Note.—At page [88], the Malagasy idol Ramahavaly is spoken of as still existing. As a fact, however, in 1869 all the Malagasy national idols were, by order of the Government, publicly burned. Many other idols and charms were at the same time destroyed by their owners.—Madagascar and its People, by the Rev. James Sibree, Jun., p. 481.

[CHAPTER IV.]
THE ADAMITES.

Much has from time to time been written as to the distinction between the Adamites and the pre-Adamites, although little has been done to identify the members of the two great divisions into which the human race has been thus divided. Those who accept the Deluge of Noah as a historical fact, stated however in terms too wide, may say generally that all the descendants of this patriarch are, as such, Adamites, while the pre-Adamites comprise the peoples of the primitive area inhabited by the dark races, supposed by some writers to be referred to in the Hebrew Scriptures under the term ish, “the sons of man,” as distinguished from the sons of Adam. Little value, however, can be attached to such a general statement as this. Supposing Noah to have been a second common father of the race, we are still ignorant as to what peoples are to be classed among his descendants. No doubt the Toldoth Beni Noah of Genesis throws considerable light on the question. According to that genealogical table the whole earth was divided after the Flood among the families of the three sons of Noah—Shem, Ham, and Japheth. It is not necessary here to identify the peoples described as the descendants of these patriarchs. It will suffice to say that Professor Rawlinson, who differs only in one or two particulars from other recent authorities, writes as to the distribution of those peoples: “Whereas the Japhetic and Hamitic races are geographically contiguous, the former spread over all the northern regions known to the genealogist—Greece, Thrace, Scythia, most of Asia Minor, Armenia, and Media; the latter over all the south and the south-west, North Africa, Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia, Southern and Southeastern Arabia, and Babylonia—so the Semitic races are located in what may be called one region, that region being the central one, lying intermediate between the Japhetic region upon the north and the Hamitic one upon the south.”

Supposing the Toldoth to give an exact statement of the descendants of the three sons of Noah, it by no means follows that the peoples there referred to are alone entitled to be classed as Adamites, and I propose, therefore, to see whether the latter can be identified by other evidence. Almost intuitively we turn, in the first place, to that region known as Chaldea, which has furnished in our own days material so important for the reconstruction of the annals of civilised man in the earliest historical period. Professor Rawlinson, indeed, at the Liverpool meeting of the British Association, held in 1870, sought to establish that the Garden of Eden of the Hebrew writers was none other than Babylonia; a hypothesis which certainly agrees with Sir Henry Rawlinson’s statement that Héa, the third member of the primitive Chaldean triad, may be connected with the Paradisaical traditions of the tree of knowledge and the tree of life. This would point to Chaldea as the original home of the Adamites, unless, indeed, the traditions were derived from a still earlier centre, and it will be well to ascertain whether there is anything in the history of Babylon which directly connects its people with the Adamic stock.

If we were to accept with Chwolson the great antiquity of “The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture,” there would be no difficulty in assigning such a position to the Chaldeans. For this book not only expressly declares that they were the descendants of Adam, but in it Adam appears as the founder of agriculture in Babylon, acting the part of a civiliser, and hence named “The Father of Mankind.” This agrees well with the Old Testament account of Adam as the first cultivator of the ground. M. Renan, however, would seem to have conclusively established the late date of the so-called Nabathæan work, showing that it contains legends as to Adam, Seth, Enoch, Noah, and Abraham, “analogous to those which they have in the apocryphal writings of the Jews and Christians, and subsequently in those of the Mussulmans,” Adam being known to all the Moslem East as “The Father of Mankind.”

We must seek, therefore, for some more reliable record of early Chaldean history; and this we have in the stone monuments on which its annals were engraved. Sir Henry Rawlinson, on their authority, says of the Chaldeans of Babylonia that they were “a branch of the great Hamitic race of Akkad, which inhabited Babylonia from the earliest times. With this race originated the art of writing, the building of cities, the institution of a religious system, the cultivation of all science, and of astronomy in particular.” The race affinity of the Akkad is hardly yet settled, but some information as to this point may be gained from the name by which they were designated. This appears to be composed of two words Ak(k)-Ad, the latter of which may be identified with the first syllable of the name Adam. As to the word Ak, some light may probably be thrown on its meaning by reference to the Celtic languages. Baldwin, without seeing its full bearing, makes the remark that the Dravidians of Southern India use Mag, as the Berbers and Gaels use Mac (Mach), the former word denoting “kindred” in all the Teutonic languages. Now, it could be proved by many examples that the letter M, which is found at the beginning of certain words in various eastern languages, is often simply a prefix. This is especially the case in Hebrew and Arabic, and, therefore, probably in the more ancient languages with which they are allied. Such, at least, must be the case with the initial letter of the word mach, “son,” as in Erse the m is wanting, and in Welsh the related word, having the sense of “a root or stem, lineage,” is also simply ach. Thus Ak(k)-Ad may well be “the sons or lineage of Ad;” as Mac-Adam in Gaelic is a son of Adam. That the first syllable of this word had the signification here assigned to it is rendered extremely probable by another circumstance. It is well known that the Welsh equivalent for Mach, in the sense of “son,” is Ap; and so also we find that in Hebrew “son” is rendered by ben (the Assyrian ban), while in Arabic it is ibn. In these words the b is the root sound, and if son was expressed by ak in the old Akkad tongue, this would bear the same relation to the Semitic languages as the Welsh does to the Gaelic and Erse—ak and ben in the one class answering to ach and ap in the other. Nor is this view without positive support. The Hebrew has a word ach which expresses, not only the sense of “a brother,” but also “one of the same kindred.” In Assyrian uk means a “people,” while ak signifies a “Creator;” these words being connected with the old Egyptian uk, and also ahi, “to live.”

