THE BRITISH ISRAELITES.

CHAPTER I.

Historical Evidence.

CONSIDERABLE interest has of late years been taken by numbers of Englishmen in the facts brought forward from time to time, proving that they are no other than the Ten Tribes of Israel who, under Pekah and Hoshea, were carried away captives by the Assyrians under Tiglath-Pileser and Shalmaneser, about 740 to 678 years B.C. Having very carefully studied the arguments brought forward in support of this identification, as well as the objections raised against it by opponents, we now come forward as exponents of the cause, the importance of the subject being our only apology.

Why should so small a country as Britain possess such great influence over the world as she does, and be successful in all her wars, notwithstanding that she continually makes the most palpable blunders? We have many faults, socially, nationally, and individually, to confess and bemoan; yet, for all that, it will be admitted that we are "a great nation." What is the secret of Britain's greatness? If it is proved that the British are Israelites, the whole History of England will be understood from a right point of view; and that is, that God's dealings with her, being Israel, show forth that He is true, faithful, and "Covenant keeping this is the true secret of England's greatness, and not any inherent goodness that rests in her or her people (Deut. ix. 4, 7).

The Kymri.

In "The Western Asiatic Inscriptions of the British Museum," vol. iii. p. 10, occurs the following copy of a fragmentary inscription of Tiglath-Pileser II., who reigned in Assyria B. C. 740:

A

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THE CAPTIVITY OF THE TEN TRIBES.

"The land of Beth-Khumri (Samaria), . . . the population, .

the goods of its people, . . . I sent to Assyria. Their king, Pekah, had been slain. I appointed Hosea over the kingdom."

"There fell into my hands altogether, between the commencement of my reign and my fifth year, forty-two countries, with their kings, from beyond the river Zab-plain, forest, and mountain-to beyond the river Euphrates, the country of the Khatti (Hittites), and the Upper Ocean of the Setting Sun (the Mediterranean). I brought them under one government, I placed them under the Magian religion, and I imposed on them tribute and offerings" (Cun. Insc. of Tiglath-Pileser I., translated by Sir. H. Rawlinson, vide "Stones Crying Out," App. i. p. 461; Rawlinson's Herodotus, p. 348).

Now see 2 Kings xv. 29:-"In the days of Pekah king of Israel came ¡Tiglath-Pileser king of Assyria, and took Ijon, &c., and carried them captive to Assyria."

I Chron. v. 26:-"And the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria, and the spirit of Tilgath-Pilneser king of Assyria, and he carried them away, even the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh, and brought them unto Halah, and Habor, and Hara, and to the river Gozan, unto this day."

2 Kings xvii. 6, 22:—“In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. For the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam, which he did; they separated not from them until the Lord removed Israel, as He had said by all His servants the prophets. So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day."

The Cuneiform inscriptions of King Sargon describe the above captivity thus:-"By the help of the sun, I captured the city of Samaria (Khumro), and carried into captivity 27,280 of its inhabitants." Notice, the Israelites are called Beth Khumri, and Khumro. On the Nimroud obelisk in the British Museum another inscription, deciphered by Rev. Dr. Hincks, of Belfast, states that Jehu, son of Omri (YAHUA-ABIL-KUMRI) paid tribute to Shalmaneser II., king of Assyria 858-823 B.C. Jehu was really the son of Jehoshaphat (2 Kings ix. 2), but he was of the house of Omri, who built Samaria (Khumro) (1 Kings xvi. 24). The Assyrians, as Rawlinson informs us, taking him for the legitimate successor to the throne, named him Khumri, after his ancestor Omri; the Assyrian k or kh having the same phonetic value as the initial letter y of Omri omitted in our English Bibles. The same writer says: "That a people,

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known to their neighbours as Cimmerii, Gimiri, or (probably) Gomerim, attained to considerable power in Western Asia and Eastern Europe, within the period indicated by the date B. c. 800-600 is a fact which can scarcely be said to admit of a doubt" (Herodotus, Book iv., Essay i.) Now, the Khumri, called sometimes Gimiri (the Tribes), were known by the Greeks as Cimmerioi, and Cimbri by the Romans about 650-630 B.C. in the east of Europe. The Crimea is believed to have been called after them, and many ancient Israelitish tombstones have been found there. They, the Cimbri, have been traced to Cumberland in Britain, and to Cambria in Wales, and are spoken of as the Cymri. A Russian fortress, called "Gumri," still exists on the banks of the Araxes, at the very place where the Israelites were taken after their captivity."

Rawlinson says:-"The Kimmerians, when the Scythians fell upon them from the east, must have gradually retreated westward. . If, then, we are to find the Kimmerians, driven westwards B.C. 650-600, among the known nations of Central or Western Europe, we must look for them among the Celts. Now the Celts had an unvarying tradition that they came from the East; and it is a fact concerning which there can be no question, that one of the main divisions of Celtic people has always borne the name of Cymry as its special national designation. . The identity of the Cymry of Wales with the Khumri of the Romans, seems worthy of being accepted as an historic fact upon the grounds stated by Niebuhr and Arnold (Rawlinson's Herodotus, App., Book iv., Essay i. s. 3).

Sharon Turner also states :-"That at some period after the Kimmerians reached the shores of the German Ocean, a portion of them passed the sea and settled themselves in Britain" (AngloSaxon History, p. 5).

The Sakai.

