Hercules of Tyre, part of his history. Was a pastor king in Egypt. Retired thence with 240000 men, about the latter end of Abraham’s time. The chronology of those pastor kings fixed, somewhat more accurately than in Usher and Cumberland. Hercules king in Egypt, or the Pharaoh with whom Abraham conversed there. He was a very great navigator: a learned prince, an astronomer, a chronologer. The Hercules Ogmius. What the word means. He knew the secret of alphabet writing, and the true length of the solar year. He learn’d probably of Abraham. He carried colonies about the Mediterranean, and into the Ocean, and brought the Druids into Britain. He built many patriarchal temples; some of serpentine form: particularly at Acon in Palestine. He had a son called Isaac. The evidences of Hercules planting Britain. Of Apher his companion, grandson of Abraham, giving name to Britain. Remains of Hercules his people, called Hycsi, in Britain. Hence we conclude our Druids had the use of Writing before Cadmus carried it into Greece.
NOT much later in time than Phut, lived that other celebrated hero of antiquity, the Egyptian, Phœnician, Tyrian Hercules; whom I take to be a principal planter of Britain. He was of Phœnician extract, born in Egypt and king there, founder of Tyre, and the most famous navigator: the first that pass’d thro’ the Mediterranean, and ventur’d into the great Ocean. I have wrote his history copiously, from which I must recite some deductions only, useful to our present purpose.
Hercules call’d Melcartus, was son of Demaroon, as Sanchoniathon the Phœnician writer informs us. Demaroon was intituled Zeus, whence the Greeks made Hercules the son of Jupiter. Demaroon according to our Phœnician author, was son of Dagon or Siton son of Ouranus (who in truth is Noah) and begat after the flood, but it was not his business to mention the flood. Hercules then may reasonably be suppos’d to live to the same age as Noah’s other great grandsons; if we say grandsons, it alters not the case. We need not be concerned at the seeming great distance between Hercules in the genealogy and Apher: for from Sanchoniathon we may prove that Melchisedec was Arphaxad. He conversed with Abraham.
Josephus in his first book against Apion has preserv’d a valuable and venerable piece of antiquity, call’d Manethon, the Egyptians’ Dynasties. This has given the learned much entertainment. I have considered it too with attention, in what I have wrote concerning the Mosaick chronology. I shall here recite some conclusions from it, for my present purpose.
TAB. XXXVI.
P. 70.
Stukeley f.
A Brittish bridle
A Brittish Urn
Chyndonax’ Urn
DM
Roberti Halford Mit. Caroli Tucker Ar.
De Antiquitatibus Alburiensibus
optime meritis ex voto posuit
L. M. Q. W. Stukeley.
The dynasty of the pastor kings is what we are chiefly concern’d in, which belongs to the most early ages after the flood. Sir John Marsham has set them too low. Bishop Usher and Cumberland are much nearer the truth, as I apprehend, and from whom I differ very little. The last of this dynasty of pastors is Assis, Archles, our Egyptian Hercules. They were Canaanites that followed Misraim into Egypt, and at first liv’d very peaceably, but in time the two families quarrel’d, and wag’d terrible wars together, for 200 years. The Misraimites possess’d the upper regions of the Nile, Canaanites the lower or marshy part upon the Mediterranean sea, call’d Delta. Hence the former call’d ’em Titans, i. e. dirty, fenmen, bog-trotters, as we say contemptuously, of a people who are their real descendants. The Misraimites call’d themselves the Elohim, or Gods, descendants of Ilus or Cham, and that liv’d, as it were, in a heavenly region, toward Egyptian Ethiopia, where Homer makes the gods to hold their festivals. So the Greeks call’d such as liv’d in the high countries, Athamanes, heavenly. Mount Olympus was heaven, the habitation of the gods. This was the way of talking in the heroical times.
The Canaanites, on the other hand, call’d themselves Hycsi, or royal pastors. And the stories of the battles between these two people are the oldest stories we have among the poets, when they ring about the wars between the gods and the Titans.