they brought with them out of Bactria), but not more than enough.

That gives us the framework for the place of Egypt on this side, reckoning from below.

But our researches into the Arian Origines are no less important and decisive as regards the task of establishing the internal position of Egypt in general history, and with it the oldest epoch of Asiatic civilisation since the great catastrophe in Northern Asia.

The two great formative branches of the human race, the Semitic and Arian, exhibit indelible marks of their common origin, in language and religion, in the reminiscences of the antediluvian foretime, and the civilisation of the primeval world, which were interwoven into the traditions of each.

Each commenced a course of independent development, by which humanity was raised one step higher, at the very point where Egyptian civilisation, when considered as a portion of the general progression of the human race, became stationary.

As their condition prior to the separation was stereotyped in the valley of the Nile, so Babylon forms the point of junction for the separate Arian and Semitic systems of religion and of thought.

The strongest influence exercised over mankind by Magism emanated from Chaldea, though its origin was Arian, that is Zoroastrian. We can find no root for Mag, the Magian (the mighty), in Hebrew or Chaldee. The reason why this influence was so strongly exercised by the Chaldee arose partly from its more western position, and partly from the preponderance of Chaldean astronomy and astrology over those of the Arian as well as Old-Egyptian populations.

The great historical position and influence of Abraham, the Hebrew, belong, at all events, to a later age than Zoroaster. But not only is there no indication of the race of Abraham having been affected by the modifica

tion produced in the old natural religion of Asia by means of Indo-Bactrian minstrels and founders of religious systems, but everything testifies to the contrary. There is no certain proof that the Zendavesta contains a single Semitic idea, or single Semitic word, 274 nor even the name, indeed, of a single country peopled by Semitic

races.

In order to complete our Arian researches we have only to cast a glance at the traditions of the PelasgoHellenic Arians of Europe.

274 The only word which it is possible with any certainty to refer to the Semitic is tanûra, oven, stove; in Hebrew, tannûr. But the Semitic origin of even this is doubtful, and the first mention of it occurs moreover in the Vêndidâd.

Q 4

OXFORD

MUSEUM

PART VIII.

THE

BEGINNINGS OF THE HISTORY OF THE IONIANS IN

ASIA MINOR,

AND THE ANTIQUITY OF THEIR NAME.