[681] George Smith, Chaldæan Genesis, pp. 62, 95.
[682] Sibri or Sibirru. I have noted the probable derivation of this word from the Egyptian Sf, Sayf, or Seft; and its resemblance to our ‘sabre.’
[683] Budil (says Mr. Boscawen) succeeded his father in b.c. 1350. He defended the north-eastern peoples, the Nari and the Guti, Gutium or Goim; he also built largely, and his son, Vul-nirari (Vul is my hope), from whose palace the Sword came, was one of the greatest of the early Assyrian kings. The British Museum has a long inscription recording his restoration of the causeway leading to the Temple of Ashur.
[684] Layard advocates the theory that the Persians and Hindús separated from a common centre about b.c. 1500. But of what Hindús does he speak? Certainly not of the ‘Turanian’ tribes, which peopled the peninsula before the Brahmin immigration.
[685] The Greeks having no sh sound, turned Kurush into Kyros.
[686] Media was North-Western Persia, from Armenia to Azerbáiján, south of the Caspian. ‘Great Armenia’ afterwards included Georgia and Abkhasia. From their racial name Manda or Mada came the Greek Mantiene and Matiene. (See Bib. Archæology, Nov. 9, 1882.)
[687] Herod. i. 136, 138, &c. All writers assure us that the ancient Egyptians and Persians, the Chinese and Hindús (Marco Polo), were truth-telling races who abhorred a lie. ‘How sweet a thing is truth!’ exclaimed a Nile-dweller. In the Carpentras Inscription the Lady Ta-Bai ‘spoke no falsehoods against any one.’ In the trilingual Behistun Inscription (b.c. 516) Darius the king says, ‘Thou who mayest be king hereafter, the man who may be a liar, and who may be an evil-doer, destroy them with the destruction of the Sword’ (col. iv. par. 14). They are now emphatically the reverse. The wild tribes, such as the Bedawin, the Iliyát, and the outcasts of India, still preserve the old characteristic. ‘The word of a Korager’ is proverbial on the West Coast of the Hindu Peninsula. I cannot but attribute the deterioration to extensive commerce, contact with strangers, and change of faith. The subject, however, is too vast and important even to glance at in these pages; but I may note that the Hindú has deteriorated even in my day. In 1845 the trade-books of a Sahukár (merchant) were received as evidence in our law courts. In 1883 the idea would be scouted.
[688] The conquests of Alexander the Great had given the civilised world a unity of language. The Ptolemies, having asserted Greek mastery in Egypt, established that perfect toleration which is proved by the Septuagint, Manetho and Berosus.
[689] Famous in the Book of Esther (Amestris), which contains scant traces of the faith of Israel. This terrible virago (b.c. 474) caused the massacre of 800 men at Shushan, and 7,500 in the provinces. From the Pehlevi name of Xerxes (Khshhershe), possibly we may derive the modern titles, ‘Shah’ and ‘Shahanshah.’
[690] Hence, perhaps, Pukhtu or Pushtu, the Afghan language, an old and rugged dialect of Persian type.