usages and customs of the period which that book embraces. We have nothing of the kind to offer. We have rather endeavoured to enliven our leading narrative by making it self-explanatory of the traits of society and character which it brings under our notice. This has not always been an easy operation; and sometimes it has been necessary to throw into notes, at the end of the several chapters, larger illustrations and discussions than the text could have been safely made to comprehend. This, indeed, has not been the sole use of the "Supplementary Notes;" for they have not only enabled us to keep the text more clear from digressive matter, but also, by allowing us to explain things as they occurred, have left no need for those separate dissertations on particular subjects which we might have otherwise deemed it necessary to annex to the several books of this work. This plan it is still our intention to pursue, believing that we shall be the most likely thus to succeed in impressing upon our readers the idea which, from much study and some eastern travel, we have ourselves been enabled to form of the modes of life and developments of character which pass under our review. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. [Pillows of Stone and Wood.] (') JACOB'S PILLOW, p. 91.-Jacob's use of a stone for a support to his head during sleep, seems a resource which might be suggested to any one under similar circumstances, and which, therefore, no one has thought it needful to explain by any reference to ancient customs. Yet it is possible that in his case the resource was all the more natural and obvious to him from its not being then customary to use any other pillows than those of some hard substance-such as stone or wood. When we find that such hard pillows or head-stools were in use among so comparatively luxurious a people as the Egyptians, it seems but reasonable to infer that their more hardy neighbours of the desert had no softer rest for their heads. The frame of the Egyptian head-stools is shown in our woodcut, in which the specimens are of wood, except the foremost, which is of alabaster. It is singular that the most costly and luxurious are the hardest, being of stone or hard foreign woods. Those which were employed by the inferior classes were of common soft native woods, such as the sycamore and tamarisk, and sometimes even of earthenware. It is not easy to see how the head could rest comfortably on pillows of this shape and height; and it is, therefore, likely that their ancient use should be explained by their existing use among the Abyssinians, who rest the neck rather than the head upon them.* (2) BETHEL, p. 92.-The following brief but interesting notice of the site of Bethel has lately been afforded by Professor Robinson. After telling us that the site now bears the name of Beit-în, he proceeds to state that,"It lies just east of the Nablous road, fortyfive minutes N.E. of Bireh. Here are ruins of very considerable extent, and among them the foundations of several churches, lying on the point of a low hill between two shallow wadys, which unite below, and run off S.E. into a deep and rugged valley. This was evidently a place of note in the early Christian ages, and apparently also in the days of the Crusades. It is now entirely uninhabited; except that a few Arabs, probably from some neighbouring village, had pitched their tents here for a time. In the western valley we spread our carpets, and breakfasted on the grass within the limits of what was once an immense reservoir. We obtained here from the Arabs butter of excellent quality, which might have done honour to the days when the flocks of Abraham and Jacob were pastured on these hills."-American Biblical Repository, April, 1839, p. 420.t Wilkinson, ii. 204. Univ. Hist. xv. 84. The valuable memoir from which this is extracted, and of which we have written more particularly in the last note to the preceding chapter, has since been reprinted, in a greatly abridged form, in the Journal of the Geographical Society,' vol. ix. pt. 2, p. 295-308. (3) Teraphim, TALISMANS, AND AMULETS, p. 96.—Our information concerning the teraphim, so often mentioned in Scripture, is so perplexed by confused statements and doubtful conjectures, that it is not quite easy to arrive at any tolerably clear notions on the subject. The name, even, has excited considerable discussion. The word is allowed by all the Jewish rabbins to be not Hebrew; and, seeing that we first meet with the word, and the objects denoted by it, in Syria, beyond the river, it is more natural to look for it in the Syriac language than in the Arabic, in which its etymology has been more generally sought. Now in Syriac the word, in its singular form, (, teraph,) means, according to Bar Bahlul, an inquirer, which very well agrees with the use of teraphim as oracles. From the narrative in the text, it is manifest that the figures were of small size, otherwise Rachel could not so easily have removed them, or have concealed them so readily in or under her camel's furniture. Yet the story in 1 Sam. xix. has been thought to show that a teraph was as large as life,-or, at least, that such figures sometimes were so in the end, although those of Laban were small. This may have been true; but, in our view, the incident in question does not make this manifest. That same passage is also the only one which is adduced to prove that the teraphim bore a human form; and although we think that they did, it