agreement, it was forbidden to allow the interest to increase to more than double the original sum. Creditors could not seize the debtor's person: their claims were confined to the goods in his possession, and such as were really his own, and which were comprehended under the produce of his la bour, or goods received from another individual to whom they lawfully belonged. This law was borrowed from the Egyp tian code by Solon; and it was, as Diodorus remarks, much more consistent with justice and common sense than that which allowed the creditor to seize the person, while it forbade him to take his property.

To prevent the accumulation of debt, and to protect the interests of the creditor, a remarkable law was enacted, according to Herodotus, by Asychis, who lived about the same time as Bocchoris. By this law it was pronounced illegal for any one to borrow money without pawning to the creditor the dead body of his father, which every Egyptian embalmed with care, and reverentially preserved in his own house, and therefore it might be easily moved from one place to another. It was deemed impious not to redeem so sacred a pledge, and he who died without having discharged this duty, was deprived of the customary honours paid to the dead; nor could he inter his children, or any of his family, as long as the debt remained unpaid; the creditor being in actual possession of the debtor's family tomb.

The cause which gave rise to this severe enactment appears to have been luxury. At an early age, a fondness for display, and the usual allurements of luxury, were introduced into Egypt among the rich; but at this period, the evil appears to have descended among the less wealthy, who envied, and sought to imitate those above them. The result of such attempts was, the accumulation of debt to such an extent as demanded the interference of the legislature; this severe measure was therefore one of absolute necessity, adopted in order to check a growing and a fatal evil.

Punitive laws.-The object of the Egyptian laws was to preserve life, and to reclaim the offender. Death took away every chance of repentance, deprived the country of the of fender's services, and hurried him out of the world when least prepared to meet the ordeal of a future state: hence, the Egyptians deemed it unnecessary to sacrifice the life of an offender except in the case of murder, and a few other crimes which appeared highly injurious to the community.

The customary mode of punishment for capital crimes was

the gibbet. Criminals charged with such were kept "bound" in prison till their fate was decided, whether it depended on the will of the sovereign, or the decision of the judges. Their prisons were under the superintendence, and within the house of the chief of the police. See Gen. xxxix. 20; and xl. 3-22. The laws of the Egyptians, however, do not appear to have sanctioned the gibbet, or the exposure of the body of an offender. The conduct of Rhampsinitus, in the case of the robbery of his treasure,* is mentioned by Herodotus as a singular mode of discovering an accomplice, and not as an ordinary mode of punishment.

Some of the punitive laws of the Egyptians were very simple; the character of them, indeed, was consonant with the notions of a primitive age. These laws were directed against the offending member. Thus, adulterators of money, falsifiers of weights and measures, forgers of seals or signatures, and scribes who altered any signed document by erasures or additions, without the authority of the parties, were condemned to lose both their hands; and those who betrayed secret designs to the enemy, had their tongues cut out.

Thefts, breach of trust, and petty frauds, were punished with the bastinado; and in military, as well as civil cases, minor offences were generally punished with the stick, a mode of punishment still in vogue among the modern inhabitants of the valley of the Nile: the Moslems hold it in such esteem, indeed, that they say, "The stick came down from heaven as a blessing to mankind."

At one period, robbery and house-breaking were considered capital crimes, and deserving of death. According to Diodorus, however, Actisanes enacted a law preventing this extreme penalty of the law, and instituted the novel mode of cutting off their noses, and banishing them to the confines of the desert, where a town was built called Rhinocolura, from the nature of their punishment. Thus, continues this author, by removing the evil-minded, he benefited society, without depriving the criminals of life; while at the same time, he punished them severely for their crimes by obliging them to live by their industry in a barren and inhospitable region.

One remarkable feature of the Egyptian laws was the sanctity with which edicts were upheld from generation to generation. Like the Jewish and Moslem laws, they were interwoven with the religion of the country, and as they were

The historian relates that he caught the thief in a trap which he had placed round the vases in which his treasures were preserved.

supposed to be derived from the gods themselves, it was considered impious to alter such sacred institutions. Innovations were never introduced unless loudly called for by circumstances; and we neither read of any attempts on the part of the people to alter or resist the laws, nor on that of their rulers to introduce a more arbitrary mode of government, except in the case of Cheops, as recorded by Herodotus; but this cannot be received as indubitable.

The reader will perceive from this, that occasional alterations were made in the Egyptian code of laws. Among the different legislators of the Egyptians, are particularly noticed the names of Mnevis, Sasyches, Sesostris, Bocchoris, Asychis, Amasis, and the Persian Darius; the particulars of which will be found narrated in their several histories. In the latter period of the ancient history of the Egyptians, the Ptolemies abrogated some of the favourite laws of the country, which appears to have given great offence to the native Egyptians, a circumstance which cannot be wondered at, since every individual from his infancy was nurtured in the strictest observance of those laws.

