NICOPOLIS, a city mentioned by St. Paul in Titus 3. 12. Some writers have supposed it to be the Nicopolis of Thrace, on the confines of Macedonia, near the river Nessus; but the subscription of the Epistle to Titus fixes it to Nicopolis of Macedonia, founded by Augustus in commemoration of his victory over Antony, at Actium, B.C. 31. This city stood on the shore of the Ambracian gulf; it was built on the spot that the conqueror's camp had occupied, was made a Roman colony, and adorned with many splendid edifices, but it is now a mere heap of ruins.

NIDDUI. See ANATHEMA; EXCOMMUNICATION.

NIGER, Niyep, was the surname of Simeon, a teacher at Antioch. (Acts 13. 1.) Some believe he was that Simon the Cyrenian, who carried the cross of Our Lord to Mount Calvary; but this opinion is founded merely on a similarity of names. Epiphanius, however, speaks of one Niger, among the seventy disciples of Our Saviour, and this may be presumed to be the Niger of the Acts.

NIGHT, lail. The Hebrews began their artificial day in the evening, and ended it the next evening; so that the night preceded the day, whence it is said, "And the evening and the morning were the first day." (Gen. 1. 5.)

Before the captivity, the night was divided into three watches. The first, which continued till midnight, was denominated inDUN UN) rosh ashmuroth; (Lam. 2. 19;) the second was denominated in now ashmoreth hatechonah, and continued from midnight till the crowing of the cock; (Judges 7. 19;) the third, called ashmoreth haboker, the morning watch, extended from the second watch to the rising of the sun. These divisions and names appear to have originated in the watches of the Levites in the Tabernacle and Temple. (Exod. 14. 24; 1Sam. 11.11.) During the time of Our Saviour, the night was divided into four watches, a fourth watch having been introduced among the Jews from the Romans, who derived it from the Greeks. The second and third watches are mentioned in Luke 12. 38; the fourth in Matthew 14. 25; and the four are all distinctly mentioned in Mark 13. 35: “ Watch, therefore, for ye know not when the master of the house cometh; at even, (ove, or the late watch,) or at midnight, (μepoVUKTIOV,) or at the cock-crowing, (aλEKTOpodovias,) or in the morning (pwi, the early watch)." Here, the first watch was at even, and continued from six till nine; the second commenced at nine, and ended at twelve, or midnight; the third watch, called by the Romans gallicinium, lasted from twelve to three; and the morning watch closed at six. A double cock-crowing, however, is noticed by St. Mark, (14. 30,) where the other Evangelists mention only one. (Matt. 26. 34; Luke 22. 34; John 13. 38.) But this may be easily reconciled; the Jewish doctors divided the cock-crowing into the first, second, and third; the heathen nations in general observed only two. As the cock crew the second time after Peter's third denial, it was this second or principal cock-crowing (for the Jews seem in many respects to have accommodated themselves to the Roman computation of time,) to which the Evangelists Matthew, Luke, and John refer; or, perhaps, the second cockcrowing of the Jews might coincide with the second of

the Romans.

Night is a term used with much variety of imagery in the Scriptures: some of the more remarkable passages we proceed to notice.

"They that sleep, sleep in the night; and they that be drunken, are drunken in the night," (1Thess. 5. 7,) is

the observation of the Apostle Paul in enforcing the Christian virtues of vigilance and sobriety, in opposition to the pernicious usages of the world. The whole term of human life is frequently called in Scripture a day. (Job 14. 6.) But in another place, it is called night: "The night is far spent, the day is at hand." (Rom. 13.12.) Or, as the same Apostle says, "Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord." (Ephes. 5. 8.) Night being the time of darkness, the image and shadow of death, in which the beasts of prey go forth to devour, symbolically signifies a time of adversity and affliction: "Thou hast proved mine heart, thou hast visited me in the night, thou hast tried me." (Psalm 17. 3.) "Watchman, what of the night?" (Isai. 21. 12,) is an inquiry how long the captivity of Judah was to last.

