propably to superstition. Medicine was among early sciences. All rude nations have a pharmacy of their own, equal in general to their wants. Luxury, creating new and more complex diseases, requires a profounder knowledge of medicine and of the animal economy.

III.-Of the Egyptians.

1. A great portion of the knowledge and attainments of the ancient nations, and by consequence of those of the moderns, is to be traced to Egypt. The Egyptians instructed the Greeks; the Greeks performed the same office to the Romans; and the two latter have transmitted much of that knowledge to the world of which we are in possession at this day.*

2. The antiquity of this empire, though we give no credit to the chronicles of Manétho,† which, like those of the Chaldeans, Chinese, and Indians, appear clearly to have been more astronomical than historical, must be allowed to be very great. The Mosaic writings represent Egypt, about four hundred and thirty years after the flood, as a flourishing and a well-regulated kingdom. The nature of the country itself affords a presumption of the great antiquity of the empire, and its early civilization.

* For the supposed origin of Egyptian sciences, see Part II. sect. 50. Manétho, an Egyptian high-priest, and keeper of the sacred archives of Egypt, surnamed Mendesian, lived under Ptolemy Philadelphus, B.C. 261. He wrote the history of his country in Greek which has often heen quoted and commended by the ancients, particularly Josephus. It was chiefly collected from the writings of Mercurius, and other ancient memoirs preserved in the archives of the Egyptian temples. The few fragments of this history that have been preserved, contain little else than a list of thirty kings of different races or dynasties, the order of their succession is not given. Rollin observes, if they are allowed to be successive, they make up a series of time of more than 5300 years, to the reign of Alexander the Great, which is a palpable absurdity; besides we find in Eratosthenes (an historian of Cyrene), who was invited to Alexandria by Ptolemy Evergetes, a catalogue of thirty-eight kings of Thebes, all different from those of Manétho. The clearing up of these difficulties pas put the learned to a great deal of trouble and labour. The most effectual way to reconcile such contradictions, is to suppose that the kings of these different dynasties, did not reign successively one after the other, but many of them at the same time, and in different countries of Egypt.

Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson, in his "Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptian," (Loud. 8vo. 1841, 3 vols.), has given us the dynasties of the Egyptian kings, according to Manétuo, on the authority of Africanus and Eusebius, and also the list of Egyptian monarchs according to Herodotus and Diodórus Siculus, with observations thereon; in which he observes, that although many of the dynasties of Manétho are questionable, he is far from rejecting him, inasmuch as recent discoveries have in many instances verified his statements.-ED.

From the fertilizing effects of the waters of the Nile, it is probable that agriculture would be more early practised there than in regions less favoured by nature. The periodical inundations of the Nile are owing to the vapours of the Mediterranean condensed on the mountains of Ethiopia.

3. The government of Egypt was an hereditary monarchy. The powers of the monarch were limited by constitutional laws; yet in many respects his authority was extremely despotical. The functions of the sovereign were partly civil and partly religious.-The king had the chief regulation of all that regarded the worship of the gods, and the priests, considered as his deputies, and having more skill and learning than the other orders, filled all the offices of state. They were both the legislators and the civil Judges; they imposed and levied the taxes, and regulated weights and measures.-The great national tribunal was composed of thirty judges, chosen from the three principal departments or cities of the empire, Heliopolis, Thebes, and Memphis. The administration of justice was defrayed by the sovereign, who exacted an oath from his judges, not to yield obedience even to himself, if he passed any unjust sentence, and as parties were their own advocates, the expense was no burthen upon the people. So tender were they in regard to the purity and impartiality of their decisions, that, besides excluding professed advocates and public pleaders, that no extraordinary gifts of oratory might mislead them, every case was laid before them in writing, that the parties might stand on an equal footing, and on the exact merits of the question.-The penal laws of Egypt were uncommonly severe.— -Female chastity was most rigidly protected, and personal security so guarded by the laws, that whoever saw another attacked, and neglected to render him assistance, was liable to be punished as an assassin.— Funeral rites were not conferred but after a scrutiny into the life of the deceased, and by a judicial decree approving of his character. The characters even of the sovereigns were subject to this inquiry. Daily, indeed, during their lives, in the morning service of the temple, and in the presence of the whole court, were their kings, in a remarkable manner, and with singular delicacy, so reminded of every regal virtue, and of the baseness of every opposite quality, as pretty generally to ensure thei:

conformity to the laws; as a proof of which, most of them are reported to have passed the last ordeal of the posthumous judgment before-mentioned with credit and respect, and to have been, on their deaths, very sincerely lamented by their subjects.

There was an extraordinary regulation in Egypt regarding the borrowing of money. As it was usual to preserve, in a remarkable manner, the dead bodies of their ancestors, the borrower gave in pledge the body of his father, and was deprived of funeral rites if he failed to redeem it.*

Population was encouraged by law, and every man was bound to maintain and educate the children born to him of his slaves.

The manners of the Egyptians were very early formed. They had a singular attachment to ancient usages; a dislike to innovation; a jealousy and abhorrence of strangers.

4. They preceded most of the ancient nations in the knowledge of the useful arts, and in the cultivation of the sciences.-Architecture was early brought to great perfection. Their buildings, the pyramids, obelisks, &c., have, through the mildness of the climate, suffered little injury from time. Pliny describes the contrivance for transporting the obelisks. The whole country abounds with the remains of ancient magnificence. Thebes in Upper Egypt was one of the most splendid cities in the universe.

