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other versions. No plant, however, bearing this name grows now in Egypt; and, as the modern state of agriculture in that country affords no data to assist us in our conjectures on the ancient agriculture, it is as likely to have been rye as spelt.

Dr. Shaw supposes that rice is the grain intended by the original, and cites Pliny as affirming that rice, or oryza, was the olyra of the ancients. Hasselquist, however, states that the Egyptians learned the cultivation of rice under the caliphs.

Ensele. We are told by Horus Apollo, that the Egyptians, wishing to describe the antiquity of their origin, figured a bundle of papyrus, as an emblem of the food they first subsisted on, when the use of wheat was yet unknown among them. Bruce affirms this to be the ensete, an Ethiopian plant, which was cultivated in Egypt till the general use of wheat superseded it as a diet. The stalk of this herbaceous plant, when boiled, has the taste of the best wheaten bread not perfectly baked, and if eaten with milk or butter, is wholesome, nourishing, and easy of digestion. This symbol, therefore, by no means proves that the ancient Egyptians ate plants before they discovered corn, but only that ensete was one of the articles they used for food, and which occasionally supplied the place of wheat.

Lotus-The Egyptian lotus, an aquatic plant, and a species of water lily, was also used by the ancient Egyptians for food. Herodotus thus describes it: "The water lily grows in the inundated lands of Egypt. The seed of this flower, which resembles that of the poppy, they bake and make into a kind of bread. They also use the root of this plant, which is round, of an agreeable flavour, and about the size of an apple. This the Egyptians call the lotus." Theophrastus, in his History of Plants, bears similar testimony. It is the nymphea lotus of Linnæus, and the colocassia of Pliny. It is mentioned by Prosper Alpinus, under the name of culcas. At the present day it is called eddow, and the inundated places of the Nile produce an abundance of it. Its root is also the food of numbers both in the East and West Indies, and in the South Sea Islands.

Holcus Sorghum-This plant, which in Latin is called Milium, a name which points to a stalk bearing a thousand grains, appears to have been known in the early ages of the world in the countries bordering upon Egypt, and we may safely conclude that it was known in that country also. It is now extensively cultivated there, and three harvests are ob

tained in one year. In the countries south of Eygpt, it is frequently to be met with, from sixteen to twenty feet in height, and wheat being almost unknown there, both man and beast subsist chiefly upon it. In Egypt, it forms part of the diet of the poorer classes. But that which forms the chief food of the Egyptians is, what it has been from the remotest period of time, bread-corn.

Wheat. We learn from the interesting history of Joseph, as well as from the narrative of the ten plagues, that Egypt was famous in those days for this species of grain. Some, indeed, point out that country as the parent of wheat; and, as the earliest mention of it is connected with that country, and it might have extended from thence to the islands of the Mediterranean and to Greece and her colonies, the conjecture is probable.

The matchless wealth of Egypt arose from its corn, which, even in almost universal famine, enabled it to support neighbouring nations, as it did under Joseph's wise administration. In latter ages, it was the vast granary of Rome and Constantinople. A calumny was raised against St. Athanasius, charging him with having threatened to prevent in future the importation of corn into Constantinople from Alexandria, which greatly incensed the emperor Constantine against him, because he knew that his capital city could not subsist without the corn exported from Egypt thither. The same reason induced the emperors of Rome to take so great a care of Egypt, which they considered as the nursing mother of the world's metropolis.* The same river, however, which enabled Egypt to feed the two most populous cities in the world, sometimes reduced its own inhabitants to the most terrible famine; and it is astonishing that Joseph's wise foresight, which in fruitful years had made provision for seasons of sterility, should not have taught these wise politicians to

* If what Diodorus affirms to be true, that in his day, Egypt contained thirteen millions of people, and that the population consisted before his time of seventeen millions, the fertility of Egypt must have been prodigious indeed. And the wonder is heightened, when we reflect on the above-mentioned facts, that it exported vast quantities of grain to Rome, and afterwards to Constantinople. Rollin states the exportation to Rome to have been twenty millions of bushels of wheat, which is equal to 2,500,000 quarters. Such a quantity was more than sufficient to have supplied the whole population of Rome, though it should have doubled that of the metropolis of England at the present day. His error arises from mistranslation. The word "modi," which he translates bushels, according to Arbuthnot and Adam, signifies pecks. Hence 625,000 quarters only were exported to Rome annually.

