HAMAN (iyr,i, a name of the planet Mercury; Sept. 'Af.tcfv), a favourite of the king of Persia, whose history is involved in that of Esther and Mordecai. He is called an Agagite ; and as Agag was a kind of title of the kings of the Amalekites [AGAG], it is supposed that Haman was descended from the royal family of that nation. [This name, however, may have been merely a name of re proach derived from the ancient Jewish hatred of Amalek (Stanley, 2ewzIrk Church, p. t41)]. He or his parents probably found their way to Persia as captives or hostages ; and that the foreign origin of Haman was no bar to his advancement at court, is a circumstance quite in unison with the most an cient and still subsisting usages of the East. Joseph, Daniel, and Mordecai, afford other examples of the same kind.
It is unnecessary to repeat the particulars of a story so well known as that of Haman. The cir cumstantial details of the height which he attained and of his sudden downfall, afford, like all the rest of the book of Esther, a most faithful picture of the customs of an Oriental court and government, and furnish invaluable materials for a comparison be tween the regal usages of ancient and modern times. The result of suc,h a comparison will excite surprise by the closeness of the resemblance ; for there is not a single fact in the history of Haman which might not occur at the present day, even in its merely formal characteristics, and which, indeed, is not of frequent occurrence in different combina tions. The boundless credit which Haman enjoyed with Ahasuerus ; the homage which all the court in consequence paid to him ; the royal signet-ring, the impression from which gave such authority to all written orders, and placed the doom of nations in the hands of its possessor; the price of blood which Haman offered to the king ; the inquietude of that inordinate power which could endure no rival, and which the shadow of opposition offended and alarmed ; and the form of poetical justice given to the final retribution in the hanging of Haman upon a gallows which he had prepared for another ; —all these are traits which would at the present day be received in Asia as the unexaggerated record of current events.
Even the decree for the extermination of the Jews which was granted at the request of Haman, however startling it may appear to those whose notions are grounded upon European institutions, would appear in no wise strange under an Oriental government. Even in Europe the fanaticism and tyranny of ancient governments often produced similar proscriptions (sometimes with reference to the very same people), which, under the mildness and tranquillity of modern institutions, we are as little able to comprehend. But in the East we have still no difficulty in discovering the traces of the same excesses of despotism, the same blind submission of the people, the same respect for the seal of the sovereign, and the same passive resigna tion to the sword which he uplifts or to the bow string which he sends. Even in our own day we have seen imperial firmauns consign to utter de struction in the mass the Greeks, the Druses, and the Maronites ; and such things must and will occur wherever the extermination of a people is unhappily so easy a matter that it costs a despot nc further trouble than the drawing of a ring from his finger. Other times and other names make all the difference—the manners are the same. It inay be well to observe that Haman never mentions Mor decai himself to the king ; and that in speaking of the Jews he does not name them directly, but de scribes them as a certain people' dispersed through the kingdom, and living separate under laws of their own (Esth. 8). That this people, or any other subject to his sceptre, should require to be thus descriptively indicated, seems to shew how little the king knew of the actual state of his dominions, or of persons beyond the immediate circle of the court. The death of Haman appears to have taken place about the year B. C. .5 IO. [EsTHER.J—J. K.