DIVISION OF THE COUNTRY INTO NOMES, OR PROVINCES.

In the prediction of the overthrow of Egypt, uttered by the prophet Isaiah, this passage occurs, ch. xix. 2:

"And I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians;
And they shall fight every one against his brother,
And every one against his neighbour;

City against city,

And kingdom against kingdom."

The latter clause of this verse is rendered by the Seventy, who were well acquainted with the condition of Egypt, nomos epi nomos, nome against nome" and an Egyptian father, Cyril, says, with reference to this verse, "A nome is a city with a circumjacent territory, and the places contained in it:" in other words, it was a province.

This division of the country existed in the earliest ages, and it subsisted under the Ptolemies and the Romans. The number of nomes is not easily determined, for scarcely two writers agree on the subject. They seem to have varied at different times; and they were distinctly marked by differen

*According to Champollion, Egypt was divided in the time of the Pharaohs, into thirty-six nomes or governments; ten in the Thebais, or Upper Egypt, sixteen in Heptanomis, or Middle Egypt, and ten in Lower Egypt, commonly called the Delta. Each of these nomes, he says, was

Local usages, and forms, and objects of worship, which would be likely to give rise to contention, so that Heeren's conjecture, namely, that each nome was originally an independent settlement and government, having some interests in common with others, but also interests that were conflicting, and which would produce quarrels among them, amount almost to a certainty. When these were united into one kingdom by powerful princes, the difference of the habits, customs, and religion of the inhabitants of each province must necessarily have prevented harmony; so that when the general government became weak, these separate members would be disposed to quarrel, and seek to promote their own interests by placing them in a commanding position. Such an event took place, according as the prophet foretold, when after the death of Sethon, the contemporary of Hezekiah and Sennacherib, and an interregnum of two years which followed, the monarchy of Egypt was divided into twelve separate kingdoms. It was to the reign of this oligarchy, and to the anarchy and civil wars which attended its extinction, by Psammetichus, one of the twelve, who became thereby absolute monarch, that the prophet is supposed by most commentators to refer.

Over each of these provinces there appears to have been a monarch or governor, who ranked in station next to the judges or magistrates of the capital. The office of monarch was, indeed, at all times of the highest importance. To his charge were committed the management of the lands, and all matters relating to the internal administration of the district. He regulated the assessment and levying of the taxes, the surveying of the lands, the opening of the canals, and all other agricultural interests of the country, which were under the immediate superintendence of certain members of the priestly order; and as he resided in the chief town of the nome, all causes respecting landed property, and other accidental disputes, were adjusted before his tribunal. The distinctive appellation of each nome was derived from the chief town where the monarch resided, and his rank appears to have depended on the extent of his jurisdiction.

Such were the laws and institutions of Egypt, so far as can be gleaned from ancient authors. Of the state of Egypt

divided into districts or toparchies. Diodorous says, that in the time of Sesostris, the number of nomes amounted to thirty-six, and such was the number in Strabo's time; but they were afterwards increased in number, if D'Anville states correctly, to fifty-three.

VOL. I.

8

during the early period of its history there is little or no information, owing to the uncivilized condition of neighbouring states, to the indifference of the Greeks who visited it, or the loss of their writings, and above all, to the jealousy of the Egyptians towards foreigners; for like the Chinese, they prevented all strangers from penetrating into the interior, and abstained from imparting information to them respecting the institutions and state of the country. The knowledge we have handed down to us, was collected, when, after the time of Amasis and the Persian conquest, foreigners became better acquainted with the country, and when its ancient institutions had begun to lose their interest, from the influence of a foreign rule. From this knowledge, it would appear to have been the reverse of a free and happy country; but it has been well observed that "freedom is a word indifferently understood in different ages and countries." The Egyptians therefore, trained up as they were from their infancy to reverence laws which they deemed immutable, might have enjoyed as great a degree of happiness (speaking of happiness with reference to this life only) as most of the nations in the Old or New world. The degradation of the lowest caste however, the waste of human life in the working of their mines, and the building of their ostentatious pyramids, with the frequency and severity of their summary punishments as recorded by Diodorus, and confirmed by existing monuments would convey an idea that those who ruled over them were hard task-masters. But it is probable that these labours were not performed solely by the natives, but in a great degree by slaves, as they certainly were at one time; for the lives of the Hebrews were made "bitter with hard bondage, in mortar. and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: al their service, wherein they made them serve was with rigour," Exod. i. 14.