COFFINS. 
2a^ 
Its being an ancient Egyptian custom, and not practised in the 
neighbouring countries, was doubtless the cause that the sacred his- 
torian expressly observes of Joseph, that he was not only embalmed, 
but put into a coffin too, both these being practices peculiar to the 
Egyptians. Bishop Patrick, in his commentary on this passage, takes 
notice of these Egyptian coffins of sycamore wood and of pasteboard ; 
but he does not mention the contrary usage in the neighbouring coun- 
tries, which was requisite, one might suppose, in order fully to illus- 
trate the passage ; but even this perhaps would not have conveyed 
the whole idea of the sacred author. Maillet apprehends that all 
were not enclosed in coffins who were laid in the Egyptian reposito- 
ries of the dead ; but that it was an honour appropriated to persons 
of figure. Hence, after having given an account of several niches found 
in those chambers of death, he proceeds, “ But it must not be imagined 
that the bodies deposited in these gloomy apartments were all enclosed 
in chests, and placed in niches. The greatest part were siinply 
embalmed and swathed after that manner which every one has some 
notion of ; after which they laid them one by the side of another, 
without any ceremony Some were even laid in these tombs without 
any embalming at all ; or such a slight one, that there remains nothing 
of them in the linen in which they were wrapped, but the bones, and 
those half rotten. It is probable that each considerable family had 
one of these burial places ; that the niches were designed for the 
bodies of the heads of the families ; and that those of their domestics 
or slaves had no other care taken of them, than the laying them on 
the ground, after having been embalmed, or without that,— which 
without doubt was all that was done even to the heads of families of 
less distinction.’^ After this, he gives an account of a way of burial, 
practised anciently in that country, which had been but lately disco- 
vered, and which consisted in placing the bodies, after they were 
swathed, upon a layer of charcoal, and covering them with a mat, 
under a depth of sand of seven or eight feet. 
That coffins then were not universally used in Egypt, is undoubtedly 
proved from those accounts, and probably they were only persons of 
distinction who were buried in them. It is also reasonable to believe, 
that in times so remote as that of Joseph, they might not be less 
common than afterwards; and consequently that Joseph’s being put 
in a coffin in Egypt, might be mentioned with a design to express the 
great honours which the Egyptians did him at his death, as well as 
in life, he being interred after the most sumptuous manner of the 
Egyptians, — embalmed, and put into a coffin. Agreeable to this, the 
Septuagint version, which was made for Egyptians, seems to represent 
coffins as a mark of grandeur. 
: It is no objection to this account, that the widow of Nain is repre- 
sented as carried forth to be buried on a bier, for the present inha- 
bitants of the Levant, who are well known to lay their dead bodies on 
the earth unenclosed, carry them frequently out to burial in a kind of 
coffin. So Dr. Russel, in particular, describes the bier used for 
the Turks at Aleppo, as a kind of coffin much in the form of ours, only 
that the lid rises wdth a ledge in the middle. Christians indeed, he tells 
us, are carried to the grave on an open bier ; but as the most comiiion 
