J90 Chemical Examination of an antient ^pccuhuri, 



we are told that the mirrors used by the Israelitish ladies at 

 tlieir toilet were put in requisition bv JMoses, in order that 

 they might be cast into a large bason for washing the feet 

 of the priests. In our common German translation of the 

 Bible, no mention is made in this passage of mirrors; for 

 Luther translates it — " And he made the hand-bason of 

 brass, and its stand also of brass, in the presence of the 

 vomen who served before the doer of the tabernacle." 

 Luther consequently has considered the word viarotk in 

 the original as the plural of marah, which is deduced from 

 raah, and which therefore signifies, "■ in the sight of the wo- 

 men." Luther, however, is the more inexcusable in this 

 passage, as the word maroth^ a mirror, occurs in the Bible 

 only in this passage. The Septuagint, the Vulgate^ the 

 English and Dutch Bibles, all, however, agree in transla- 

 ting Beramoth " of the mirrors," as being more correct : and 

 we find by Plinv* that the Pagan women, when attending 

 the worship of their deities, were ornamented with metallic 

 mirrors. We are told also by Cyrillus Alexandrinus f that 

 the Israelitish women adopted the same custom, which they 

 borrowed from the Egyptians. 



A passage in Job, c. xxxvii. v. 18, makes mention 

 also of the solidity of cast mirrors. But the authority of 

 this passage as a proof of the great antiquity of metallic 

 mirrors is much lessened by the doubts which some of the 

 modern critics entertain respecting the period when this 

 ij«jok was written : being considered as not older than the 

 time of Solomon, it is ascribed to that sovereign or to some 

 of his cotemporarics. Menard, in his Recherches sur les 

 Miroirs des yhulens, makes Cicero ascribe the invention of 

 metallic mirrors to ^sculapius : ^' The first mirrors," says 

 he, '^ were of metal ; ajid Cicero ascribes the invention to 

 the first jEsculapius." But must it not appear singular that 

 j^sculapius, a deity who exerted himself so much for the 

 benefit of mankind, should be the inventor of mirrors ? 

 The passage of Cicero, translated by Menard, is to be found 

 in the treatise De Natura Deorum, and is as follows : JEs" 

 ciilapionun primus, Apollims, quern Arcades colunty qui 

 specillum invenlsse, primusque vulnus dicltur obligavisse. 

 But it may be readily seen that Menard has here conmiitted 

 a most egregious blunder, as he took the word specillum 

 which signifies a probe, for speculum which expresses a 

 mirror 3 and therefore was guilty of a more serious oflencc 



* Lili xxxiii. cap. 9; lib. xxxiv. cap. 17. , 



t Lib ii. vol. i. p. 64, De Adoratione in Spiritu. 



towards 



