As Khons stands in the very same relation to the Egyptian Maut as Ninus does to Rhea, how does this title of "The Huntsman" identify the Egyptian god with Nimrod? Now this very name Khons, brought into contact with the Roman mythology, not only explains the meaning of a name in the Pantheon there, that hitherto has stood greatly in need of explanation, but causes that name, when explained, to reflect light back again on this Egyptian divinity, and to strengthen the conclusion already arrived at. The name to which I refer is the name of the Latin god Consus, who was in one aspect identified with Neptune, but who was also regarded as "the god of hidden counsels," or "the concealer of secrets," who was looked up to as the patron of horsemanship, and was said to have produced the horse. Who could be the "god of hidden counsels," or the "concealer of secrets," but Saturn, the god of the "mysteries," and whose name as used at Rome, signified "The hidden one"? The father of Khons, or Ohonso (as he was also called), that is, Amoun, was, as we are told by Plutarch, known as "The hidden God"; and as father and son in the same triad have ordinarily a correspondence of character, this shows that Khons also must have been known in the very same character of Saturn, "The hidden one." If the Latin Consus, then, thus exactly agreed with the Egyptian Khons, as the god of "mysteries," or "hidden counsels," can there be a doubt that Khons, the Huntsman, also agreed with the same Roman divinity as the supposed producer of the horse? Who so likely to get the credit of producing the horse as the great huntsman of Babel, who no doubt enlisted it in the toils of the chase, and by this means must have been signally aided in his conflicts with the wild beasts of the forest? In this connection, let the reader call to mind that fabulous creature, the Centaur, half-man, half-horse, that figures so much in the mythology of Greece. That imaginary creation, as is generally admitted, was intended to commemorate the man who first taught the art of horsemanship. *
* In illustration of the principle that led to the making of the image of the Centaur, the following passage may be given from PRESCOTT'S Mexico, as showing the feelings of the Mexicans on first seeing a man on horseback: "He [Cortes] ordered his men [who were cavalry] to direct their lances at the faces of their opponents, who, terrified at the monstrous apparition--for they supposed the rider and the horse, which they had never before seen, to be one and the same--were seized with a panic."
But that creation was not the offspring of Greek fancy. Here, as in many other things, the Greeks have only borrowed from an earlier source. The Centaur is found on coins struck in Babylonia, showing that the idea must have originally come from that quarter. The Centaur is found in the Zodiac, the antiquity of which goes up to a high period, and which had its origin in Babylon.