Lydia issuing from the “ School of Esdras” in Palestine (foreign to Lydian-blo.od, language,
and traditions), should the latter contradict him : which, happily, they do not.
The compiler of Xth Genesis, educated, as we now begin to feel assured, amid the
“ learning of the Chaldees,” attributes no affiliations to the geographical locality he
designates LUD ; any more than, in his classification of the senior Hamidce {ver. 6),
he ascribes descendants to PACT ; which, we have seen, is Barbary. This engenders
the supposition that he knew little beyond the names of either; and that just as to
him, composing his ethnic chart in some University of Chaldsea, P/iUT appeared to
be the most western geographical range of Hamitic migrations, so LUD probably
seemed to lie among the most northerly of Semitic. As such, then, he duly registered
them in bis inestimable chorography.
Some centuries prior to the age of this venerable digest, the Lydians are mentioned
in Egyptian hieroglyphics. In the Asiatio conquests of Sethei-Meneptha, and of
Ramses II., to say nothing of later Pharaohs, associated with Ionians, Biplueans, and
other well-known families of Asia Minor, we find the oft-recurring “ Land of Ludenu,”
or “ land of the upper Luden,” and “ of the lower Luden.” This establishes the existence
of Lydia and of Lydians at the XVIIIth dynasty, fourteenth—sixteenth centuries
B. c. ; in days anterior to and coeval With Moses ; i. e., much earlier than the compilation
of Xth Genesis'. But (to avoid Mosaic conflictions with Egyptian records) it is best
perhaps to ascend a few generations beyond modern disputes upon the era of the Hebrew
“ scholar and statesman ; ” when by pointing out LUD and Lydians in chronicles
appertaining to the anterior XVIIth dynasty, we show that Amunoph II., Thotmes
III., and Amunoph III., successors of that “ new king over Egypt which knew not
Joseph” (Ex. i. 8 ),.could not readily have heard of Moses’s Lydian geography before
the great lawgiver was born. Posterior in epoch to the former, and anterior to the
latter dignitary, these Pharaohs of the XVIIth dynasty knew nothing about either
Joseph or Moses.
Nor is history wanting to support the early spread of Egyptian arms into Asia
Minor; for besides a confused aggregation of events of. different ages to be met with
in every classical lexicon under the head of “ Sesostris,” we have the authentic account
of Tacitus that the Priests of Thebes read, to the Emperor Germanieus, from
hieroglyphical inscriptions, how “ Ramses overcame Libya, Ethiopia, the Medes and
the Persians, Bactriana, and Scythia, and held sway over the lands which the Syrians,
Armenians, and neighboring Cappadocians^inhabit from Bithynia up to the Lycian Sea.
We cannot quote authority for the discovery of the name LUD in cuneiform writings;
unless Ludenu be the same as the “ Rutennu. ” of the “ Grand Procession of Thotmes
III.” [supra, p_. 159], which Birch fixes, in hieroglyphical geography, “ north of the
Great Sea,” and compares with the Assyrian king Sargina’s prisoners at Khorsabad.
However, LUD, being identical with Lydia, enters, like the rest, as a geographical
appellative into the catalogue of Xth Genesis ; and the cyclopaedic notion that, from a
man called LUD, “ the Lydians in Asia Minor derived their name,” ranks among the
childish postulates belonging to an age of which science now hopefully discerns ‘‘ the
beginning of the end.” 631
50. — ARM — ‘A ram.’
Orthodox lexicography informs us that Aeam means “ highness, magnificence; otherwise,
one that deceives, or their curse.“ In this instance the erudition of “ N. M.’’.compensates
for the meagre article by “ J. P. S.” in Kitto’s cyclopaedia.
It has been shown already that Quatrembre doubts Mover’s derivation of ARM;
which the latter considers to mean a high land, in juxtaposition to KNAS-N, a low land
Still the objection assigned by the former is inconclusive, because RM does actually
signify high; and with the primeval masculine article aleph, A, prefixed, A-R.M is
the-high. Certain it is, also, that the geographical brother of Arphf-Kasd, “ Or/a of the
Chaldrean,” and oí Lydia, must be sought for along the same Tauric uplands of Asia
Minor- where ARM lay among the “ mountains of the east” (Numb, xxiii, 7). In
Punic, also, the same word means high; for M. Judas reads on Numidian coins, Juba
■ nouM mellcat == “ Juba, highness of the realm.”
