to sound interpretation, the passage can mean only as follows; only the land of the priests he did not purchase; for the cause, which compelled the remaining Egyptians to sell their land, did not affect them, since they received an allowance from Pharaoh, so that, so long as he had bread, they also had it. But the contradiction may be removed in another way, and become perfect agreement. In the passage of Herodotus1 especially relied on, the meaning is not what it has been affirmed to be. It is there said: "And yet many And yet many thousand other usages, I might say, must they observe. But for this there is also much favour shown them. For neither their means of support, nor their other expenses, are derived from their own wealth. But they have their holy bread baked, and each one receives a great quantity of goose and neat's flesh every day; wine is also given them." The distinction is not here between the "common treasures" and 'private wealth" of the priests, but between their own property and that which they receive in common with others out of the public treasures, from the king. It is precisely the distinction between the wealth of the priests existing in lands, and their salary made up of natural productions, which appears in Genesis ; so that this passage of Herodotus, very far from contradicting our representation, serves rather as a strong confirmation of it. The phrase, "For neither their means of support nor other expenses are derived from their own wealth," 2 then leads decidedly to this conclusion. For, since in what precedes the passage quoted, individual priests are not spoken of, but priests in general, so it is entirely arbitrary to understand by "their own wealth" the private property of individuals. The wealth of the priesthood, in distinction from the allowance which was given them as a reward for their service, can alone then be designated here. This declaration: "There is much favour shown them," (lit. they suffer property, and also the expression "except the land of the priests alone, became not Pharaoh's," in verse 26, shows that the land of the priests was in the fullest sense their own. After comparing the words DP :IT with verse 18 seq., according to which the Egyptians sold their Jand in order to procure food, no one will interpret them by "they enjoyed their privilege." Finally, it cannot, from the nature of the case, be supposed, that the same author who makes the Egyptian peasants landowners, will deny to the priests all such possessions. 1 2.37. * Οὔτε τι γὰρ τῶν οικηΐω τρίβουσι οὔτε δαπανέωνται. much good),' contributes further to this argument. For, since the party receiving, the suffering subjects are the priests in general, the activity must come from some other source than from themselves. Just so this: "There is to them," "there is given them." But did there any doubt remain with regard to the correctness of the foregoing explanation, it would be cleared away by the explanation of Herodotus himself in another place. He says, The soldiers alone, besides the priests, receive a salary from the king. Now, since the land of the priests was their own property, their salary could consist only of the portion which was given them. 2 But other accounts also show that the priests received their support from the king. "The thirty judges," says Drumann,3 "priests of Heliopolis, Thebes and Memphis, were maintained by the king, and, without doubt, the sons of the priests also, all of whom over twenty years of age, were given to the king as servants, or more correctly, to take the oversight of his affairs. As a general rule, every one in the immediate service of the court is maintained by the king; for example, the two thousand soldiers, who alternating yearly, formed the body guard of the king." The ministers of court were in Egypt the priests, just as the state was a theocracy, and the king was considered as the representative and incarnation of the Godhead. Diodorus says indeed, that the whole maintenance of the priests, as also the expenses for the offerings, &c., were derived from the revenues of the lands. But this is true, at any rate, only of later times, when the priesthood had lost much of their income, and of the respect previously shown them.7 We have hitherto shown that the author exhibits in the narrative which we are considering the most accurate knowledge of the condition of Egypt-such a knowledge as Moses may more easily be supposed to possess than any other one. But we cannot stop here. We must also show that the Egyptian usages here referred to, were the groundwork of those of the Israelites under discussion 4 Diodorus 1. 75. Συντάξεις δὲ τῶν ἀναγκαίων παρὰ τοῦ βασιλέως τοῖς μὲν δικασταῖς ἱκαναὶ πρὸς διατροφὴν ἐχορηγοῦντο· τῷ δὲ ἀρχιδικαστῇ πολλαπ λάσιοι. 5 Diod. 1. 70. 6 Herod. 2. 168. F 'Drumann, S. 159 ff. in the Pentateuch, and that a copy of them can only be accounted for when the legislation attributed to Moses truly proceeded from him, since it was natural that he and no law-giver of more modern times should have regard to the Egyptian institutions in forming his laws. We will here quote what has been already said in another place upon this point. "Michaelis 2 indeed finds a reference in the two-tenths in Gen. xlvii. to an Egyptian law. 'In Egypt,' he says, 'the lands all belonged to the king, and the husbandmen were not the proprietors of the fields which they cultivated, but farmers or tenants who were obliged to give to the king one-fifth of their produce. Gen. xlvii. 20-25. Just so Moses represents God, who honoured the Israelites by calling himself their king, the sole possessor of the soil of the promised land, in which he was about to place them by his special providence; but the Israelites were mere tenants, who could not alienate their land for ever.3 In fact, they were obliged to give God, as also the Egyptians Pharaoh, two-tenths,' &c. Indeed the copiousness of the account must awaken the supposition of some design; and if we compare Lev. xxv., it can scarcely be doubted, that the representation of the relation in which Egypt stands to its visible king is applied to the relation of Israel to its invisible king, the king who is also God." As Pharaoh, we also add, furnished support for the priests out of the fifth which he received, so also did Jehovah. EMBALMING, LAMENTATION FOR THE DEAD, &c. In Gen. 1. 