AMOMUM (dime/sop). This word occurs only in Rev. xviii. 13, where it is omitted in the received text, and consequently does not appear in the A. V. The ancients seem to have applied the term di.tw,uop to every odour which was pure and sweet (Salmasius ad Solin. p. 234); but the term was also specifically applied to an unguent which was pressed from the berry of a shrub of the same name (Plin. Hist. Nat. xii. 13; Theophrast. Hist. Plant. ix. 7; Dioscor. i. 14). This ointment was used for the hair (Ovid. Heroid. 'ad. 166 ; Sil. Ital. x.. 402; Martial, Efig. vii. 77, etc.).—W. L. A.
AMON ()JtN, Jer. xlvi. 25) is the name of an Egyptian god, in whom the classical writers unani mously recognise 'their own Zeus and Jupiter. The primitive seat of his worship appears to have been at Mera, from which it descended to Thebes, and thence, according to Herodotus (ii. 54), was transmitted to the Oasis of Siwah and to Dodona ; in all which places there were celebrated oracles of this god. His chief temple and oracle in Egypt, however, were at Thebes, a city peculiarly conse crated to him, and which is probably meant by the No and No Amon of the prophets. He is generally represented on Egyptian monuments by the seated figure of a man with a rain's head, or by that of an entire ram, and of a blue colour. In honour of him, the inhabitants of the Thebaid abstained from the flesh of sheep, but they annually sacrificed a ram to him and dressed his image in the hide. A religious reason for that ceremony is assigned by Herodotus (ii. 42); but Diodorus (iii. 72) ascribes his wearing horns to a more trivial cause. There appears to be no account of the manner in which his oracular responses were given ; but as a sculpture at Qarnaq, which Creuzer has copied from the De scription d'Egypte, represents his portable taber nacle mounted on a boat and borne on the shoulders of forty priests, it may be conjectured, from the re semblance between several features of that re presentation and the description of the oracle of Jupiter Ammon in Diodorus, xvii. 5o, that his responses were communicated by some indication during the solemn transportation of his tabernacle.
As for the power which was worshipped under the form of Amon, Macrobius asserts (Saturnal.
i. 21) that the Libyans adored the setting sun under that of their Ammon; but he points to the connection between the ram's horns of the god and Aries in the Zodiac. Jablonski, however, has endeavoured to shew that Amon represented the sun at the vernal equinox (Pantheon, i. 165, sqq.) This again has been questioned by Jomard (in the Descri,t. & Egypte), who maintains that the ancient vernal equinox was in Taurus, and considers Amon to denote the overflow of the Nile at the autumnal equinox. The precise ground of this objection is not apparent ; for the Egyptian year was movable, and in every 119 years the vernal equinox must have fallen in a different sign of the Zodiac (Ideler, Handbuch der Chnmologie, i. 94). But Creuzer (Symbolik, ii. 205) still adheres to Jablonski's opinion ; and the fact that Amon bears some rela tion to the sun seems placed beyond doubt by en chorial inscriptions, in which Amon Ra is found, lea meaning sun (Kosegarten, De Pricers "Egyptiorunt Literatura, p. 31). F. S. de Schmidt also, in his essay De Zodiaci Origine p. 33, sqq. (inserted in his Opuscula quibus Res fEgyptiacce illustrantur, Carolsruhas, 1765), endeavours by other arguments to prove the connection between Amon and Aries. In doing this he points out the coincidence of the festival of Amon, and of the sacrifice of the ram, with the period and with the kind of offering of the Jewish Passover, as if the appointment of the Paschal lamb was in part intended to separate the Jews more entirely from the Egyptians. For this he not only cites the pas sage of Tacitus, case ariete velut in contumeliam Hammonis (Hist. v. 4), but adduces an extract to the same effect from Rabbi Abrah. Seba ; Bahr, however (in his Symbolik des Mosaischen Cultees, 641), when objecting to Baur's attempt to draw a similar parallel between the festival of Amon and the Passover, justly remarks that the Hebrew text, besides allowing the Paschal offering to be a kid, always distinguishes between a mare lamb and a ram, and that the latter is not the sacrifice of the Passover (Ibid. p. 296).