crimes, they endeavoured to prevent its occurrence by the marked severity with which it was avenged. The criminal was therefore sentenced to be lacerated with sharpened reeds, and after being thrown on thorns he was burnt to death. WOMEN. When a woman was guilty of a capital offence, and judgment had been passed upon her, they were particularly careful to ascertain if the condemned was in a state of pregnancy; in which case her punishment was deferred till after the birth of the child, in order that the innocent might not suffer with the guilty*, and 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 to enforce chastity, and to put an effectual stop to crime, yet the punishment rather reminds us of the laws of a barbarous people than of a wise and civilised 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 * A law adopted also by the Athenians. か force had been used against a free woman, he was doomed to a cruel and inhuman punishment.* 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. THE BASTINADO. Some of the laws and punishments of the Egyptian army I have already noticed: and 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 Προσέταξαν αποκοπτεσθαι τα αιδοία. go Diod. i. 77. With the Jews it was punished by death. Deut. xxii. 22. 66 + The Moslems say, Nézel min e'semma e'nebóot, báraka min Allah." "The stick came down from heaven, a blessing from God." vernors of the country experienced in extorting from them what they were bound to pay; whence Ammianus Marcellinus tells us, "an Egyptian blushes if he cannot show numerous marks on his body that evince his endeavours to evade the duties."* The bastinado was inflicted on both sexes t, as with the Jews. Men and boys were laid prostrate on the ground §, and frequently held by the hands and feet while the chastisement was administered; * Amm. Marcel. life of Julian. + Sculptures at Beni-Hassan. but women, as they sat, received the stripes on their No. 88. 1 2 Women bastinadoed. Beni-Hassan. man. back, which were also inflicted by the hand of a Nor was it unusual 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 genteel 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. 66 Why," inquired the angry Turk, "have you not paid your taxes?"-" Because," re |