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OBSERVATION XXII.

A very curious Method of honouring deceased Princes in Persia.

SIR John Chardin, in his MS.* gives us an account of a very whimsical honour paid the Persian princes after their deaths—the driving their physicians and astrologers from court. This he supposes to be of great antiquity, and to have been the cause of Daniel's abscence, when Belshazzar saw the hand, writing his doom on the wall, which writing no body that was then with him could explain.

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Daniel was not, it is certain, only occasionally absent from this solemnity, which was managed in a manner affronting to the GoD of Israel; for it appears from v. 13, that he was not at all personally known to Belshazzar. This has been supposed to have been owing to his having been a vicious and a weak prince; Chardin supposes, on the other hand, that the ceremonial of the Persian court required it. The first reason hardly accounts for his absence, since weak and vicious as he might be, Nitocris his mother, who appears to have been no stranger to the great abilities of Daniel, who is said to have been a lady of great wisdom, and who is believed to have had the chief management of affairs, might have employed

*Note on Dan. v. 11.

' V. 2—4.

Daniel in matters of state, which in all probability, considering his eminence, would have made him known to the king: he did not, however, know him; she did not therefore employ Daniel: but whether for the reason assigned by Sir John, is another consideration.

If that really were the reason, Daniel's retirement from the management of the affairs of state, must have been of long continuance, (twenty-three years, according to Dr. Prideaux) for it must have commenced at the death of Nebuchadnezzar.

Be this as it may, it is so extraordinary an usage, that it deserves a place in these papers. "I collect from hence (says Sir John, that is, from the queen-mother's recommending to Belshazzar to consult Daniel,) that Daniel had been mazouled" at the death of the king: for in the East, when the king dies, the physicians and astrologers are displaced; the first for not having driven death away, and the other for not having predicted it. This the 13th verse confirms."

Curious etiquette this! Upon this principle Daniel deserved to be reinstated in his office, since he now predicted the death of Belshazzar. However, whatever was the ground of their procedure, Belshazzar made him the third

m An Eastern term, signifying displaced, used by Dr. Perry, in his View of the Levant, p. 41, &c. Sir. J. Chardin's words are: Je receuille de la que Daniel avait esté mazoul á la mort du roy, car en orient, quand le roy meurt, les medecins & les astrologues sont chassez les uns pour n'avoir chassé la mort, les autres pour ne l'avoir preditte. C'est ce que le v. 13 confirme. Tu es Daniel? &c.

ruler in the kingdom, Dan. v. 29; and under Darius the Mede, the Prophet made a distinguished figure at court, Dan. vi. 1-3.

According to this, the life of Daniel was extremely variegated: a large part of it spent in conducting affairs of state: a considerable portion of it in a devout retirement-in reading, meditation, and prayer. He practised these things when involved in the hurry of public business; certainly therefore when disengaged from affairs of state.

OBSERVATION XXIII.

Particular Kinds of Food used by Mourners.

ST. JEROM affirms, that the Jews of his time, in mourning their dead, wept, rolled themselves in ashes, having their feet bare, and laid in sackcloth: to which he adds, that, according to the vain rites of the Pharisees, lentiles were the first things of which they eat in their mourning He gives us an explanation. of this usage (which certainly was never derived from the Jews, but from his own lively fancy, which furnished him with an inexhaustible store of interpretations of the mystic kind,) namely, that this custom marked out their loss of the birth-right."

." Dan. ix. 2, 3.

Ep. ad Paulam, super obitu Blesillæ filiæ, tome 1, p. 159.

Gen. xxv. 34.

Dean Addison has mentioned nothing of their eating lentiles, in Barbary, after the interment of their dead, or any other fixed and stated kind of food; but he says, in some places, "the mourners use to eat eggs, out of no less emblem, than that death is voluble as an egg, and to-day takes one, and another to-morrow, and so will come round upon all." But perhaps a more probable reason may be assigned for this usage.

The eating of lentiles on these occasions, by the Jews of the age of St. Jerom, was merely, I should imagine, to express affliction, and even not only inattention to, but a disgust against, the delicacies of life. So in the account of the life of Hilarion, a celebrated hermit of that time, that austere recluse is said for three years to have eaten nothing but half a sextary' of lentiles, moistened with cold water; and for other three years only dry bread with salt, and some water. This then shows the eating of lentiles was thought to be very poor living, though much eaten in those countries; and sometimes sent to soldiers attending their prince.'

It shows also, in a very strong point of light, the profaneness of Esau, who despised his birth-right to such a degree, as to part with it for a mess of lentile pottage.

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Ch. xxvi. p. 224.

Namely, the hope of the resurrection: on which account, it is said, the Oriental Christians make presents to each other of eggs at Easter, richly adorned with painting and gilding. • About a pint. • 2 Sam. xvii. 28.

OBSERVATION XXIV.

Of their Tombs in the East, and their Orna

ments.

WINDUS, speaking of the reverencing idiots as saints among the Mohammedans, their kissing their garments, and giving them every thing but money, which they are not to take, adds, And after their death, some great man hears of their fame, and makes it an act of devotion to beautify their tombs; or if they had none, to build one over the grave, wherein they are laid."

He had a little before observed, that their tombs are generally cupolas built with an entrance as wide as the building; and that "they are of several forms-some are low pyramids, others square, and the body put in the middle. But there is no rule, for Alcayde Ally Ben Abdallah's is a great square of thirty feet at least."

These passages naturally lead us to recollect the words of our LORD, Matt. xxiii. 29, 30. Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the Prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the Pro

In his journey to Mequinez, p. 55. × P. 53, 54.

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