that Jehovah would pardon the dead, and the priest purifies | from the Pharisees, A. D. 12, when Archelaus was banished, them by prayer.

The Samaritans have a catalogue of the succession of their high-priests from Aaron to the present time. They believe themselves to be of the posterity of Joseph by Ephraim, and that all their high-priests descended from Phinehas; whereas the Jews have not one of that family. They boast that they have preserved the Hebrew characters which God made use of to promulgate his law; while the Jews have a way of writing from Ezra, which is cursed for ever. And, indeed, instead of looking upon Ezra as the restorer of the law, they curse him as an impostor, who has laid aside their old characters to use new ones in their room, and authorized several books that were written to support the posterity of David. Several attempts have been made to convert these Samaritans; but they have been oppressed instead of being made Christians, and they are reduced to a small number rather by misery than by the multitude of those who have been converted. Nay, they seem more stubbornly wedded to their sect than the Jews, though these adhere rigorously to the law of Moses. At least Nicon, who lived after the twelfth century, when setting down the formalities used at the reception of heretics, observes, that if a Jew had a mind to be converted, in order to avoid punishment or the payment of what he owed, he was to purify himself, and satisfy his creditors before he was admitted. But the Samaritans were not received before they had been instructed two years, and were required to fast ten or fifteen days before they professed the Christian religion, to attend at morning and evening prayers, and to learn some psalms; others were not used with so much rigour. The term of two years which was enjoined to the Samaritan proselytes is an argument that they were suspected, and the reason why they were so was, that they had often deceived the Christians by their pretended conversion.1

Judæa reduced into a Roman province, and a census taken by
Quirinius or Cyrenius, president of Syria (to which province
Judæa was attached). On this occasion, Judas the Galilæan,
or Gaulonite, as he is also called,' exhorted the people to
shake off this yoke, telling them, that tribute was due to God
alone, and, consequently, ought not to be paid to the Romans;
and that religious liberty and the authority of the divine laws
were to be defended by force of arms. In other respects his
doctrines appear to have been the same as those of the Phari-
sees. The tumults raised by these pernicious tenets were in-
deed suppressed (Acts v. 37.); but his followers, who were
called Galilæans, continued secretly to propagate them, and
to make proselytes, whom they required to be circumcised.
As the same restless disposition and seditious principles con-
tinued to exist at the time when the apostles Paul and Peter
wrote their Epistles, they took occasion thence to inculcate
upon Christians (who were at that time generally confounded
with the Jews), the necessity of obedience to civil authority,
with singular ability, truth, and persuasion. See Rom. xiii.
1. et seq. 1 Tim. ii. 1. et seq. 1 Pet. ii. 13. et seq.4
IX. The ZEALOTS, so often mentioned in Jewish history,
appear to have been the followers of this Judas. Lamy is
of opinion that the JUST MEN Whom the Pharisees and Here-
dians sent to entangle Jesus in his conversation were mem-
bers of this sect, (Matt. xxii. 15, 16. Mark xii. 13, 14. Luke
xx. 20.)5 Simon the Canaanite, one of the apostles of Jesus
Christ, is called Zelotes (Luke vi. 15.); and în Acts xxi. 20.
and xxii. 3. (Gr.) we find that there were certain Christians
at Jerusalem, who were denominated ZEALOTS. But these
merely insisted on the fulfilment of the Mosaic law, and by
no means went so far as those persons, termed Zelote or
Zealots, of whom we read in Josephus's history of the Jew-
ish war.

X. The SICARII, noticed in Acts xxi. 38. were assassins, who derived their name from their using poniards bent like the Roman sica, which they concealed under their garments, and which was the secret instrument of assassination. The Egyptian impostor, also mentioned by the sacred historian, is noticed by Josephus, who says that he was at the head of 30,000 men, though St. Luke notices only 4000; but both accounts are reconciled by supposing that the impostor (who in the second year of Nero pretended to be a prophet) led out 4000 from Jerusalem, who were afterwards joined by others to the amount of 30,000, as related by Josephus. They were attacked and dispersed by the Roman procurator Felix.

BOTH IN RELIGION AND MORALS, AT THE TIME OF CHRIST'S
BIRTH.