"And it shall come to pass on that day, that the light shall not be clear nor dark. But it shall be one day, which shall be known to the Lord, not day nor night: but it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be light," (Zech. 14. 6,7,) meaning that there shall be no vicissitude of day and night, but a constant light; and this signifies, symbolically, that there shall be no vicissitude of peace and war, but a constant state of quiet and happiness. The night is sometimes put for a time of ignorance and helplessness. "Therefore night shall be unto you, that ye shall not have a vision.” (Micah 3. 6.) Night is also put for death: "The night cometh wherein no man can work." (John 9. 4.)

Children of the day and children of the night, in a moral and figurative sense, denote good men and wicked men. The disciples of the Son of God are children of light: they belong to the light, they walk in the light of truth; while the children of the night walk in the darkness of ignorance and infidelity, and perform only works of darkness: "Ye are all the children of the light, and the children of the day; we are not of the night nor of darkness." (1Thess. 5. 5.)

Some other passages relating to the night receive illustration from the present usages of the East, as narrated by Roberts. Thus "in Jacob's complaint to Laban, he says, "Thus I was; in the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night; and my sleep departed from mine eyes.' (Gen. 31. 40.) In India, does a master reprove his servant for being idle, he will ask, ‘What can I do? the heat eats me up by day, and the cold eats me up by night, how can I gain strength? I am like the trees of the field: the sun is on my head by day, and the dew by night.'

"In Ruth 3.2 it is said, 'Behold he winnoweth barley to-night in the threshing floor.' Much of the agricul tural labour is performed in the night. The sun is so hot, and so pernicious, that the farmers endeavour as much as possible to avoid its power. Hence numbers plough and irrigate their fields long after the sun has gone down, or before it rises in the morning. The wind is also generally stronger in the night, which might induce Boaz to prefer that season.

"The Psalmist says, 'I will bless the Lord who hath given me counsel; my reins also instruct me in the night seasons.' (16. 7.) Night is the time when the Hindoos are principally engaged in the worship of their gods; because they believe praise is more acceptable to them then, than at any other period. It is believed also, that the senses have more power in the night; that then is the time for thought and instruction; hence they profess to derive much of their wisdom at that season. The Psalmist says, 'Thou hast visited me in the night; and the heathen priests always pretend to have their communications with the gods 'when deep sleep falleth on man.' See them at their bloody sacri

NIGHT

fices: they are nearly always held at the same time, and what with the sickly glare of lamps, the din of drums, the shrill sound of trumpets, the anxious features of the votaries, the ferocious scowl of the sacrificer, the bloody knife, and the bleeding victim, all wind up the mind to a high pitch of horror, and excite our contempt for the deities and demons to whom night is the time of offering and praise."

In the hot countries of the East people frequently travel in the night, and arrive at midnight at the place of their destination, which serves to illustrate the exhortations of Our Lord to ceaseless diligence, in Mark 13. 35; Luke 11. 5,6.

NIGHT-HAWK, D tachmas, (Levit. 11. 16,) one of the unclean birds according to the Mosaic institution, was probably a species of owl. See HAWK.

Among the ancient Egyptians, Sir John Gardner Wilkinson informs us, The hawk was particularly known as the type of the sun, and worshipped at Heliopolis as the sacred bird, and representative of the deity of the place. It was also peculiarly revered at the island of Phila, where this sacred bird was kept in a cage and fed with a care worthy the representative of the deity of whom it was the emblem. It was said to be conse

crated to Osiris, who was buried at Philæ; and in the sculptures of the temples there the hawk frequently occurs, sometimes seated amidst lotus plants. But this refers to Horus, the son of Osiris, not to that god himself, as the hieroglyphics show, whenever the name occurs over it.

