The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous ... - Cd3wd.com

226 SHEEP BREEDING AND
proofs of their architectural skill, but were not allowed to keep
flocks of sheep and goats. That this was the case at the time,
when Jacob took his family to sojourn in Egypt, is evident from
their application to Pharaoh on arriving in the land of Goshen,
which was on the eastern border of Egypt adjoining Palestine
and Arabia, to be permitted to remain there on the ground, that
from their youth they had been accustomed to tend flocks,
whereas '-every shepherd was an abomination to the Egyp-
tians*."
It appears that the Nabatsean law was far more efiectual
towards the attainment of its object than the Egyptian. For,
whereas the pastoral tribes of Arabia have retained their inde-
pendence and their national pecuharities even to the present
day ; the Egyptians, on the other hand, became a prey to foreign
invasion, and among other changes in their customs we
have to notice the introduction of the management of sheep.
Even as early as the time of Moses the practice had commen-
for in the account of the effects of the murrain in Exodus
ced ;
ix. 3, we find mention of sheep, and indeed it is remarkable,
that the domestic animals there enumerated, viz. horses, asses,
camels, oxen, and sheep, are exactly the same, which, as we
have before shown, were bred by the ancient Persians!. Later
historians afford distinct testunony to the same fact. Thus
Diodorus Siculus says, that " upon the subsidence of the waters
after the inundation of the Nile the flocks were admitted to
pasture, and the produce of the soil was so abundant, that the
sheep were not only shorn twice, but also brought forth young
twice in the year." Herodotus also plainly supposes, that sheep
and goats were bred in Egypt, when he contrasts the inhab-
itants of the Theban Nome, who worshipped Amnion, with
the inhabitants of the Mendesian Nome, who worshipped
Mendes. The former, he says, " all abstain from sheep, and
sacrifice goats ;" the latter " abstain from goats, which they
hold in veneration, and sacrifice sheep." He, however, men-
* Gen. xlvi. 28.—xlvii. 6. Compare Josephus, Ant. ii. 7. 5.
t It should be obsen'^ed, that the Hebrew word translated sheep in Ex. ix. 3.
included goats.