General corruption of the leaders of the Jewish nation—of their
chief priests, and other ministers of religion-its deplorable
effects on the people.-State of the Jews not resident in Pa-

VII. The HERODIANS were rather a political faction than a religious sect of the Jews: they derived their name from Herod the Great, king of Judæa, to whose family they were strongly attached. They were distinguished from the other Jewish sects, first, by their concurring in Herod's plan of subjecting himself and his people to the dominion of the Romans; and, secondly, in complying with the latter in many of their heathen practices, such as erecting temples with images for idolatrous worship, raising statues, and instituting games in honour of Augustus; which symbolizing with idolatry upon views of interest and worldly policy is supposed to have been a part at least of the leaven of Herod, against which Jesus Christ cautioned his disciples (Mark viii. 15.); consequently they were directly opposed to the Phari-§ 2. ON THE EXTREME CORRUPTION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE, sees, who, from a misinterpretation of Deut. xvii. 15. maintained that it was not lawful to submit to the Roman emperor, or to pay taxes to him. But Herod and his followers, understanding the text to exclude only a voluntary choice, and not a necessary submission where force had overpowered choice, held an opinion directly contrary, and insisted that in this case it was lawful both to submit to the Roman emperor, and also to pay taxes to him. How keen then must have been the malice of the Pharisees against Christ, when they united with their mortal enemies the Herodians, in proposing to him the ensnaring question, whether it was lawful to give tribute to Cæsar or not? (Matt. xxii. 16.) If our Redeemer had answered in the negative, the Herodians would have accused him to the Roman power as a seditious person; and if in the affirmative, the Pharisees were equally ready to accuse him to the people, and excite their indignation against him, as betraying the civil liberties and privileges of his country, Christ by his prudent reply defeated the malice of both, and at the same time implicitly justified the Herodians in paying tribute to Cæsar. It is further probable that the Herodians, in their doctrinal tenets, were chiefly of the sect of the Sadducees, who were the most indifferent to religion among the whole Jewish nation; since that which is by one evangelist called the leaven of Herod (Mark viii. 15.), is by another termed (Matt. xvi. 6.) the leaven of the Sadducees.2

VIII. The GALILEANS were a political sect that originated Lewis's Origines Hebrææ, vol. iii. pp. 57-59. In pp. 59-65. he has printed a letter, purporting to have been written by the Samaritans at Shechem in the seventeenth century, and sent by them to their brethren in England, by Dr. Huntington, some time chaplain to the Turkey company at Aleppo, and afterwards Bishop of Raphoe, in Ireland.

Prideaux's Connection, part ii. book v. (vol. ii. pp. 365-368.) Jennings's Jewish Antiquities, book i. ch. xii. Calmet, Dissertations, tom. i. pp. 737 -743. where the different opinions of former writers concerning the Hero. dians are enumerated; as also in Elsley's Annotations on the Gospels, vol. i. pp. 342--316. vol. ii. p. 15. Parkhurst's Greek Lexicon, voce; Lardner's Credibility, parti, book i.ch. iv. § 4. (Works. vol. i. pp. 126, 127.) Tappan's Lectures on Jewish Antiq. p. 239.

lestine.

THE preceding chapters will have shown that the political state of the Jews was truly deplorable. Although they were oppressed and fleeced by various governors, who exercised the most rigorous authority over them, in many instances with peculiar avarice, cruelty, and extortion, yet they were in some measure governed by their own laws, and were permitted to enjoy their religion. The administration of their sacred rites continued to be committed to the high-priest and the Sanhedrin; to the former the priests and Levites were subordinate as before: and the form of their external worship, except in a very few points, had suffered no visible change. But, whatever comforts were left to them by the

He was a native of Gamala, in the province of Gaulonitis.