“A hawk with a human head was the emblem of the human soul, the baieth of Horapollo. The goddess Athor was sometimes figured under this form, with the globe and horns of her usual head-dress. Hawks were also represented with the head of a ram. Several species of hawks are natives of Egypt, and it is difficult to decide which was really the sacred bird. But it appears

the same kind was chosen as the emblem of all the dif

ferent gods, the only one introduced besides the sacred hawk being the small sparrow-hawk, or Falco tenunculoïdes, which occurs in certain mysterious subjects connected with the dead in the tombs of the kings. The sacred hawk had a particular mark under the eye, which, by their conventional mode of representing it, is much more strongly expressed in the sculptures than in nature; and I have met with one species in Egypt, which possesses this peculiarity in so remarkable a degree, as to leave no doubt respecting the actual bird called sacred in the country. I have therefore ventured to give it the name of Falco aroeris. Numerous hawk mummies have been found at Thebes and other places. And such was the care taken by the Egyptians to preserve this useful and sacred bird, that even those which

died in foreign countries, where their armies happened to be, were embalmed and brought to Egypt to be buried in consecrated tombs."

NILE. There are frequent allusions to this celebrated river of Egypt in the sacred writings, but in scarcely any of them does it bear any other appellation than that of "the river," 87 ha yor. (Exod. 7. 15,18.) Nexos is the name given to it by Greek writers, and Nilus by the Latin, whence the English, Nile.

The Nile is formed by the junction of two other rivers, one flowing through the country of Abyssinia, and the other through that which lies west of Abyssinia; but which of these rivers proceeds from a source the more remote from its mouth, or which has the superior claim to be regarded as the source of the Nile, is a

From

question which as yet remains undetermined. the greater similarity, however, between its waters and those of the Nile, and the greater influence exerted by it on its rise, the Abyssinian river is generally supposed to be the source.

The Nile is the noblest river in the old world; for the immense distance of thirteen hundred and fifty nautical miles, that is to say, from Ilak in Nubia, where the Nile is joined by the river Tacazze, it rolls on to its mouths in the Mediterranean in solitary grandeur, without receiving a single tributary stream during its course: "an unexampled instance," says Humboldt, "in the hydrographic history of the globe." It is to this noble river that Egypt owes its fertility and even its existence. the earth brought down by the river from Abyssinia and The soil of Egypt was no doubt originally formed by the interior of Africa, and deposited during the annual inundation; and that it has been progressively elevated in the course of ages from the same cause is demonstrated by many distinct facts; thus towns and buildings which are known from history to have been originally built on mounds, to secure them from the effects of the inundations, now lie so low on the plain as to be inundated every year; and it also appears that a greater rise seems now necessary to prevent a dearth, than was required in the age of Herodotus.

inundation which is occasioned by the periodical rains This river is especially remarkable for an annual that fall within the tropics. This phenomenon has been described, with various degrees of accuracy, by number

less writers from Homer and Herodotus down to the travellers of the present day, but the statement of Bruce is perhaps the best suited for the general reader. "The air is so much rarefied by the sun, during the time he remains almost stationary over the tropic of Capricorn, that the winds, loaded with vapours, rush in upon the land from the Atlantic Ocean on the west, the Indian Ocean on the east, and the cold Southern Ocean beyond the Cape. Thus, a great quantity of vapour is gathered as it were into a focus; and as the same causes con

tinue to operate during the progress of the sun northward, a vast train of clouds proceeds from south to north, which are sometimes extended much further than at other times. In April, all the rivers in the south of Abyssinia begin to swell; in the beginning of June they are all full, and continue so while the sun remains stationary in the tropic of Cancer. This excessive rain, which would sweep off the whole soil of Egypt into the sea, were it to continue without intermission, begins to abate as the sun turns southward; and on his arrival at the zenith of each place, on his passage towards that has passed the line, he begins the rainy season to the quarter, they cease entirely. Immediately after the sun southward. The rise of the Nile at Cairo does not commence till June, the green colour produced either by the influx of corrupt or stagnant water, or by the action of the hot south winds on the sluggish stream, appearing about the 12th of that month. The red appearance, occasioned by the arrival of the Abyssinian waters, takes place early in July, from which the rise of the river may properly be dated, as it then begins to increase rapidly. By the middle of August, it reaches half its greatest height, and it attains its maximum towards the end of September. From the 24th of that month, the waters are supposed to decline, but maintain nearly the same level till the middle of October. By the 10th of November, they have sunk about half, and from that period continue to subside very slowly till they reach their minimum in April. The regularity with which these phenomena occur will appear the more remarkable when taken in connexion with all the cir

