In The 30th Chapter Of Exodus, Cinnamon, Cassia, Myrrh,
Frankincense, &C. Are Mentioned, Some Of Which Are The Exclusive Produce Of
India; These Were Used For Religious Purposes, But At The Same Time The
Quantities Of Them Specified Are So Great, That It Is Evident They Must
Have Been Easily Obtained.
Spices are mentioned, along with balm and other
productions of Canaan, in the present destined by Jacob for Joseph.
These
testimonies from holy writ are perfectly in unison with what we learn from
Herodotus; this author enumerates oriental spices as regularly used in
Egypt for embalming the dead.
It is sufficiently evident, therefore, that, at a very early period, the
productions of India were imported into Egypt. That the Arabians were the
merchants who imported them, is rendered highly probable from several
circumstances. The Ishmaelites, mentioned in the 37th chapter of Genesis,
are undoubtedly the Nabathians, whose country is represented by all the
geographers, historians, and poets, as the source of all the precious
commodities of the east; the ancients, erroneously supposing that cinnamon,
which we know to be an exclusive production of India, was the produce of
Arabia, because they were supplied with it, along with other aromatics,
from that country. The proof that the Nabathians and the Ishmaelites are
the same, is to be found in the evident derivation of the former name, from
Nebaioth, the son of Ishmael. The traditions of the Arabians coincide with
the genealogy of the Scriptures, in regarding Joktan, the fourth son of
Shem, as the origin of those trihes which occupied Sabaea and Hadraumaut, or
the incense country; Ishmael as the father of the families which settled in
Arabia Deserta; and Edom as the ancestor of the Idumeans, who settled in
Arabia Petraea.
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