Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/405

Rh is recorded in very early times; that is to say, at a date long preceding Moses or any of the books written by him. The proof of this is to be found in such passages as the following: Genesis xxix, 27, where Jacob is desired by Laban to "fulfill her week," that is, Leah's week, in order that he might also receive Rachel. The week appears to express the time given up to nuptial festivities. So afterward, in Judges xiv, where Samson speaks of "the seven days of the feast." So also on occasion of the death of Jacob, Joseph "made a mourning for his father seven days" (Genesis 1, 10). But "neither of these instances," as remarked in the article to which reference has been already made, "any more than Noah's procedure in the ark, go further than showing the custom of observing a term of seven days for any observance of importance. They do not prove that the whole year, or the whole month, was thus divided at all times, and without regard to remarkable events." They do not, indeed, prove this, but they suggest the division as common and familiar, and in some early period recognized as an institution.

When, therefore, the children of Israel went down to Egypt for what proved to be a very long sojourn in that country, they possibly were familiar with the practice of dividing time by weeks, and at all events the notion of seven days as a convenient portion of time for the affairs of life would not seem altogether strange to them. It is exceedingly probable that on arriving in Egypt they found the week established by the practice of the country. It will be observed that it was in Egypt that Joseph mourned seven days for Jacob; and it is possible, though there seems to be no necessity to assume the fact, that in so doing he was conforming to the custom of the country, as he did with regard to the embalming and chesting of his father's remains. But independently of any such consideration, it would seem highly probable that the Israelites found themselves in Egypt among a people who divided the time by weeks of seven days. We know that they did so at a later period; why might they not have commenced as early as before the sojourn of the Israelites? The Egyptians were in fact a people very likely to be advanced in such a matter as this; order and government, both ecclesiastical and civil, were undoubtedly in a remarkable state of perfection at the time to which reference is now made; and it would seem much more probable than otherwise that so convenient an institution as the subdivision of the month into short periods had already been established.

It may be noted, with reference to the number seven and its recognition in some form or another as a special number among the Egyptians, that we have incidental evidence in the dream of Pharaoh; the special form of the dream, as presenting seven fat and seven lean kine, may be supposed to have been connected with some familiarity in Pharaoh's mind with the number seven during his waking hours.

And as regards the Israelites, it may be observed that the period