It was already an ancient town at the beginning of the Egyptian conquest. As in other places of ancient date, the inhabitants rejoiced in stories of the origin of things in which the city figured as the most venerable in the world. After the period of the creating gods, there followed immediately, according to the current legends, two or three generations of minor deities—heroes of light and flame—who had learned how to subdue fire and turn it to their needs; then a race of giants, associated with the giant peaks of Kasios, Lebanon, Hermon, and Brathy;* after which were born two male children—twins: Samem-rum, the lord of the supernal heaven, and Usôos, the hunter. Human beings at this time lived a savage life, wandering through the woods, and given up to shameful vices.
* The identification of the peak of Brathy is uncertain. The
name has been associated with Tabor: since it exactly
recalls the name of the cypress and of Berytus, it would be
more prudent, perhaps, to look for the name in that of one
of the peaks of the Lebanon near the latter town.
Samemrum took up his abode among them in that region which became in later times the Tyrian coast, and showed them how to build huts, papyrus, or other reeds: Usôos in the mean time pursued the avocation of a hunter of wild beasts, living upon their flesh and clothing himself with their skins. A conflict at length broke out between the two brothers, the inevitable result of rivalry between the ever-wandering hunter and the husbandman attached to the soil.
Usôos succeeded in holding his own till the day when fire and wind took the part of his enemy against him.* The trees, shaken and made to rub against each other by the tempest, broke into flame from the friction, and the forest was set on fire. Usôos, seizing a leafy branch, despoiled it of its foliage, and placing it in the water let it drift out to sea, bearing him, the first of his race, with it.
* The text simply states the material facts, the tempest and
the fire: the general movement of the narrative seems to
prove that the intervention of these elements is an episode
in the quarrel between the two brothers—that in which
Usôos is forced to fly from the region civilized by
Samemrum.
Landing on one of the islands, he set up two menhirs, dedicating them to fire and wind that he might thenceforward gain their favour. He poured out at their base the blood of animals he had slaughtered, and after his death, his companions continued to perform the rites which he had inaugurated.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from the original in the
Cabinet des Médailles.