Serapis was another name for the Sun, Remisius gives an inscription to Jupiter the Sun, the invincible Serapis.
Mithras was likewise the Sun, or rather was but a different name, which the Persians bestowed on the Egyptian Osiris.
Harpocrates also represented the Sun. It is true, he was also the God of Silence; he put his finger upon his mouth, because the Sun was worshiped with a reverential silence, and thence came the Sigè of the Basilidians, who had their origin from Egypt.[1]
By the Syrians the Sun and Heat were called המה hme, Chamha;[2] and by the Persians Hama.[3] Thus the temple to which Alexander so madly marched in the desert, was called the temple of the Sun or of Ammon. Mr. Bryant shews that Ham was esteemed the Zeus of Greece, and the Jupiter of Latium.
Mr. Bryant says, “The worship of Ham, or the Sun, as it was the most ancient, so it was the most universal of any in the world. It was at first the prevailing religion of Greece; and was propagated over all the sea-coast of Europe, from whence it extended itself into the inland provinces, It was established in Gaul and Britain; and was the original religion of this island, which the Druids in after times adopted.”[8]
This Ham was nothing but a Greek corruption of a very celebrated Indian word, formed of the three letters a u m, of which I shall have much to say hereafter.
Virgil gives the conduct of the year to Liber or Bacchus,[9] though it was generally thought to be in the care of Apollo. It also appears from the Scholia in Horace,[10] that Apollo and Dionusos were the same. In fact, they were all three the same, the Sun.
4. It is allowed that the grand mysteries of the Grecian religion were brought by way of Thrace from Assyria, Persia, Egypt, or other Eastern parts, by a person of the name of Orpheus, or at least that it came from those parts, whoever brought it into Greece. And in the doctrines attributed to this philosopher, we may reasonably expect to find the ground-works of the religion, in fact, the religion unadulterated by the folly of the populace, and the craft of the priests. And here we shall find a pure and excellent religion.
Proclus says of the religion, Ζευς κεφαλε, Ζευς μεσσα· Διος δ᾽εκ παντα τετυκαι—Jove is the head and middle of all things; all things were made out of Jove.
According to Timotheus, in Cedrenus, Orpheus asserted the existence of an eternal, incomprehensible Being, Δημιουργον απαντον, και αυτου του αιθερος, και παντων των επ᾽ αυτον τον αιθερα, the Creator of all things, even of the æther itself, and of all things below that æther. According to him, this Δημιουργος is called ΦΩΕ, ΒΟΥΛΗ, ΖΩΗ, Light, Counsel, Life. And Suidas says, that these three names express one and the same power, ταυτα τα τρια ονοματα μιαν δυναμιν απεφηνατο: and Timotheus concludes his account by affirming that Orpheus, in
- ↑ Basnage, B. iii. Ch. xviii.
- ↑ Selden de Diis Syriis Syntag. II. C. viii. p. 247.
- ↑ Gale’s Court of the Gentiles, Vol. I. Ch. xi. p. 72.
- ↑ Hesychius.
- ↑ Herodotus, L. ii. C. xlii.
- ↑ Bochart, Geog. Sac. L. i. C. i. p. 5.
- ↑ Pind. Pyth. Ode iv. 28, Schol.
- ↑ Bryant, Vol. I. 4to. p. 284.
- ↑ Georg. L. i. v. 6.
- ↑ Lib. ii. Ode xix.
- ↑ Orphic Fragm. in. Macrob. Sat. L. i. C. xxiii.
