he sought to displace the many dangerous books which were current by words which were at once pleasantly written and objectively true (xii. 10, 12).
Koheleth is a native Hebrew philosopher. The philosophy of an eastern sage is not to be tied up in the rigid formulæ of the West. Easterns may indeed take kindly to Western doctrines; but where they think independently, they eschew system. Koheleth's seeming Stoicism is, as we have seen, of primitive Hebrew affinities; his seeming Epicureanism, if it be not sufficiently explained as a mental reaction against the gloom of the times, may perhaps be connected more or less closely, not with the schools of Greek philosophers, but with the banquet-halls of Egypt. The Hebrew writer's invitations to enjoy life remind us of the call to 'drink and be happy,' which accompanied the grim symbolic 'coffin,' or mummy, at Egyptian feasts (probably they were funeral-feasts), according to Herodotus (ii. 78), and of the festal dirges translated by Goodwin and Stern.[1] A stanza in one of the latter may be given here. It is from the song supposed to be sung by the harper at an anniversary funeral feast in honour of Neferhotep, a royal scribe, and still to be seen cut in the stone at Abd-el-Gurna, in the Theban necropolis. As Ebers has remarked,[2] the song 'shows how a certain fresh delight in life mingled with the feelings about death that were prevalent among the ancient Egyptians, who celebrated their festivals more boisterously than most other peoples.' By a poetic fiction, the dead man is supposed to be present, and to listen to the song.
Make a good day, O holy father!
Let odours and oils stand before thy nostril.
Wreaths of lotus are on the arms and the bosom of thy sister,
Dwelling in thy heart, sitting beside thee.
Let song and music be before thy face,
And leave behind thee all evil cares!
Mind thee of joy, till cometh the day of pilgrimage,
When we draw near the land which loveth silence.