Nor is the idea that the Chaldean Akkad were literally “the sons of Ad” without historical basis. According to Berosus, the first Babylonian dynasty was Median. What people were referred to by this name is still undecided. Professor Rawlinson supposes that they were really the same as the so-called Aryan Medes of later history, while Sir Henry Rawlinson, although treating the later Medes as Aryan, yet considers those of Bersosus to have belonged to a Turanian, or at least a mixed Scytho-Aryan, stock. Elsewhere Professor Rawlinson seems inclined to identify the Chaldean Akkad with these Medes, as a Turanian people who at a very early date conquered the Babylonian Kushites and mixed with them. This is, in fact, the conclusion which appears to be required by other considerations. The name by which the Medes are first noticed on the Assyrian monuments is Mad. But if the initial labial is removed, this name is reduced to the more simple form Ad; and, supposing the explanation given of the primitive name of the Chaldean race to be correct, the (M)ad who preceded them would really be the parent stock from which the Akkad, or Chaldeans, were derived. Confirmation of this notion may be supplied from another source. Among their Aryan neighbours the later Medes had the distinctive title of Már. This, Sir Henry Rawlinson supposes to have given rise, “not only to the Persian traditions of Zohák and his snakes, but to the Armenian traditions also of the dragon dynasty of Media, the word Már having in Persian the signification of a snake.” But this must have been through ignorance of the real origin of the title, which had reference rather to the lion than to the snake. The Arab historian, Massoudi, in accounting for the application to the city of Babylon of the name of Iran-Sheher, observes that, “according to some, the true orthography should be Arian-Sheher,” which signifies in Nabathæan, “the city of Lions,” and that “this name of Lion designated the kings of Assyria, who bore the general title of Nimrud.” Sir Henry Rawlinson thinks that the title Már is Scythic, and, if so, there can be little doubt of its signification. The primitive meaning of Ar was “fire,” from which the lion, as the symbol of the Sun-god was called ari, the Sun-god himself having a name Ra. Strictly, therefore, Már would denote “fire-worshippers,” a title which, as is well-known, was especially applicable to the ancient Medes. The Aryans generally appear to have been Sun-or Fire-worshippers, and probably they received their name from this fact. This would seem to be much more probable than the ordinary derivation of the name Aryan from the root ar, “to plough;” and it would include the sense of “noble” preferred by Mr. Peile, “children of the Sun” being usually a special title of the priestly or royal caste.

Connected with this question is that of the origin of the name of the Greek god Ares (the Latin Mars). Among other grounds for inferring the Asiatic origin of this deity is his connection with Herakles. The Latin myth of Hercules and Cacus would seem, moreover, to require the identification of the former with Mars. Such would appear to be the case also in Chaldean mythology. The Babylonian Mars was called Nergal, which is probably the same name as “Hercules,” and Sir Henry Rawlinson suggests that the only distinction to be made between that deity and Nin, or Hercules, as gods of war and hunting, is that the former is more addicted to the chase of animals and the latter to that of mankind. That Hercules, or Herakles, was of Phœnician or Assyrian origin has been fully established by the learned researches of M. Raoul-Rochette, who has shown, moreover, that the proper name of that deity was Sandan or Adanos (Adan), a name which not only reminds us of Aduni, supposed by Professor Rawlinson to be a primeval Chaldean deity, but also recalls that of the Median Ad, and even of the Hebrew Adam.

A remark made by Lajard strongly confirms the idea that the Latin war-god was derived from a similar source. This learned French writer accounts for the rapidity with which Mazdëism, better known as the worship of Mithra, spread among the Romans, by supposing that it was in some way connected with their national worship. Probably a key to this connection may be found in the curious figures of Mithra which appear to have been peculiar to the Roman phase of Mazdëism. These figures, which are encircled by a serpent, unite to the human body and limbs, the head of the lion, and they might well be taken to represent Mars himself, since the title Már, which was distinctive of the Medes, not only conveyed the idea of a serpent, but was also, and more intimately, associated with the lion symbol of the Sun-god.