Egyptians. Herodotus speaks of a feast of Isis, wherein her statue was carried upon a chariot with four wheels, drawn by her priests. The same author, speaking of one of their deities, says, they carried it from one temple to another, inclosed in a little chapel made of gilt wood. Clemens of Alexandria speaks of an Egyptian procession, wherein they carried two dogs of gold, an hawk, and an ibis. The same father quotes the words of Menander, who rallied those vagrant divinities that could not continue in one place. Macrobius says, that the Egyptian priests carried the statue of Jupiter of Heliopolis upon their shoulders, as the gods of the Romans were carried in the pomp of the games of the cireus. Philo of Biblos relates, that they used to carry Agrotes, a Phœnician deity, in a covered niche upon a car drawn by beasts. (Euseb. Præp. lib. i.)

The Egyptian priests placed Jupiter Ammon upon a little boat, from whence hung plates of silver, by the motion of which they formed a judgment of the will of the deity, and from whence they made their responses to such as consulted them. The Egyptians and Carthaginians, as Servius reports, had little images, which were carried upon chariots, and gave oracles by the motion they communicated to these carriages. The Gauls, as we are told by Sulpicius Severus, carried their gods abroad into the fields, covered with a white veil. Tacitus speaks of an unknown goddess, who resided in an island of the ocean. They keep for her a covered chariot, which none dares approach but her priest: and when he says that the goddess is entered therein, two heifers are harnessed to it who draw the chariot where they think fit, and then bring it back into her grove. They wash the chariot, and the veils that cover it, and then they drown the slaves that were employed in the service.

Diodorus Siculus speaks of two small temples of gold. There was one at Lacedæmon, which was all of brass, and therefore was called chalcotoichos, or the house of brass. Victor, in his description of Rome, gives instances of some of the same metal in that city; but I should rather think that the little temples of Diana of Ephesus, which were made and sold by Demetrius the silversmith, were either models of the temple of their goddess, or niches wherein the goddess herself was represented.

CALMET'S Dictionary of the Bible, art. NICHES.

No. 351.—vi. 4. And eat the lambs out of the flock.] Chardin observes that lambs are in many places of the scripture spoken of as great delicacies. These and the kids must be eaten of, to form a conception of the moisture, taste, delicacy, and fat of this animal. As the eastern people are no friends of game, fish, or fowls, their most delicious food is the lamb and the kid; hence they were used for presents, Judges xv. 1. 1 Sam. xvi. 20; hence also the energy of that expression, marrow and fatness, Psalm lxiii. 5.

HARMER, vol. i. p. 322.

No. 352.-vi. 10. Then shall he say, hold thy tongue, for we may not make mention of the name of the Lord.] One of the ceremonies attending the funerals of the Jews was that of conducting the corpse to the grave with singing. For this purpose mourning-women were retained in the East. On these occasions, Maillet says, "the lower class of people are wont to call in certain women who play on the tabor, and whose business it is to sing mournful airs to the sound of this instrument, which they accompany with a thousand distortions of their limbs as frightful as those of people possessed by the devil. These women attend the corpse to the

grave, intermixed with the female relations and friends of the deceased, who commonly have their hair in the utmost disorder, like the frantic bacchanalian women of the ancient heathens, their heads covered with dust, their faces daubed with indigo, or at least rubbed with mud, and howling like mad people." It was also customary to accompany the body to its last home, with devout singing of men. Russell says, (Hist. of Aleppo, p. 116.) "when the corpse is carried out, a number of sheiks, with their tattered banners, walk first; next come the male friends, and after them the corpse, carried with the head foremost, upon men's shoulders. The bearers are relieved very often, for every passenger thinks it meritorious to lend some little help on such solemn occasions. The nearest male relations immediately follow, and the women close the procession with dreadful shrieks, while the men all the way are singing prayers out of the Koran." Dean Addison particularly mentions, that he found this custom practised by the Jews of Barbary, and that they commonly made use of the forty-ninth Psalm for this purpose. (Present State of the Jews, p. 218.) Mr. Harmer, (vol. iii. p. 411.) conceives that this latter custom of men reciting portions of scripture gives us the true meaning of the prohibition in these words of Amos; we may not make mention of the name of the Lord: it is to be understood of the more sedate singing of parcels of holy writ, according to the modern practice of these countries: and certainly this is confirmed from chap. viii. ver. 3. of the same prophet, where he speaks of many dead bodies in every place, and says, they shall cast' them forth with silence,

No. 353.-vi. 11. He will smite the great house with breaches and the little house with clefts.] Chardin, speak

VOL. I.

ing concerning the rains, says, "they are the rains, which cause the walls to fall, which are built of clay, the mortar plastering dissolving. This plastering hinders the water from penetrating the bricks; but when the plastering has been soaked with wet, the wind cracks it, and occasions the rain in some succeeding showers to get between and dissolve every thing." This account illustrates the words of the prophet in a very happy manner, as the houses were mostly built of these fragile materials. (Ezek. xiii. 11.)

HARMER, vol. i. p. 178.

No. 354.-vii. 14. Sycamore fruit.] The sycamore fruit which grows sticking to the trunk of the tree, does not ripen till it is rubbed with iron combs, after which it ripens in four days. Jerome says, that without this management the figs are excessively bitter. Hasselquist, (Travels, p. 261.) describing the ficus sycomorus, or scripture sycamore, says, "it buds the latter end of March, and the fruit ripens in the beginning of June; it is wounded or cut by the inhabitants (of Lower Egypt) at the time it buds, for without this precaution, they say, it will not bear fruit."

No. 355.-viii. 9. I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day.] One of the asiatic poets, describing a calamitous and miserable day, says it was a time in which the sun rose in the west. Amos threatened that God would make the sun go down at noon, and would darken the earth in a clear day. Mr. Harmer observes (vol. ii. p. 186.) that though these expressions are different, they are of the same import, and serve to illustrate one another. They both signify how extremely short this time of prosperity would be, and how unexpectedly it would terminate. Mr. Lowth (Commentary on the Prophets,) says, that the

prophet alluded to eclipses of the sun, for he says that Archbishop Usher hath observed in his annals, that about eleven years after the time that Amos prophesied, there were two great eclipses of the sun, and it is well known in what an ominous light the ancients regarded them.

No. 356.-ix. 6. It is he that buildeth his stories in the heaven.] The chief rooms of the houses of Aleppo at this day are those above, the ground-floor being chiefly made use of for their horses and servants. Perhaps the prophet referred to this circumstance, when he spoke of the heavens as God's chambers, the most noble and splendid apartments of the palace of God, where his presence is chiefly manifested, and the collection of its offices, its numerous little mean divisions, of this earth. HARMER, vol. i. p. 175.

No. 357.-ix. 13. The ploughman shall overtake the reaper.] The Arabs commit depredations of every description. They strip the trees of their fruit even in its unripe state, as well as seize on the seed and corn of the husbandman. Maillet ascribes the alteration for the worse, that is found in the wine of a province in Egypt, to the precipitation with which they now gather the grapes, This was done to save them from the Arabs, "who frequently make excursions into it, especially in the season in which the fruits begin to ripen. It is to save them from these depredations, that the inhabitants of the country gather them before they come to maturity." (Lett. viii. p. 296.) It is this circumstance that must explain this passage of the prophet: Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that the ploughman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed, and the mountains shall drop