365. Schwartz, Ursprung der Mythologie, pp. 138–150.
368. Ps. XIX. 5 [4]. We have already remarked (p. 111) that the tents which originally belonged to the sky at night are frequently transferred to the sky of daytime; see also Is. XL. 22. And Noah uncovers himself, bethôkh oholô ‘in the middle of his tent’ (Gen. IX. 21).
369. In al-Jauharî, s.r. kfr.
370. In Ibn al-Sikkît, p. 193; ḥatta ara aʿnâḳa ṣubḥin ablajâ * tasûru fî aʿjâzi leylin adʿajâ. The expression aʿjâz al-leyl also occurs in a verse of Farazdaḳ, Kitâb al-Aġânî, XIV. 173. 19, and of Ashgaʿ, ibid. XVII. 35. 13.
371. See also Shâhnâmêh, VII. 395, with Rückert’s conjecture suggested in Zeitsch. der D. M. G., 1856, X. 136.
372. Lazarus Geiger, Ursprung und Entwickelung der menschl. Sprache und Vernunft, I. 447.
373. Schwartz, Sonne, Mond und Sterne, p. 228.
374. In G. Rawlinson’s History of Herodotus, I. 490 et seq. One might also think of the Arabic nafara ‘to fly.’ The Sun is a fugitive, as has been already shown.
375. Lenormant, Premières Civilisations, II. 21.
376. On the primary signification of the root mrd in Semitic, see Fried. Delitzsch, Studien über indogerm.-semit. Wurzelverwandtschaft, Leipzig 1873, p. 74.
377. Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, p. 17, and Die assyr.-babyl. Keilinschriften, p. 212. Compare Merx, Grammatica Syriaca, p. 201.
378. Levy, Phönizische Studien, pt. II. p. 24.
380. I am fully aware that in Hebrew poetry arrows are frequently, indeed most frequently, to be understood of lightning. ‘He sends out his arrows and scatters them; lightnings in great number and discomfits them’ (Ps. XVIII. 15 [14]). But the arrows of Joseph’s adversaries must from the very nature of the myth be rays of the sun. If the hunter is the Sun, then the rays can only be something which the hunter in that ancient time used for shooting. Mythology is not the product of a well-thought-out consistent system, and so nothing is more likely than that two different things should be treated in the same way by virtue of some feature common to both. Thus the solar ray and the lightning are the same in mythology—an Arrow.
381. See a fuller description in Schwartz, Sonne, Mond und Sterne, pp. 218–220.
382. J.G. Müller, Geschichte der amerikanischen Urreligionen, p. 429.
383. See this question treated and its literature cited in Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie, 3rd ed., I. 57.
384. For the description of the Sun as an Opener, I am enabled to insert a supplementary datum, borrowed from a book which was published when p. 97 of the present work (to which I refer back) was already printed. In a cuneiform Hymn to Samas, the Sun-god, he is addressed thus:
(German translation of George Smith’s Chaldean Account of Genesis, with additions by Dr. Fr. Delitzsch, Leipzig, 1876.) The passage quoted is one of Delitzsch’s additions, p. 284. I think this Hymn is a remarkable illustration of our hypothesis that Yiphtâch, ‘the Opener,’ is a linguistic description of the Sun.
385. I owe to the kindness of my honoured friend Dr. Hampel, Custos of the archeological section of the Hungarian National Museum, the verification of a reference in the Bulletino dell’ Instituto di Correspondenza Archeologica, 1853, p. 150, to a stone which exhibits the same representation of the head of Janus as the coin in question, viz.: ‘una testa doppia, di cui una facie è barbata, l’altra giovanile.’
387. Compare Sol languidus (Lucretius, De rerum nat., V. 726).
388. The Arabian historians transfer the entire Biblical story of Samson (Arabic Shamsûn), to the time of the Mulûk al-ṭawâʾif; and in their narrative the hero fights against Rûm [i.e. the Greek Empire at Constantinople]; for the jawbone of an ass is substituted that of a camel. See Ibn al-Athîr al-Taʾrîch al-kâmil, Bûlâḳ edition, I. 146.
389. Schwartz, Ursprung der Mythologie, p. 144, where Sif and Loki of the Scandinavian mythology are also mentioned. The hairiness of the solar heroes has been translated into an ethnographical peculiarity in modern Greek popular legends. Bernhard Schmidt (Das Volksleben der Neugriechen, I. 206) says, ‘In Zante I encountered the idea that the entire power of the ancient Greeks lay in three hairs on the breast, and vanished if these were cut off, but returned when the hairs grew again.’
