eople than of a wise and civilized state. A woman who had
committed adultery was sentenced to lose her nose, upon the principle
that, being the most conspicuous feature, and the chief, or, at least,
an indispensable, ornament of the face, its loss would be most
severely felt, and be the greatest detriment to her personal charms;
and the man was condemned to receive a bastinado of one thousand
blows. But if it was proved that force had been used against a free
woman, he was doomed to a cruel mutilation.

The object of the Egyptian laws was to preserve life, and to reclaim
an offender. Death took away every chance of repentance, it deprived
the country of his services, and he was hurried out of the world when
least prepared to meet the ordeal of a future state. They, therefore,
preferred severe punishments, and, except in the case of murder, and
some crimes which appeared highly injurious to the community, it was
deemed unnecessary to sacrifice the life of an offender.

In military as well as civil cases, minor offences were generally
punished with the stick; a mode of chastisement still greatly in vogue
among the modern inhabitants of the valley of the Nile, and held in
such esteem by them, that convinced of (or perhaps by) its efficacy,
they relate "its descent from heaven as a blessing to mankind."

If an Egyptian of the present day has a government debt or tax to pay,
he stoutly persists in his inability to obtain the money, till he has
withstood a certain number of blows, and considers himself compelled
to produce it; and the ancient inhabitants, if not under the rule of
their native princes, at least in the time of the Roman emperors,
gloried equally in the obstinacy they evinced, and the difficulty the
governors of the country experienced in extorting from them what they
were bound to pay; whence Ammianus Marcellinus tells us, "an Egyptian
blushes if he can not show numerous marks on his body that evince his
endeavors to evade the duties."

The bastinado was inflicted on both sexes, as with the Jews. Men and
boys were laid prostrate on the ground, and frequently held by the
hands and feet while the chastisement was administered; but women, as
they sat, received the stripes on their back, which was also inflicted
by the hand of a man. Nor was it unusual for the superintendents to
stimulate laborers to their work by the persuasive powers of the
stick, whether engaged in the field or in handicraft employments; and