thus the father be deprived of that child to which he had at least an equal right.

But some of their laws regarding the female sex were cruel and unjustifiable; and even if, which is highly improbable, they succeeded by their severity in enforcing chastity, and in putting an effectual stop to crime, yet the punishment rather reminds us of the laws of a barbarous people than of a wise and civilized state. A woman who had committed adultery was sentenced to lose her nose, upon the principle that, being the most conspicuous feature, and the chief, or, at least, an indispensable, ornament of the face, its loss would be most severely felt, and be the greatest detriment to her personal charms; and the man was condemned to receive a bastinado of one thousand blows. But if it was proved that force had been used against a free woman, he was doomed to a cruel mutilation.

The object of the Egyptian laws was to preserve life, and to reclaim an offender. Death took away every chance of repentance, it deprived the country of his services, and he was hurried out of the world when least prepared to meet the ordeal of a future state. They, therefore, preferred severe punishments, and, except in the case of murder, and some crimes which appeared highly injurious to the community, it was deemed unnecessary to sacrifice the life of an offender.

In military as well as civil cases, minor offences were generally punished with the stick; a mode of chastisement still greatly in vogue among the modern inhabitants of the valley of the Nile, and held in such esteem by them, that convinced of (or perhaps by) its efficacy, they relate "its descent from heaven as a blessing to mankind.”

If an Egyptian of the present day has a government debt or tax to pay, he stoutly persists in his inability to obtain the money, till he has withstood a certain number of blows, and considers himself compelled to produce it; and the ancient inhabitants, if not under the rule of their native princes, at least in the time of the Roman emperors, gloried equally in the obstinacy they evinced, and the difficulty the governors of the country experienced in extorting from them what they were bound to pay;

whence Ammianus Marcellinus tells us,

66

an Egyptian blushes if

he cannot show númerous marks on his body that evince his endeavours to evade the duties."

for the superintendents to stimulate labourers to their work by the persuasive powers of the stick, whether engaged in the field or in handicraft employments; and boys were sometimes

beaten without the ceremony of prostration, the hands being tied behind their back, while the punishment was applied.

It does not, however, appear to have been from any respect to the person, that this less usual method was adopted; nor is it probable that any class of the community enjoyed a peculiar privilege on these occasions, as among the modern Moslems, who, extending their respect for the Prophet to his distant descendants of the thirty-sixth and ensuing generations, scruple to administer the stick to a Shereef until he has been politely furnished with a mat, on which to prostrate his guilty person. Among other amusing privileges in modern Egypt, is that conceded to the grandees, or officers of high rank. Ordinary culprits are punished by the hand of persons usually employed on such occasions; but a Bey, or the governor of a district, can only receive his chastisement from the hand of a Pasha, and the aristocratic daboss (mace) is substituted for the vulgar stick. This is no trifling privilege: it becomes fully impressed upon the sufferer, and renders him, long after, sensible of the peculiar honour he has enjoyed; nor can any one doubt that an iron mace, in form not very unlike a chocolate-mill, is a distingué mode of punishing men who are proud of their rank.

Having noticed the pertinacity of the modern Egyptians in

resisting the payment of their taxes, I shall introduce the following story as remarkably illustrative of this fact. In the year 1822, a Copt Christian, residing at Cairo, was arrested by the Turkish authorities for the non-payment of his taxes, and taken before the Kehia, or deputy of the Pasha. "Why," inquired the angry Turk, "have you not paid your taxes?"—" Because," replied the Copt, with a pitiable expression, perfectly according with his tattered appearance, “I have not the means.” He was instantly ordered to be thrown upon the floor, and bastinadoed. He prayed to be released, but in vain: the stick continued without intermission, and he was scarcely able to bear the increasing pain. Again and again he pleaded his inability to pay, and prayed for mercy : the Turk was inexorable; and the torments he felt at length overcame his resolution: they were no longer to be borne. "Release me," he cried," and I will pay directly."—" Ah, you Giower! go." He was released, and taken home, accompanied by a soldier, and the money being paid, he imparted to his wife the sad tidings. "You coward! you fool!" she exclaimed; "what, give them the money on the very first demand! I suppose after five or six blows, you cried, 'I will pay, only release me ;' next year our taxes will be doubled through your weakness; shame!"—" No, my dear,” interrupted the suffering man, “I assure you I resisted as long as it was possible; look at the state I am in, before you upbraid me. I paid the money, but they had trouble enough for it; for I obliged them to give me at least a hundred blows before they could get it." She was pacified; and the pity and commendation of his wife, added to his own satisfaction in having shown so much obstinacy and courage, consoled him for the pain, and, perhaps, in some measure, for the money thus forced from him.

Hanging was the customary mode of punishment, in ancient Egypt, for many capital crimes; and the criminals were kept "bound" in prison till their fate was decided; whether it depended on the will of the sovereign, or the decision of the judges. These places of confinement were under the immediate superintendence, and within the house, of the chief of the police, or "captain of the guard," "an officer of Pharaoh," who was

probably the captain of the watch, like the Zábut of the modern Egyptian police.*

The character of some of the Egyptian laws was quite consonant with the notions of a primitive age. The punishment was directed more particularly against the offending member : and adulterators of money, falsifiers of weights and measures, forgers of seals or signatures, and scribes who altered any signed document by erasures or additions, without the authority of the parties, were condemned to lose both their hands.

But their laws do not seem to have sanctioned the gibbet, or the exposure of the body of an offender; for the conduct of Rhampsinitus, in the case of the robbery of his treasure, is mentioned by Herodotus as a singular mode of discovering an accomplice, and not as an ordinary punishment; if indeed the whole story is not the invention of a Greek cicerone.

Thefts, breach of trust, and petty frauds were punished with the bastinado; but robbery and housebreaking were sometimes considered capital crimes, and deserving of death; as is evident from the conduct of the thief, when caught by the trap in the treasury of Rhampsinitus, and from what Diodorus states respecting Actisanes. This monarch, instead of putting robbers to death, instituted a novel mode of punishing them, by cutting off their noses, and banishing them to the confines of the desert, where a town was built, called Rhinocolura, from the peculiar nature of their punishment; and thus, by removing the bad, and preventing their corrupting the good, he benefited society, without depriving the criminals of life; at the same time that he punished them severely for their crimes, by obliging them to live by their labours, and derive a precarious sustenance from quails, or whatever they could catch, in that barren region. Commutation of punishment was the foundation of this part of the convict system of Egypt, and Rhinocolura was their Norfolk Island, where a sea of sand separated the worst felons from those guilty of smaller crimes; who were transported to the mines in the desert, and condemned to work for various terms, according to their offence.

* Gen. xxxix. 1, 20; xl. 3, 22.