cumstances which distinguish this wonderful stream." A writer in the Quarterly Review, (vol. xxx. Art. Modern Egypt,) remarks, "The winds from the middle of June to the inundation, are at first variable, but latterly fix themselves to the north, where they become regular, rising and falling with the sun. These winds, in passing over the Mediterranean, are supposed to convey large masses of aqueous vapours to the mountains of Ethiopia and Abyssinia, amongst which the Nile traverses on its way to Egypt. Here these vapours being condensed, are precipitated in torrents of rain, at and after the summer solstice; producing that gradual, constant, and periodical increase of the Nile, to which the people on its banks are indebted for sustenance. It has been suggested, however, that the vapours of the Mediterranean are as nothing compared with those brought over from the Atlantic and Indian oceans by the north and south-west winds."

The swell of the river varies in different parts of its channel. In Upper Egypt it is from thirty to thirty-five feet; at Cairo it is about twenty-three feet, whilst in the northern part of the Delta it does not exceed four feet, which is owing to the artificial channels and the breadth of the inundation; yet the four feet of increase is as necessary to the fertility of the Delta, as the twenty-three or the thirty feet elsewhere. Very little rain ever falls in Egypt, and in Upper Egypt it is scarcely known. In Lower Egypt a very slight and almost momentary shower is all that is occasionally experienced even during the cool part of the year. Therefore the irrigation which the land receives through the direct overflow of the Nile, and by means of the canals which convey its waters where the inundation does not directly extend, is quite essential to that fertility for which Egypt has in all times been proverbial. The inhabitants of Egypt have, with great labour, cut a vast number of canals and trenches through the whole extent of the land. These canals are not opened till the river has attained a certain height, nor yet all at the same time, as the distribution of the water would then be unequal. The sluices are closed when the water begins to subside, and are gradually opened again in the autumn, allowing the waters to pass on to contribute to the irrigation of the Delta.

We have in all the details of this inundation of the river of Egypt a striking exemplification of the providence of God. The fertility of the country depends on the waters reaching a certain medium; for if they do not rise to a certain minimum, famine is the result, and if they exceed a certain maximum, consequences scarcely less calamitous result; whole villages are then liable to be swept away, with all the corn, cattle, and inhabitants. The waters, however, usually reach this medium, which is higher or lower in different parts of the country, according as these parts are visited with less or more copious supplies of rain; the rise is so regular that it may be calculated upon within a very few days of its actually taking place; and yet the cause of it exists at least two thousand miles from some of the parts where it is experienced! No wonder that the Egyptians, looking no farther than to the river itself for the source of all their natural blessings, should deify and worship it.

We have been favoured by Sir John Gardner Wilkinson with a paper on the Nile, read before the Royal Geographical Society, which contains some valuable particulars:

"The nature and character of the Nile, and the peculiar laws which govern the land of Egypt, are questions which, in all times, have been looked upon with considerable interest. Numerous conjectures were formed by ancient writers respecting the probable cause of the inundation. Some attributed it to the continued force

of the Etesian, or annual winds, which, blowing from the northward during that season of the year, were supposed to check the course of the stream, and to occasion it to overflow, an opinion readily refuted by Herodotus; others explained it by the melting of the snow in the lofty mountain ranges of Ethiopia; and some were disposed to believe that periodical rains falling there accounted for this phenomenon.