390. See Ewald, History of Israel, I. 345, note 1.
391. In Gen. XXVII. 11, the received punctuation is îsh sâʿîr.—Tr.
392. Compare Tiele, Vergel. Geschied. p. 447.
393. Schwartz, Ursprung der Mythologie, p. 146; see above, p. 34.
394. Zur Entwickelungsgeschichte der Menschheit, pp. 45–60.—Ursprung und Entwickelung der menschlichen Sprache und Vernunft, Bd. II. book 3.—Compare Lazarus, Leben der Seele, II. 80; ibid. p. 185 note.
395. For Silver the three North-Semitic languages, Assyrian, Aramaic, and Hebrew, have the same word, and in so far ‘form a strict union,’ as Schrader says, in opposition to the South-Semitic languages, which employ other words for the designation of this metal.' Keilinschriften und das A. T., p. 46.
396. Chârûṣ = gold has in recent times been frequently met with on Phenician territory, e.g. in the Inscription of Idalion published by Euting, II. 1, in the Inscription of Gebal (De Vogüé in the Journal asiat. 1875, I. 327), and in an unpublished Carthaginian Inscription (Derenbourg in Journal asiat. 1875, I. 336).
397. The consideration of the Hebrew cheres ‘Sun’ might suggest that both it and the old word for gold (chârûṣ), composed of possibly related sounds, both originated in the notion of shining.
398. Al-Maḳḳarî, Analectes, etc., Leyden edition, I. 369. 3.
399. Al-Jauharî, s.r. kbr.
400. Yâḳût, Geogr. Dictionary, II. 609. 8.
401. Zur himjarischen Alterthumskunde, in Zeitsch. der D. M. G., 1865, XIX. 247. Compare Halévy, Etudes sabéennes, in Journal asiat., 1874, II. 523.
402. Pseudowâḳidî, ed. Nassau Lees, p. 181. 6.
403. Hist. de l’économie politique en Turquie, in Journal asiat., 1864, I. 421. Compare also Sprenger, Alte Geographie Arabiens, p. 56.
404. The use of black should also be noticed; dirhem saudâ and kara ġurush.
405. In al-Thaʿâlibî in the Zeitsch. der D. M. G., 1854, VII. 505.
406. Culturgeschichtliche Streifzüge, p. xi.
407. Compare Aġânî, III. 90. 10. Fadaʿa bichâzinihi wa-ḳâla kam fî beyt mâlî faḳâla lahu min al-waraḳ w-al-ʿayn baḳîyyatun.
408. Thorbecke, Antarah, ein vorislamischer Dichter, Leipzig 1867, p. 41.
409. al-Ḥarîrî, Paris edition, 2nd ed., p. 467.
410. Kitâb al-aġânî, XVII. p. 11.
411. M.A. Levy in Zeitschr. der D. M. G., 1870, XXIV. p. 191.
412. Halévy, ibid. p. 539.
413. Freytag points this word urayḳ.—Tr.
414. J. Levy, Chaldäisches Wörterbuch, I. 345.
415.
—says Hudibras, canto II.
416. In the Babyl. Talmûd, Yômâ 28. b, the falling of the shades of night is described as the time when meshacharê kôthâlê ‘the walls are black.’
417. Called by Freytag an eagle.—Tr.
418. In Harîrî (Paris edition, 2nd ed.), p. 644. 4, we read of the Dawn: ḥîna naṣal chiḍâb al-ẓalâm ‘when the dye of darkness was washed off.’ The Arabic word here used for ‘dye’ is generally employed of gay colours, e.g. al-ḥinnâ; but it is self-evident that here only al-kuḥl can be meant.
419. In Persian black hair is called mû i-Zengî ‘Gipsies’ hair,’ and zulf-i-Hindu, ‘Indian hair,’ i.e. black like an Indian’s (e.g. Rückert, Grammatik, Poetik und Rhetorik der Perser, p. 287). So in the well-known verse of Ḥafiẓ, in which the poet gives away all Bochara and Samarkand for the black mole (bechâl-i-Hinduwesh, ‘Indian mole’) of his Turkish boy (Dîwân Râ, no. 8. v. 1; ed. Rosenzweig, I. 24).
420. Saḳt-al-zand, I. 91. 7.
421. E.g. Romance of ʿAntar, VII. 115. line 4 from below: wa-kasa-l-leylu ḥullat al-sawâd.
422. Varro treats it as self-evident that ‘black’ is the most suitable epithet for Night, and is thereby tempted to a very curious etymology in his work De ratione vocabulorum. He explains the word fur ‘thief’ by saying that in the old Latin fur-vum was equivalent to ‘black,’ and thieves practise their dark deeds at night. ‘Sed in posteriore ejusdem libri parte docuit (scil. Varro) furem ex eo dictum quod veteres Romani furvum atrum appellaverint: at fures per noctem quae atra sit facilius furentur’ (Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, I. 18. 3–6).
