And Gonzala adds,—
When we were boys,
Who would believe that there were mountaineers
Dew-lapp'd like bulls, whose throats had hanging at them
Wallets of flesh? or that there were such men,
Whose heads stood in their breasts.
The Amorites, the most important tribe of the aborigines of Palestine, are described in the Jewish Rabbinical writings as of enormous stature. Amos indeed, speaks of them, figuratively, as being as high as cedars and as strong as oaks. It is stated in Deuteronomy that the iron bed of Og, King of Bashan, was nine cubits long and four in breadth. This bed, however, by some, is believed to have been really a kind of divan. The Rabbinical writers were not, however, content with even a literal interpretation of these passages. In the Jalkut Shimoni we are told that Moses informed Azräel, the Angel of Death, that the dimensions of Og and Sihon were so great that they escaped drowning at the great Deluge, the water of which reached no higher than their ancles! According to the Sevachir, Og placed his feet on the fountains of the Great Deep, and, by putting his hand on the windows of Heaven, he stopped the Deluge! On the water being made so hot, however, that the monster's lower extremities became parboiled, he was compelled to desist. He nevertheless mounted the ark, and survived the great catastrophe. He was said to consume daily one thousand oxen, one thousand head of game, and one thousand measures of wine. He was a famous hand at uplifting mountains and other objects of similarly trifling magnitude! He met with a mishap, however, whilst conveying a rock "three miles in extent," with which he proposed to annihilate the Israelitish army at one blow! We are further informed that Joshua, who was ten ells high, perceiving that the rock was crumbling to pieces around the giant's shoulders, struck him on the ancle with an axe ten ells in length, and thus lamed him for life. Sihon was so powerful that no creature on earth could withstand him. It seems, however, that he derived his strength not altogether from his immense physique, but from a demon with which he was connected, inasmuch as the Israelites speedily vanquished both him and his gigantic Amorite followers, after the said demon had been effectually confined in chains. The Amorites may have been men of large stature in comparison with the surrounding tribes. This is by no means improbable. Two recent travellers, Mr. Porter and the Rev. Cyril Graham, testify to the Cyclopean character of the remains of some of the ancient cities of Bashan, which they succeeded in discovering, after infinite toil and fatigue, the former in 1853 and the latter in 1857. Some of the houses are described as being built of immense masses of squared stones of the neighbouring basalt rock, without mortar or other cement, with an enormous basaltic "flag" for the roof, and a similar one for a door or gateway. Some of the latter Mr. Graham found still in position, and capable of being turned on the stone pivots which supplied the place of hinges.
Mr. Gladstone, in his "Juventus Mundi," contends that the "Cyclops, a godless race," are the children of Poseidon, and that Poseidon (the Greek Neptune) was the chief god of the Phœnicians. He adds, "Syria was inhabited by Canaanites; and it has been observed that the names given in Scripture to that race indicate great stature and physical force, which became the basis of a tradition that they were a race of giants. To the Greek mind this would naturally convey that they were the children of Poseidon, as the Phœnician god."
The ruins at Baalbec, and the sites of other ancient Phœnician cities, present numerous specimens of colossal masonry, of most extraordinary dimensions. In a wall at Baalbec three large blocks of stone are described as still in situ, at the height of twenty feet from the ground, which measure each twelve feet in width, twelve feet in depth, and sixty feet in length. Mr. John D. Baldwin, in his "Pre-historic Nations," contends that the ancient Phœnicians were of Cushite of Hamite origin. Speaking of their stupendous architectural remains, he says:—
"The Cushite origin of these cities is so plain that those most influenced by the strange monomania which transforms the Phœnicians into Semites now admit that the Cushites were the first civilisers in Phœnicia. These old builders, whose sculpture produced such astonishing effects in coarse rock, resorted to wood and metal for the finish and ornamentation of their work. The stone they used was not Parian marble, therefore they covered it with ornament of another material, and 'what remains of their monuments is not the monument itself, but the gross support that served to bear the whole system of decoration under which the stone was concealed.'"
In relatively recent times, India appears to have been regarded as especially the land of giants, marvels, and enchantments. Honest old Sir John Mandeville, in his quaint, credulous, innocent way, tells us that there are, in one of the Indian islands, "folks of great stature, as giants, and they be hideous to look upon, and they have but one eye, and that is in the middle of the front, and they eat nothing but raw flesh and raw fish." He further adds that they were clothed in the skins of beasts, they drank milk, preferred man's flesh to all other food, and they had no houses to live in. In another Indian island, Sir John tells us he was informed that giants dwelt "of great stature—some fifty cubits long;" but he adds, with commendable caution, "I saw none of these, for I had no lust to go to those parties, because no man cometh neither into that Isle nor into the other, but he is devoured anon. Men say that many times the giants take men into the sea out of their ships and bring them to land, two in one hand and two in another, eating them going, all raw and all quick."
The extravagance manifested in these giant legends may have arisen from two distinct sources, besides the one to which I have alluded. In the first place giant did not originally mean bulk or extraordinary height. The Hebrew word nephilim, used in the Bible, according to Dr. Derham, is sometimes employed to signify "violent men," and it is translated by a word carrying such a meaning by several ancient writers. He considers that "monsters of rapine and wickedness" are referred to rather than giants in stature. And it is perfectly true that vice and violence are almost always characteristic of these legendary huge-limbed gentry; while the conqueror, who represents the better morals of the age of the myths, is generally of the dimensions of ordinary humanity.
The discovery of certain fossil bones of colossal size for a time seemed to countenance the belief in the physical existence of this mythic race. Buffon, indeed, describes and figures large bones as the remains of giants, which are now well known to pertain to a species of extinct fossil elephant.
In a letter from Dr. Mather to Dr. Woodward, published in the Royal Society's Transactions, reference is made to a discovery, at Albany, in New England, in 1705, of enormous bones and teeth. The doctor calls them the bones of a giant, and refers to them as corroborative of the statement in Genesis, c. 6, v. 4. The bones in question, however, turned out to belong to the great American fossil pachyderm, the Mastodon giganteus. There is a tradition amongst the red Indians, that a race of men, relatively large in stature, existed contemporaneously with these animals, and that both were destroyed by the Great Spirit with thunderbolts. One account says,—that "as a troop of these terrible quadrupeds were destroying the deer, the bisons, and the other animals created for the use of the Indians, the 'Great Man,' slew them all with his thunder, except the Big Bull, who, nothing daunted, presented his enormous forehead to the bolts, and shook them off as they fell, till, being at last wounded in the side, he fled towards the great lakes, where he is to this day."