BEHEMOTH

the name of an animal poetically and graphically described in Job to the end. It is evidenUy an herbivorous animal but commentators and naturalists are not agreed to the particular spedes. Bochart, Gesenius, others tnink the description most applicable hippopotamus; others think it was the elephant. The appUcation of the description to the elephant receives some confirmation from the fact that modem Arabs are in the habit of adding the mehemoth to their name for this auadruped when is very large, which appears to be the same Siberian word mammotk. Nor would it militate much against this interpretation that the elephant is not a native of the country in which the scene the poem is laid. Hie author of the book of nHiether Moses or not, may have been familiar life in Egypt and Arabia, and if so, would naturally introduce scenery and adjuncts Egyptian or Arabian, or both oombineid; and that the elephant was known in Egypt is proved not onlv by the ivory in the arts, specimens of whid i are preserved in abundance, but also by the representation animal itself on early Egyptian monuments.