Scythians, Anglo-Saxons.—Sir Henry Rawlinson says:—“The ethnic name of Gimiri occurs in the Cuneiform records as the Semitic equivalent of the Aryan name SAKA or SAKAI." Again, The Saco Scythians were termed the Gimiri by their Semitic neighbours." "It is very remarkable that in the Achoeminian inscriptions the Sacan or Scythic population, which was widely spread over the Persian Empire, receives in the Babylonian transcripts the name of Gimiri, which looks as if this were the Semitic equivalent for the Arian name of Saka or Scyths. Perhaps both names originally meant Nomads' or wanderers, and only came in course of time to be used as ethnic appellatives" (Herod., App., Book iv., Essay i. s. 1-5, and note).

THE SAKAI SCYTHIANS.

"The ethnic name of Gimiri (the equivalent of the Cimmerii, according to Professor Rawlinson) first occurs in the Cuneiform records of the time of Darius Hystas pes, as the Semitic equivalent of the Aryan name of Saka. . . . The Babylonian title of Gimiri, as applied to the Saco, is not a vernacular but a foreign title, and that it may simply mean 'the tribes' generally, corresponding thus to the Hebrew D. . . . The Saco or Scythians, who were termed Gimiri by their Semitic neighbours, first appear in the Cuneiform inscriptions as a substantive people, under Esarhaddon about B.C. 684" (Rawlinson's Herodotus, App., Book iv., Essay i., note).

On the Behistan Rock, which contains the principal events in the reign of Darius Hystaspes, king of Persia, about 516 B.C., the mention of the Sakai or Saco occurs thus:-"This is Sarocus, the Sacan."

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"Says Darius the king. I went to the country of the Saco the Tigris... towards the sea, him . . . I passed over I slew; the enemy I seized . . . to me and . . . Sarocus by name, him I seized" (Rawlinson's Behistan, pp. 264 and 259).

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In page 294 of the same work is a Cuneiform inscription of a tablet of Darius at Alwand, near the town of Hamadan :-" By the grace of Ormuzd, these are the countries which I have gained besides Persia. I have established my power over them. They have brought tribute to me. That which has been said to them by me, that they have done. That which has been given (to them) by me, that they have possessed. Media, Susiana, Parthia, Aria, Bactria, Sogdiana, Chorasmia, Zarangia, Arachotia, Sattagydia, Gandara, India, THE SACE OF EURODUS, THE SACE OF THE VALLEY OF THE TIGRIS, Babylonia, Assyria, Arabia, Egypt, Armenia, Cappadocia, Sparta, Ionia, the Ionians, the Tihrians, the Budians, the Scythians beyond the sea (namely) the Scodræ, Ionians, the Tihrians, the Budians, the Corseans, the Sauromatæ, and the Greeks."

This inscription is important, as it shows the existence of two branches of the Saco: one representing the House of Isaac of the Ten-Tribes or Assyrian Captivity, who afterwards migrated westward; the other, of the remnants of the Jewish Babylonish Captivity, who did not return at the end of the seventy years, but being persecuted, migrated eastward to Afghanistan, and probably to India also.

The Persians call all the Scythians Sakai (Herodotus, Book vii. s. 64):-"The Sakai got possession of the most fertile tract of Armenia, which was called after their own name Saccassena " (Strabo xi., viii. 4).

Herodotus (Book iv. s. 5-7) states that the Scythians say that theirs "is the most recent of all nations. They reckon the whole

number of years from their first beginning,-from King Targetaus to the time that Darius crossed over against them,-to be not more than a thousand years, but just that number."

"Now Darius's expedition against the Scythians was about 500 B.C., and a thousand years before that brings us to the time of Moses" (Our Scythian Ancestors, Col. Gawler, p. 5).

Strabo (Book i., ii. 27) informs us that "the ancient Greeks classed all the northern nations with which they were familiar under the one name of Scythians, or, according to Homer, Nomads."

Pliny (lib. vi. cap. 17) says "that the Sakai were among the most distinguished people of Scythia."

Strabo (vii. iii. 9) says :-" And the sheep-feeding Sakai, a people of Scythian race, but they inhabited wheat-producing Asia; truly they were a colony of the nomads, a righteous race. Strabo (lib. ii. p. 776) says: — "The Sakai or Sako were an IMPORTANT BRANCH of the Scythian nation."

The above-named tribes, known as Saco by the Arians and Khumry by the Semitic tribes, are no other than the remnants of Ten-tribed Israel who settled in Britain. Sharon Turner, in his "History of the Anglo-Saxons," declares "that they were a German or Teutonic-that is, a Gothic or Scythian tribe" (see p. 34, book i. vol. i., History), and "Of the various Scythian nations which have been recorded, the Sakai, or Saco, are the people from whom the descent of the Saxons may be inferred with the least violation of probability.' They seized Bactriana and the most fertile part of Armenia, which from them derived the name of "Saka". . . That some of the divisions of this people were really called Saka-suna (or sons of the Sakai) is obvious from Pliny, for he says that the Sakai, who settled in Armenia, were named Saccassani (Pliny, lib. vi. cap. II), . . . and the name Sacasena, which they gave to the part of Armenia they occupied, is nearly the same sound as Saxonia.

sena.

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The author of "The Lost Ten Tribes and the Saxons of the East" says:-"There is indication that the Sakai, if they took not their names from the house of Isaac, were at least connected with Isaac's descendants." Dr. Moore, again, in "Ancient Pillar Stones of Scotland," speaking of the Sakai, says: "We have reason to believe a tribe of the same people, denominated Arii by Tacitus, also conveyed the name into Germany through Thrace, which was called Aria, according to Stephanus. Herodotus says that the Medians were Arii, and we can well suppose that the Sakai might adopt and be known by the same name. . . That the people here called Arians were Hebrews, is, however, evident from the names of their cities. This early record sufficiently connects