considered to have been tainted with Sabaeism or star-worship." (Ibid.)
"In these legends," says Lenormant, "we find traces of a wealthy nation,
constructors of great buildings, with an advanced civilization,
analogous to that of Chaldea, professing a religion similar to the
Babylonian; a nation, in short, with whom material progress was allied
to great moral depravity and obscene rites. These facts must be true and
strictly historical, for they are everywhere met with among the
Cushites, as among the Canaanites, their brothers by origin."

Nor is there wanting a great catastrophe which destroys the whole Adite
nation, except a very few who escape because they had renounced
idolatry. A black cloud assails their country, from which proceeds a
terrible hurricane (the water-spout?) which sweeps away everything.

The first Adites were followed by a second Adite race; probably the
colonists who had escaped the Deluge. The centre of its power was the
country of Sheba proper. This empire endured for a thousand years. The
Adites are represented upon the Egyptian monuments as very much like the
Egyptians themselves; in other words, they were a red or sunburnt race:
their great temples were pyramidal, surmounted by buildings. ("Ancient
History of the East," p. 321.) "The Sabaeans," says Agatharchides ("De
Mari Erythraeo," p. 102), "have in their houses an incredible number of
vases, and utensils of all sorts, of gold and silver, beds and tripods
of silver, and all the furniture of astonishing richness. Their
buildings have porticos with columns sheathed with gold, or surmounted
by capitals of silver. On the friezes, ornaments, and the framework of
the doors they place plates of gold incrusted with precious stones."

All this reminds one of the descriptions given by the Spaniards of the
temples of the sun in Peru.