Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub
[graphic][subsumed][merged small][ocr errors]

a gold vase and an ivory tooth; as the latter is the only specimen, and as it is broken, it was probably rare. The others bear vessels of gold and silver, of exquisite beauty, some of which hold flowers, (probably artificial; square packages, perhaps answering to the "chests of rich apparel;" and vases of porcelain. One bears a red pitcher of no beauty, probably containing incense; others have bags, which may also carry incense or gums. One bears a large chain of blue and crimson precious stones alternating with gold beads; one a string of blue gems, and one a broadsword (?) of gold. The heap of treasure already deposited consists of pretty baskets of silver ingots and rings, and one of a blue substance in powder, which may be indigo, or pounded incense;-large and elegant vessels of silver and gold; bottles of coloured glass; and the heads of several animals wrought in gold and silver; one of these is very interesting, as indicating a communication with India; the head of a cock wrought in gold, the comb and wattles being of a bright scarlet.

We know that Arabia was in very early times the medium of communication between India and Egypt, so that it is not necessary to identify all these productions with one region. The porcelain, if not the ivory, was probably the result of eastern traffic, and seems to point even as far as to China.

The ancient writers speak in the most extravagant terms of the riches and luxury of the Arabian Sabeans. Arrian, in the Periplus, mentions their embroidered mantles, their murrhine vases, their vessels of gold and silver, elegantly wrought, their

girdles, armlets, and other female ornaments. Straho speaks of their bracelets and necklaces, made of gold and pellucid gems arranged alternately; as well as their cups and their domestic utensils, all composed of the same precious metals, which, we are assured, were so abundant, that gold was but thrice the value of brass, and only twice that of iron, while silver was reckoned ten times more valuable than gold; their mountains producing the latter metal in vast quantities nearly in a pure state, and in lumps, varying from the size of an olive to that of a nut.

It is then highly probable that the procession thus depicted, corresponded, in the persons who composed it, the dresses which they wore, and the commodities which they presented, to that which, seven hundred years afterward, accompanied the Queen of the South with royal gifts to Solomon. But this is put almost beyond doubt by the hieroglyphic name which is inscribed over the head of the procession. This

name reads

* B&, which let

ters correspond very nearly to the Hebrew Na, Shva, or Sheba.

In all these illustrations of ancient nations which we are able to identify, we find nothing contra

(See

* The power of the letter is involved in some obscurity: Dr. Hincks (On the Letters of the Hieroglyphic Alphabet, p. 75,) considers it as having had a sound answering to our ch in the word church. the same treatise, p. 78, for the value of the basin, and p. 70 for that of the horned serpent.)

dictory, but many things, (minute it is true, but therefore indubitable,) confirmatory of the accounts given of them in the Word of God; thus showing that those accounts are no forgeries of a later age, but were written with actual and personal acquaintance with the people and things described. And, doubtless, if the remains of Egyptian antiquity were in a state of higher preservation, and the study of their inscriptions more advanced, many more illustrations might be found, which are at present unsuspected. And how interesting it is to look upon actual portraits (national if not individual portraits) of the people with whose names we have been so familiar, to see them in their usages, their costumes, and their arms, thus drawn with fidelity from the life.

117

HISTORY.

THE detailed annals of Egypt in her earliest ages, could not fail, on many accounts, to be full of intense interest. But her connexion with the family which God had chosen for himself, first as a kind fosterparent, and then as a tyrannical oppressor, would always form, to a Christian, the chief attraction to the study. Egypt was the school in which the young people of God was educated; and though the training was sharp and severe, the discipline was fitted for its purpose by divine, and therefore unerring, wisdom, while at the same time, it was tempered by watchful mercy. "When Israel was a child, then I loved him." (Hos. xi. 1.)

"When the children of Israel first migrated into Egypt, that country had long enjoyed the blessing of a settled government, which was continued to it during the usurpation of the shepherd kings; who framed, improved, and administered the excellent laws which seem to have existed in some form in Egypt from its first establishment as a monarchy, and the wisdom of which excited the admiration of the Greek authors many ages afterwards. Moreover, the Egyptians were a warlike race; well able to defend their own frontier.

*

*

Thus

guarded by her laws from intestine tumults, and by

« PoprzedniaDalej »