The Phœnician origin of Britons, Scots & Anglo-Saxons : discovered by Phœnician & Sumerian inscriptions in Britain, by preroman Briton coins & a mass of new history : with over one hundred illustrations and maps

50 PHCNICIAN ORIGIN OF BRITONS & SCOTS

these Kassis of Babylonia, that most modern Assyriologists now admit that the Kassis were Aryan in race as well as speech. But yet, although Assyriologists mostly admit that these Kassis were apparently affiliated to the Khatti or Hittites, they nevertheless refuse the logical inference that the latter also were presumably Aryans.

His personal name “ [khar,” “ Ixar,” or “ Icar,” also significantly confirms his royal Kassi ancestry. This name was borne not infrequently by Kassis of Babylonia in their still extant legal and business documents, etc., of the second millennium B.c. It occurs therein in the varying dialectic spelt forms of Ikhar or Ixar, Ikhur, Ikaria, Igar, Akhri, Agar, Agri, Ekarra, and Ekur; and amongst the Hittites of the fourteenth century B.c., as ‘‘ Agar.”? These vagaries in the phonetic spelling of the name, reflected also in the variation in spelling it on the Newton Stone itself, are merely in keeping with the notorious vagaries in the phonetic spelling of personal names, even by the individual himself, down to modern times, until printing has nowadays stereotyped the form of spelling. Thus we have the wellknown instance of Shakespeare, who is said to have spelt his own name over half a dozen different ways in the same document. The meaning of this personal name possibly has an especial Phoenician significance. The land of Pheenicia and the Amorites was called by the Babylonians, who not infrequently interchanged the vowels, Akharri or Axarri or ““ Western Land.”

The title of S(z)dyri or “« S(i)Zwor,” suggests the ethnic name of “ Silur-es ” applied by some late Roman writers to the people of South Wales bordering the Severn. But these Silures, described by Tacitus as dark-complexioned and Iberian,‘ were clearly non-Aryan ; and there is no suggestion in the Ancient British Chronicles to connect the author of these inscriptions with Wales. This title, therefore, is probably the designation of his subclan; though it may possibly

VC. P.N., 45, 50, 51, 78, 85, 149, 152. * Tb. 45.

°M.D., 30.

4 Tacitus, Agricola ii.