[FN#198] Eastern fable runs wild upon this subject, and indeed a larger volume could be written upon the birth, life and death of Moses’ and Aaron’s rods.  There is a host of legends concerning the place where the former was cut and whence it descended to the Prophet whose shepherd’s staff was the glorification of his pastoral life (the rod being its symbol) and of his future career as a ruler (and flogger) of men.  In Exodus (viii. 3-10), when a miracle was required of the brothers, Aaron’s rod became a “serpent” (A.V.) or, as some prefer, a “crocodile,” an animal worshipped by certain of the Egyptians; and when the King’s magicians followed suit it swallowed up all others.  Its next exploit was to turn the Nile and other waters of Egypt into blood (Exod. vii. 17).  The third wonder was worked by Moses’ staff, the dividing of the Red Sea (read the Sea of Sedge or papyrus, which could never have grown in the brine of the Suez Gulf) according to the command, “Lift thou up thy rod and stretch out thine hand over the sea,” etc. (Exod. xiv. 15).  The fourth adventure was when the rod, wherewith Moses smote the river, struck two blows on the rock in Horeb and caused water to come out of it (Numb. xxi. 8).  Lastly the rod (this time again Aaron’s) “budded and brought forth buds and bloomed blossoms and yielded almonds” (Numb. xvii. 7); thus becoming a testimony against the rebels:  hence it was set in the Holiest of the Tabernacles (Heb. ix. 14) as a lasting memorial.  I have described (Pilgrim. i. 301) the mark of Moses’ rod at the little Hammam behind the old Phoenician colony of Tur, in the miscalled “Sinaitic” Peninsula:  it is large enough to act mainmast for a ship.  The end of the rod or rods is unknown:  it died when its work was done, and like many other things, holy and unholy, which would be priceless, e.g., the true Cross or Pilate’s sword, it remains only as a memory around which a host of grotesque superstitions have grouped themselves.

[FN#199] In this word “Hayy” the Arab. and Heb. have the advantage of our English:  it means either serpent or living, alive.

[FN#200] It is nowhere said in Hebrew Holy Writ that “Pharaoh,” whoever he may have been, was drowned in the “Red Sea.”

[FN#201] Arab.  “Kaml.”  The Koranic legend of the Ant has, I repeat, been charmingly commented upon by Edwin Arnold in “Solomon and the Ant” (p.i., Pearls of the Faith).  It seems to be a Talmudic exaggeration of the implied praise in Prov. vi. 6 and xxx. 25, “The ants are a people nto strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer” which, by the by, proves that the Wise King could be caught tripping in his natural history, and that they did not know everything down in Judee.

[FN#202] Isa, according to the Moslems, was so far like Adam (Koran iii. 52) that he was not begotten in the normal way:  in fact his was a miraculous conception.  See vol. v. 238.

[FN#203] For Elias, Elijah, or Khizr, a marvellous legendary figure, see vols. iv. 175; v. 334.  The worship of Helios (Apollo) is not extinct in mod.  Greece where it survives under the name of Elias.  So Dionysus has become St. Dionysius; Bacchus the Drunken, St. George; and Artemis, St. Artemides the healer of childhood.