Chucshusha was the name given both by the Hindus and Egyptians to the great ancestor of Noah. These nations equally name the land, which was the residence of the antediluvian monarchs, Carucshatra; and place the residence of our first parent west of Cushadweep. It is therefore more consonant to reason, and to the usage of mankind, to suppose that the country alluded to, whether named Chaldeus, Chaldea, Chasdim, or Chusdim, was so named from the great ancestor of Noah, Chucshusha; who was a native of Carucsha, than that it should have been named after his descendant in the fifth or sixth generation. It is infinitely more likely that Cush took his name from his ancestor Chucshusha, than that Chaldea was named after Cush. Moreover, the city of Chaldea, or Babylon, is said to have been built before either Cush or Nimrod became rulers. It was built by Ham, on his first settling in those parts; and, we read, in the Scripture, that the beginning of the kingdom of Nimrod* was when he seized on the city of Babylon, which was about sixty years after Ham had finally retired thence into Canaan, leaving his son Cush in the govern

* Moses, therefore, calls him Nimrod, or the rebel: He assumed the name of Nin or Ninus, signifying the Son, or Nin the son of Cush.

ment, whose reign is stated at fifty-five years: consequently, Nimrod was the third instead of the first king of Babylon, and could not have assumed the government sooner than A. M. 1960. The assertion, therefore, of Mr. Bryant, that "Nimrod was indeed the first who reigned upon earth,” is but a feeble support of the argument which he urges in proof of Alorus and Nimrod being the same. But Nimrod aspired to no such honour. It is recorded of him, that after he had conquered many nations, and built the city of Nineveh, he*, in a public assembly of the Babylonians, extolled his grandfather Ham as the founder of the empire of Babylon, deemed him worthy of canonization, and exhibited a statue of him, which he ordered to be worshipped in a magnificent temple of that city. By Bishop Cumberland's tables, from Eratosthenes it appears that Mizraim reigned in Egypt an hundred and eleven years, before Nimrod is said to have seized on the kingdom of Babylon. But Bryant, having established to his own satisfaction that Alorus was Nimrod, and that Nimrod was the first monarch that ruled upon earth, in his instructions how to confute the absurdities of the Greeks, completely overthrows his

Annal. Salion. Anno Mundi 2000, and Hicron upon Ezekiel and Hosea.

own hypothesis: for, if the series had been inverted, this "primeval king, the first who ruled on earth," would have been the tenth, instead of the first king of Babylon. "The Grecians (he informs us) not knowing, or not attending to, the eastern mode of writing, have introduced these ten kings, in the first book, which Berosus refers to the second. They often inverted the names of persons as well as places, and have ruined whole dynasties through ignorance of arrangement. What the orientals wrote from right to left, they were apt to confound by a wrong disposition, and to describe in an inverted sense. Hence those supposed kings, who, according to Berosus, were subsequent to the deluge, and to the patriarch, are made prior to both: and he who stands first is made later by ten generations, through a reversion of the true order*." Here we find this first of men, and first of kings, made the contemporary of Abraham; being placed in the tenth generation from the deluge. Let us examine the reasoning on this subject. First, if Apollodorus and Abydenus were ignorant of the manner in which the orientals wrote, how were they able to collect the sense of the original text which they translated? Secondly, how could the commencement of a line

* Bryant, vol. IV. p. 144.

from the right, instead of the left, transpose a work, from the second to the first book? And, thirdly, admitting that Berosus wrote in such a manner, it would be difficult to prove therefrom that Anadophus, the son of Acdoreschus, was born two generations before his grandfather Daus. The sentence is as follows.

антиновANA азаз 30 OUS SUAQ Язтъл

SHOEA TO NOS

Those, that have been in the habit of reading oriental languages, well know the facility, with which such a mode of writing is understood. Mr. Bryant then reverts to what he styles the "contradictory accounts given of the Oannes:" we have seen that Abydenus places the Musaris Oannes, the fish-deity, in the time of Amillarus.

his time, a semi-dæmon called Annedotus, in appearance very like to Oannes shewed himself a second time from the sea:" Apollodorus was speaking of his appearance at a subsequent period, in a different province, governed by a different prince who was one generation later than Amillarus. He records, "that they say the Musaris Oannes, the fish-deity, the Annedotus, appeared in the time of Amenon:" Alexander Polyhistor, who was treating of the Oannes, not the Annedotus who was 66 very like him," places his ap

pearance in the first year: the first year of the return of the race of Cain to the valley where Abel was murdered. Nothing can be more clear and intelligible, than this piece of history. But Mr. Bryant, as if purposely to confuse the text, says: "Alexander Polyhistor, who first took this history in hand, mentions that this personage (the Oannes) shewed himself in the first year; but Apollodorus says it was after forty Sari. Abydenus differing from both, makes the second Annedotus appear after twenty-six Sari." Now each of the authors, whom he quotes even according to his own translation agree respecting the Oannes. The two latter were treating of the appearance of the Annedotus, the fish-deity, who was very like the Oannes, evincing that he was not the same. And to elucidate the account, after recording that the Oannes appeared in the first year after the return of this race, for the purpose of instructing them in various sciences, it is added, " he infused into them a knowledge of right and wrong. He instructed them in every thing, which could tend to soften manners and humanize mankind: from that time, so universal were his instructions, that nothing has been added material, by way of improvement." They then proceed to inform us, that, subsequently, a semi-dæmon, or prophet, called the Annedotus, or Musaris Oannes, who was in ap