Josephus, Ant. Jud. lib. xviii. c. 1. §§ 1. 6. lib. xx. c. 5. § 2. De Bell. Jud.

lib. ii. c. 17, 597-9. lib. vii. c. 8. § 1. The Theudas mentioned in Acts v.36.
must not be confounded with the Theudas or Judas referred to by Jose-
phus. (Ant. lib. xx. c. 5. § 1.) Theudas was a very common name among
the Jews; and the person mentioned by the sacred historian was probably
one of the many leaders who took up arms in defence of the public liber-
before the speech delivered by Gamaliel. (Acts v. 34-40.) He seeins to
have been supported by smaller numbers than the second of that name,
and (as the second afterwards did) perished in the attempt; but as his fol
lowers were dispersed, and not slaughtered, like those of the second Judas,
survivors might talk much of him, and Gamaliel might have been particu
larly informed of his history, though Josephus only mentions it in general
terms. See Dr. Lardner's Credibility, part i. book il. cn. vii. (Works, vol. i.
pp. 405-413.) Dr. Doddridge on Acts v. 36.
Apparatus Biblicus, vol. i. p. 239.
Josephus, Ant. Jud. lib. xx. c. 8. § 10.
Ibid. lib. xx. c. 8 § 6. De Bell. Jud. lib. ii. c. 13. § 5.
Credibility, part i. book ii. ch. viii. (Works, vol. i. pp. 414-419.)
See particularly pp. 50-53. of the present volume.

ties, at the time of Cyrenius's enrolment, at least seven, if not ten years

Dr. Lardner's

Roman magistrates, they were not allowed to enjoy them by | ii. 24.) And in his Epistle to Titus, he informs us that the their chief priests and popular leaders, whom Josephus cha- Jews in speculation, indeed, acknowledged a God, but in racterizes as profligate wretches, who had purchased their practice they were atheists; for in their lives they were aboplaces by bribes or by acts of iniquity, and maintained their minally immoral and abandoned, and the contemptuous ill-acquired authority by the most flagitious and abominable despisers of every thing that was virtuous. They profess crimes. Nor were the religious creeds of these men more that they know God, but in works they deny him, being abomi pure having espoused the principles of various sects, they nable and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate. suffered themselves to be led away by all the prejudice and (Titus i. 16.) This testimony to the religious and moral animosity of party (though, as in the case of our Saviour, character of the Jewish people, by Jesus Christ and his they would sometimes abandon them to promote some fa- apostles, is amply corroborated by Josephus, who has given vourite measure); and were commonly more intent on the us a true estimate of their principles and manners, and is gratification of private enmity, than studious of advancing the also confirmed by other contemporary historians. The circause of religion, or promoting the public welfare. The cumstance of their nation having been favoured with an exsubordinate and inferior members were infected with the cor- plicit revelation from the Deity, instead of enlarging their ruption of the head; the priests, and the other ministers of minds, miserably contracted and soured them with all the religion, were become dissolute and abandoned in the highest bitterness and leaven of theological odium. They regarded undegree; while the common people, instigated by examples circumcised heathens with sovereign contempt, and believed so depraved, rushed headlong into every kind of iniquity, them to be hated by God, merely because they were born and by their incessant seditions, robberies, and extortions, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and lived strangers armed against themselves both the justice of God and the to their covenant of promise. They would not eat with vengeance of men. them (Acts xi. 3.), do the least friendly office for them, or maintain any social correspondence and mutual intercourse with them. The apostle comprises their national character in a few words, and it is a just one: They were contrary to all men. (1 Thess. ii. 15.) The supercilious insolence, with which the mean and selfish notion of their being the only favourites of heaven and enlightened by God inflated them as a people, and the haughty and scornful disdain in which they held the heathens, are in a very striking manner characterized in the following spirited address of St. Paul to them :-Behold! thou art called a Jew, and restest in the low, and makest thy boast of God: and knowest his will, and approvest the things that are more excellent, being instructed out of the law, and art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law. (Rom. ii. 17-20.) This passage exhibits to us a faithful picture of the national character of this people, and shows us how much they valued themselves upon their wisdom and superior knowledge of religion, arrogating to themselves the character of lights and guides, and instructors of the whole world, and contemptuously regarding all the heathen as blind, as babes, and as fools.

Owing to these various causes, the great mass of the Jewish people were sunk into the most deplorable ignorance of God and of divine things. Hence proceeded that dissoluteness of manners and that profligate wickedness which prevailed among the Jews during Christ's ministry upon earth; in allusion to which the divine Saviour compares the people to a multitude of lost sheep, straying without a shepherd (Matt. x. 6. xv. 24.), and their teachers, or doctors, to blind guides, who professed to instruct others in a way with which they were totally unacquainted themselves.' (Matt. xv. 14. John ix. 39, 40.)

