An Account of the remains of the worship of Priapus : lately existing at Isernia, in the kingdom of Naples; in two letters : one from Sir William Hamilton ... to Sir Joseph Banks ... : and the other from a person residing at Isernia : to which is added, A discourse on the worship of Priapus : and its connexion with the mystic theology of the ancients / By R.P. Knight.

Date:
1786
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An Account of the remains of the worship of Priapus : lately existing at Isernia, in the kingdom of Naples; in two letters : one from Sir William Hamilton ... to Sir Joseph Banks ... : and the other from a person residing at Isernia : to which is added, A discourse on the worship of Priapus : and its connexion with the mystic theology of the ancients / By R.P. Knight. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    170/234 (page 162)
    [ ] <|uite entire, and, according to the Phoenician alpha- bet publifhed by Mr. Dutens, are equivalent to the Roman ones, which compofe the words Baal ThrZy of which Mr. Swinton makes Baal TarZy and tranf- lates Jupiter of Tl*arfus; whence he concludes that this Coin was ftruck at that city. But the firft letter of the lad word is not a T'ethy but a Thauy or afpi- rated T; and, as the Phoenicians had a vowel anfwer- ing to the Roman A, it is probable they would have inferted it, had they intended it to be founded : but we have no reafon to believe, that they had any to exprefs the U or Y, which mud therefore be com- prehended in the preceding confonant whenever the found is expreded. Hence I conclude that the word here meant is Tbyrz or ThurZy the Ibor or Tkur of the Celtes and Sarmatians, the Thurra of the Ady- rians, the Turan of the Tyrrhenians or Etrufcans, the Taurine Bacchus of the Greeks, and the Deity whom the Germans carried with them in the diape of a Bull, when they invaded Italy ; from whom the city of Tyre, as well as Tyrrhenia, or Tus- cany, probably took its name. His fymbol the Bull, to which the name alludes, is reprefented on the Chair or Throne in which he dts; and his Sceptre, the emblem of his authority, reds upon it. The pther word, Baal^ was merely a title in the Phoenician language,