Though the reasoning of Herodotus on the subject is not very philosophical, it is evident that he attributes the rise of the Nile to the rains which fall near its source -an opinion common, as Strabo informs us, to many; and one that Homer, from his calling the river duπETηs, or 'fallen from heaven,' appears to have adopted. Modern discoveries have shown the truth of this conjecture; and, as far as regards the course and sources of the Blue river, or eastern branch, and its tributary streams, our knowledge is tolerably accurate. The White river, its sources, and the extent of its course from its head until it joins the Blue river at Khartum, in lat. 15° 38', are still a desideratum; and the only part of the stream hitherto examined is a distance of thirty days' march above the junction. It is, however, to be hoped that a native of Ethiopia, lately sent from England for the purpose, will clear up this important question, and add to our geographical knowledge by ascertaining the course and sources of the White river. That this last is the main stream is universally allowed by every one who has visited it, from Bruce to the present day; but the Blue river possesses a remarkable character, which connects it more closely with the inundation, and claims for it the merit of being the parent of the beneficial quali ties of that river which spreads fertility throughout its course from Abyssinia to Egypt.

"The White river brings no such alluvial deposit; the sandy soil of its banks is unsuited to many of the productions which flourish in the other branch; and though its additional stream, rising about the same time as the Blue river, tends to raise their combined waters over the lands they fertilize in their course northward, the Egyptian peasant has merely this debt of gratitude to acknowledge; and the prayers of a heathen husbandman might be offered to the supposed god of the Abyssinian branch, without his being bound in duty to propitiate the presiding deity of its western companion. The Blue river has the same general character as that observable throughout the course of the Nile; its banks in Ethiopia and Egypt are formed of the same rich alluvial deposit brought from the mountains of Abyssinia; and the prin cipal difference is in the greater thickness of the stratum left in the southern part of its course, in consequence of the heavier particles subsiding more quickly than those lighter ones which are carried onwards in its course to Egypt.

I

"To give some idea of the manner in which the alluvial deposit takes place, and the changes it causes in the levels of the land, and in the bed of the river itself throughout its course, I must first observe that the bed of the Nile and the land of Egypt (to which country shall now confine my remarks,) undergo a gradual increase of elevation, varying in different places according to circumstances, and always lessening in proportion as the river approaches the sea. This increase of eleva tion in perpendicular height is much smaller in Lower than in Upper Egypt; and in the Delta it diminishes still more; so that, according to an approximate calculation, the land about Elephantine, or the first cataract, in lat. 24° 5', has been raised nine feet in one thousand seven hundred years; at Thebes, in lat. 25° 43′, about seven feet; and at Heliopolis and Cairo, in lat. 30°, about five feet ten inches. At Rosetta, and the mouths

this, an opinion which perfectly coincides with my own observation. In many places where valleys open upon the plain, the sand is found to accumulate and sometimes to form drifts upon the land, which, when no precautions are taken, by planting the bushy tamarisk, increase so far as to prevent the overflow of the Nile from covering a portion of the previously irrigated soil; but these incursions of sand are only partial, and in particular spots, bearing a very small proportion to the whole valley of Egypt."

Of the animals connected with the Nile, the crocodile and the hippopotamus are mentioned in Scripture, though the latter is not now often seen below the cataracts. The kine in Pharaoh's dream were probably buffaloes, which pasture among the high grass that clothes the islands of the Nile. "The husbandman," says Savary, "seated on the withers of the foremost, descends the banks of the river, smacks his whip, and leads the way; the whole herd follow, and lowing swim to pasture, blowing the water from their large nostrils. During the summer heats, they live in the Nile, lying among the waters up to the neck, and feeding on the tender herb that grows on its banks." "As the buffaloes," says Mr. Jowett, "rose out of the water, on the bank, I was struck with their large bony size. Their emerging brought to mind the passage Genesis 41. 1, 2, 'Behold, he stood by the river; and, behold, there came up out of the river seven well-favoured kine, and fat-fleshed; and they fed in a meadow.' It was the very scene and the very country." The river also abounds in fish, after which the Israelites longed in their journey through the desert, (Numb. 11. 5;) and as it was a main article of subsistence, we see the force of the calamity predicted by Isaiah, (19. 8-10,) "The fishers also shall mourn, and all they that cast angle into the brooks shall lament, and they that spread nets upon the waters shall languish." In this prophecy is also mentioned another source of advantage arising from the river: "The paper reeds by the brooks, by the mouth of the brooks, and every thing sown by the brooks, shall wither, be driven away, and be no more." (Isai. 19. 7.) The papyrus, one of the most celebrated vegetable productions of Egypt, was made use of for various purposes, chiefly to construct boats and manufacture paper. Small boats were formed almost wholly of papyrus, according to Pliny, having a piece of acacia tree for the