More particularly, in the New Testament, "the Jews are described as a most superstitious and bigoted people, attached to the Mosaic ritual and to the whimsical traditions of their elders, with a zeal and fanaticism approaching to madness. They are represented as a nation of hypocrites, assuming the most sanctimonious appearance before the world, at the corners of crowded streets uttering loud and fervent strains of rapturous devotion, merely to attract the eyes of a weak and credulous multitude, and to be noticed and venerated by them as mirrors of mortification and heavenly-mindedness; devoured with ostentation and spiritual pride; causing a trumpeter to walk before them in the streets, and make proclamation that such a rabbi was going to distribute his alms; publicly displaying all this showy parade of piety and charity, yet privately guilty of the most unfeeling cruelty and oppression; devouring widows' houses, stripping the helpless widow and friendless orphan of their property, and exposing them to all the rigours of hunger and nakedness; clamouring, The temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord! making conscience of paying tithe of mint, anise, and cummin, to the support of its splendour and priesthood, but in practical life violating and trampling upon the first duties of morality,-justice, fidelity, and mercy,—as being vulgar and heathenish attainments, and infinitely below the regard of exalted saints and spiritual perfectionists. Their great men were to an incredible degree depraved in their morals, many of them Sadducees in principle, and in practice the most profligate sensualists and debauchees ; their atrocious and abandoned wickedness, as Josephus testifies, transcended all the enormities which the most corrupt age of the world had ever beheld; they compassed sea and land to make proselytes to Judaism from the Pagans, and, when they had gained these converts, soon rendered them, by their immoral lives and scandalous examples, more depraved and profligate than ever they were before their conversion. The apostle tells them, that by reason of their notorious vices their religion was become the object of calumny and satire among the heathen nations. The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you! (Rom.

Mosheim's Eccl. Hist. book i. part i. chap. ii., and also his Commentaries on the Affairs of Christians before the time of Constantine the Great, vol. i. Introd. ch. ii. Pritii Introductio ad Lectionem Novi Testamenti, c. 35. De sumina Populi Judaici corruptione, tempore Christi, pp. 471-473. For the following picture of the melancholy corruption of the Jewish church and people, the author is indebted to Dr. Harwood's Introduction to the New Testament. (vol. íì. pp. 58. 61.) a Josephus, Bell. Jud. lib. vii. p. 1314. Hudson. Again, says this historian, They were universally corrupt, both publicly and privately. They vied which should surpass each other in impiety against God and injustice towards men." Ibid.

The superstitious credulity of a Jew was proverbial among the hea thens. Credat Judæus Apella. Horat. Epictetus mentions and exposes their greater attachment to their ceremonies than to the duties of morality. Dissertationes, lib. i. p. 115. edit. Upton. See also Josephus contra Apion. p. 480. lavercamp.

"Another ever memorable instance of the national pride and arrogance of this vain and ostentatious people is, that when our Lord was discoursing to them concerning their pretensions to moral liberty, and representing the ignoble and despicable bondage in which sin detains its votaries, they imagined this to be an indirect allusion to the present condition of their country: their pride was instantly in flames; and they had the effrontery and impudence openly to assert, that they had always been free, and were never in bondage to any man (John viii. 33.); though every child must know the history of their captivities, must know that Judæa was at that very time a conquered province, had been subdued by Pompey, and from that time had paid an annual tribute to Rome. Another characteristic which distinguishes and marks this people, was that kind of evidence which they expected in order to their reception of truth. Except they saw signs and wonders they would not believe! (John iv. 48.) If a doctrine proposed to their acceptance was not confirmed by some visible displays of preternatural power, some striking phenomena, the clear and indubitable evidences of an immediate divine interposition, they would reject it. In an

"I cannot forbear," says Josephus, "declaring my opinion, though the declaration fills me with great emotion and regret, that if the Romans had delayed to come against these wretches, the city would either have been ingulfed by an earthquake, overwhelmed by a deluge, or destroyed by fire from heaven, as Sodom was: for that generation was far more enormously wicked than those who suffered these calamities." Bell. Jud. lib. v. c. 13. abandoned of men." Origen contra Celsum, p. 62. Cantab. 1677. "These things they suffered," says Origen, "as being the most

p. 1256.

