complete and irrecoverable desolation to which the Idumean territory was condemned, was intended to prove to the whole Jewish people, that, notwithstanding their own crimes, their enemies were to be treated as the enemies of the Lord; that he watched over the house of Israel with a jealous eye, which no errors could efface; and that the very ruins which the descendants of that house may now behold in Arabia Petræa, though destitute of hope for Edom, exhibit in letters of light the affectionate promise that Judea is yet to rise from her misery to more than her primeval splendour. The emphatic contrast at this day actually subsisting between these two countries bordering on each other-one sentenced to desolation, from which it is manifestly never to recover, the other chastised by adversity, which is manifestly one day to have an end becomes one of the clearest as well as the most wonderful evidences of the truth of the holy writings, and of the divinity of the Spirit by whom the prophecies were dictated." Most truly has the prediction uttered by Ezekiel (xxxv. 5, 6, 14, 15) been verified-"Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, and hast shed the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword, in the time of their calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end; therefore, as I live, saith the Lord God, I will prepare thee unto blood, and blood shall pursue thee; sith thou hast not hated blood, even blood shall pursue thee. Thus saith the Lord God, When the whole earth rejoiceth, I will make thee desolate. As thou didst rejoice at the inheritance of the house of Israel because it was desolate, so will I do unto thee; thou shalt be desolate, O Mount Seir, and all Idumea, even all of it, and they shall know that I am the Lord." See MOUNT SEIR.

EDREI, a very great mass, or cloud, death of the wicked, the city of Og, king of Bashan, Deut. i. 4. That prince went out against the Israelites with his army near the city, and he was defeated and slain with "his sons and all his people,"

Numb. xxi. 33, 35. It was the metropolis of the kingdom of Bashan, east of the Jordan, and was given to the halftribe of Manasseh. Eusebius and Jerome allege that it was the same place as Adara in the Arabic language, about twentyfour miles west of Bostra. It was several times destroyed, yet it continued a place of some importance even after the Christian It was at one time a bishop's see, but it was subsequently so completely ruined, that no traces of it are now visible.

era.

EDREI, a city of the tribe of Naphtali, Josh. xix. 37.

EGLAIM, drops of the sea, the name of a place on the borders of the country of the Moabites, Isa. xv. 8. It is called Gallim, 1 Sam. xxv. 44. It was situated beyond the Jordan, to the east of the Dead Sea, and was also designated Agalla.

EGLON, heifer, chariot, round, or EGLAH, a royal town of the tribe of Judah, upwards of twelve miles west of Jerusalem, the king of which formed a confederacy with the neighbouring princes to assist Adoni-zedek, king of Jerusalem, to attack Gibeon, because that city had made peace with Joshua and the Israelites, Josh. x. 3, 4. Joshua met the confederated kings near Gibeon, and routed them with great slaughter. In their flight we are also told that "the Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died; they were more which died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword." The defeated princes fled to a cave at Makkedah, where he surprised them, and, after compelling them to submit to the greatest indignities, and ordering his captains to put their feet upon their necks, he slew them, and exhibited their bodies on trees; the inhabitants of Eglon were also put to the sword. This city was in the territory of the tribe of Judah, Josh. xv. 39. In the time of Eusebius it was merely a village. Cellarius says that in its district lay Aphek, where the Philistines pitched their tents twice against the Israelites, 1 Sam. iv. 1.

two arms of the Nile, called the Delta, contained anciently many cities, highly cultivated, maintaining a large population, and at the time of the annual inundations had the appearance of an archipelago of islands. On each side of Egypt lie vast regions of barren sand, scarcely inhabited or habitable, doomed to perpetual sterility and scorching desolation. Egypt thus exhibits two features in its appearance, consisting first of the long and narrow valley beginning at Syene, or Assooan, near the third cataract of the Nile already mentioned, and terminating near Cairo. This valley, of which the Nile occupies the centre, is upwards of eight miles in breadth and about forty in length, and lies between two mountain ridges called by an Arabian writer the "wings of the Nile," one of which extends to the Red Sea, the other running into the ancient Libyan deserts; and, secondly, the extensive plain situated between the northern extremity of this valley and the Mediterranean Sea. The appearance of Egypt, in a word, has been compared to the head and horn of an unicorn, the Delta being the head, and the long narrow valley of the Nile resembling the horn therein.