Diodorus’s i'pigi Hjfrf or Arimi Montes,-suggest.themselveg at Once; although authorities
disagree upon their location, in Phrygia, Lydia, Mysia, Cilicia, or Syria: but Strabo
and Josephus inform us that the Greeks called Syrians those'people who called themselves
Aramaeans: and when Homer and Hesiod wrote, the Api/m\ extended to Phrygia,
which they termed Arimaia. Syria, therefore, in its widest acceptation, seems best
to correspond to ARM, because the latter merges into Mesopotamia; and in Pliny and
Pomponius Mela the name of Syria is applied to provinces even beyond the Euphrates
and Tigris.
As the grand céntre of Shemitish families, Syria still preserves the name of SAeM
in its Oriental appellative ; being known to Syrians and the populations around them
by no other title than BúR-Es-SA&M, land of Shem. Arab geography explains this
coincidence' by reasons worthy of attention. S h a m means the left hand, and Y em b e n
(Temen in Arabia), the right; as, face directed to the East, an Arabian worshipped the
rising sun; or looked back to ARM as the traditionary birthplace of his ancestry
before, by emigration to Arabia, they had acquired the right to call themselves 3RB,
western-men. Damascus, Bs-SMm eb-hebeer, “ the great Sham,” may perhaps be the
focus of these ancient radiations: for its identity with A b am is marked in the passage
“ The ARaMiares of Damascus came to succor Hadadezer king of Sobah, &c. (2'Sam.
yüi. 5. 6) — the versions generally substituting Syrians for Aramaeans.
So extensive was the range of ARM in ancient geography that, to distinguish its
divisions, a qualifying name was generally appended to it: thus, Sedeh-NRM, the
“ field of Aram,” JWan-ARM, the “ plain of Aram,” and ARM-Naharaim, “ Aram of
the two rivers,” refer to parts of Mesopotamia: NRM-Damashk was a Damascene
territory; ARM.-8obah, probably Cilicia; ATM-Maakah, east of the Jordan; and
ABM-beih-Rekhub, ' on which authorities vary. ARMI, an Aramaean, is a Syrian in one
scriptural text (2 Kings v. 20). It is a Mesopotamian in another (Gen. xxv,. 20).
Aramman was the speech of the patriarchal Abrahamidse, when abandoning ARPAa-
KaSD, or -its equivalent AUR-KaSDlm (Chaldsean Orfa, or Ur of the Chaldees), they
arrived in the land of Kanaan; where, forgetting their ancestral idiom, they adopted
and misnamed Hebrew “ the language of Kanaan,” or Phwnician.
Thus, from Arabia Deserta to the confines of Lydia, from Syria, over Mesopotamia,
to Armenia, do we meet with infinite reliquice of Aram: without being able, after four
or five thousand years of migrations, to mark on the quicksands of Aram&an geography
any more specific locality for ARM, than Stbaa in its most extended sense.
Hieroglyphical researches do not aid us to a more definite ascription of ARM. In
the Vatican Museum, the statue of a priest bears the inscription— “ His majesty,
King Darius, ever living, orderéd me to go to Egypt, while'his majesty was in ARMA :
supposed to bé Assyria. Nor, in Persepolitan cuneifqrm records or in those of Assyria,
has any more positive identification of ARM been discovered and published than
what may exist in Arm’ina, Arama, &c., considered to be Armenia-— a country in
whose name ARM is also preserved.
The writer of Xth Genesis may or may not have had more precise views upon ARM;
which he set down with its parallels, Assyria, Orfa, and Lydia, on his invaluable chart,
and then proceeded -to tabulate those tribes of the Semitic stook that looked back upon
the land of ARM as their birthplace.635
“ And the affiliations of ARM.”
•51. dUTs— ‘Uz.’
In Gen. x. 23, the four names after ARM are called BeNI-ARM; i. e., “ sons of