Forlong - Rivers of Life

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Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
orthodox Gale, following Bochart, says the word is more likely to come from Beni-Anak,
qnu ynb sons of Anak, which shortened is Benak or Penak, for it was “very usual with
the Greeks to turn b into f” (Gale I. 24)—a fact I beg the reader to bear in mind.
Both derivations are in different senses correct, for AN, AR, or AL all signify the
Sun; An-Ait, is “the fount of the Sun,” and Greece had deities called Anaktes, who
wero worshipped in temples called Anaktoria. The Kadmians were called An-aktes,
and both Egypt and Babylon knew of Anakims. The Greeks had a festival to Castor
and Pollux called correctly An-akeia-Neko. Naki, and Negurs, the names of kings and
temples, are but abbreviations 1 of Anakus as Necho of Egypt, and hence perhaps the
Naki Roostum shrine at Persepolis. An-akium, signifying a king and benefactor, is
mentioned in the Iliad (iii.) as the name of a celebrated mountain in the
Peloponnesus; 2 whilst in the Odyssey (xi.), we learn that “Tri-nac-ria is Tor-Anac,”
or Anak-toria—“the spot first inhabited by the Kyklopians . . . . . a name by which many
cities and countries in which the worship of the gods prevailed were distinguished.” 3 Of
course, Tor-Anak is a tower of hill of the Sun, a Mount Zion. The Jews considered the
sons of Anak the most noble and renowned; and where they say, as already mentioned,
that “we were in our own sight as grasshoppers,” they also add, “and so we were in their
sight.” From Gale, I. 21, we learn that Hebron was a Phenician “fortress and strength
for war, and Debir the seat of their learning—which was therefore called Kirjath Sepher
—the city of books and Kirjath Sanna the city of learning, or the Law.” Bryant and
Holwell state that Phoinik or “Phœnix was a mere honorary term compounded of
Anac with the Egyptian prefix,” so that it meant a great man or king of men, an
oracle or mouth-piece, Phi or Pi, of the Sun—that Koothites and Canaanites assumed
it—that it signified red, scarlet, the great Palm with its huge radiating sun-like leaves,
and stalwart upright form; which they said could bear without yielding a greater load
than any other tree of equal girth and height, and which monthly put forth its seed.
Thus the Myaians called Dionysus Ph’anak, and the Royal shepherd-race of Egypt, who
wece Koothites, were entitled Phenices. It is clear then that Phenicians per se were
simply a noble religious sect, and not a nation. Isaiah called the Phenicians the
“honourable of the earth” (xxiii 8), whose fall, says Ezekiel, would make the earth
tremble, but in those days they were only known as the Sarim \ryc and \yrwx Tsurim,
not Ashyrim or Asyrians, but a people of rwx Tsur or Tsyr, or as we say Tyre. that
wondrous Ora Regia in which we are even yet digging for the remains of this mighty
race, as did Pythagoras, Plato, and Zeno, say Gale; 4 for it was in. the region of Tyre
and Sidon that all Greek philosophers got their choicest notions of religion and the
cosmogony of things. Bryant and Holwell are agreed that from two great chiefs,
Belus and Phenix, sprung the two great races, Belidæ and Phenices, and all those
races going by such names, from Pesepolis to Britain. Granting that Phenicia is
1 Rev. W. Holwell’s and Bryant’s “Myth,” Art. Anac.
3 “Class. Man,” 320.
2 “Class. Man,” 147, quoting Iliad iii.
4 Do., p. 28.