"The Jews are the only people who refuse all friendly intercourse with every other nation, and esteein all mankind as enemies." Diod. Siculus, tom. ii. p. 524. edit. Wesseling, Amstel. 1746. "Let him be to thee as an heathen man and a publican." (Matt. xviii. 17.) Of the extreme detestation and abhorrence which the Jews had for the Gentiles we have a very striking example in that speech which St. Paul addresses to them, telling them in the course of it, that God had commissioned him to go to the Gentiles. The moment he had pronounced the word, the whole assembly was in confusion, tore off their clothes, rent the air with their cries, threw clouds of dust into it, and were transported into the last excesses of rage and madness. "He said unto me, Depart, for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles: they gave him audience," says the sacred historian, "until this word, and then lifted up their voice and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth; for it is not fit that he should live." (Acts xxii. 21.) This character of the Jewish nation is confirined by Tacitus, and expressed almost in the very words of the Apostle, Adversus omnes alios hostile odium." Tacit. Hist. lib. v. § 5. vol iii. p. 261. edit. Bipont.

PART IV.

DOMESTIC ANTIQUITIES OF THE JEWS, AND OF OTHER NATIONS INCIDENTALLY MENTIONED IN THE SCRIPTURES.

CHAPTER I.

ON THE DWELLINGS OF THE JEWS.

I. Caves.-II. Tents.-III. Houses-Their Arrangement-Materials—and Conveniences.-IV. Furniture.-V. Cities, Markets, and Gates.

would be useful to them for fuel. The tents of the emirs | Indies, also, nothing is more common than for thieves to dig and sovereigns of the East are both large and magnificent, or break through these mud walls, while the unsuspecting and furnished with costly hangings. Those of the Turco- inhabitants are overcome by sleep, and to plunder them. To mans are said to be black; and those of the Turks green: similar depredations Jesus Christ appears to allude, when he but, according to D'Arvieux, Dr. Shaw, and M. Volney, the exhorts his disciples not to lay up their treasure where tents of the Bedouins, or Arabs of the Desert, are univer- thieves BREAK THROUGH and steal. (Matt. vi. 19, 20.) Job also sally black, or of a very dusky brown. To these the bride seems to refer to the same practice. (xxiv. 16.) In the holes in the Canticles compares herself (i. 5.)—I am black (or, and chinks of these walls serpents sometimes concealed tawney) as the tents of Kedar, but comely, or beautiful as the themselves. (Amos v. 19.) In Egypt, it appears from Exod. curtains of Solomon. In the East, those who lead a pastoral v. 7. that straw anciently entered into the composition of life frequently sit (as Abraham did) in the tent-door in the bricks; and some expositors have imagined that it was used heat of the day. (Gen. xviii. 1.) The Arabian tents are of (as with us) merely for burning them; but this notion is unan oblong figure, supported according to their size, some founded. The Egyptian bricks were a mixture of clay, mud with one pillar, others with two or three, while a curtain or and straw, slightly blended and kneaded together, and aftercarpet, occasionally let down from each of these divisions, wards baked in the sun. Philo, in his life of Moses, says, converts the whole into so many separate apartments. These that they used straw to bind their bricks. The straw still tents are kept firm and steady by bracing or stretching down preserves its original colour, and is a proof that these bricks their eaves with cords, tied to hooked wooden pins, well were never burnt in stacks or kilns. Part of the bricks of pointed, which they drive into the ground with a mallet: the celebrated tower of Babel (or of Belus, as the Greeks one of these pins answering to the nail, as the mallet does termed it) were made of clay mixed with chopped straw, or to the hammer, which Jael used in fastening the temples of broken reeds, to compact it, and then dried in the sun. Their Sisera to the ground. (Judg. iv. 21.) In these dwellings solidity is equal to that of the hardest stone. 10 Among the the Arabian shepherds and their families repose upon the ruins discovered on the site of ancient Nineveh, are houses, bare ground, or with only a mat or carpet beneath them. built of sun-dried bricks, cemented with mud; and similarly Those who are married have each of them a portion of the constructed dwellings were observed by Mr. Buckingham in tent to themselves separated by a curtain. The more opu- the village of Karagoosh, near Mousul in Mesopotamia. At lent Arabs, however, always have two tents, one for them- this day the town of Busheher (or Bushire), like most of the selves, and another for their wives, besides others for their towns in Persia, is built with sun-dried bricks and mud,12 servants; in like manner, a particular tent was allotted to There is an allusion to this mode of building in Nahum Sarah. (Gen. xxiv. 67.) When travelling, they were care-iii. 14. ful to pitch their tents near some river, fountain, or well. (1 Sam. xxix. 1. xxx. 21.) In countries subject to violent tempests as well as to intolerable heat, a portable tent is a necessary part of a traveller's baggage, both for defence and shelter. To this the prophet Isaiah appears to allude. (iv. 6.)4