423. Opuscula arabica, ed. W. Wright, Leyden 1859, p. 30. 11; compare p. 31. 12.
424. Aġânî, XI. 44.
425. Ibid., XVIII. 139.
426. Ibn al-Sikkît, p. 344.
427. Ibn al-Sikkît, p. 345.
428. Iḥyâ ʿulûm al-dîn, II. 148.
429. Gesenius, Thesaurus, p. 1183.
430. Chabas, Etudes sur l’antiquité historique d’après les sources égyptiennes, etc. 2nd edition, Paris 1873, p. 34, where the article by Le Page Renouf is referred to.
431. Ibn al-Sikkît, p. 193, whom I follow as a reliable ancient authority; al-Jauharî and Freytag after him understand aṣbaḥ somewhat differently.
432. Abû-l-ʿAlâ, II. 107. 3–4.
433. Saḳt al-zand, I. 93. 1. These ideas of the relations of colours are found expressed with characteristic energy by the eccentric Persian poet Abû Isḥâḳ Ḥallâjî; he says, ‘When the Sun in the blue vault turns his cheek into yellow, it makes me think of saffron-coloured viands on an azure dish’ (Rückert, Grammatik, Poetik und Rhetorik der Perser, p. 126). The conception of turning grey combines that of both colours—the white appearing beside the black. According to Aġânî, II. 41. 7; those clouds which combine the two colours are called shîb ‘grey’ (al-saḥâʾib allatî fîhâ sawâd wa-bayâd).
434. I will mention here that according to al-Ġazâlî (Iḥjâ, IV. 433) the stars have various colours, some tending towards red, others towards white, others towards leaden: wa-tadabbar ʿadad kawâkibihâ, wachtilâf alwânihâ fabaʿḍuhâ tamîl ila-l-ḥumrâ wa-baʿḍuhâ ila-l-bayâḍ wa-baʿḍuhâ ila launi-r-ruṣâṣ.
435. Abû-l-ʿAlâ, I. 195. 1.
436. In Yâḳût, IV. 911. 7.
437. Ḥarîrî’s Maḳâmâs, p. 675. 7: Istanâra-l-leyl al-bahîm.
438. See Excursus H.
439. Aġânî, I. 158. 23.
440. al-Anṭâḳi, Tazyîn al-aswâḳ, etc., p. 405.
441. Maḳâmâs, p. 128; cf. Mehren, Rhetorik der Araber, p. 99.
442. al-Buchârî, IX. 35.
443. The notion of the white colour of the moon is also the foundation of one of the Hebrew names of the moon. In the verse Ẓabyatun admâʾu mithla-l-hilâlî ‘a gazelle red like the new moon’ (Aġânî, VI. 122. 21) the moon is treated as red. But in the appellation al-layâli al-bîḍ ‘white nights,’ by which are meant nights illumined throughout by the moon, the moonshine is associated with a white colour.
444. Die Höllenfahrt der Istar, p. 75.
445. Halévy, ibid., p. 556.
446. See Excursus I.
447. See Excursus K.
448. Among the Arabic names of the sun, we find the curious appellation al-jaunâ (Ibn al-Sikkît, p. 324), a word of colour, which belongs to the aḍdâd of the Arabic philologians, i.e. words with contradictory signification, and may denote either white or black (see Redslob, Die arab. Wörter mit entgegengesetzter Bedeutung, Göttingen 1873, p. 27). Al-jaunâ is especially the setting sun, e.g. lâ âtîhi ḥatta taġîb al-jaunâ, ‘I cannot come to him till the jaunâ sets;’ and the setting sun is well described by a colour-word which, by its faculty of standing for either white or black, answers to the transition from sunshine to darkness.
449. Communicated by Henne Am Rhyn, Deutsche Volkssagen &c., p. 219. no. 427.
450. Nagyidai Czigányok. In the original Hungarian:
451. On Regina coeli, see Jablonski, Opuscula, II. 54 et seq. (ed. Te Water).
452. In Fox Talbot, quoted by Schrader, Die Höllenfahrt der Istar, p. 98.
453. Zeitschr. d. D. M. G., 1873, XXVII. p. 404.
454. G. Rawlinson, History of Herodotus, App. B. I., Essay X. (I. 484).
455. Schwartz, Sonne, Mond und Sterne, 269, 274.
456. See especially Osiander in the Zeitsch, d. D. M. G., 1865, XIX. 242 et seq.
457. In Yâḳût, IV. 406.
458. The constant epithet ‘holding the seed of bulls’ brings to view the idea that the influence of the moon produces fertility in cattle (Spiegel, Die heiligen Schriften der Parsen [in German], III. xxi.). According to Yasht, VII. 5, it is the moon ‘that produces verdure, that produces good things.’ Compare Catullus, XXXII (XXXIV) v. 17–20, where the poet apostrophises the Moon—
459. This connexion is also clear in the Hottentot mythology. Heizi Eibib, which means moon, is there the name of the man to whom grave-tumuli are consecrated, and who is addressed in prayer for good sport and numerous herds (Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, II. 324).