2, 3. it is said: "And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father, and the physicians embalmed Israel. And forty days were fulfilled for him; for so are fulfilled the days of those who are embalmed, and the Egyptians mourned for him seventy days." 1 This passage gives occasion for the following remarks: 1. The Th. III. der Beiträge zur Einl. ins Alt. T. S. 411, 412. a Lev. xxv. 23. Compare verses 42 and 55. • Additional information upon the topics discussed in this section may be found in Wilkinson, Vol. II. Sec. Ser. p. 451 seq. and 402 seq., with which compare Lane's Mod. Eg. pp. 283-311. phrase, “Joseph commanded his servants, the physicians," is not to be understood to mean that all the physicians of Joseph took part in this operation. The command was rather obeyed by those among the physicians of Joseph to whom this business belonged. It is remarkable that we find among the domestics of Joseph a large number of physicians. Even Warburton has compared with this account what Herodotus1 says of the healing art among the Egyptians: "The medical practice is divided among them as follows: each physician is for one kind of sickness, and no more, and all places are crowded with physicians; for there are physicians for the eyes, physicians for the head, physicians for the teeth, physicians for the stomach, and for internal disease." Therefore, remarks Warburton, it ought not to appear strange that Joseph had a considerable number of family physicians. "Every great family, as well as every city, must needs, as Herodotus expresses it, swarm with the faculty. A multitude of these domestics would now appear an extravagant piece of state, even in a first minister. But then we see it could not be otherwise, where each distemper had its proper physician." The medical men of Egypt were renowned in ancient times. Cyrus had a physician sent him from Egypt,3 and Darius always had Egyptian physicians with him.4 2 2. That the custom of embalming was very ancient in Egypt, is shown from the practice of cutting the bodies with an Ethiopian stone. Some mummies also bear the date of the oldest kings. 6 3. The embalming is here performed by the servants of Joseph, the physicians. According to the accounts of classical authors, on the contrary, the embalmers were a hereditary and organized class of men in Egypt, in which different duties were assigned to different persons. According to Diodorus, the Taricheuta were the most distinguished among them.7 If a proper distinction of time is observed, there is no contradiction here. It is entirely natural to suppose, that in the most ancient times this operation was per 1 2.84. • Warburton's Divine Legation, Book IV. 3. 83. Herod. 3. 1. 5 Herod. 2. 86. Diod. 1. 91. 7 Rosenm. Alterthumsk. II. 3. S. 352 ff. remarks, De Obeliscis, p. 263: At that time the college of Taricheuta seems not to have been formed, but embalming was performed by slaves. formed by those to whom each one committed it. But afterwards, when the embalming was executed more according to the rules of art, a distinct class of operators gradually arose. 4. The embalming continued, according to the declaration of the author, forty days, the whole mourning seventy days, in which the forty days of the embalming are evidently included. The account of Diodorus agrees in a remarkable manner with this. With reference to embalming, he says: "They prepare the body first with cedar oil, and various other substances, more than thirty (according to another reading, forty) days; then, after they have added myrrh and cinnamon and other drugs, which have not only the power of preserving the body for a long time, but of imparting to it a pleasant odour, they commit it to the relatives of the deceased." Of the mourning, the same author says: "When a king died, all the Egyptians raised a general lamentation, tore their garments, closed the temples, offered no sacrifices, celebrated no festivals for seventy-two days."2 Herodotus,3 in opposition to both these accounts, seems to limit the time of retaining the body in natron alone to seventy days. But if the passage referred to is more closely examined, it shows that he limited the whole time in which the body was under the embalmers to seventy days. Since this time began with the death and ended with the burial, while the mourning began and ended at the same time, there is the most perfect agreement between this passage of Herodotus and ours, which limits the time of lamentation to seventy days.4 1 1.91. ខ 2 1. 72. 3 2.86. • Herodotus says: ταῦτα δὲ ποιήσαντες, ταριχεύουσι λίτρῳ, κρύψαντες ἡμέρας ἑβδομήκοντα· πλεῦνας δὲ τουτέων ουκ ἔξεστι ταριχεύειν. That these seventy days of Herodotus have reference, not merely to the time of retaining the body in natron, but to the whole time of the embalming and mourning, has been asserted by some who are by no means guided by a respect for the Mosaic account, as for example, by Zoega, De Obeliscis, p. 253, and by Heyne, Spicilegium antiquitatis mumiarum, in Commentt. Götting. III. p. 85. The time is not only too long for retaining the body in natron, but it is also improbable that Herodotus would give the time of salting, which was so far from being the prominent thing that Diodorus does not mention it at all, and not that of embalming and of the whole operation. Besides, seventy, as a round and sacred number, is much more suitable for the whole than a single, proportionally unimportant part, which under the embalming in its restricted sense, of which alone the Pentateuch makes mention, (the means, according to the Arabic, bonis odoribus condivit mortuum, and consequently designates the opera |