III. In progress of time men erected HOUSES for their habitations: those of the rich were formed of stone or bricks, but the dwellings of the poor were formed of wood, or more frequently of mud, as they are to this day in the East Indies; which material is but ill calculated to resist the effects of the impetuous torrents, that descended from the mountains of Palestine. Our Lord alludes to this circumstance at the close of his sermon on the mount. (Matt. vii. 26, 27.) In the

1 Emerson's Letters from the Egean, vol. i. p. 192.

At first, houses were small; afterwards they were larger, especially in extensive cities, the capitals of empires. The art of multiplying stories in a building is very ancient, as we may conclude from the construction of Noah's ark and the tower of Babel. The houses in Babylon, according to Herodotus,13 were three and four stories high; and those in Thebes or Diospolis, in Egypt, were four or five stories. In Palestine they appear to have been low, during the time of Joshua; an upper story, though it may have existed, is not mentioned till a more recent age. The houses of the rich and powerful in Palestine, in the time of Christ, were splendid, and were built according to the rules of Grecian architecture.15

Of all modern travellers, no one has so happily described the form and structure of the eastern buildings as Dr. Shaw, from whose account the following particulars are derived, which admirably elucidate several interesting passages of

From Hit, a town on the banks of the Euphrates, to Hilla, the site of Holy Writ.

ancient Babylon, "the black tent of the Bedouin, formed of strong cloth made of goat's hair and wool mixed, supported by low poles, is almost the enly kind of habitation met with." (Capt. Chesney's Reports on the Navigation of the Euphrates, p. 3. London, 1833. folio.) The Illyauts, a wan dering tribe of Arabs, have black tents. (Hon. Capt. Keppel's Narrative of Travels from India to England, vol. i. p. 100.)

Shaw's Travels, vol. i. pp. 398, 399. The description given by the intelligent traveller Mr. Buckingham of the tent of the Sheik Barak, who was at the head of a tribe of Turcomans, wandering in the vicinity of Aleppo, will enable us to form some idea of the shape and arrangenient of the tent of the patriarch, Abraham. "The tent occupied a space of about thirty feet square, and was formed by one large awning, supported by twenty-four small poles in four rows of six each, the ends of the awning being drawn out by cords fastened to pegs in the ground. Each of these poles giving a pointed form to the part of the awning, which it supported, the outside looked like a number of umbrella tops, or small Chinese spires. The half of this square was open in front and at the sides, having two rows of poles clear, and the third was closed by a reeded partition, behind which was the apartment for females, surrounded entirely by the same kind of matting.".... ."When the three angels are said to have appeared in the plains of Mamre, he is represented as sitting in the tent-door in the heat of the day." (Gen. xviii. 1-10.) "And when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent-door, and bowed himself towards the ground. ..... And Abrahain hastened into the tent unto Sarah, and said, Make ready quickly three measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes upon the bearth. And he took butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set it before them, and he stood by them, under the tree, and they did eat. When inquiry was made after his wife, he replied, 'Behold, she is is the tent. And when it was promised him that Sarah should have a son, it is said, 'And Sarah heard in the tent-door which was behind him.'...... The form of Abraham's tent, as thus described, seems to have been exactly like the one in which we sit: for in both there was a shaded open front in which he could sit in the heat of the day, and yet be seen from afar off; and the apartment of the females, where Sarah was, when he stated her to be within the tent, was immediately behind this, wherein she prepered the meal for the guests, and from whence she listened to their prophetic declaration." Travels in Mesopotamia, vol. i. pp. 30. 33, 34.