460. Max Müller’s view (Introduction to the Science of Religion, p. 184), ‘When Jeremiah speaks of the Queen of Heaven, this can only be meant for Astarte or Baaltis,’ is correct only if Baaltis be identified with the Moon. The correctness of this identification, which was first asserted by Philo Byblius, and has been conceded by the older interpreters Grotius and Lyra, and by many modern ones, is very probable; for the name Baaltis stands in the same relation to Baʿal (Sun) as Milkâ to Melekh, Lebhânâ to Lâbhân, and Ashêrâ to Âshêr. Tiele also (Vergelijkende Geschiedenis, p. 512) says the same as Müller.
461. Midrâsh Shôchêr Ṭôbh on Ps. XIX. 7.
462. The contrast of Leah’s weak eyes to Rachel’s beauty belongs not to the mythic stage, but to the epic description.
463. There is no reason to separate the word shilhê from the Shaphʿêl shalhî, as Levy does in his Chald. Wôrterbuch, II. 481; compare Reggio in the Hebrew journal Ozar Nechmad, I. 122.
464. See Zeitschr. für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, 1869, VI. 237, 252.
465. Rohlfs, Quer durch Afrika, I. 204.
466. Opuscula Arabica, pp. 16–39.
467. E.g. Ḥamâsâ, p. 609, v. 6: Nâbiġâ, VI. v. 9.
468. Ḥamâsâ, p. 391, v. 2.
469. Commentary on Ḥamâsâ, ibid.
470. The Arabian poet Ibn Mayyâdâ, in a description of the lightning (Aġânî, II. 120. 9), says 'it lights up the piled-up cloud, which is like a herd of camels, at the head of which those that long for their home cry out with pain: yuḍîʾu ṣabîran min saḥâbin kaʾannahu * hijânun arannat lil-ḥanîni nawâziʿuh.
471. The ancient Arabs understood that the thunder and lightning were caused by the clouds whence they issued. Many passages might be quoted in support of this, but Lebîd Muʿallaḳâ v. 4, 5, is sufficient. Ḥanna (to sigh, to groan with desire) is therefore equivalent to ‘to thunder,’ e.g. Aġânî, XIII. 32. 8. ḳad raʿadat samâʾuhu wa-baraḳat wa-ḥannat warjaḥannat.
472. See W. Wright, Opuscula Arabica, p. 20. 10; 21. 7.
473. Ibid., p. 29. 2.
474. Kitâb al-Aġânî, XIX. 157. 1.
475. Jeremiah XXXI. 15, Matth. II. 18.
476. Compare al-Sherbînî Hezz al-ḳuḥûf, etc., lithographed Alexandria, p. 253. The Arabs also said of the red evening-sky that ‘it wept bloody tears’ (al-Maḳrîzî, al-Chiṭaṭ, Bûlâk edition, I. 430).
477. Clemens Alex. Strom. V. 571.
478. See Nöldeke’s Beiträge zur altarab. Poesie, p. 34.
479. In mythology the clouds are also called udders. See Mannhardt, German Mythenf., pp. 176–188; so in Arabic, Ibn Muṭeyr apud Nöldeke l. c.
480. Ibn Dureyd, Kitâb al-ishtiḳaḳ, ed. Wüstenfeld, pp. 13, 14.
481. Ibnat al-ʿinab, in the celebrated wine-song of Wâlid b. Yazîd (Aġânî, VI. 110. 5). Wine is well known to be called in Hebrew ‘Blood of the grape,’ dam ʿênâbh (Deut. XXXII. 14); compare the Persian chôni rûz in Waṣṣâf ed. Hammer, p. 138. 6: shahzâdegân bâ yekdiger chôni rûz chordend.
482. In Siamese luk mei is ‘son of the tree, fruit’ (Steinthal, Charakteristik, p. 150); compare Midrâsh rabbâ Leviticus, sect 7, where ‘children of the tree’ are spoken of, châlaḳtâ khâbhôd laʿêṣîm bishebhîl benêhem. The pearl is called by Waṣṣâf, p. 180. 15, zâdei yem ‘son of the sea.’ A curious mythological relationship is found in the Polynesian system; the year, a daughter of the first pair, combined with her own father to produce the months, and the children of the latter are the days (Gerland, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, VI. 233).
483. Fleischer in the Zeitschr. d. D. M. G., 1853, VII. 502 note.
484. Aġânî, XX. 54. 16.
485. Arabic tradition knows another name besides Zalîchâ for this person. In al-Ṭabarî her name is given as Râʿîl; see Ouseley, Travels in various Countries of the East, London 1819, I. 74; also in al-Beyḍâwî’s Anwâr al-tanzîl, ed. Fleischer, I. 456–8.