One step in the Saint’s progress has been traced by M. Ch. Clermont-Ganneau,[579] an Orientalist whose archæological acumen is unsurpassed even by his industry. A bas-relief group in the Louvre shows the hawk-headed Horus, mounted and in Roman uniform, piercing with his peculiar spear (an hamatum, or barb-head), the neck of the crocodile Typhon, Set, Dagon,[580] Python—the Devil. This strongly suggests that Horus and Perseus, Saint Patrick and Saint George, are one and the same person.
PHŒNICIAN SWORDS.
The Hereba-blade has not yet been found in Phœnicia, but Wilkinson argues (II. ch. vii.) that the beautiful Swords and daggers, buried with the Ancient Britons and clearly not of Greek or Roman type, are Phœnician work. Carthaginian blades, however, dug up at Cannæ are now in the British Museum.[581] That the nations were congeners we see by the Pœnulus of Plautus, and by such names as Dido (another form of David) and Elissa (El-Isá, the royal woman); by Sichæus, who derives from the same root as Zacchæus; by Hannibal and Hasdrubal (containing the root Ba’al), and by the ‘Suffetes’—magistrates who are the Hebrew Shophetim or Judges.[582] The mercenary armies of Carthage, whose conquests are first alluded to by Herodotus (vii. 165), used Swords of bronze, copper, and tin: Meyrick (i. 7) also mentions brass; and the highly imaginative General Vallancey compares it with Dowris metal or ‘Irish brass.’ Dr. Schliemann (‘Mycenæ,’ p. 76) picked up, at ‘Motyë in Sicily,’ Carthaginian piles (arrow-heads) of bronze, pyramidal and without barbs (γλωχῖνες or hami); he found the same style at Mycenæ (p. 123).
The Swords of the Lycians probably resembled the Egyptian Khopsh; and the same was the case with the Cilician falchion. The latter peoples were also armed with the σάρισσα (Sarissa); the lance or spear, sixteen to twenty feet long, afterwards used by the people of Epirus and the Macedonian phalanx. It is opposed to the Larissa, the lance of the European Middle Ages, and to the Narissa affected by the Norrenses.
THE JEWISH SWORD.
The most remarkable point concerning the Sword amongst the ancient Hebrews is our practical ignorance of its shape and size. Although shekels and similar remains have been discovered in fair quantities, that ‘iron race in iron clad,’ the Jews of old, has not left us a single specimen of arms or armour. This is the more curious, as we are expressly told that the blade was buried with its wielder.[583] And although we are assured (Gen. iv. 22) that Tubal-Cain, son of Lamech and Zillah, was the first metal-smith, there is no direct mention of iron arms amongst the Jews till after the Exodus. Gesenius proposes to make Tubal-Cain a hybrid word, ‘scoriarum faber,’ from the Persian ‘Tupal’ (iron-slag or scoriæ), and ‘Kani’ (faber, a blacksmith). He has been identified with Ptah, Bil-Kan (Assyria), Vulcan, and Mulciber; and only ignorance of Hinduism prevented mediæval commentators discovering him under the alias of Vishvamitra, the artificer of the Hindú gods. Maestro Vizani (a.d. 1588), a famous master of fence, attributes the invention of the Sword to Tubal-Cain; we should now place this worthy in the later bronze and early iron age. Unjust claims to discovery are made by all ancient peoples; and here it would be hardly fair to adduce Bochart’s ‘Judæi semper mendaces; in hoc argumento potissimum mentiuntur liberalissime.’
It is, however, amply evident that the Phœnicians and the despised Canaanites were highly-cultivated peoples, whereas the Jews were not. The latter are never alluded to in Egyptian hieroglyphs.[584] Even after they had established their principality upon the bleak and barren uplands of Judæa, they were dependent for their art upon their neighbours. Although gold was so abundant in the days of David that he could collect about one thousand million pounds (one hundred thousand talents of gold and one million of silver) for building the Temple, yet Solomon, the Wise King, was obliged to seek stone-cutters and even carpenters among the Σίδονες πολυδαίδαλοι. Judæa had neither science nor art; architecture, sculpture, paintings nor mosaics; comfort nor cookery. The Great Temple that succeeded the Tabernacle of Moses was mainly the work of Hiram of Tyre, the Siromus of Herodotus (v. 104), the Hiromus of Dius, Menander and Josephus (‘Apion,’ i. 17, &c.), and probably a dynastic name, as ‘Haram’ the Sacred.
Another learned master of arms[585] declares that the first weapon mentioned in Hebrew Holy Writ is the flammeus gladius wielded by the Cherubim (Gen. iii. 24), the ‘Chereb’ which the Septuagint renders Ῥομφαία.[586] On the Assyrian monuments the Kerubi (‘cherub,’ which derives, like the Arabic ‘Karrúb,’ from ‘Karb’ = propinquity) denotes the colossal figures symbolising the Powers of Good, and guarding the palace-gates. As they prevented the admission of Evil, they found their way to the entrance of the Garden of Eden, whence they warned off sinners and intruders. The ‘flaming Sword,’ which ‘turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life,’ was, according to some, the two-pronged blade, the Greek ‘chelidonian,’ which served as a talisman. Tiglath Pileser I. made one of these forked Swords of copper, inscribed it with his victories, and placed it as a trophy in one of his castles. But the Genesitic Sword is probably the weapon-symbol of Merodach, the Babylonian god and planet Jupiter. This revolving disc represented, like the Aryan ‘Vajra,’ the lightning or ‘thunderbolt’ with which our classics armed Zeus-Jovi;[587] and a highly poetical description of it is given in an old Akkadian hymn. Here it is called among other names littu (or litu), which is, letter for letter, the same as the first of the Hebrew words translated ‘flaming Sword’ (lahat ha-Chereb): it may also signify the ‘Burning of Desolation.’ M. F. Lenormant[588] suggests that the true meaning is ‘magical prodigy.’ But it is safer to stand by the disc-like Sword, which corresponds with the wheels of Ezekiel’s vision (chap. x. 9, 10). In the Chaldæan battle of Bel and the Dragon we again find the great flaming Sword, turning all round the circle when wielded by the deity against the ‘Drake.’ So the Egyptians had long before depicted the solar god with a glory of solar rays, a most appropriate symbol; and his enemy, Apophis
, the serpent of Genesis, whom he destroys, is a monstrous reptile bristling with a dorsal line of four Sword-blades, like flesh-knives, typifying destruction.