Twelfth Week-Fourth Day.

THE BIRTH-DAY.-GENESIS XL. 20.

IN Egypt, the birth-days of the kings were celebrated with great pomp. They were looked upon as holy. No business was done upon them; and all classes indulged in festivities suitable to the occasion. Every Egyptian attached much importance to the day, and even to the hour, of his birth; and it is probable that, as in Persia, each individual kept his birth-day with great rejoicings, welcoming his friends with all the amusements of society, and a more than usual profusion of the delicacies of the table.1

Such a day, the birth-day of the king, came round at the end of the three days to which Joseph had limited the fulfilment of Pharaoh's imprisoned officers' dreams. We are told that on that day 'Pharaoh made a feast to all his servants;' and the absence on that occasion of two so eminent as these could not fail to be much noticed. Besides, the very nature of the festivities of that day was well calculated to remind the king of the absence of those whose services had usually contributed much to the enjoyment of them. He determined to inquire at once into their case, and the result was as Joseph had predicted that the butler was restored to his office, and the baker was put to death.

Some speculation has been founded upon the mode in which this functionary was executed. Joseph, in his interpretation of the dream, says: "Within three days shall Pharaoh lift up thy head from off thee, and shall hang thee on a tree; and the birds shall eat thy flesh from off thee.' Sir J. G. Wilkinson infers from this, that hanging was in use among the Egyptians as a capital punishment. But this is a mistake. Everywhere in the Old Testament, except in the book of Esther (the scene of which is in Persia), hanging means the gibbeting of the body, after death has been inflicted by the sword or other means. 1 WILKINSON'S Ancient Egyptians, ii. 45.

Of proper hanging-that is, death by suspension-as a punishment, we find no instance but in the case of Haman, and in the Persian decree in Ezra.1 The case of Judas in the New Testament was one of suicide. The text just quoted suggests decapitation, and the subsequent gibbeting of the body on a tree. The striking incident of the birds eating away the flesh, indicates the nature of the 'hanging up' intended. We cannot but feel some surprise that Sir J. G. Wilkinson infers from the instance before us, not only that hanging was a capital punishment, but that gibbeting was not practised. If the object is merely to deprive of life by hanging, the body does not remain long enough for the flesh to be eaten by birds; and if it be left sufficiently long for that, it is gibbeting, whatever the mode of death may have been. It is clear that the mind of the chief baker was familiar with the idea of bodies thus exposed to be devoured by birds of prey. It was probably in the fear lest their acquaintance with this frightful practice in Egypt should lead the Israelites to adopt it, that they were expressly forbidden by the law to expose bodies in this manner longer than till the sunset of the day of the execution.3 This regulation evinces a degree of humanity, and of regard for public decency, unexampled in any ancient code of laws, and which modern civilisation, even under Christian influences, has been slow to imitate.

In this country itself, which is apt to boast of its distinguished humanity and enlightenment, it is within the memory of men— and of not old men either-that the land was disfigured with these fatal trees, with the bodies of murderers left to corruption upon them. It is not clear even that this kind of 'hanging' after death, as mentioned in Scripture, denotes suspension by cords. It means simply any kind of suspension; and the only thing of the sort that we can recollect to have seen represented in ancient painting or sculpture, is among the recently

1 Ezra vi. II; Esther vii. 9, 10.
2 Matt. xxvii. 5.

3 Deut. xxi. 22, 23.

discovered Nineveh sculptures, one of which shows three dead men stuck under the ribs upon the sharpened tops of as many poles driven into the ground; their heads and arms hanging down in a manner very painful to behold.

Before quitting the transactions of this day, we may direct attention to what seems a slight, but is really a very significant, variation in the interpretation, and consequent accomplishment, of the dreams. To the butler Joseph says, Pharaoh shall ‘lift up thy head;' and to the baker, 'shall lift up thy head from off thee.' The first of these phrases occurs also (in the original) in Ex. xxx. 12, and Num. i. 49, in the sense of numbering; and in this sense it agrees well with the words used in describing the fulfilment: 'he lifted up the head of the chief butler and of the chief baker in the midst of his servants.' It might, then, be translated literally, 'shall take thy poll;' that is, in recounting his officers, Pharaoh shall remember thee, and as it follows, shall restore thee to thy station.1 To the same phrase in the interpretation of the baker's dream, a different meaning is given by the addition of the words (or rather word, for it is but one in Hebrew) 'from off thee'-signifying, shall put thee to death, and that probably, but not certainly, by beheading.

