much of their income and of the respect previously shown them.*

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 in the Pentateuch, and that a copying 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 placet upon this point. "Michaelist 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. 47: 20-25. Just so Moses represents God, who honored 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 forever.|| In fact, they were obliged to give God, as also the gyptians Pharaoh two tenths,' etc. 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

* Drumann, S. 159 ff.

† Th. III. der Beiträge zur Einl. ins Alt. T. S. 411, 412.

Mos. Laws, vol. I. § 73.

Lev. 25: 23. Compare verses 42 and 55.

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, etc.

In Gen. 50: 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."

This passage gives occasion for the following remarks: 1. The 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 Herodotus* 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 * 2. 84.

Warburton's Divine Legation, Book IV. 3. 83.

Egypt were renowned in ancient times. Cyrus had a physician sent him from Egypt, and Darius always had Egyptian physicians with him.t

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.||

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. 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 performed 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

*Herod. 3. 1.

† Ibid. 3. 129.

Herod. 2. 86. Diod. 1. 91. || Rosellini, II. 3. p. 306. § Rosenm. Alterthumsk. II. 3. S, 352 ff. Upon this difference Zoega remarks, De Obeliscis, p. 263: At that time the college of Taricheuta seems not to have been formed, but embalming was performed by slaves.

pleasant odor, 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." Herodotus, 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.||

† 1. 72.

$ 2.86.

* 1. 91. || Herodotus says: ταῦτα δὲ ποιήσαντες, ταριχεύουσι λίτρῳ, κρύ ψαντες ἡμέρας ἑβδομήκοντα· πλεῦνας δὲ τουτέων οὐκ ἔξεστι ταριXeve. 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 operation of which Diodorus speaks,) held so inferior a place. But Creuzer, to whom Bähr accedes, has attempted to prove that the explanation which is most in accordance with the facts in the case, is inconsistent with the words. "Ego si quaeris," he says in Comment. upon Herodotus, p. 45, vereor ut hae explicationes conciliari queunt cum verbis Herodoti, qui quidem h. 1. diserte dicit tapizevovoi litow, quod

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5. The Egyptians mourned for Jacob according to the above passage, seventy days. In verse 4 it is said: "And when the days of his mourning were past," etc. In verses 10 and 11: "And they came to the threshing floor of Atad, which is beyond Jordan and mourned there with a great and very sore lamentation; and he made a mourning for his father seven days, and the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning in the floor of Atad and said, "This is a grievous mourning to the Egyptians; wherefore the name of it was called Abel Mizraim (mourning of Egypt)." The classical writers also show that the Egyptians appointed for themselves a very solemn mourning for the dead, espe

posterius vocabulum cogitando videtur repeti debere cum ad sequens κρύψαντες, tum ad ταριχεύειν, ita ut ταριχεύειν h. 1. proprie salitionem videatur significare." According to Creuzer therefore we must translate: "When this is done, they lay it in natron and leave it therein 70 days, but they are not allowed to salt it longer." But this interpretation is not admissible, much less then necessary. With κρύψαντες, λίτρῳ cannot be implied, for the dead body was not put into the natron, but that was applied to it. Tapınɛvew without hirow can the more appropriately be taken in a general sense, since it is always so used in what precedes and follows. Compare c. 85: οὕτω ἐς τὴν ταρίχευσιν κομίζουσι, c. 86 : ὧδε τὰ σπουδαιότατα ταριχεύουσι, c. 89: τὰς δὲ γυναῖκας τῶν ἐπιφανέων ἀνδρῶν, ἐπεὰν τελευτήσωσι, ου παραυτίκα διδοῦσι ταριχεύειν,ποὕτω παραδιδοῦσι τοῖς ταριχεύουσι. Compare upon the meaning of ταριχεύειν, primarily to salt and then to embalm in general, Creuzer p. 10 seq.; Heyne p. 81. We must translate: "When this is done, they embalm it in natron, having concealed it (in all) 70 days; but it is not permitted to embalm it longer." The expression "having concealed it 70 days" refers to the whole time in which the dead body was removed from the view of the relatives, and was under the operation of the embalmers. The phrase "They are not allowed to embalm it longer" is explained by the remark, that to the rapiysvois the treatment with natron also belonged, which began after the embalming in its more limited sense was at an end, and continued until the burial, or to the end of the mourning.

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