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ought to be restrained from the commission of sin, not on account of any distinction of station in life, but from the light in which they viewed the crime itself. So heinous did the Egyptians consider this crime to be, that to be the accidental witness of an attempt to murder, without endeavouring to prevent it, was a capital offence, which could only be palliated by bringing proofs of inability to act. With the same spirit they decided, that to be present when any one inflicted a personal injury on another without interfering, was tantamount to being a party, and he was punishable according to the extent of the assault.

But, though the laws were thus inexorable towards the murderer; the royal prerogative might be exerted in favour of the culprit, and the punishment was sometimes commuted by the king. Herodotus says, indeed, that Sabaco, during his reign, "made it a rule not to punish his subjects with death," whether guilty of murder or any other crime; but, "according to the magnitude of their crimes, he condemned the culprits to raise the ground about the town to which they belonged, to preserve it from the Nile's inundations."

Infanticide. Unlike the Greeks and Romans among whom fathers had the right of life and death over their offspring, the Egyptians justly deemed the murder of a child an odious crime that called for the direct interposition of the laws. They did not, however, punish it as a capital offence, deeming it inconsistent to take away life from one who had given it to the child, but preferred inflicting such a punishment as would induce grief and repentance. To this end, the corpse of the deceased infant was fastened to the neck of its parent, and he was obliged to pass three whole days and nights in its embrace, under the surveillance of a public guard.

Parricide. This crime was visited with the most cruel punishment. Conceiving that the murder of a parent was the most unnatural of all crimes, they endeavoured to prevent its occurrence by marked severity. The criminal was sentenced to be lacerated with sharpened reeds, and after being thrown on thorns, he was burned to death.

Perjury.-Truth, or justice, was considered to be the cardinal virtue among the Egyptians, inasmuch as it relates to others; whereas, prudence, temperance, and fortitude being relative qualities, benefit only the individual who possesses them. Hence it was, that truth was earnestly inculcated → among them, and any departure from it was not only con

sidered disgraceful, but when it entailed an injury on another person, was punishable by law. Those who spoke evil of the dead were visited with a severe punishment; and the false accuser was doomed to undergo the punishment which the person accused would have suffered had the accusation been proved. To maintain a falsehood by an oath was deemed the blackest crime, because it attacked both the gods, whose majesty is trampled upon by invoking their name to a false oath, and men, by breaking the strongest ties of human society, namely, sincerity and veracity. The crime was uniformly punished with death.

Theft.-A singular custom prevailed in Egypt respecting theft and burglary. Those who followed the profession of a thief, gave in their names to the chief of the robbers, and agreed that he should be informed of every thing they might thenceforward purloin. The owner of the lost goods always applied by letter to the chief for their recovery, and having stated their quality, etc., when the goods were identified, they were restored to the applicant on payment of one-quarter of their value. The license given by the government to thieves arose from the persuasion that an entire check to robbery was impracticable, either by the dread of punishment or by any method that could be adopted by the most vigilant police; hence, they considered it more for the advantage of the community that a certain sacrifice should be made in order to secure the restitution of the remainder, than that the law, by taking on itself to protect the citizen and discover the offender, should be in the indirect cause of greater loss.

Debt. The laws of the Egyptians respecting debt underwent great changes, according as society advanced, and as pecuniary transactions became more complicated. In the reign of Bocchoris, about 812 B. C., the law of debt gave rise to many disputes and much oppression. To preven tthis, Bocchoris enacted, that no agreement should be binding unless it was acknowledged by a written contract; and if any one took an oath that the money had not been lent him, no debt should be recognised, and the claims of the suing party should immediately cease. This principle was acted upon, in order that great regard might be preserved for the name and nature of an oath; while, at the same time, by substituting the proof of a written document, they avoided the necessity of having frequent recourse to an oath, thereby preserving its sanctity.

In all cases usury was condemned by the Egyptian legislature; and when money was borrowed, even with a written

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 labour, or goods received from another individual to whom they lawfully belonged. This law was borrowed from the Egyptian 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."

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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 different

* 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

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