Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/335

TRADESMEN -ARTISANS. -EMBALMING. 31*, Those whom Herodotus denominates tradesmen (y.axij.o!) aro doubtless identical with the artisans (fegmat) specifled by Diod- ortis, the town population generally as distinguished from that of the country. During the three months of the year when Egvpt was covered with water, festival days were numerous, the people thronging by hundreds of thousands, in vast barges, to one or other of the many holy places, combining worship and enjoyment. 1 In Egypt, weaving was a trade, whereas in Greece it was the domestic occupation of females ; and Herodotus treats it as one of those reversals of the order of nature which were seen only in Egypt,- that the weaver stayed at home plying his web while his wife went to market. The process of embalming bodies was elaborate and universal, giving employment to a large special class of men : the profusion of edifices, obelisks, sculpture and painting, all executed by native workmen, required a large body of trained sculptors, 3 who in the mechanical branch of their business attained a high excellence. Most of the animals in Egypt were objects of religious reverence, and many of them were identified in the closest manner with particular gods. The order of priests included a large number of hereditary feeders 1 Herodot. ii. 59-60. 2 Herodot. ii, 35 ; Sophokl. OEdip. Colon. 332 : where the passage cited by the Scholiast out of Nymphodorus is a remarkable example of the habit of ingenious Greeks to represent all customs which they thought worthy of notice, as having emanated from the design of some great sovereign : here Nymphodorus introduces Sesostris as the author of the custom in question, in order that the Egyptians might be rendered effeminate. 3 The process of embalming is minutely described (Herod, ii, 85-90) ; the word which he uses for it is the same as that for salting meat and fish, rapixevaif : compare Strabo, xvi. p. 764. Perfect exactness of execution, mastery of the hardest stone, and undevi- ating obedience to certain rules of proportion, are general characteristics of Egyptian sculpture. There are yet seen in their quarries obelisks not severed from the rock, but having three of their sides already adorned with hiero- glyphics ; so certain were they of cutting off the fourth side with precision (Schnaase, Gesch. der Bild. Kiinste, i, p. 428). All the nomes of Egypt, however, were not harmonious in their feelings respecting animals : particular animals were worshipped in some nomcs which in other nomes were objects even of antipathy, especially the crocodih (Herod, ii. 69 ; Strabo, xvii, p. 817: see particularly the fifteenth Satire oi Juvenal)