Humái, in order to keep the throne for herself, casts away her son, when an infant, in an ark on the Euphrates. The babe is found by a launderer, adopted by him and his wife, and named Dáráb. Dáráb's kingly qualities early assert themselves, and, re­fusing to follow his foster-father's trade, he enters the Persian army. A portent calls the general's attention to him. He dis­plays great valour in war against the Rúmans, and is recognised by Humái, who owns him as her son and resigns the throne in his favour.

The goddess of love, worshipped in many lands and under many names, had one of her oldest seats at Ascalon.*

Beside her dove-haunted temple was a lake, abounding in fish, to which at stated times the image of the goddess—a woman to the waist and a fish below—was borne in procession. Her local name was Derketo. The cult of the goddess gave rise to a legend that Derketo origi­nally was a girl who, as the result of a love-affair with a Syrian youth, gave birth to a daughter whom she exposed to perish among rocks in a desert, threw herself into the lake, and was changed into a fish. Her abandoned babe was cared for and fed by the doves till about one year old, when it was found by the herdsmen of Simmas, the keeper of the flocks of Ninus, king of Assyria. Simmas, who was childless, brought up the babe as his own, and gave her the name of Semiramis. In after years Onnes, the viceroy of Syria under king Ninus and his chief counsellor, saw, fell in love with, and married her. She bore him two sons, Hyapates and Hydaspes. Then Ninus himself became infatuated with her, Onnes hung himself, and Semiramis became queen. By Ninus she had a son named Ninyas. When Ninus died he left her the throne. Her career as supreme ruler was magnificent rather than moral. She governed all Asia as far eastward as the Indus, and was the reputed builder of Babylon, its hanging gardens, and the temple of Bel. In fact all great achievements of building or engineering in those parts were attributed to her. After a reign of forty-two years, and at the age of sixty-two, she resigned the throne to her son Ninyas, and either made away with herself by suicide or else turned into a dove and flew off in com­pany with a flock of those birds. Such in brief is a legend that was much in vogue in the days when Ktesias was court physician in Persia between the years B.C. 417 and B.C 398. He recorded it in his Persica, Diodorus epitomised it in his Bibliotheca, Books I. and II., and through his epitome it has come down to us. The legend has been given here because it seems not unlikely that in Humái we have a reminiscence of Semiramis. The two legends certainly have much in common. We have two queens, both of whom, after the death of their husbands and by their express sanction, oust—to employ a convenient phrase—the rightful heir; both of them have a foundling story connected with them, and both in the end resign their thrones to their sons. Both too are repre­sented in legend as having been great builders; Humái is credited, though not in the Sháhnáma, with the edificos whose ruins still exist in the neighbourhood of lstakhr (Persepolis) in Párs.*

Moreover Mas'údí tells us that Humái's mother was a Jewess, i.e. a Syrian.*

Two attempts seem to have been made to connect Humái with the old legendary line of kings, and both charac­teristically Persian. In one she is the daughter of Gushtásp and marries her brother Asfandiyár; in the other she is the daughter of Bahman and marries her father. The foundling legend is transferred from her to her son Dáráb. Several such legends are in existence. The oldest probably is that of Sargon I. of Agani, an ancient Babylonian king. “My mother,” he says, “placed me in an ark of bulrushes: with bitumen my door she closed up: she threw me into the river,*

which did not enter into the ark to me. The river carried me: to the dwelling of AKKI the water-carrier it brought me. AKKI the water-carrier in his goodness of heart lifted me up from the river. AKKI the water-carrier brought me up as his own son.”*

Similarly Romulus and Remus, the twin sons of the Vestal Silvia, were set afloat on the Tiber in a trough, and afterward brought up by a shepherd and his wife.*

There is too the case of Moses and of others.

Humái appears in the Zandavasta as “the holy Huma.”*

She is the earliest of the three queens or female Sháhs that, according to the partly legendary, partly historical, dynastic scheme of the Sháhnáma, ruled in ancient times over Irán. She is also by far the most important of the three. The other two—Púrándukht and Ázarmdukht—reigned in succession for six and four months respectively during part of the troublous period (A.D. 628-633) that intervened between the deposition of Khusrau Parwíz and the accession of Yazdagird III.