with fuch infcriptions; or this Ægyptian way of recording things might be celebrated among the Arabs, and other Eastern nations, as extremely durable, as in fact it has been found to be; and this might be fufficient to engage Job to use this expreffion, O that my words were written! that they were recorded in a book! that they were graven with an iron pen, and incruftated with fome durable plaifter, after the manner of the Egyptians, whose memorials are fupposed to be the moft lafting of any nation's!]

There is no neceffity of fuppofing that the writing on the ftones mentioned Deut. xxvii. 2, 3, which apparently was defigned to be very lafting, was by infcribing them on the plaifter of lime, as has been imagined. The plaifter, or morter, might be commanded, because it is made extremely ftrong and durable, for fome works, in those countries, a circumftance which both Maillet and Shaw have remarked; whereas clay, or fome fuch mouldering a material, might be thought fufficient for the cementing the ftones of common buildings. Nay, their monuments were often heaps of ftones, unconnected by any cement whatever'. am not ignorant, that the very learned Dr. Kennicott fuppofes, that the whole ftone was covered with this plaifter, excepting the letMaillet, lett. 12. p. 192 193 Diff, on the fate of the Shaw, p. 206.

2d

7 See Gen. 31. 46.
printed Heb. Text. Note, p. 77.

ters,

I

ters, the ftones being, he imagines, naturally black. Travellers muft decide of what colour the great ftones of that district usually but most probably thefe ftones were only cemented in this case to keep them in their proper place.

are;

OBSERVATION LIX.

But previous to these fepulchral honours, there were fome methods of honouring the dead, which demand our attention: the being put into a coffin has been, in particular, confidered as a mark of diftinction.

XLI.

With us the poorest people have their coffins if the relations cannot afford them, the parish is at the expenfe. In the Eaft, on the contrary, they are not at all made use of in our times: Turks and Christians, Thevenot affures us', agree in this. The ancient Jews probably buried their dead in the fame manner: neither was the body of our Lord, it fhould feem, put into a coffin; nor that of Elifha, whofe bones were touched by the corpfe that was let down a little after into his fepulchre, 2 Kings xiii. 21. That they however were anciently made use of in Ægypt all agree, and antique coffins of ftone, and of fycamore-wood, are still to be feen in that country; not to mention those said to be made of a kind of pasteboard, formed by folding and glewing cloth together a great Part I. p. 58. number

number of times, which were curiously plaistered, and then painted with hieroglyphics". Its being an ancient Egyptian custom, and its not being used in the neighbouring countries, were doubtlefs the caufe that the facred historian exprefsly observes of Jofeph, that he was not only embalmed, but that he was put into a coffin too, Gen. 1. 26, both being managements peculiar in a manner to the Ægyptians.

Bishop Patrick, in his commentary on this paffage, takes notice of these Ægyptian coffins of fycamore-wood and of pasteboard, but he doth not mention the contrary usage of the neighbouring countries, which was, I fhould think, requifite, in order fully to illuftrate the place: but even this perhaps would not have conveyed the whole thought of the facred author. Maillet apprehends, that all were not inclosed in coffins that were laid in the Ægyptian repofitories of the dead, but that it was an honour appropriated to perfons of figure; for after having given an account of feveral niches that are found in those chambers of death, he adds, "But it "must not be imagined that the bodies, de

pofited in these gloomy apartments, were "all inclosed in chefts, and placed in niches. "The greatest part were fimply embalmed " and fwathed after that manner that every "one hath fome notion of; after which they laid them one by the fide of another, ? Thevenot, part 1. P. 137. "" without

"without any ceremony. Some were even "put into these tombs without any embalming at all; or fuch a flight one, that there "remains nothing of them in the linen in

which they were wrapped but the bones, " and those kalf rotten.-It is probable that "each confiderable family had one of these "burial-places to themselves; that the niches "were defigned for the bodies of the beads of the family, and that those of their do"meftics and flaves had no other care taken

of them, than the laying them on the "ground, after having been embalmed, or " even without that. Which, without doubt,

was alfo all that was done, even to the "heads of families of lefs diftinction'. After which he gives an account of a way of burial, practifed anciently in that country, which had been but lately discovered, and which confifted in placing the bodies, after they were swathed up, on a layer of charcoal, and covering them with a mat, under a depth of fand of feven or eight feet.

Coffins then were not univerfally used in Ægypt, that is undoubted from these accounts; and probably they were perfons only of diftinction that were buried in them. It is alfo reafonable to believe, that in times for remote as thofe of Jofeph, they might be much less common than afterwards, and confequently that Jofeph's being put into a coffin in Egypt, might be mentioned with a ? Lett. 7. p. 281.

I

defign

defign to express the great honours the Ægyptians did him in death, as well as in life, being treated after the most sumptuous manner of the Ægyptians, embalmed, and put into a coffin.

Agreeably to this, the Septuagint version, (which was made for Ægyptians,) feems to represent coffins as a mark of grandeur, Job xxi. 32.

It is no objection to this account, that the widow of Naim's fon is represented as carried forth to be buried in a Zopos, for the prefent inhabitants of the Levant, who are well known to lay their dead in the earth uninclofed, carry them frequently out to burial in a kind of coffin: fo Ruffell in particular describes the bier used for the Turks at Aleppo as a kind of coffin, much in the form of ours, only that the lid rifes with a ledge in the middle. Chriftians indeed, that fame author tells us, are carried to the grave on an open bier'; but as the most common kind of bier there very much resembles our coffins, that used by the people of Naim might very poffibly be of the fame kind, in which cafe the word Lopos was very proper,

XLII.

OBSERVATION LX.

If the use of a coffin in burial was doing a particular honour to the dead, the embalming them alfo certainly was; and the disserta