is not clear to us that this is evinced by Michal's contrivance to screen her husband from the wrath of Saul. It is, however, the most received and probable opinion that those images were wholly, or in part, human. From the intimations we have been able to collect, we infer that some of the common forms of the teraphim were not unlike those of the analogous Egyptian figures represented in our cut at p. 96. For although the images among the ancient idolaters, which we conceive to have been strictly answerable to the Scriptural teraphim, sometimes bore animal heads on human bodies, we defer to the opinion that the teraphim always had human heads; although it is allowed that the human form was rarely, if ever, complete-the general figure being that of a bust, or else of a sort of terminus. Yet there may be reason to suspect that these figures might bear almost any form which the caprice or fancy of the maker assigned to them. The instance of Micah's teraphim (Judg. xviii.) is the only one in which the materials are mentioned. In that case silver was employed; but we are not to infer that they were always of silver, or even of metal. The figures, like those of analogous character elsewhere, 109 Of were probably often of carved wood, or even of earthenware; but probably not of stone. course, no attention is to be paid to the very silly story of the rabbins, who inform us that a teraph was formed of the head of a first-born son, plucked off from the neck and embalmed; under the tongue of which was fixed a golden plate, with the name of some false deity engraven thereon; and that the head, thus prepared, and deposited in a niche or upon a bracket, gave vocal answers to the questions which were proposed to it. The objects which these figures were supposed to represent, and the precise point of view in which they were regarded, are also questions involved in some doubt. That they were not public idols, but mere private property, and for domestic use, is clear from almost every instance in which they are mentioned; and hence some have inferred that they were small private images-representatives of the larger idols worshipped in the temples. But this is reasoning from later knowledge concerning the household gods of the Romans; and it is not clear to us that teraphim were not honoured before there were any larger idols, or any temples. We know, indeed, of instances, as in that of Laban and Micah, in which the owners of the teraphim fully recognised the supreme power of Jehovah, and, in the case of the last, laboured under the delusion that these figures were certain to bring down His blessing upon the house in which they were contained. In this use of them there can be no difficulty. We have not only the examples of the Roman household gods-the penates and lares,—but, in our own day, the tinsel-covered picture of the Virgin or St. Nicholas, conspicuously displayed, receiving marks of respect, and with the lamp kept constantly burning before it, which may be seen in every Russian shop or cottage, and without which no house would be held happy or prosperousaffords as good an illustration as could be desired, not only in fact but in principle. But, besides this, it was more peculiar to the teraphim that they were consulted as oracles. confirmed by the mention of teraphim in conThis appears constantly in the Bible,* and is nection with the arts of divination. But in what manner the responses were supposed to be conveyed, when reference was made to them, to foretel what was to come or to discover what was hid or lost, we are not told, and it is useless to conjecture. Many writers on the subject tell us that the superstition con Compare Judges xvii. 5; xviii. 5, 6, 14-20; Ezek. xxi. 21; Zech. x. 2; Hos. iii. 4. Sam. xv. 23. cerning talismans, with which the whole East is still infatuated, may be traced to the teraphim. We should rather say that they may be traced to the common principles in which these and a thousand other superstitions had their origin; and these principles are easily detected, whatever dispute there may be about details. All of it seems to us to result as plainly as possible from the operation of those views which we have explained in a preceding page (21 et seq). When men, without disavowing the supreme Lord of all, undertook to relieve Him from the care of their own small affairs, which they transferred to inferior agents, they ere long thought of attracting and fixing the beneficent attention and influence of those agents, by placing in their houses, or by attaching to their persons, certain symbolical or representative figures, which they appropriated to their determined use with such rites and astrological or other observances as they judged suited to the purpose. They are then the symbols, and draw to him the benevolent attention of those powers which are deemed to stand between man and that great and awful Being, whom he thinks he cannot decorously trouble with the relatively small concerns of his family and home. The practical tendency of this to become a low idolatry in the end, we need not indicate. Under the view we have taken, such things as talismans and amulets will be regarded much in the light of teraphim to be worn upon the person; and, therefore, a slight notice of these instruments of superstition may very suitably be added in this place, to anticipate the separate statement concerning them which might otherwise be necessary. That such things were known, even in patriarchal times, is manifest from the instance of the ear-rings, which, being instruments of superstition, Jacob obliged his people to deliver up to him, and which he buried under the oak near Shechem. And it is now also well understood that Moses alluded to the previous use of talismans and amulets when he commanded the Israelites to bind his words for a sign upon their hands, and that they should be as frontlets between their eyes.