III. SECT. ready to conclude with the philosopher that many inventions, even of vulgar use, have been. often lost and often recovered. 44 II. Of clothing. 47 45 In procuring materials for clothing, the Egyptians discovered not less ingenuity. The fine vesture in which Joseph was arrayed may be supposed to have consisted of byssus or cotton, since this substance is extracted from a nut, immemorially growing in Egypt, and there formed into raiment. 46 But at the æra of the Jewish emigration, Egypt abounded also with yarn from flax"; a manufacture of greater intricacy than that of cotton, since instead of a soft down easily separable from its covering, the tough filaments of flax must be disengaged from the friable and useless wood which they inclose, by maceration in water, and successive manual operations of considerable difficulty. Of the decorations which different stuffs received from dyeing and embroidery, conspicuous proofs appear in the sacerdotal vestments of the Hebrews and the inner hangings of the tabernacle, in which we find not only the simpler employments of those arts, but ingenious complications of them into pieces of exquisite workmanship. Among a profusion of brilliant colours may be discovered the coccus 48 of the Greeks or kermes of the Arabs, the deeper scarlet tint obtained 44 Aristotle, passim. 46 Pollux, Onomastic. vii. 13. 45 Genesis, c. xli. v. 42. 47" And the flax was bolled," that is, had risen in stalks. Exodus, c. ix. v. 32. 48 Kokkivov dirλav. Exodus, c. xxv. III. from cochineal", and the still richer Tyrian dye SECT. from the neck of the Palagea 50; as the colour, translated blue or violet", proceeds from the blacker blood of the Sepia or Cuttle-fish. The cochineal, mentioned in this list, was brought by the Indo-Scythians, of whom we have already spoken, to the great staple of Bactra; there it was purchased by the Assyrian caravans; and, by the routes formerly described 52, brought down from Syria into Egypt. The greater part of this shining dye stopt short, however, in Assyria, to supply the vast manufactories of cloth established successively, as will be seen hereafter, at Babylon and Borsippa. regard to cent But of the three necessaries of life,-food, III. With clothing, and habitation, the last was most mag- solid and nificently provided for amongst a people, who, magnifiin the chain of mountains bordering on the Red dwellings. Sea, enjoyed invaluable materials for building. In this endless range, for it extends far beyond the straits of Babelmandeb to the unexplored regions of Southern Africa, fine granite and marble were ordinary and little regarded productions: the mountains teem with porphyry, alabaster, and the hardest basalts; and, on their sides towards the Nile, many natural declivities facilitate the conveyance of these rich produc 49 Michaelis, from the root of the word, infers that the Hebrews knew cochineal to be the production of an insect. Anmerk. Exodus, c. xxv. v. 4. He might have cited the enpia epulpa worep Kivabap of Ctesias, Indic. c. xxi. 50 Plio, N. H. l. ix. c. 36. and Amati de Restitut. Purpurarum, p. 30. 52 See above, p. 34. 51 akılov, Septuagint. 148 54 53 Of this advantage, SECT. tions to the water's edge. III. the Egyptians availed themselves to rear public monuments unparalleled in solidity and grandeur; among the ruins of which, because no private dwellings appear, it has been rashly concluded that none of great value were ever to be found, and that the habitations of the ancient Egyptians, like those of the présent wretched tenants of the soil, consisted of earthen huts, slightly covered with palm-trees. " We know, on the contrary, from good authority, that even in Thebes, the first capital of Egypt, many private houses were worthy of that magnificence which shone in public edifices. 55 In early ages, indeed, magnificence, like knowledge, was confined to the few: but exertions in laborious undertakings are never more vigorous or more successful, than when the artful few direct the patient industry of thoughtless and submissive millions. 56 Egyptian architecture The subject of Egyptian architecture natu rally divides itself into temples, mausolea, I.Temples. obelisks, and pyramids. The three first mentioned remount to immemorial antiquity: pyramids, as will be seen presently, have a far 53 Bruce's Travels to discover the Source of the Nile, vol. i. p. 176. et seq. 54 Bruce, ibid. 55 Diodorus, l. i. s. 45. The private houses being lofty, and composed of perishing materials, have totally disappeared: the low massive vaults and temples, the obelisks and pyramids, are stamped with stupendous durability. 56 The period at which this most perfectly took place is the true age of Anakim; the age not so much of giants as of gigantic undertakings. III. later origin. I begin with temples, which, as sECT. above proved, were destined not solely to sacred, but to many important civil purposes. It has been conjectured with some probability, that the tabernacle of the Jews in the wilderness, might give the general outline of Egyptian temples."7 This venerable sanctuary of worship to the living God, in opposition to the vilest, but, from its associations, the most bewitching idolatry, was merely a portable temple for, as yet, a Nomadic nation. 56 It is described in all its parts with a circumstantial minuteness, which those will most approve, who can best estimate the importance of definite weights and measures to a people just emerging into civil and settled life. According to the sacred penman 59, the tabernacle consisted of an inner structure, which he calls the house; and an outer, which he calls the tent or court. The house was covered with curtains of finelinen; with blue and purple and scarlet. It was ten cubits high and as many broad, supported on acacia pillars, and divided by a veil into two apartments; the one looking towards the east, called the holy place, twenty cubits in length; the other looking towards the west, called the most holy, only ten cubits in length. Both divisions were overhung with fine linen, and this linen was covered externally with camlet or hair cloth, and this hair cloth again shielded by two layers of leather, the one of rams' skins dyed 5 Spencer in Dissertat. de Tabernac. Origin. p. 660. first edit. 5 Josephus, Antiq. Judaic. l. iii. c. 5.. Exodus, c. xxvi. throughout. III. 60 SECT. red, the other of badgers' skins. The rams' skins dyed red had already travelled, it should seem, to Egypt from Morocco, and the pillars of Hercules, where they have been manufactured from the remotest antiquity. The badgers' skins formed the outermost covering of all, and were judiciously chosen for completing the whole work, since the Arabs, who make shields and shoes of this substance, boast of the former as musket proof, and are said to undervalue the latter, if they do not last them fifteen years. 61 The holy house, itself a rectangle, was surrounded by a larger rectangle, called by Moses the court or tent; whose two larger sides were hung with curtains of fine linen, an hundred cubits long, and the two shorter sides hung with curtains extending respectively the length of fifty cubits. 62 The temples of Egypt had three distinct parts, corresponding to the divisions of the tabernacle: that is, the tent, the holy place, and the most holy, 63 The tent of the Hebrews answered to the sacred and solid inclosure of the Egyptians, always distinguished by a marble pavement, about one hundred feet broad, and three or four hundred in length. This magnificent avenue, which the Greeks called Dromos "the course,' was ornamented on each side by a row of sphinxes, 60 Herodotus, l. iv. c. 185. 61 Michaelis ad Exod. c. xxvi. 63 The two parts collectively are called vews; the outer corresponding to the holy place is called "povaos; the inner corresponding to the most holy is called onkos. Strabo, 1. xvii. p. 805. |