[164] Rawlinson says that there is no doubt that Nebo represents the planet Mercury, and between the attributes of Mercury or Hermes, the epithets of Nebo, and the traditions concerning Shem, there is something in common. He is the god of eloquence and persuasion—the god of alliances and peace. “He contributed to civilise the manners and cultivate the minds of the people.” “He united them by commerce and good laws.” The Egyptian Mercury or Thaut first invented landmarks. Finally, “He was consulted by the Titans, his relations, as an augur, which gave occasion to the poets to describe him as interpreter of the will of the gods.”—_L’Abbe de Tressan, “Mythology.”_
[165] “Notwithstanding the difficulty of ascending to so distant a period, there will always be found some traces by which truth may be discovered.... The historian Josephus relates that the Chaldæans from the earliest times carefully preserved the remembrance of past events by public inscriptions on their monuments. He says they caused these annals to be written by the wisest men of their nation.”—_L’Abbe de Tressan, “Hist. of Heathen Mythology.”_ London, 1806.
[166] I had come to the above conclusion upon the perusal of Rawlinson, and before I had read Bryant, who, I find, had already come to this identical conclusion. (“Mythology,” iii. 109.) Speaking of Berosus’ account of Oannes and Xisuthrus, he says, “The latter was undoubtedly taken from the archives of the Chaldæans. The former is allegorical and obscure, and was copied from hieroglyphical representations which could not be precisely deciphered.... In consequence of his borrowing from records so very different, we find him, without his being apprized of it, giving two histories of the same person. Under the character of the man of the sea, whose name was Oannes, we have an allegorical representation of the great patriarch; whom in his other history he calls Sisuthrus.”
[167] Bochart also says (Geog. Sacra, lib. i.) “Noam esse Saturnum tam multa docent, ut vix sit dubitandi locus.”
[168] “Cum falce, messis insigne.”—Macrobius, “Saturn.”
[169] Sanchoniathon, vide supra M’Lennan ([ch. vii.])
[170] Bryant (Mythology, ii. 261) says:—“He is by Lucian made to say of himself οὐδεις ὑπ' ἐμοῦ δούλος ἠν. The Latins in great measure confine his history to their own country, where, like Janus, he is represented as refining and modelling mankind, and giving them laws. At other times he is introduced as prior to law; which are seeming contrarieties very easy to be reconciled.” There were traditions also of Saturn in Crete and Sparta.—Bryant, iii. 414.
[172] An indirect argument in proof of the identity of Saturn and Noah might be adduced if I had space to incorporate Boulanger’s evidence of the ceremonies among the ancients’ commemoration of the Deluge, (“Vestiges d’usages hydrophoriques dans plusieurs fêtes anciennes et modernes”). This being assumed, is it not of some significance that when the Roman pontiffs proceeded to the banks of the Tiber to perform their annual (commemorative) ceremonial, that they should make their expiatory sacrifices to Saturn? The points that Bryant takes (ii. 262) are very striking:—“He was looked upon as the author of time, ‘Ipse qui auctor temporum’ (Macrob. i. 214). [His medals had on the reverse the figure of a ship.] They represented him as of an uncommon age, with hair white as snow; they had a notion that he would return to second childhood. ‘Ipsius autem canities primosis nivibus candicabat; licet etiam ille puer posse fieri crederetur.’—Martianus Capella. Martial’s address to him, though short, has in it something remarkable, for he speaks of him as a native of the former world—
‘Antiqui rex magne poli, mundique prioris,