[147] Compare these epithets, and what was said above, of resemblance “to classical Hades,” with the following verses from the “Oracula Sybillina,” lib. i. 80—
“Orcus eos cepit græco qui nomine dictus
Est Ades, quod primus eo descenderit Adam,
Expertus mortis legem,” &c.
[148] Osiris also is “the judge of the soul, or the god of the world of spirits.” “Osiris is never represented in an animal form, but is called the Bull” (infra pp. [203, 204]), vide Bunsen’s “Egypt,” iv. 332. Bunsen’s own view is, that “the history of Osiris is the history of the cycle of the year, of the sun dying away and resuscitating himself again.” Mr Palmer (“Egyptian Chronicles,” i. p. 3) says—(and I think it as well that I should state that I had come to an almost identical conclusion, and had written this and the following chapter before I became acquainted with Mr Palmer’s profound and yet still neglected work, vide [ch. vi.])—“The first human (‘Osiris = Adam and Isis = Eve’) having been thrown back into pairs of anthropomorphous deities (p. 2), the original Osiris and Isis, formed by the divine potter as parents of all, disappear in name, and are represented by Seb and Nutpe, while Osiris, Typhon, and Horus, the progeny of Seb and Nutpe, answers rather to Cain, Abel, and Seth, in the old world, and to the three sons of Noah in the new.... From Osiris-Seb (whether he be viewed as Adam or Noah) are derived downwards all the successive generations of Egyptian, gods and demigods, patriarchs, kings, and other men” [and for a parallel exposition of the Phœnician myth, vide Palmer, p. 53 and seq., “each dynast in turn, in the early generations, being identifiable at once with Seb and Osiris, as father of those following, with Osiris again by sharing the same mortality, and with Horus as renewing his father’s life and being the hope of the coming world. So each ancestor in turn went, it was said, to the original Osiris as patriarch of the dead, and to his intermediate Osirified fathers, and was himself Osirified like them, all making one collective Osiris.” [I have not space to discuss the question at what stage the mythology became pantheistic.] “Waiting for that reunion and restoration which was to come through successive generations by the great expected Horus, who was to take up into himself the old, and to be himself the new Osiris.”
[149] In a note to Cardinal Wiseman’s “Science and Revealed Religion” on Conformity between Semitic and Indo-Europ. grammatical forms, it will be seen that Ana in Chaldaic is the pronoun of the first person singular, and corresponds with the revealed appellation of the Deity, “I Am who Am” (Exod. iii. 14) = the τò Ἔγω.
[150] Max Müller, Chips i. 153, refers to Dr Windischmann’s (“Zoroastrian Studies”) discovery that there are ten generations between Adam and Noah, as there are ten generations in the Zendavesta between Yima (Adam) and Thrâstouna (Noah), and without controverting the point. Mr Palmer (“Egypt. Chron.,” i. 45) says—“And though the fancy of making the ten kings to begin only after 1058 years, and to be not all named from the same city, seems to distinguish them from Adam and the nine patriarchs his descendants, still Xisuthrus, the tenth, being clearly identified with Noah, by the flood and the ark, the very number ten, and the relation of the succession in which they stand one to the other, show that Alorus, the first of them, is no other than Adam.”
[151] Gainet (i. 211) quotes as follows from “Ceremonies Relig.” i. vii.: “The Mandans pretend that the Deluge was caused by the white men to destroy their ancestors. The whites caused the waters to rise to such a height that the world was submerged. Then the first man, whom they regard as one of their divinities, inspired mankind with the idea of constructing, upon an eminence, a tower and fortress of wood, and promised them that the water should not rise beyond this point.” Here seems a very analogous confused tradition of Adam and Nimrod, the Deluge and the Tower of Babel. Comp. with the distinct testimony to the Mandan tradition, infra, [ch. xi.]
[152] I find that the Egyptians had the same confused tradition respecting Menes, who stood to them in the same relation as Nimrod to the Assyrians (vide Bunsen’s Egypt, ii. p. 65). “The statement in Manetho’s lists that Menes was torn to pieces by a hippopotamus, is probably an exaggeration of an early legend, that he was carried away by a hippopotamus, one of the symbols of the god of the lower world. The great ruler was snatched away from the earth, to distinguish him from other mortals, just as Romulus was.”
[153] “Etienne de Byzance dit qu’à ‘Icone’ (‘de urbibus’ voce ‘Iconium’) ville de Lycaonie près du Mont Taurus dans les régions occupées par les habitants antediluviens regnait Annacus dont la vie alla au-déla de trois cents ans. Tous les habitants d’alentour demandèrent à un oracle jusqu’à quelle époque se prolongerait sa vie. L’oracle répondit que ce patriarche étant mort, tout le monde devait s’attendre à périr. Les Phrygiens à cette ménace jetèrent les hauts cris, d’où est venu le proverbe: ‘Pleurer sous Annacus, ce que l’on dit de ceux qui se livrent à des grands gémissements. Or le Déluge étant survénu tous périrent.... Dans ces récits tout est conformé à la Bible. Annacus a vécu trois cents ans avant le Déluge. Il a averti ses concitoyens: il est entouré du même respect que le patriarche Noë lui-même. Annacus parait venir d’Enoch; tout announce une identité de personnages.” (Gainet, Hist. de L’Anc. et Nouv. Test. i. 94, 95.) The connection between the death of Enoch and the destruction of mankind may accord as well with the traditional belief in his reappearance at the end of the world.