Anecdota Oxoniensia. Semitic series.

CERTAIN MATTERS CONCERNING EGYPT.

57

~ The first worshippers of idols were the people of Egypt and
Babylon, and the Franks and the people of the sea-coast. In the
days of Kuhtan, the son of Falik, the father of the Arabs, men made
likenesses of all that were renowned for virtue, and of good repute, and
famous for valour and beauty of form, and worshipped their images.
~ Abu Naiturl, the fourth son of Noah, learnt, through the inspiration of God, the science of the sphere2, and -the art of reckoning
it by years, months, days, and hours, and the like. Afterwards
Nimrod3 the giant learnt from him, and composed books on the
science of the sphere, and on reckoning it; and men wondered at the
wisdom which he showed in his books, and copied them after him,
so that Ardashir envied him; and Nimrod also served Satan, and
fasted for him, and offered sacrifice to him, and burnt incense to
him, and humbled himself before him. Therefore Satan appeared
to him, and taught him magic4, and how to raise false phantoms; and
u."di E \.\1 LJL 1. J ul i JU c;.) Le J-Z. j L.
'The revenues of Egypt, after deducting the pay of the troops and the expenses
of the governor's house and what was needed for the administration of the country,
amounted to 200,000,000 dinars carried yearly to the public treasury.' MS. Anc.
FondsArabe 139,. I80, line 25, p. I8I, lines I, 2. The figures have been altered.
1Abf Naitur is not elsewhere mentioned.
2 I.e. astronomy. As it is well known, the Arabs derived their first knowledge
of astronomy from the Arabic translation, made by order of the caliph Ma'mfn,
of the Almagest of Ptolemy, and it is from that work that the term eJL = opaaipa
is borrowed.
' The attribution of a knowledge of astronomy to Nimrod is based on
a genuine tradition of the devotion of the ancient Babylonians to that science.
IHaji Khalfah remarks upon the use made by Ptolemy in the Almagest of the work
of Chaldaean astronomers; Lex. bzbliogr. (ed. Fluegel) i. p. 7. Many legends
are related of Nimrod, the 'Enemy of God,' by the Arab historians, and he is
alluded to in the Koran, following Jewish tradition, as the persecutor of Abraham.
See Ibn al-Athir, Al-Kdmzl, i. p. A i ff.
4 The Mahometans consider Babylon to have been the original home of
i [II. 7.]