This may suggest that the kings of Egypt revised the lists of their court officers on their birth-days, and that the appointments were nominally annual, though in most cases actually during pleasure. It may still require explanation how such a phrase as lifting up the head' came to denote an enumeration. We meet with an explanation of Junius Piscator's in Parker's Bibliotheca Biblica, which has at least the merit of being curious and ingenious. The ancients, in keeping their reckonings or accounts of time, as days, months, years, and their lists of domestic officers and services, made use of tables with holes bored in them, in which they placed a sort of pegs or nails with broad heads, exhibiting their particulars, whether numbers or names, or whatever it was. These nails or pegs the Jews called heads; and the sockets of these heads they called bases. The meaning, therefore, of lifting up the head is, that Pharaoh should 1 See TURNER's Notes to Genesis, p. 340.

take up the peg that had the butler's name on the top of it, read it, and will restore him, that is, his peg, into its place, there to stand good.'

On the other hand, there are those who dismiss all these views, and teach that the phrase 'to lift up the head' in the chapter before us, is elliptical for the full expression 'to lift up thy head out of prison,' such places of confinement being, it is alleged, usually under ground. And here we are directed to 2 Kings xxv. 27, where the words occur in reference to the king of Babylon and his captive, the king of Judah, whom he released from a long imprisonment. Here the idea of taking the poll would seem to be inadmissible; and it is most probable that it therefore denotes removal from prison, and restoration to liberty. Such is the explanation which a great authority1 gives. But he has overlooked the simple fact, that Egypt, being simply the valley of a river, by whose waters the land is periodically inundated, is the very last country in which phrases derived from subterraneous constructions could exist. All is above ground in Egypt, and necessarily so, as any constructions below the ground would be constantly full of water. The Egyptians were too intent upon contrivances for keeping their land above water, to dream of going below ground for any purpose whatever. From this, in a very considerable degree, arises the peculiar character of Egyptian buildings and architecture. Even Babylon, to which the explanation also refers, was in this respect considerably like Egypt. We cannot therefore receive this explanation.

Twelfth Week-Fifth Tay.

THE RIVER NILE.-GENESIS XLI. I.

We have had the dreams of Joseph, the dream of the chief butler, and the dream of the chief baker, and now the time is come for the king himself to dream. The dream is altogether

1 GESENIUS, in his Hebrew Lexicon.

a state dream, and the dreamer dreams it officially, as the head of the state. Given to any other person, it would have wanted its due weight, and would have secured less attention. It was all of God. The time was come for Him to show himself for the thousands of Egypt, for the tens of Israel, and for the slave in the prison-house. There were, in fact, two dreams following each other, in which, although the symbols are varied, the purport is so obviously the same, as to command attention among a people not accustomed to suffer even dreams of apparent significance to pass heedlessly by.

In both dreams the king stood by the river Nile. In the first dream, he saw come up out of the water seven thriving kine, which fed upon the reed-grass beside the river. Presently came up also seven starving kine, which stood near to the others on the river's brink, and soon devoured them up. In the second dream, seven full ears of corn, rank and good, came up upon one stalk; but soon seven parched and withered ears came up after them, and devoured, or absorbed, all the rich and exuberant ears.

The

There are some points in this that demand attention. most prominent object in both dreams is the river. The king is by the river; all takes place on the brink of the river; and both the fat and the lean kine come up from the stream. Every one knows that the existence of Egypt depends upon the river. There is little or no rain. But for the river, which periodically overflows the lands, and renders them fit for culture, and fertilizes them by its deposits, the whole country would be a barren, sandy, and uninhabitable desert. A few feet more or less in the rise of the river at the appointed time, makes all the difference between 'a good Nile' and 'a bad Nile'-between abundance and starvation. Hence the deep attention and profound anxiety with which everything connected with the river is regarded.

These facts have been so often recorded in prose, that we are glad to be able to report them here in the language of a recent poetical traveller:1—

1 R. MONCKTON MILNES, in his Palm Leaves.