Their death seems to have been due to a long period of terrible heat and drought.
On a couch was a damsel more beautiful than all the daughters of Adam; she was embalmed, so as to preserve all her charms. Her eyes were of glass, filled with quick
{p. 274}
silver, which seemed to follow the beholder's every motion. Near her was a tablet of gold, on which was inscribed:
"In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful.... the Lord of lords, the Cause of causes; the Everlasting, the Eternal. . . . Where are the kings of the regions of the earth" Where are the Amalekites? Where are the mighty monarchs? The mansions are void of their presence, and they have quitted their families and homes. Where are the kings of the foreigners and the Arabs? They have all died and become rotten bones. Where are the lords of high degree? They have all died. Where are Korah and Haman? Where is Sheddad, the son of Add? Where are Canaan and Pharaoh? God hath cut them off, and it is he who cutteth short the lives of mankind, and he hath made the mansions to be void for their presence. . . . I am Tadmor, the daughter of the king of the Amalekites, of those who ruled the countries with equity: I possessed what none of the kings possessed," (i. e., in extent of dominion,) "and ruled with justice, and acted impartially toward my subjects; I gave and bestowed; and I lived a longtime in the enjoyment of happiness and an easy life, and emancipated both female and male slaves. Thus I did until the summoner of death came, and disasters occurred before me. And the cause was this: Seven years in succession came upon us, during which no water descended on us from heaven, nor did any grass grow for us on the face of the earth. So we ate what food we had in our dwellings, and after that we fell upon the beasts and ate, and there remained nothing. Upon this, therefore, I caused the wealth to be brought, and meted it with a measure, and sent it, by trusty men, who went about with it through all regions, not leaving unvisited a single large city, to seek for some food. But they found it not, and they returned to us with the wealth after a long absence. So, thereupon we exposed to view our riches and our treasures, locked the gates of the fortresses in our city, and submitted ourselves to the decrees of our Lord; and thus we all died, as thou beholdest, and left what we had built and what we had treasured."
{p. 275}
And this strange tale has relations to all the other legends.
Here we have the great demon, darting fire, blazing, smoking, the destructive one; the rebel against the good God. He is overthrown by the bright-shining one, Dimiriat, the same as the Dev-Mrityu of the Hindoos; he and his forces are cut to pieces, and scattered over the land, and he, after being chased for months through space, is captured and chained. Associated with all this is a people of the Bronze Age--a highly civilized people; a people living on an island in the Western Sea, who perished by a calamity which came on them suddenly; "a summoner of death" came and brought disasters; and then followed a long period of terrible heat and drought, in which not they alone, but all nations and cities, were starved by the drying up of the earth. The demon had devoured the cows-the clouds; like Cacus, he had dragged them backward into his den, and no Hercules, no Indra, had arisen to hurl the electric bolt that was to kill the heat, restore the clouds, and bring upon the parched earth the grateful rain. And so this Bronze-Age race spread out their useless treasures to the sun, and, despite their miseries, they praise the God of gods, the Cause of causes, the merciful, the compassionate, and lie down to die.
And in the evil-one, captured and chained and sealed by Solomon, we seem to have the same thing prefigured in Revelation, xx, 2:
"2. And he laid hold on the dragon, the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.