound; and means only an alien, one born in another country, and that came from a great distance. This being settled, the purport of the history is to this effect. "When Acherres was king "in Egypt, there likewise reigned there a foreign "prince, who was descended from Orus, and was "of the shepherd race:" which Orus or Alorus was, we know, originally of Babylonia. So that the whole of this short account relates to the Cuseans. But it is said at the close that this foreigner was in descent the seventh from Inachus. This seems to be an interesting part of the story, which is here obscured. What connection can a son of

22 Eusebii Chron. pag. 25. edit. Scalig.

23 By the Indus they mean the east, or a place towards the

east.

24 Euseb. Chron. Hieron. Interpr. pag. 14. edit. Scalig.

Orus have with a king of Argos? What relationship could possibly subsist between them? Carry the antiquity of Argos as high as it will possibly bear; and make Inachus, if ever there was such a man, contemporary with Abraham: yet the arrival of the Shepherds in Egypt, which is here alluded to, must have been prior to it: at least we may venture to affirm that it could not be seven generations 25 later. But there is otherwise no correspondence between the terms: nor can they possibly relate to one another. The original history, of which the above is a bad copy, I imagine was this. Sub Acherre in Egyptum se recepit, et partem regionis occupavit Rex alienigena Pastor; ab Oro Babylonio ortus, et septimus a Noacho. This last word had been probably transposed to Onacho; from whence the Greeks altered it still farther, and

25 Ιωσήπατος, και 185ος, Κλημης ὁ ἱερος τρωματευς, Τατιανας τε, και Αφρικανος συνομολογεσι κατα Ιναχον γεννηθηναι Μωσέα. Syncellus. pag. 121. edit. Paris. 1652. Ο δε πρωτος Αργείων ηγειται [Ιναχος] κατα τον πέμπτον μετα Σεμίραμιν Ασσυρίων βασιλέα, ν και ς ύσερον ETEσiv auTng Te zaι Mwows. Euseb. Præp. Evang. lib. 10. cap. 9. The king who reigned after the expulsion of the first Shepherds was but equal in time with Inachus: how could a person that preceded some centuries be the seventh from him? Amosis laid the city Auris in ruins: κατεσκαψε δε την Αθυριαν (Αουρίαν) Αμωσις, κατα τον Αργείον γενομενος Ιναχον. Apion apud Clement. Alex. Strom. lib. 1. pag. 320. edit. Potter. Ὁ δὲ Αμωσις εγενείς κατ' Ivaxor Bacinia. Ptol. Mendes. apud Tatianum. §. 59. edit. Oxon. 1700. See Theophilus ad Autolycum, lib. 3.

reduced it to a name they were acquainted with. If this be, as I imagine, the true reading, it makes the migration of the Shepherds to be about the time of Serug or Nahor. What is extraordinary, this is the very time when it is supposed by that very great chronologist archbishop 26 Usher to have happened: who refers it to the year of the world 1920, according to the Hebrew computation; in the hundred and first year of the life of Serug the seventh from Noah; and in the forty-second of Terah, eighty-eight years before the birth of Abraham. But this is a degree of exactness that I do not pretend to arrive at. Let it suffice, that near this period I imagine this event to have happened.

26 A. M. 1920. Ex vicinâ Arabia irrumpens gens eorum quos Hyc-sos, id est, Reges Pastores, Egyptii vocabant, Memphim ceperunt, &c. Usserii Annales. pag. 3. edit. Paris. 1673. Bishop Cumberland supposes that the Shepherds invaded Egypt A. M. 1937; in the time of the same patriarchs, according to the Hebrew chronology. Remarks on Sanchon. pag. 170.