Blair Collection > Celtic researches, on the origin, traditions & language, of the ancient Britons

Ill
The coimtrV;, the character and the antiquity of this author
rntitlc the fragment hcfore us to the higlicst respect, amongst
poetic histories. Sanehoniuthon i\as a Phuiuician, and a
most diligent searcher andj'aitl/fal tnmscriber of the records of
his country, and is supposed to have hvcd 300 years before
Homer. We liave then no room to appeal, from his autho-
rit\^, to any Greek or Roman writer^ respecting the opinions
of the old Phoinicians.
"We are here informed that the discoveries and the records
ascribed to Thoth, or Hermes Trismegistus, ΛvllateveΓ they
may have been, originated in the first ages of mankind, long
before the Phoenicians or the Egyptians became a distinct
nation.
For the memorial of these things was first committed to
writing — and afterwards converted into allegories, and in tlii;;
form delivered to the priests, who handed them down in suc-
cession, to the time of Isiris the brother of Chna or Canaan,
the patriarch of the PhcBnicians.
This Isiris, whom Sanchoniathon elsewhere calls Miior,
could be no other than the father of the Egyptian family, and
consequently their first King and their first Priest. He there-
fore imited in his own person the characters οϊ- — Mizroim, tiie
Brother of Canaan, and the Father of the Egyptians:
OiiV/s, die deified ancestor of the Egyptians:
Thoth, the son of Agathodemon, or the good genius, tîàcir
first national instructor, who transcribed the records, and
enforced the precepts pf his great antediluvian predecessor,
and