The Indian singer (Rigveda I. 164. 14), says that the sun has a sharp sight, and the same idea is preserved in a relic of Hebrew mythology, which has attached itself to an historical person. Of King David, an historical hero, it is written among other features borrowed from the myth of the Solar hero (to which also must belong the idea that he takes the life of his giant adversary by hurling stones), that 'he was ruddy, with beautiful eyes, and a good sight, admônî ʿim yephê ʿênayim we-ṭôbh rôʾî' (1 Sam. XVI. 12). The red colour itself which is praised, since the narrator evidently wishes to characterise David’s handsomeness, shows us that these traits cannot have been invented directly for the hero of this story; for it can scarcely be proved that the Hebrews in ancient times considered reddishness an element of beauty. But the red colour is admirably fitted to figures of the solar myth, as we shall have further occasion to observe in the course of this chapter. With this are connected the beautiful eyes and the good sight, which are certainly taken from the mythical description of the blazing midday sun. They are the relics of a mythic cycle only preserved in fragments, and have been tacked on to the portraiture of an historical hero, who had, like the Solar hero, to fight with a hostile giant. When the sun appeared at noon with a red glow at its highest point in the heaven, the men of old said ‘The Red one is looking down on the earth with his perfect eyes and sharp sight.’ And he viewed the diminution of the solar rays and heat as a weakening of his sight, which ended at sunset with total blindness. Samson (Shimshôn), the hero whose solar character Steinthal has raised above all doubt, ends his heroic career by being made blind. In the Greek mythology the significance of one-eyed and blinded persons is exhibited with equal clearness.[[309]] This mythical idea is very clearly reflected in language. In Arabic, for example, iṭlachamma or iṭrachamma signifies both oculos hebetiores habuit and obscura fuit [nox]. The verb aġdana, from which aġdan is derived, which is used of suffering from certain eye-diseases, expresses the idea of darkness, and the word inchasafa unites the two meanings to be eclipsed (of the moon) and to lose one’s sight. Hence the expression, al-leyl aʿwar, ‘the night is one-eyed.’[[310]] It becomes clear from all this what is the meaning of the mythical words, ‘And when Isaac was old, his eyes became too dim to see.’ It may also be mentioned here that Shakespeare calls night the eyeless:—

Thou and eyeless night

Have done me shame.

King John V. 6.

§ 4. The battle of the Day with the Night is still more frequently represented as a quarrel between brothers. At the very threshold of the earliest Biblical history we meet a brothers’ quarrel of this kind, the source of which is the nature-myth, spread out among all nations of the world without exception. It is not difficult to prove that Cain (Ḳayin) is a solar figure, and that Abel (Hebhel) is connected with the sky dark with night or clouds. Here, as everywhere, investigation must of course be guided by the nature of the personages in question, by the matter of the story, and by the appellative signification of the names. Cain is an agriculturist, Abel a shepherd. We have demonstrated in the preceding chapter that agriculture always has a solar character, whereas the shepherd’s life is connected with the phenomena of the cloudy or nightly sky. Shepherds in mythology are figures belonging to the dark or overclouded sky; whereas huntsmen and agriculturists are solar heroes. The heaven at night is a great tent or a group of tents, with a great piece of pasture close by, where the herds (the clouds) are driven to feed. In German, to be sure, the expression Himmelszelt (heaven’s tent) is also used of the heaven by day, but this is a generalisation of the original limitation to the nocturnal and cloudy sky. This limitation is still acknowledged in the Hungarian language, where sátoros éj is said, ‘the tented (provided with many tents) night;’ e.g. by Vörösmarty at the commencement of the second canto of his national epic ‘Zalán Futása’ (the Flight of Zalán). And in Arabic, ‘Night spread out its tent, and there arose thick darkness,’ is quite a familiar expression.[[311]]

The shepherd Abel (Hebhel) is accordingly a figure of the dark sky. This is proved also by the signification of the name. For it denotes neither childlessness, as some try to explain it by the help of Arabic, and on the supposition that the first parents anticipated their son’s future fate on giving his name, nor simply son, being explained from the Assyrian. The Hebrew language itself is adequate to establish the proper signification. The word denotes in Hebrew a ‘breath of wind;’[[312]] and the wind stands in connexion with the dark sky. Another modification of the same appellation is known to Hebrew mythology. As in other classes of language h and y may interchange dialectically, so here beside Hebhel (Abel) we have Yâbhâl (Jabal). This latter appellation is etymologically either identical with the former, or if not, at least its mythological identity can scarcely be questioned. Yâbhâl (from whence comes mabbûl, ‘body of water,’ hence of the Deluge) signifies Rain (like Indra). Rain and Wind are both attributes of the dark sky and the night-sky. In Arabic the verb ġasaḳa denotes both the darkness of the sky, and the rain, and (what exactly suits the mythical circle of ideas) the flowing of milk from the udder. The rain is to the men of the myth-creating age a milking of the cloud-cows, which the shepherd leads out to pasture by night on the heavenly meadows. The verb aġḍana, of which Freytag, following al-Jauharî, gives only the meaning perpetuo pluit coelum, is known to the classical lexicographer of Arabic synonyms also in the sense it is dark night. Similarly, aġḍafa denotes both obscura, atra fuit nox and ad pluviam effundendam paratum et dispositum fuit coelum. In poetry also rain is often attached to night: an old poet quoted by Ibn al-Sîkkît says,[[313]] ‘A dark night, during which a drenching rain pours down upon the streets.’[[314]]

