it the significant ceremonial. Thus Herodotus tells us how that at Memphis the death of the sacred bull was a cause of general wailing, and its discovery one of exultation. When Cambyses was in Egypt, and the land groaned under foreign sway, no Apis appeared; but when his two armies were destroyed, and he came to Memphis, Apis had appeared; and he found the conquered people manifesting their joy in dances, and with feasting and gay raiment[1].
We have, it will be seen, among Phœnicians, Syrians, Egyptians, and Nabathæans, all Semitic nations, peculiar myths, with symbolic ceremonies bearing such a close resemblance to one another, that we are constrained to acknowledge them as forms, slightly varied, of some primæval myth.
We find also among the Arabs, another Semitic nation, a myth identical with that of the Babylonian Tammūz, prevalent among them not long after their adoption of Islamism. How shall we account for this? My answer is, that the pre-Mohammedan Arabs had a worship very similar to that of Tammūz, Baal, Adonis, or Osiris, and that, on their conversion to the faith of the prophet, they retained the ancient legend, adapting it to El Koudir, whom
- ↑ Thalia. c. 27.
