Page:An Essay on the Age and Antiquity of the Book of Nabathaean Agriculture.djvu/96

80 words, by which, in the East, it was often sought to escape from getting embroiled with suspected powers; something in the way in which the Jews successively designated the nations which persecuted them by the name of Edomites or Amalekites, and the capitals of nations which were hostile to them by that of Babylon. The reserve with which Kúthámí speaks of the Canaanites, confirms this hypothesis. The histories of the Jews, Samaritans, Mendaïtes, Harranians, Nosaïris, and Yezidis, offer examples of this kind of falsification. Possibly, too, many of the singular names which surprise us in “The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture,” proceed from some form of the cabbala or secret writing. The use of these forms is very ancient in the East; since we find at least two very probable examples in the text of Jeremiah.