adopt similar precautions against the contingency of the failure of the Nile. Pliny, in his panegyric upon Trajan, paints with great strength the extremity to which that country was reduced by a famine in the reign of that prince, and the relief he generously afforded to it. "The Egyptians," says he, "who gloried that they needed neither sun nor rain to produce their corn, and who believed they might confidently contest the prize of plenty with the most fruitful countries of the world, were condemned to an unexpected drought and a fatal sterility, from the greatest part of their territories being deserted and left unwatered by the Nile, whose inundation is the source and standard of their abundance. They then implored that assistance from their prince, which they had been accustomed to expect only from their river. The delay of their relief was no longer than that which employed a courier to bring the melancholy news to Rome; and one would have imagined that this misfortune had befallen them only to display with greater lustre the generosity and goodness of Cesar. It was an ancient and general opinion, that our city could not subsist without provisions drawn from Egypt. This vain and proud nation boasted, that though conquered, they nevertheless fed their conquerors; that, by means of their river, either abundance or scarcity were entirely at their disposal. But we now have returned the Nile his own harvests, and given him back the provisions he sent us. Let the Egyptians be, then, convinced by their own experience, that they are not necessary to us, and are only our vassals. Let them know that their ships do not so much bring us the provision we stand in need of, as the tribute which they owe us. And let them never forget that we can do without them, but that they can never do without us. This most fruitful province had been ruined, had it not worn the Roman chains! The Eygptians, in their sovereign, found a deliverer and a father. Astonished at the sight of their granaries, filled without any labour of their own, they were at a loss to know to whom they owed this foreign and gratuitous plenty. The famine of a people, though at such a distance from us, yet so speedily stopped, served only to let them feel the advantage of living under our empire. The Nile may, in other times, have diffused more plenty in Egypt, but never more glory upon us. May Heaven, content with this proof of the people's patience, and the prince's generosity, restore for ever back to Egypt its ancient fertility.'

The reproach of this ancient author to the Egyptians for

their vain regard to the inundations of the Nile, points out one of their peculiar characteristics; and which is aptly and beautifully illustrated by the prophet Ezekiel in a passage wherein God speaks to Pharaoh-hophra, or Apries, thus: "Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself." Ezek. xxix. 3. The Almighty perceived an insupportable pride in the heart of this prince, a sense of security, and confidence in the inundations of the Nile, as though the effects of this inundation had been owing to nothing but his own care and labour, or those of his predecessors, and not, as in reality they were, dependent on the gracious influences of Heaven. So prone is man by nature to forget the source from whence all blessings flow.

Besides the plants enumerated above, which grew anciently in Egypt, at the present day the following are successfully cultivated in that country: winter plants, which are sown after the inundation, and reaped in about three or four months after; peas, vetches, lupins, clover, coleseed, lettuce, poppy, and tobacco: summer plants, which are raised by artificial irrigation, by means of water wheels, and other machinery; Indian corn, sugar cane, cotton, indigo, and madder. Rice is sown in the spring, and gathered in October, chiefly near Lake Menzaleh. Fruit trees, which grow mostly in gardens near the principal towns; the mulberry, and Seville orange, which ripens in January; apricots in May; peaches and plums in June; apples, pears, and caroobs at the end of June; grapes at the beginning of July; figs in July; prickly pears at the end of July; pomegranates and lemons in August; citrus medica in September; oranges in October; and sweet lemons and banana in November. Some of these plants may have grown anciently in Egypt, but we know of no data whereon to make such an assertion.

GOLD AND SILVER MINES.

Egypt was proverbial for its riches. See Exod. xii. 35; Ezek. xxxii. 12; Heb. xi. 26. This arose partly from its fertility, and partly from its extensive commerce. But that which chiefly rendered the people rich in gold and silver, for which they were celebrated, was their mines of these precious metals. Their gold mines were in the desert of the upper

country. Their position, still known to the Arabs, is about S. E. from Bahayreh, a village opposite the town of Edfou, in latitude 24° 58', on Apollinopolis Magna, and at a distance of nearly ten days' journey from that place in the mountains of the Bisharéeh. Arab authors place them at Gebal Ollágee, a mountain situated in the land of Begá, which word points out the Bisháree desert, being still used by the tribe as their own name. The gold lies in veins of quartz, in the rocks, bordering an inhospitable valley and its adjacent ravines; but the small quantity they are capable of producing by immense labour, added to the difficulties of procuring water, and other local impediments, would probably render the re-opening of them an unprofitable speculation. In the time of Aboolfidda, indeed, who lived about A.D. 1334, they only just covered their expenses, from which circumstance, they have ever since been abandoned by the Arab caliphs. The toil of extracting the gold in ancient times, according to the account of Agatharchides, was immense, and the loss of life in working the mines appalling.

He thus describes the process: "The kings of Egypt compelled many poor people together with their wives and children, to labour in the mines, wherein they underwent more suffering than can well be imagined. The hard rocks of the gold mountains being cleft by heating them with burning wood, the workmen then apply their iron implements. The young and active, with iron hammers, break the rock in pieces, and form a number of narrow passages, not running in straight lines, but following the direction of the vein of gold, which is as irregular in its course as the roots of a tree. The workmen have lights fastened on their forehead, by the aid of which they cut their way through the rock, always following the white veins of stone. To keep them to their task, an overseer stands by, ready to inflict a blow on the lazy. The material that is thus loosened, is carried out of the galleries by boys, and received at the mouth of the mine by old men and the weaker labourers, who then carry it to the Epopta or inspectors. These are young men, under thirty years of age, strong and vigorous, who pound the broken fragments with a stone pestle, till there is no piece larger than a pea. It is then placed on grinding-stones, or a kind of millstone, and women, three on each side, work at it till it is reduced to fine powder. . . . The fine powder is then passed on to a set of workmen called Sellangees, who place it on a

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