Exod. 35: 25, 6, "And all the women that were wisehearted did spin with their hands, and brought that which they had spun, of blue and of purple, of scarlet and of fine linen: And all the women whose heart stirred them up in wisdom spun goat's hair." In v. 35, that Aholiah was endowed with the wisdom of the weaver. The eleven curtains of goat's hair for the tent over the tabernacle were each eleven cubits long and four broad;* and the hangings for the court one hundred by fifty cubits. Also "thou shalt embroider the coat (of Aaron) of fine linen, and thou shalt make the girdle of needlework."t Intimately connected with weaving is the art of dyeing. Almost all the cloths employed in the tabernacle service, from the curious girdle of the ephod, to the hangings of the gate of the court, were "blue and purple and scarlet." Some seem to have been used without coloring, but in the case of those which were dyed, the uniform junction of these colors is remarkable. On the painted monuments of Egypt, the different colors seem to have been always kept distinct. Nowhere is found the blending and shading of one by another which gives its charm to modern painting. That the Egyptians were ignorant of the art of mixing colors, as Heeren supposes, we cannot affirm. The fact that they did not mix them seems well established; and we have no certain way of accounting for it. Of the materials for dyeing, some were, as we have shown, indigenous; some were imported from the East, and some introduced by the Tyrians, who from their early commercial connections with that country had much to do with the manufacture of Egypt. The engraving of gems and setting of precious stones was an art quite familiar to the Egyptians. The two stones of memorial and the breastplate of judgment, were ordered to be cut with the names of the children of Israel," with the work of an engraver in stone, like the engraving of a signet." * Ex. 36: 14, 15. Ex. 28: 39, and 36: 37. The Several plants in addition to those we have mentioned, are used as materials for dyeing, some of which as they are native we may suppose to have been always used for this purpose. They cultivate the saffranoun, which grows like succory, and the flower of it dyes a rose color. An herb called Nil, to make an indigo blue. Pococke. The Tyrian murex could hardly have been long concealed in its value and uses from the Egyptians. § Ex. 28: 11 and 21. Gen. 41: 42. precious stones which were in possession of the Hebrews, of which a catalogue is given,* were among the articles every man borrowed from his neighbor, as they were leaving the land of their bondage. These stones were most of them not native in Egypt, and indicate an extensive commerce in those articles in the days of Moses. The uniform testimony of those who have inspected the evidences of the character of Egyptian manufactures, which yet remain in the painted monuments, is given in terms of high commendation of their excellence and skilful workmanship. Many articles of luxurious use were common among them, and many which we are accustomed to think the invention of more modern times even, were wrought with a niceness of finish, which modern artists might find it difficult to rival. The whole indicates great progress in the refined arts of civilized life, and so far as this proves any thing, shows that their foreign relations must have been extensive and intimate. Among the manufactured articles, which seem to have been rather common among the Israelites, as they were collected from many private persons for the use of the tabernacle and which they must have got from Egypt, were "ram's skins dyed red, and badger's skins." This amply proves the great antiquity of the arts of tanning and dyeing leather. We have other * Ex. 28: 17-20. Some of these stones were native in Egypt, though many were doubtless imported, as we find no trace of their being the products of that country. Strabo iii. 462. speaks of the isthmus, on which was Berenice, as containing mines of emeralds and other valuable minerals, and that the Arabians had made deep excavations in search of them. They have been worked by successive princes from the time of the Romans, to the present pasha, but have not produced stones of any great value. See Wilkinson p. 420. Diodorus iii. 39, says that not far below the sinus immundus is an island in which the topaz is found. The mines were wrought under royal orders, and rigidly guarded to prevent access of strangers, and stealing minerals. No vessel was allowed to remain at the island, the one which carried food to the miners returning as soon as the food had been left. Pliny xxxvii. 32. tells, on the report of Juba, of an isle of topazes in the Red Sea, a day's sail from the shore; and on the statement of later authors that it was found in Alabastron, a city of the Thebais. The mineral riches of Egypt consisted rather of its marble and porphyry, great quantities of which were exported to Rome, for the construction of baths, porticoes, etc. Ex. 25: 5. 35: 23. evidence, for in the oldest tombs at Thebes are found distinct representations of curriers working at their trade. "The semicircular knife used for cutting leather is precisely similar to that employed in Europe at the present day for the same purpose."* The legumen of the Acacia Nilotica, which grew plentifully in Egypt, is still used as in ancient times for tanning. But we have a curious passage on this subject, in Herodotus, which may be thought to show the existence of an extensive trade in this article, with western Africa famous in these days for preparing morocco leather. Speaking of the Lybians, who lived west of lake Tritonis, and who had not the nomadic character of the other tribes of that name, he says they pay peculiar honors to Minerva. "The robe and aegides of the statues of Minerva the Greeks have made in imitation of the Lybians, for except that the robe among the Lybians is of leather and the fringes of the aegis are not serpents but strips of leather, the adorning is entirely the same. And the very name is an acknowledgement that the vesture of the palladium is derived from Lybia, for the Lybian women put around the robe their goat skins tasselled and stained with madder, (¿oɛvedávw) and from these goat skins, (ἐκ δὲ τῶν αἰγέων τουτέων) the Greeks have taken the word aegis." The internal commerce of the country, the transporting to one part of it the products of another, we may presume to have been brisk and somewhat extensive, as the products of the different regions were much in common use, and yet unlike. The island Elephantine was the southern limit of Egyptian navigation, on the river. They were met there by boats (canoes) from Ethiopia, which managed the commerce above.