the cattle get green food only four months of the year, the rest of the time, dried fodder.

1

Not less important is the parenthetical remark of the author in chap. ix. 31,32: "And the flax and the barley were smitten; for the barley was in the car, and the flax was bolled. But the wheat and the spelt were not smitten, for these come to maturity later." In surveying what was destroyed, and what was to be destroyed, in case of persevering obstinacy, there is here named,First, the products on which the weal and woe of ancient Egypt depended. Compare respecting spelt as one of the most important products of ancient Egypt, the corn from which they prepared their bread, Herodotus with the remarks of Bähr. There are representations of the flax harvest in Rosellini. The cultivation of the Durrah, from which the bread is made, upon which the common people for the most part live, is recent in Egypt.3 Of the cultivation of rice there is scarcely a single certain trace found, and it cannot at least have been general. Secondly, The author shows the most accurate knowledge of the time of the harvest in Egypt. Flax and barley are nearly ripe, when wheat and spelt are yet green. Theophrastis and Pliny say: In Egypt barley was harvested in the sixth month after sowing, wheat in the seventh month. Sonnini," after remarking that with the cultiva tion of wheat, that of barley is very important, says: "It comes to maturity about a month earlier than wheat, and its harvest is especially abundant." Wheat and spelt come to maturity at about the same time. Flax and barley were generally ripe in March, wheat and spelt in April. Such circumstances are not in keeping with the character of a mythic historian.

5

6

THE EIGHTH PLAGUE-THE LOCUSTS.

The narrative itself indicates, ch. x. 6, 14, that the animals, which constituted the eighth plague, the locusts, were at other times somewhat common in Egypt, and that only the abundance of them was unprecedented. Other accounts also confirm this fact.

Hartmann has collected the notices of ancient travellers, among whom Norden2 has particularly described what he saw in the following words: "In common with Syria and other regions of Asia, Egypt suffers from the locusts, yet no account can be found of their producing such terrible desolation here as in Syria, Arabia," &c. But of especial interest is Denon's' account of a flight of locusts observed by him: "Two days after this calamity, (they had been suddenly overtaken by a heavy chamsin) we were informed that the plain was covered with birds, which flew in dense flocks from east to west. We in fact saw from a distance, that the fields seemed to move, or at least that a long current flowed through the plain. Supposing that they were strange birds which had flown hither, in such great numbers, we hastened our pace in order to observe them. But instead of birds, we found a cloud of locusts which made the land bald; for they stopped upon each stalk of grass in order to devour it, and then flew further for spoil. At a time of the year when the corn is tender, they would have been a real plague; as lean, as efficient, and as lively as the Arab Bedawin, they are also a production of the desert. After the wind had changed its course, so as to blow directly against them, it swept them back into the desert.'

This account presents a striking agreement with ours, in three particulars: 1. In both passages, the locusts and chamsin appear in immediate connection with each other. 2. In both the flight is from east to west, which is even so much the more worthy remark, since some, as recently v. Bohlen, have imputed it to the author, as a fault, that he represents the locusts as coming with the east wind. 3. In both, the locusts, by a change of the wind, are driven back whence they came.

4

THE NINTH PLAGUE-THE DARKNESS.

In the ninth plague the darkness, it is scarcely possible to mistake the similarity to natural phenomena, since it has many other characteristic traits besides the one rendered most conspicuous here. The partial prominence given to the darkness in this plague is explained from the symbolic significance, which the occurrence

has in this particular.

The darkness which overshadowed Egypt,

and the light which shone upon the Israelites, were symbols of God's anger and favour. It cannot be doubted that the foundation in nature for this ninth plague is to be sought in the chamsin, whose effects, in a higher or lower degree, all travellers who have visited Egypt have experienced.

Hartmann has collected what is said by ancient authors. "The inhabitants of the cities and villages," it is there said, “shut themselves up in the lowest apartments of their houses and cellars; but the inhabitants of the desert go into their tents, or into the holes which they have dug in the ground. There they await, full of anxiety, the termination of this kind of tempest, which generally lasts three days. The roads during this time are entirely vacant, and deep stillness, as of the night, reigns everywhere."