a Hebrew MIZRAIM, that itens; or, that troubles, or host ancient, distinguished, d kingdom and country of cted with Asia by the neck the Isthmus of Suez, boundrest by the country called nd the Deserts of Libya; on - the Mediterranean; on the Arabian Gulf, and a line is the Isthmus of Suez from Rhinocorura; and on the hiopia or Abyssinia. Egypt, called, may in one sense be s the long and narrow valley by the magnificent Nile from Assooan, to Cairo, near the ancient city Memphis. To the hat mir fountry owes its very existence e, the periodical inundations of tribute, in the almost total abain, to its exceeding fertility; rt the rich and fertilizing mud by this noble river at these agues asions, Egypt would be a vast As this country is amply Nately described in numerous well Dorks of a geographical and genMae, many of which are accessible reader, we merely observe that general language, may be said immense valley or longitudinal minating in a triangular plain vial nature formed by the Nile, between its two exterior arms, ceives the designation of the Delts resemblance to the Greek letit name (A), although, from the encroachments made by shifting 'sand, which are said to be on ase, its shape now more resembles a pear. Altogether, from the of Syene-the third cataract of the which the river is introduced into Egypt, to the shores of the Medin-Egypt may be estimated at 00 miles in length; its breadth or 3 variously stated, but does not, at its greatest expanse, exceed 250 or 300 miles, including the › called the Greater and Lesser The country lying between the

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The natural boundaries of Egypt have in all ages been so distinctly marked, that its nominal or territorial extent has seldom exceeded the area included within its physical limits. By many of the ancients it was regarded as belonging either partly or entirely to Asia, when it numbered upwards of eleven millions of inhabitants, and eighteen thousand important places. Then, as at present, the valley of the Nile was divided into three parts, Upper Egypt, or Thebais, now called Saïd, the capital of which was Thebes, or Diospolis; Central Egypt, now Vostani, the chief city of which was Memphis; and Lower Egypt, comprising the Delta, and a portion of territory on either side, now called Bahri. This last tract contained many cities, the most remarkable of which were Sais and Heliopolis, otherwise On, and at a subsequent period the celebrated Alexandria. Joseph

married a daughter of the priest or prince of On, and it was famous as the seat of the Egyptian hierarchy and its obelisks. In Lower Egypt, descending the Nile, was also situated a city designated Babylon, founded, it is alleged, by the Persians, who transported thither an unruly colony of Babylonians. Under the Romans it was a fortified place, and after the seventh century it became the chief seat of the Arabian conquerors under the name of Fostat; in the tenth century the Arabians founded New Cairo, the present capital of Egypt, and Babylon received the designation of Old Cairo. The Egyptians possessed few permanent establishments beyond their own territory. Even the harbours and towns which belonged to them along the coast of the Red Sea during the reign of the Ptolemys were regarded merely as colonies. The mountains east of Egypt were formerly, as they are at present, inhabited by roving Arabs, over whom the Egyptians had little control; in those regions they are said to have opened various mines, but they built neither towns nor cities. On the west, hordes of robbers of the Libyan race roamed over the wide and desert plains of sand, and the Egyptians possessed nothing, except the Oases, which constituted a separate district. The state of Cyrene, now called Barca, acknowledged for a considerable period the supremacy of Egypt, but it was never incorporated with the country.

Egypt, during the time of the Pharaohs, was divided into three districts or provinces-the Thebais, or Upper Egypt; the Middle and the Lower Egypt. The The bais contained ten jurisdictions, or nomes, as they were called by the Greeks, the Coptic word for which is pthosch. Middle Egypt included sixteen nomes, and, where the Nile commenced to branch off, came the ten nomes of Lower Egypt, or the Delta, extending to the sea. It is said that this division, which consisted in all of thirty-six jurisdictions or nomes, was made by Sesostris before his expedition into Asia; but there is every reason to conclude that it was much more

ancient, and Strabo more than confirms this opinion. Under the Ptolemys, the number of nomes was increased, on account of the great improvements in that part of Egypt in which Alexandria is situated, by the addition of the divisions called the Oases, and by the alterations produced by commerce along the Arabian Gulf. Lower and Upper Egypt were enlarged, while Middle Egypt was reduced, and its nomes restricted to seven, from which it afterwards received the name of Heptanomis. Under the Romans, the Thebais, or Upper Egypt, was alone considered as a separate division of the country. While the Eastern Empire existed, Egypt sustained a new division in the reign of the Emperor Theodosius; an Imperial Prefect governed the country, including also Lybia and Cyrene; a Comes Militaris commanded the forces throughout all Egypt as far as Ethiopia; and on him a Dux was dependent, who exercised a particular jurisdiction in Thebes. Middle Egypt, or The Heptanomis, then received the name of Arcadia, from Arcadius, the eldest son of the Emperor Theodosius. A new province, designated Augustamnica, from its immediate vicinity to the Nile, was about the same time also constituted, comprising the eastern half of the Delta, a portion of Arabia as far as the Arabian Gulf, and the cities on the Mediterranean coast to the borders of Syria. The capital of this province was Pelusium, mentioned by the ecclesiastical writers as early as the time of Constantine the Great. During the eighth century of the Christian era, the position of the various Archbishoprics and Bishoprics under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Alexandria caused a new division. The territory of Alexandria, with the western portion of the Delta to the Canopic mouth of the Nile, was called The First Egypt; and the eastern part, as far as the Phatnetic mouth, was called The Second Egypt. The north-eastern quarter of the Delta, or the Pelusiac mouth, together with the eastern tract as far as the Arabian Gulf, was designated The First Augustamnica,