DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.3720#0086
BRICKS.—JEWISH BRICKMAKERP. 09
authority, could neither be made nor sold. It was on this
account that the Jews, and various captives taken in war, were
employed in such numbers to make bricks for the Pharaohs;
and the representation of the whole process preserved in
a tomb at Thebes is doubly interesting from its according so
exactly with the account given in Exodus, and from its having
been painted at the very time when the Israelites were in
Egypt. Eor though the Asiatic captives there represented are
said to be so employed "at Thebes," and cannot therefore be
Jews, as some have supposed, still the task-masters, the tale
of bricks, the straw brought to mix with the clay, and the
whole details of the picture are in such exact accordance
with the Bible account, as to be a complete illustration of
it. "We may therefore look upon it with full interest,
without the necessity of a forced identity, and claim for it
an importance far beyond that of the ordinary paintings in the
tombs.*
K"ext to their mode of living, their houses, and their amuse-
ments, the most common and the most interesting represen-
tations on the monuments are those that relate to the trades,
and the ordinary employments of the working classes; and
though a great number of these (as may be reasonably ex-
pected) are unnoticed, there is sufficient to enable us to obtain
an insight into their most usual occupations. Among those
that occur most frequently in the paintings of the tombs,
are agricultural pursuits, rearing cattle, fishing and fowling
scenes, potters, glass-blowers, gold-workers, weavers, dyers,
mat-makers, carpenters, and cabinet-makers, boat-builders,
chariot-makers, undertakers, leather-cutters, sculptors, painters,
public scribes and weighers, and some others. These, with the
amusements of their private life already mentioned, present a
See P. A. of Ancient Egyptians, vol. ii. p. 196 (woodcut).
authority, could neither be made nor sold. It was on this
account that the Jews, and various captives taken in war, were
employed in such numbers to make bricks for the Pharaohs;
and the representation of the whole process preserved in
a tomb at Thebes is doubly interesting from its according so
exactly with the account given in Exodus, and from its having
been painted at the very time when the Israelites were in
Egypt. Eor though the Asiatic captives there represented are
said to be so employed "at Thebes," and cannot therefore be
Jews, as some have supposed, still the task-masters, the tale
of bricks, the straw brought to mix with the clay, and the
whole details of the picture are in such exact accordance
with the Bible account, as to be a complete illustration of
it. "We may therefore look upon it with full interest,
without the necessity of a forced identity, and claim for it
an importance far beyond that of the ordinary paintings in the
tombs.*
K"ext to their mode of living, their houses, and their amuse-
ments, the most common and the most interesting represen-
tations on the monuments are those that relate to the trades,
and the ordinary employments of the working classes; and
though a great number of these (as may be reasonably ex-
pected) are unnoticed, there is sufficient to enable us to obtain
an insight into their most usual occupations. Among those
that occur most frequently in the paintings of the tombs,
are agricultural pursuits, rearing cattle, fishing and fowling
scenes, potters, glass-blowers, gold-workers, weavers, dyers,
mat-makers, carpenters, and cabinet-makers, boat-builders,
chariot-makers, undertakers, leather-cutters, sculptors, painters,
public scribes and weighers, and some others. These, with the
amusements of their private life already mentioned, present a
See P. A. of Ancient Egyptians, vol. ii. p. 196 (woodcut).