Bp. Lowth on Isaiah iv. 6. Pareau, Antiq. Hebr. pp. 353-356. Bruning, Antiq. Hebr. p. 273. Jahn et Ackermann, Archæol. Biblica, §§ 26-31. In Bengal and Ceylon, as well as in Egypt, houses are constructed with this frail material. Dr. Davy's Account of the Interior of Ceylon, p. 256. See also Harmer's Observations, 70l. i. pp. 265. 285. The houses at Mousul "are mostly constructed of small unhewn stones, cemented by mortar, and plastered over with mud, though some are built of burnt and unburnt bricks." Buckingham's Travels in Mesopotamia, vol. ii. p. 28.

See instances of the frailty of these tenements in Dr. Shaw's Travels, vol. i p. 250. Belzoni's Researches in Egypt, p. 299., and Ward's View of the History, &c. of the Hindoos, vol. ii. p. 335.

"The streets of the cities, the better to shade them from

Ward's History, &c. of the Hindoos, vol. ii. p. 325.
Philonis Opera, tom. ii. p. 86. (edit. Mangey.)

Shaw's Travels, vol. i. p. 250. Mr. Belzoni, in his Researches in Egypt, found similar bricks in an ancient arch which he discovered at Thebes, and which he has engraved among the plates illustrative of his Researches in Egypt, Nubia, &c. Plate xliv. No. 2. In and near the ruins of the ancient Tentyra, Dr. Richardson also found huts built of sun-dried brick, made of straw and clay. (Travels, vol. i. pp. 185. 259.) They are thus described by the Rev. Mr. Jowett, as they appeared in February, 1819-Speaking of the remains of ancient buildings in that part of Egypt, he says, "These magnificent edifices, while they display the grandeur of former times, exhibit no less the meanness of the present. This temple, built of massive stone, with a portico of twenty-four pillars, adorned with innumerable hieroglyphics, and painted with beautiful colours, the brightness of which in meny parts remains to this day, is choked up with dusty earth. Village after village, built of unburnt brick, crumbling into ruins, and giving place to new habitations, have raised the earth, in some parts, nearly to the level of the summit of the temple; and fragments of the walls of these mud huts appear even on the roof of the temple. In every part of Egypt, we find the towns built in this manner, upon the ruins, or rather the rubbish, of the former habitation. The expression in Jeremiah xxx. 18. literally applies to Egypt in the very meanest sense-The city shall be builded upon her own heap; and the expression in Job xv. 28. might be illustrated by many of these deserted hovels-He dwelleth in desolate cities, and in houses which no man inhabiteth, which are ready to become heaps. Still more touching is the allusion in Job iv. 19.; where the perishing generations of men are fitly compared to habitations of the frailest materials, built upon the heap of similar dwelling places, now reduced to rubbish-How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust!"-(Jowett's Researches in the Mediterranean, pp. 131, 132.)-In one place, says the same intelligent traveller, "the people were making bricks, with straw cut into small pieces, and mingled with the clay to bind it. Hence it is, that, when villages built of these bricks fall into rubbish, which is often the case, the roads are full of small particles of straws extremely offensive to the eyes in a high wind. They were, in short, engaged exactly as the Israelites used to be, making bricks with straw; and for a similar purpose-to build extensive granaries for the bashaw; treasure-cities for Pharaoh." Exod. i. 11. (Ibid. p. 167.)

10 Sir R. K. Porter's Travels in Georgia, Persia, Babylonia, &c. vol. ii. pp. 329, 330. 11 Buckingham's Travels in Mesopotamia, vol. ii. p. 71. 12 Price's Journal of the British Embassy to Persia, part i. p. 6. Lond. 1825. folio. 13 Herodot. lib. i. c. 180. 14 Diod. Sic. lib. i. c. 45.

1 Jahn et Ackermann, Archæol. Bibl. § 33.