Besides these sacrifices, which took place, for the most part, at no fixed times, the Hebrews celebrated feasts in honour of Yahveh. Each week they had to observe the Sabbath, by abstaining from work. This was in memory of the repose of Yahveh, the seventh day after he had created the world. Perhaps this number seven, so particularly beloved by the Hebrews, which was the close for them of certain periods of days and years, was also a remembrance of Egypt. The great mourning for the death of Osiris lasted seven days. During the same length of time the death of Adonis, the divine young man slain by the teeth of a wild boar, was mourned in Phœnicia. On the Sabbath day every occupation was forbidden, even picking up wood or cooking food. No longer journey was allowed than a walk of two thousand steps outside the town. All the religious functions as well as military operations were carried on on that day as on other days. It was only after exile, when a spirit of narrow fanaticism took hold of the people, that Jewish soldiers at certain times preferred to let themselves be killed rather than violate the repose of the Sabbath by fighting. Originally the difference between the Sabbath and other days was only the absence of work and the sacrifice of two lambs, followed by an offering of libation, which had to be made in the middle of the day. Later when there were synagogues throughout Palestine, everybody went there on the Sabbath to pray in common and to hear the Law explained from the mouth of the rabbi. The Sabbath began, like all the days amongst the Hebrews, at sunset, and ended the following evening. Every seven years the earth also had a Sabbath. During the whole year it rested. People were forbidden to till or sow, or trim the vine or olive trees. Everything the earth produced naturally and unaided went to the land-owner and to the beggars and strangers. That year also all debts and all slavery were cancelled. A Hebrew slave had the right to leave his master after six years; if he preferred to stay with him, he was put against a door and his ear was pierced. The Egyptians celebrated the feast of the New Moon and the different phases of its course. The Hebrews also celebrated the New Moon; during this feast sacrifice was offered up composed of two bulls, a ram, and seven lambs, to which a he-goat was added as an expiatory offering. Offerings and libation were also added to all this. There was doubtless a solemn repast at the New Moon, when the people were assembled to eat the sacrificed animals. It was generally the day after the new moon had been seen in the sky that the feast was celebrated. But the principal feasts of Israel were the feasts of the Passover, of Pentecost, and of Tabernacles, and the day of Atonement. The first three originally had to do with the different phases of the harvest, later souvenirs of national life were associated with them.