The Papyrus.

keel. Similar boats are now used, the sides plastered with mud from the banks; and such doubtless was the ark of bulrushes, daubed with slime and pitch, (Exod. 2. 3,) in which Moses was laid. The sails of larger vessels were made of this material, as is mentioned by

Herodotus; and to this Isaiah alludes (18. 2,) when he describes the Ethiopians sending ambassadors "by the sea, even in vessels of bulrushes upon the waters." But the most remarkable use made by the Egyptians of the papyrus was as a writing material. For this purpose it was not only employed by themselves, but was in such request both by the Greeks and Romans as to become an important article of export traffic.

The water of the Nile turned into blood, mentioned in Exodus 7. 14-25, was the first of the plagues of Egypt by which was demonstrated the superiority of Jehovah over their imaginary river gods. The Nile was religiously honoured by the Egyptians, and they valued themselves much upon the excellency of its waters, and esteemed all the natives of the river as in some degree sacred. A modern traveller says, "The changing of the river into blood in colour, I saw partially accomplished. For the first four or five days of the Nile's increase, the waters are of a muddy red, owing to their being impreg nated with a reddish coal in the upper country; as this is washed away, the river becomes of a greenish-yellow for four or five days. When I first observed this, I perceived that the animalcula in the water were more numerous than at any other period; even the Arabs would not drink the water without straining it through a rag: 'And the river stank, and the Egyptians could not drink of the water of the river.'" Some of the sostyled Rationalist commentators, who seek to reduce the miracles of Scripture to mere effects of ill-understood causes, are disposed to consider this as the discoloration referred to in the text; but to this there are insuperable objections. If it had been a common occurrence the Egyptians could not have been surprised or intimidated; and the water, while subject to this red discoloration, is so far from being unwholesome, that its turning red is a sign that it has become fit for use; for it is preceded by a greenish discoloration, during which the water is so corrupt and unwholesome that the natives confine themselves to the water which they preserve in cisterns. We must, therefore, admit the miracle according to the inspired record. In the narrative of the miracle it is said, v. 18, "The Egyptians shall lothe to drink of the water of the river;" the force of which expression is best seen when we consider that the excellent qualities of the water have been the theme of praise with travellers at all periods. Benjamin of Tudela, in the twelfth century, describes the water as both drink and medicine, and Saunderson, who was in Egypt in 1586-7, says, “Nilus water I think to be the profitablest and wholesomest in the world, by being both bread and drink to them; for bread there could be none without it. It breedeth no manner of disease in the body, as divers other waters doe; it hurteth not to drink thereof either troubled or cleere; for being brought to our houses, one mile and a half or two miles off, it cometh in warmer than blood, and troubled, seeming sandy; but standing all night in our jars of earth, it is very clear and cool in the morning, and so continueth in the house be the weather never so hot."

Sir John Gardner Wilkinson tells us that "The deity, or presiding genius of the river, was propitiated by the ancient Egyptians by suitable oblations, both during the inundation, and about the period when it was expected; and Seneca tells us that on a particular fête, the priests threw presents and offerings of gold into the river near Philæ, at a place called the veins of the Nile, when they first perceived the rise of the inundation. Indeed we may reasonably suppose that the grand and wonderful spectacle of the inundation excited in them feelings of the deepest awe for the Divine power to which they were indebted for so great a blessing.