in other ways providing for the welfare of its employees. There are also manufactories of woollen goods and cigars, dyeworks and breweries. Essen was originally the seat of a Benedictine nunnery, and was formed into a town about the middle of the 10th century by the abbess Hedwig. The abbess of the nunnery, who held from 1275 the rank of a princess of the Empire, was assisted by a chapter of ten princesses and countesses; she governed the town until 1803, when it was secularized and incorporated with Prussia. In 1807 it came into the possession of the grand dukes of Berg, but was transferred to Prussia in 1814. See Funcke, _Geschichte des Furstenthums und der Stadt Essen_ (Elberfeld, 1851); Kellen, _Die Industriestadt Essen in Wort und Bild_ (Essen, 1902); and A. Shadwell, _Industrial Efficiency_ (London, 1906). ESSENES, a monastic order among the Jews prior to Christianity. Their first appearance in history is in the time of Jonathan the Maccabee (161-144 B.C.). How much older they may have been we have no means of determining, but our authorities agree in assigning to them a dateless antiquity. The name occurs in Greek, in the two forms [Greek: Essenoi] and [Greek: Essaioi]. [Greek: Essenoi] is used by Josephus fourteen times, [Greek: Essaioi] six, but the latter is the only form used by Philo (ii. 457, 471, 632). [Greek: Essenoi] is also used by Synesius and Hippolytus, and its Latin equivalent by Pliny and Solinus; [Greek: Essaioi] by Hegesippus and Porphyry. In Epiphanius we find the forms [Greek: Ossaioi, Ossenoi], and [Greek: Iessaioi]. There is a place named Essa mentioned by Josephus (Ant. xiii. 15, S 3), from which the name may have been formed, just as the Christians were originally called [Greek: Nazarenoi] or [Greek: Nazoraioi], from Nazara. This etymology, however, is not much in favour now. Lightfoot explains the name as meaning "the silent ones," others as meaning "physicians." Perhaps there is most authority in favour of deriving it from the Syriac [Hebrew: chseich], which in the emphatic state becomes [Hebrew: chaseia], so that we have a Semitic correspondence to both the Greek forms [Greek: Essenoi] and [Greek: Essaioi]. This etymology makes the word mean "pious." It has also been urged in excuse for Philo's absurd derivation from [Greek: hosios].