|| Wilkinson. A tree called sount, which seems to be a species of acacia; it bears a sort of key or pod, which they use in tanning their leather instead of bark. Pococke. iv. 189. The phrase nɛgì tùy σ9ñτa is thought, if I remember rightly, by Beloe, to refer to the ordinary dress of the Lybian women. I have given what seems to me a more natural interpretation, though it makes less for my argument. Not unlikely the source from which the ram's skins were procured in the days of Moses, was to some extent at least the same. § Τῆς ἑκατὸν θύσανοι παγχρύσεοι ἠερέθονται, Πάντες ἐϋπλεκέες, ἑκατόμβοιος δὲ ἕκαστος. Hom. II. ii. 448, 9. 7 There can be no doubt this commerce on the river reached Meroë. The earliest distinct mention of a commerce to Egypt (Gen. 37: 25 and 28), informs us, that "a company of Ishmaelites came from Gilead, with their camels, bearing spicery and balm, and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt." "Then there passed by Midianite merchant-men, . . . and they brought Joseph into Egypt." The spices which were the chief articles in this caravan, came from Arabia and doubtless remotely from India. It might have been a branch of the trade which Strabo* reprecae conveniunt naves. Namque eas plicatiles humeris transferunt, quoties ad catarractas ventum est. Pliny Hist. Nat. v. 10. sub fine. Of the boats used by the Egyptians on the Nile, we have the following account in Herod. ii. 96. "Their boats of burthen (they seem from other passages § 60, etc. to have had a variety of pleasure boats) are made of the acanthus. Having cut from this acanthus pieces of two cubits, they lay them together in the manner of bricks; they connect these pieces with frequent and long wooden pegs, and place on their surface rower's benches. The joints they fill up (éлáxτwσav render compact i. e. caulk, or perhaps fasten with bands) with byblus. They make one rudder which is thrust through the bottom, masts of acanthus, and sails of byblus. These boats cannot ascend the river except with a fresh wiud, but are dragged up by the shore. They are borne down stream in this manner. A burdle is made of tamarisk (μvoixŋs) matted with reeds, and a bored stone of about two talents weight; of these the hurdle fastened with a rope is let down in front, and the stone behind fastened by another rope. The hurdle as the stream strikes it is rapidly moved and draws the baris which is the name of this kind of boat, and the stone falling deep and dragged behind guides it. They have very many such boats and some of a thousand talents burthen." This account is not very clear, and gives no definite notion of the kind of vessel Herodotus meant to describe. They would seem to have been more like rafts than like any species in use among us. Wilkinson p. 254, gives from an examination of the sculptures a very different sketch of them and throws some doubt on the correctness of Herodotus' statement.-Diod. i. 92. calls Charon's ferry boat Bugis. The ark in which Moses was hidden and exposed may have been of another sort alluded to by Pliny xiii. 22. Ex ipso quidem papyro navigia texunt, et e libro vela. Et circum pictis vehitur sua rura phaselis. Juvenal in derision says of thein, Virg. Georg. iv. 289. Parvula fictilibus solitum dare vela phaselis, Sat. xv. 127-8. sents as carried on in later times by the Gerreans to Petra and Palestine. In another passage* he describes a caravan route from Leuke Kome, a town lying near the Elanitic gulf, to Petra, thence to Rinocolura on the borders of Egypt and Phenicia, and thence to other places. This was probably a continuation of the route from India, as he says immediately afterward that in his time, the merchandize from India and Arabia was conveyed to Myos Hormos a port on the western side of the Red Sea, thence to Coptos on the Nile, and so down the Nile to Alexandria. However this may be, we are certain that an extensive trade was carried on between Egypt and India as early at least as the Exode of the Israelites. Spices which grew nowhere west of the Indian peninsula, were used by Moses in the wilderness, and in such quantities as to show they were by no means rare. Thus we read (Ex. 30: 23-25), "Moreover the Lord said unto Moses, saying, Take thou also unto thee principal spices, of pure myrrh five hundred shekels, and of sweet cinnamon half so much, even two hundred and fifty shekels, and of sweet calamus two hundred and fifty shekels, and of cassia five hundred shekels after the shekel of the sanctuary, and of oil olive an hin." And in v. 34, "Take unto thee sweet spices stacte and onycha and galbanum, these sweet spices with pure frankincense." Whether these spices were brought from Egypt, or purchased from wandering tribes of Arabs, of which there is no evidence and which is unlikely, or from trading caravans on their journey, matters not to the question. That these spices were introduced into Egypt cannot be doubted. From this time we have little direct information respecting the eastern trade of Egypt, until the period of the Roman conquest. Before passing to the fuller consideration of this branch of their commerce, we will mention some political regulations which relate mainly to internal trade. Among them was a lawt which ordained that clippers of coined money (voucoμa) falsifiers of weights and measures, counterfeiters of seals, notaries making false records, or erasing what had been inserted, or introducing false covenants should be punished by the loss of The passage seems to refer to records of public transactions, as of judicial proceedings, ἔτι δὲ τῶν γραματέων τῶν ψευδεῖς χρηματισμούς γραφόντων. § τῶν τὰς ψευδεῖς συγγραφὺς ἐπιφερόντων. |