Of the transactions previous to the Deluge there are but few and faint memorials among the heathens. One of the most authentic may be found in the remains of the Phoenician History of Sanchoniatho, who is considered to be the most ancient writer of the heathen world. In what age he wrote is uncertain but his history was composed in the Phoenician language, and its materials collected from the archives of the Phoenician cities. It was translated into Greek by Philo Byblius, and for the preservation of these fragments we are indebted to the care of Eusebius.

The Cosmogony* I shall have occasion to refer to hereafter: as one of the most ancient, it is extremely valuable, and as it speaks more plainly than the rest, it affords a key to their interpretation.

The Generations contain many very curious passages. In the first† is an allusion to the fall: in the second Genus may be Cain: after which we lose the traces of similarity: at the fifth there is an interruption. But taking up the thread of inquiry, at the end, in Taautus or Thoyth,§ we may recognize Athothis,|| the second king of Egypt, the Hermes Trismegistus, who again appears as the adviser of Cronus. His predecessor Misor

then corresponds with Mizraïm, the first king of Egypt, the Menes and Mines of the dynasties.* In the preceding generation is Amynus, Amon, or Ham, the same with the Cronus,† of what by the historian is supposed to be a different but contemporary line. An ascent higher we find, Agrus, the husbandman, who was worshipped in Phonicia as the greatest of the gods: he corresponds with Noah, the Ouranus of the other line, whose original name was Epigeus or Autochthon.

Sanchoniatho seems to have been a very diligent inquirer, and intimates at the conclusion that the generations contain the real history of those early times, stripped of the fictions and allegories with which it had been obscured by the son of Thabion, the first hierophant of Phoenicia. That such is the case, we are assured by Philo Byblius, in the remarks on Sanchoniatho with which he prefaces his translation of the work. The passage also informs us that the history thus disguised was handed down to Isiris, the brother of Chna the first Phoenician, apparently alluding to Mizraïm the brother of Canaan.

It is very remarkable that he has placed these characters in the true order of succession, though in all the traditions of the heathens they are generally confounded with one another. It is also remarkable that Sanchoniatho is almost the only

*See pp. 8, 84, 94, 139.

† pp. 8, 9.

+ p. 16.

heathen writer upon antiquities who makes no direct mention of the deluge, though several obscure allusions to it may be found in the course of the fragment. Were we assured of his silence upon the point in the parts of his work that have been lost, the omission might still be accounted for from his avowed determination to suppress what he considered merely allegorical, for he would find the traditions of the deluge so intimately blended with those relating to the creation, that in endeavouring to disengage the truth from the fable he might easily be induced to suppose that they related to the same event.

For explanation of his fragment upon the mystical sacrifice of the Phoenicians,* I must refer to the very curious dissertations by Bryant† and Mr. Faber. Sanchoniatho wrote also a history of the serpent, a single fragments of which is preserved by Eusebius.

In the fragments of Berossus again we have perhaps some few traces of the antediluvian world. Like Sanchoniatho, Berossus seems to have composed his work with a serious regard for truth. He was a Babylonian by birth, and flourished in the reign of Alexander the Great, and resided for some years at Athens. As a priest of Belus, he possessed every advantage which the records of

*p. 16.

Pag. Idol. Lib. II. c. 8.

Mythology vi. 323.
§ p. 17.

the temple and the learning and traditions of the Chaldæans could afford. He appears to have sketched his history of the earlier times from the representations upon the walls of the temple.* From written and traditionary knowledge he must have learned several points too well authenticated to be called in question; and correcting the one by the other, and at the same time blending them as usual with Mythology, he has produced the strange history before us.

The first fragment preserved by Alexander Polyhistor is extremely valuable, and contains a store of very curious information. The first book of the history apparently opens naturally enough with a description of Babylonia. Then referring to the paintings, the author finds the first series a kind of preface to the rest. All men of every nation appear assembled in Chaldæa :‡ among them is introduced a personage who is represented as their instructor in the arts and sciences, and informing them of the events which had previously taken place. Unconscious that Noah is represented under the character of Oannes, Berossus describes him, from the hieroglyphical delineation, as a being literally compounded of a fish and a man, and as passing the natural, instead of the diluvian night in the ocean, with other circumstances indicative of his character and life.

* See
pp. 22, 24.

† p. 21.

‡ p. 22.

The instructions of the Patriarch are detailed in the next series of paintings. In the first* of which, I conceive, the Chaos is pourtrayed by the confusion of the limbs of every kind of animal: the second represents the creation of the universe: the third the formation of mankind: others again that of animals, and of the heavenly bodies.

The second book appears to have comprehended the history of the ante-diluvian world: and of this the two succeeding fragments§ seem to have been extracts. The historian, as usual, has appropriated the history of the world to Chaldæa. He finds nine persons, probably represented as kings, preceding Noah, who is again introduced under the name Xisuthrus, and he supposes that the representation was that of the first dynasty of the Chaldæan kings. From the universal consent of history and tradition he was well assured that Alorus or Orion, the Nimrod of the Scriptures, was the founder of Babylon and the first king: consequently he places him at the top, and Xisuthrus follows as the tenth. The destruction of the records by Nabonasar || left him to fill up the intermediate names as he could: and who are inserted, is not easy so to determine.¶

In the Syriac Chronicle of Bar-Hebræus, the names in the catalogue are given to certain recluses of the line of Seth, called the Sons of God, who lived upon Mount Hermon, and afterwards apostatized and became the fathers of the Giants.