The identity of Abel and Jabal appears conspicuously in another circumstance. Abel is introduced as a Herdsman. In the system of the harmonising genealogy of Genesis, in which Jabal appears some generations later, he is described as the ‘Father of those that dwell in tents and with cattle’ (Gen. IV. 2, 20). Both features or rather this identical feature told of both these Patriarchs, have a foundation and are equally true. But in the method of the critical school of Biblical exegesis these two accounts involve a contradiction which it is attempted to solve, either by the usual supposition of different narrators, or by minutely pressing the literal meaning of words and setting up delicate distinctions. The acute Knobel, for instance, pretends to know that 'Even Abel had kept cattle, but only small cattle, and these only in his own district; Jabal invented the moving about with cattle from one district to another.[[315]] It concerns us not to know how far Jabal extended the area of his pasture, and within what narrow limits Abel confined his: our assumption of the mythological identity of the two designations solves the inconsistency without any resort to minute distinctions.

Equally clear is also the Solar character of the name Cain (Ḳayin). This word, which, with other synonymous names of trades, occurs several times on the so-called Nabatean Sinaitic inscriptions,[[316]] signifies Smith,[[317]] maker of agricultural implements, and has preserved this meaning in the Arabic ḳayn[[318]] and the Aramaic ḳinâyâ, whilst in the later Hebrew it was lost altogether, being probably suppressed through the Biblical attempt to derive the proper name Cain etymologically from ḳânâ ‘to gain.’ In Hebrew therefore it appears only as the name of the first fratricide and of his duplicate Tubal-cain (Tûbhal-ḳayin), the brother of Jabal, who is called the founder of the smith’s trade (Gen. IV. 22), and stands to Cain in very much the same relation as Jabal does to Abel.

Cain is accordingly the same mythological figure as Hephaestus and Vulcan with the Greeks and Romans. But there are some other points which determine his Solar character. First, there is the characteristic that after the murder of his brother he built the first city, and called it Enoch (Chanôkh, Gen. IV. 17). We have seen above, and I shall show still more clearly in the treatment of the Myth of Civilisation, that in the myths of all peoples the Solar heroes are regarded as the founders of city-life, and that a fratricide often precedes the building of the city. The agricultural stage, which is connected with the Solar worship, overcomes the stage of nomadic life, which holds to the dark sky of night or clouds; and, after conquering the herdsmen, the surviving agriculturists build the first city. It will not surprise us if the solution of the question raised by F. Lenormant, ‘pour en suivre toutes les formes depuis Cain bâtissant le première ville Hanoch après avoir assassiné Abel, jusqu'à Romulus fondant Rome dans le sang de son frère Remus,’[[319]] proves the consistency and universality of the ideas of mankind at the mythic stage in reference to this point. Whether the connexion of the zodiacal figure of the Twins with this feature of the myth is so close as this acute French scholar imagines, is an independent question. The account of Cain as the first builder of a city is accordingly a testimony to his Solar character. But far more important testimony is afforded by the characteristic feature in the story of Cain, that after the commission of the crime that fratricide, laden with the curse of Jahveh, has to be ‘a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth’ (Gen. IV. 11). We will pause a little at this mythic feature, and passing beyond Cain, consider it in connexion with a larger group of myths which exhibit the same.[[320]]

§ 5. The word which preeminently denotes the Sun in the Semitic languages, and which, when the abundant synonyms produced by mythology to designate the Sun had vanished, drove all other names of the Sun into the background, viz. the Hebrew shemesh and the corresponding words in the cognate languages, has been proved to descend from the etymological basis of the idea of rapid motion, or busy running about. This original sense gives the point of connexion with the Aramaic terms shammêsh ‘to serve’ and shûmshemânâ ‘an ant.’[[321]] The same function which language exhibits in the most prominent name of the Sun is also repeatedly shown in mythology.