Fig. 457.—Maat.
Fig. 458.—Mut.
Surmounting the Maat here illustrated is a conspicuous feather which we have already connoted with feeder and fodder. Maat, the giver of provision from that which is in the granary of the Great God, is thus presumably allied with meat, also to mud,[873] or liquid earth. The word mud is not found in Anglo-Saxon, but is evidently the Phœnician mot, and it would be difficult for modern science to add very much to the prehistoric conception of the Phœnicians. According to their great historian Sancaniathon: “The beginning of all things was a condensed, windy air, or a breeze of thick air, and a chaos turbid and black as Erebus. Out of this chaos was generated Môt, which some call Ilus” (mud), “but others the putrefaction of a watery mixture. And from this sprang all the seed of the creation, and the generation of the universe.... And, when the air began to send forth light, winds were produced, and clouds, and very great defluxions and torrents of the heavenly waters.”[874] It is probable that Sancaniathon, the Phœnician sage to whom the above passage is attributed, was radically Iathon or Athene.
We have connoted the Egyptian sun-god Phra with Pharoah, or Peraa, who was undoubtedly the earthly representative of the same Fire or Phare as was worshipped by the Parsees, or Farsees of Persia: the Persian historians dilate with enthusiasm on the justice, wisdom, and glory of a fabulous Feridoon whose virtues acquired him the appellation of the Fortunate, and it is probable that this Feridoon was the Fair Idoon whose palace, like the Fairy Donn’s, was located on some humble fire dun, or peri down. The name Feridoon, or Ferdun (the Fortunate),[875] is translated as meaning paradisiacal: Ferdusi is etymologically equivalent to perdusi, which is no doubt the same word as paradise, and we can almost visualise the term feridoon transforming itself into fairy don. Nevertheless by one Parthian poet it was maintained—
The blest Feridoon an angel was not,
Of musk or of amber, he formed was not;
By justice and mercy good ends gained he,
Be just and merciful thou’lt a Feridoon be.[876]