The pyramids are supposed to have been erected about nine hundred years B.C. They were probably the sepul

*Herodotus speaks of king Asychis thus: " Finding that commercial interests suffered from an extreme want of money, he passed an ordinance that any one might borrow money, giving the body of his deceased father as a pledge, by which law the sepulchre of the debtor fell into the power of the creditor; for if the debt was not discharged, he could neither be buried with his family in that or any other tomb, nor was he suffered to

inter any of his children." The debtor who did not redeem his pledge

was deemed infamous.-ED.

†There were three pyramids in Egypt, more famous than the rest, they were placed at irregular distances along the foot of the Libyan hills, near the west bank of the Nile, not very far from the city of Memphis. The largest one of them has generally been deemed one of the seven wonders of the world. It was built upon a rock, having a regular base cut on the outside as so many steps, and decreasing gradually quite to the summit. The stones of which it was formed, were of a prodigious size, the least of them being thirty feet square; they were wrought with surprising art, and covered with animals and other symbolical devices, called hieroglyphics. According to several ancient authors, each side was eight hundred feet

chral monuments of the sovereigns. The Egyptians beieved that death did not separate the soul from the body, and hence their extreme care to preserve the body entire, by embalming, concealing it in caves and catacombs, and guarding it by such stupendous structures. [Much of the mystery connected with these gigantic relics of antiquity, has been dispelled by the assiduous exertions of modern travellers, among whom the names of our countrymen, Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson, Bruce, and Salt, the promoter of the curious discoveries of Belzoni, stand pre-eminent.] The remains of art in Egypt, though venerable for their great antiquity, are extremely deficient in beauty and elegance. The Egyptians were ignorant of the construction of an arch.* The remains of painting and sculpture evince but a slender proficiency in those arts. Their use

of symbols and hieroglyphics, is too well known to be insisted upon. They appear not only to have taken the lead in such kinds of allegorical painting, but to have surpassed most other nations in the obscurity and mysticism of their fictions.

5. The Egyptians possessed considerable knowledge of geometry, mechanics, and astronomy. They had divided the zodiac into twelve signs; they calculated eclipses, and seem to have had an idea of the motion of the earth.

6. The morality taught by the priests was pure and refined, but it had little influence on the manners of the people.

7. So likewise the theology and secret doctrines of the priest were rational and sublime but the worship of the people was debased by the most absurd and contemptible superstition. We know, upon the authority of the sacred broad, and as many high. The summit of the pyramid, which to those who viewed it from below seemed a point, was a fine platform, sixteen or eighteen feet long. Herodotus informs us that 100,000 men were constantly employed about this work during thirty years. Ten complete years were spent in hewing out the stones, either in Arabia or Ethiopia, and in conveying them to Egypt, and twenty years more in building this immense edifice, the inside of which contained numberless rooms and apartments.-ED.

* Recent discoveries since the death of Tytler, have satisfactorily proved that the Egyptians were not ignorant of the construction of an arch. Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson affirms, that the Egyptians were in possession of this architectural knowledge so far back as 1540 B.C.-ED.

+ The ancient Egyptians were great idolaters. In their superstitious extravagances, they accorded divine honours to men, beasts, birds, and even to some vegetables. The deities universally worshipped throughout Egypt, were Osiris and Isis, which are supposed to be the sun and moon. The Egyptians also paid especial reverence to the bull Apis, called Epa

C

writings, how addicted they were to magic and enchantments, though the grounds and extent of their operations have constantly eluded the inquiries and researches of the learned. They appear to have been a combination of the mysteries and delusions of astrology and demonology; but by what arts or influence they managed to impose on the senses of mankind must for ever remain in obscurity.

8. Notwithstanding the early civilization and the great attainments of this people, their national character was extremely low and despicable among the contemporary nations of antiquity. The reason of this is, they were a people who chose to sequestrate themselves from the rest of mankind; they were not known to other nations by their conquests; they had little connexion with them by commerce; and they had an antipathy to the persons and manners of strangers.

9. There were likewise many circumstances of their own manners which tended to degrade them in the opinion of other nations. All professions were hereditary in Egypt, and the rank of each was scrupulously settled. The objects of religious worship were different in different parts of the kingdom; a fertile source of division and controversy. Their particular superstitions were of the most absurd and debasing nature, and the manners of the people were extremely loose and profligate.

IV. Of the Phænicians.

1. The Phoenicians were among the most early civilized nations of the East.* The fragments of Sanchoniáthon phus by the Greeks, dedicated to Osiris at Memphis, and to Mnevis, a similar bull at Heliopolis; besides which every city had its particular object of superstitious idolatry, and whilst a people worshipped one species of animals as gods, their neighbours held the same animal gods in abomination; thus, the wolf, the hawk, the dog, the cat, the goat, the monkey, the stork, the crocodile, &c., were all objects of idolatrous worship in Egypt. It was death for any one to kill one of these animals, and he who dared to treat them with irreverence, met with severe punishment. Diodorus relates an incident of which he himself was an eye witness when in Egypt. A Roman having inadvertently and without design killed a cat, the exasperated populace dragged him from his house, and neither the authority of the king, nor the terror of the Roman name, could rescue the unfortunate criminal. The same historian assures us, that such was the reverence which the Egyptians had for those animal deities, that in an extreme famine, they chose to eat one another rather than feed upon their imagined gods.-ED.

The cities of the Phoenicians are supposed to have been independent states, of which Sidon and Tyre, were the chief. Tyre, which is said te