Among modern writers we first refer to Du Bois Amyé,1 who compares the Mosaic darkness to the chamsin. The phenomena of the latter he describes in the following manner : "When the chamsin blows, the sun is pale yellow, its light is obscured, and the darkness is sometimes so great, that one seems to be in the blackest night, as we experienced in the middle of the day at Cene, a city of Saïd." A second description we quote from Sonnini: 5 "The atmosphere," he says, "was heated, and at the same time obscured by clouds of dust: the thermometer of Reaumur stood at 27 degrees. Men and animals breathed only vapour, and that was heated and mingled with a fine and hot sand. Plants drooped, and all living nature languished. This wind also continued the twenty-seventh; it appeared to me to have even increased in force. The air was dark on account of a thick mist of fine dust, as red as flame." But of special importance for our object is the description of Denon: 6 On the eighteenth of May in the evening, I felt as if I should perish from the suffocating heat. All motion of the air seemed to have ceased. As I went to the Nile to bathe, for the relief of my painful sensations, I was astonished by a new sight. Such light and such colours I had never The sun, without being veiled with clouds, had been shorn It gave only a white and shadowless light, more

seen.
of its beams.

the

feeble than the moon. The water reflected not its rays, and appeared disturbed.-Every thing assumed another appearance ; air was darker, a yellow horizon caused the trees to appear of a pale blue. Flocks of birds fluttered about before the clouds. The frightened animals ran about in the fields, and the inhabitants who followed them with their cries could not collect them. The wind, which had raised immense clouds of dust, and rolled them along before itself, had not yet reached us. We thought that if we went into the water, which at this moment was quiet, we should avoid this mass of dust which was driven towards us from the south-west; but we were scarcely in the river, when it began suddenly to swell as if it would overflow its banks. The waves broke over us, and the ground heaved under our feet. Our garments flew away when seized by the whirlwind, which had now reached us. We were compelled to go to land. Wet and beaten by the wind, we were soon surrounded by a ridge of sand. A reddish dusky appearance filled the region; with wounded eyes, and nose so filled that we could hardly breathe, we strayed from one another, lost our way, and found our dwellings with great difficulty, feeling along by the walls. Then, we sensibly felt how terrible the condition must be, when one is overtaken by such a wind in the desert. On the following morning the same cloud of dust was driven, in like circumstances, along the Lybian desert. It followed the mountain range, and when we believed ourselves free from it, the west wind turned it back. Lightnings shot feebly through these dark clouds; all the elements appeared to be in commotion; the rain mingled with the lightning gleams, with wind and dust; every thing seemed to be returning to chaos and old night."

1

The severity of the chamsin is very different in different years.2 Dschemaleddin describes, in the Chronicle quoted by Rosenmueller in his Commentary, cases which, seen merely in general, are considerably like those with which we are concerned. In reference to the one which took place in the eleventh century, it is said: "There occurred a great and violent storm, accompanied by darkness; edifices were destroyed, and houses demolished; morcover,

See other descriptions in Mayer, Reise, S. 245, and in Michaud, Th. 7. S. 11.

2 Hartmann, S. 51.

at the same time Egypt was covered with so thick a darkness that all believed that the resurrection had come." In the account of another wind of this kind in the twelfth century, he says: "There occurred such a darkness in Egypt, that the whole air was obscured with dimness, at the same time there arose so heavy a wind, that the men all expected the resurrection."

The time in which the three days' darkness falls, is just that in which the chamsin generally blows.1

THE TENTH PLAGUE-THE DEATH OF THE FIRST-BORN OF THE

EGYPTIANS.

It may be proper to remark here, before we proceed with the tenth plague, that the phrase "all of the first-born" must not be pressed too far. The whole tenor of the narrative is opposed to such a proceeding, and particularly the declaration, "There was no house where there was not one dead," in chap. xii. 30; since in every house there was not a first-born. It must not be inferred that none of the first-born remained alive in the land, or that none besides the first-born died.3

If we take into view the time in which the last plague, the destruction of the first-born, occurs, and farther also that it follows immediately the chamsin, we cannot deny that we find something analogous to it in a pestilence described by Minutoli.* It is not material whether it be allowed that the plague raged at so early a period, or that another similarly destructive disease existed in its place. The plague, he says, commonly makes its appearance at Cairo about the end of March, or at the beginning of April. The miasma is communicated merely by contact. Local causes, however, increase its malignancy, and even the prevailing winds have an important influence. With an uninterrupted chamsin the

Hartmann, S. 47.

See p. 109.

The account of an especially destructive plague in Egypt, in the Description, t. 15, p. 180, may be compared: "Howls and shrieks were heard in every house; funeral processions met one at every step. Several dead bodies were oftentimes put together on the same bier, and I saw men who bore them, give over their burden to others, and lie down upon the ground with all the symptoms of the plague."

• S. 224.