* It is in confirmation of the views we have stated in a preceding page, concerning the prior antiquity of reference to the heavenly bodies, as the agencies or influences by which the Supreme power was administered over this world and its people, that talismans were first, and for the most part still are, connected with astral influences, and were constructed on astrological principles. They most usually Exod. xiii. 9; Deut. vi. 8, xi. 18. consisted of figures, of various metals and sizes, cast under certain constellations, and bearing the representative figure of the sun or moon or of some planet, or else were charged with certain astrological symbols and characters; and also of stones, more generally engraved with such characters or representative figures on the surface, than cut, in mass, into symbolical forms. Yet in the case of the talismanical scarabæus of the Egyptians, the stone itself was cut into the figure of the sacred beetle, the symbol of the sun, while its under surface was charged with figures cut in intaglio, of solar, lunar, and astral symbols and characters. The figures of beetles and hawks, which the Egyptians engraved in emerald and jasper, are noticed by Pliny; and we learn that besides the general virtues attributed to them, they were more particularly held to inspire the soldier with courage and to protect his person in the day of battle, and also to defend children from the malign influence of the "evil eye." As there is little reason to doubt that the Hebrews learnt the use of these very things in Egypt, if they were not previously known to them, and that they, therefore, may be counted among the objects of idolatry and superstition, against which many of the injunctions and prohibitions of the Mosaical law were levelled, there is a double propriety in offering specimens of them to the reader's notice. And while they are recommended to unquestionably must, at some time, have been known to the Hebrews, the fact will not be overlooked that they also offer the earliest specimens of engraving on stone; which curious and difficult art the Hebrews certainly did bring with them from Egypt. The shape which these articles bear, and the engravings with which they are charged, will spontaneously suggest to the reader that they might have been used as seals or signets; and to this use it seems that they were in fact applied, although other engraved stones were also used for that purpose. In like manner, while we believe that the old Babylonians engraved cylinders, which have lately engaged so much attention, were astral talismans; there appears also to be reason to conclude that they were used as signets. These talismanical stones of the Babylonians seem to have exhibited a horoscopical representation of the constellation of the heavenly aspects," under which the parties who owned them were born; or, as we would venture with some diffidence to suggest, of those happier "aspects," chosen by themselves, under which they would have desired to be born, and the favourable influences of which they, by means of these talismans, hoped to fix and concentrate upon their own persons. And these horoscopical representations, if used as signets, would serve as much to identify the party to whom they belonged as a proper name, and still more than the crests which we engrave upon our seals. It is remarkable that the higher class of talismans among the Orientals were chiefly engraved stones, whereas, in general, metallic figures, of which we first took notice, were little more than simple amulets; and that the reverse of this was the case among the classical ancients, who set the highest of all value upon the talismans of Samothracia, which were made according to the rules observed in the celebrated mysteries of which that island was the seat. There were bits of metal on which certain astral figures and symbols were engraved, and which were usually set in rings. Now the reader will be prepared to see how the principle on which the ancient talismans were constructed, agrees with that which the more judicious Jewish writers* assign to the teraphim, which as they tell us were figures in the human form, constructed under certain constellations, the favourable influences of which were then thought to be contained in them. The history of talismans is large and curious; and it will be understood that we have only stated such facts as seemed necessary for the purposes of the present note.t AMULETS require little separate notice as Such as Aben Ezra, Maimonides, and R. Eliezer. It may, however, be desirable to specify the several kinds of talismans which finally came into use. 1. The astronomical, or rather astrological, which were charged with celestial signs, accompanied with intelligible characters. 2. Magical, which bore monstrous figures, mysterious words, and names of unknown angels. 3. Mixed, containing both celestial signs and strange or barbarous words, but nothing otherwise superstitious or any angelical names. 4. Sigilla planetarum, marked chiefly with Hebrew numeral letters, and used by the framers of horoscopes and fortune-tellers to throw a mystery over their arts. Other magical figures, bearing Hebrew names and characters, models of which are given by Agrippa. The two last are of comparatively modern invention, and have little claim to be regarded as talismans. The third is doubtful; and the two first are the only proper subjects of antiquarian research. The first and most ancient is that on which our observations have chiefly borne. they were but a lower kind of talisman; and most of such consideration as they require has been involved in the preceding statement. It is difficult to say where the line between the talisman and the amulet should be drawn. But they were not generally considered so much connected with astral influences as the talismans. They were, in fact, for the most part, what we call "charms," intended to guard against special evils and particular diseases. Their forms were as much diversified as their objects among the ancient idolaters. Almost every different kind of gem had its virtue as an amulet; and besides these, amulets among the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, and, we may conclude, among the Syrians, often bore the form or ornament for the person, such as crowns of pearls, necklaces of shells, gems, coral, &c ; with the heads and figures of gods, heroes, lions, horses, dogs, rats, birds, fish, and various grotesque and obscene objects. The annexed engraving offers specimens of some of those which were in use among the ancient Egyptians. The Jews became much addicted to the use of amulets, especially for the prevention or cure of diseases—and, indeed, their “medical” practice consisted of little else. "There were hardly any people in the whole world," says Lightfoot, "that more used, or were more fond of amulets, charms, mutterings, exorcisms, and all kinds of enchantments." For some while before, and ever since, the time of Christ this has been true; and the use of them was not discouraged by the ecclesiastical rulers. Their only difficulties respected the use of them [probably in common with other curative measures] on the sabbath-day; and the decision was, that a man should not go abroad with his amulet on the sabbath, unless it had been prescribed by an approved "physician"—that is, by one who was known to have cured at least three persons previously by the same means. Their amulets were sometimes certain small roots hung about the neck; but more generally certain words in writing-being, in the simpler forms, extracts from the law supposed to be applicable to the case; but often mysterious names and characters, disposed according to the rules of cabalistic art-frequently within the well-known hexagonal figure called the shield of David, or, the seal of Solomon. This, with some other Jewish practices, appears to have arisen from the misapprehension or gross perversion of the passage in the law* to which we have already referred. From their example the Christians adopted, among other amulets, the use of written charms, consisting, for the most part, of words taken from the gospel-which practice is not yet wholly extirpated from some rural districts of our own country. And the same example probably led the Moslems to that most extensive use of written amulets, composed generally of sentences from their Koran, which we now find every where among them.+ (*) ANTIQUITY OF COINED MONEY.-P. 101. The word in the original is kesitah, rendered "pieces of money" in our authorised version of the Bible, but "lambs" in the margin. The word is rare, and only occurs in three places-here; in the retrospective reference to the transaction which is given in Josh. xxiv. 32; and in Job xlii. 11. All these references therefore apply to about the same time. The conclusion of many critics is, that they were pieces of money stamped with the figure of a lamb or sheep-perhaps as being of the current value of that animal-and consequently that an advance to coined money had been made since the time Abraham weighed out 400 shekels of silver as the price of the field of Machpelah. But this seems to us so incredible, that we know not how the notion could enter the mind of any one who possessed the slightest acquaintance with the subject. We disbelieve it utterly, and for the following among many other reasons. First, it will be observed that all the versions whose testimony is of any value-being the Septuagint, Samaritan, Syriac, Arabic, and the Latin Vulgate, render the word by "lambs;" to which we may add that the marginal readings, in our own version, happen to be very generally preferable to those in the text. Deut. vi. 7, 8. For further information on the subject of Teraphim, the reader may be recommended to consult, Selden, De Diis Syriis Syntag, 1629; Jurieu, Histoire Critique des Dogmes, pt. iii. ch.4; Carpzov, De Teraphimis, in Apparatus HistoricoCriticus, 1748; Dicteric, Antiq. Biblica i. 271, 272, 555, Banier, Mythology and Fables of the Ancients, B. vii. ch. 6; Calmet, Dictionary, in the word "Teraphim :" Taylor, On Teraphim in "Scripture Illustrated;" Jahu Biblische Archæologia. iii. 504. On the subject of Talismans and Amulets, much information may be found in several of the above, as also in Lightfoot, Heb. and Talm. Exercit. in Matt. xxiv. 22; Eucyclop. Methodique: Antiquities; art. Talismans; Townley, Dissertation viii. prefixed to "Reasons for the Laws of Moses, from the More Nevochim of Maimonides;" and Lane's Modern Egyptians, vol. i. ch. 11. |