the Dead Sea in the south of Judea. In the latter district Nabal kept his flocks, and as he is said to have been “very great,” and we are at the same time informed that “he had 3000 sheep and 1000 goats” (I. Sam. xxv. 2.), these numbers afford us a precise idea of the wealth of a considerable proprietor in this respect. That the “rams of the breed of Bashan,” were particularly celebrated, we learn from Deut. xxxii. 14; and Ezekiel mentions with distinction (ch. xxxix. 18.) a sacrifice “of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bullocks, all of them fatlings of Bashan.” It is impossible to conceive a more striking difference in manners and institutions, than that which must have presented itself to the traveller in very ancient times, when on crossing the Isthmus of Suez he passed from the deserts of Arabia and Idumæa to the richly cultivated and populous plains of Egypt. According to the statement already quoted from an ancient historian the wandering tribes of Nabaioth were forbidden by a positive law to till the ground or to construct settled habitations, and they lived on the produce of their flocks, which they continually led from place to place in pursuit of pasture adapted to the season of the year. The Egyptians, on the contrary, appear to have been originally under a prohibition of exactly the opposite kind, since they cultivated the ground with care, excelled most other nations in all the arts of life, and produced the most splendid proofs of their architectural skill, but were not allowed to keep flocks of sheep and goats. That this was the case at the time, when Jacob took his family to sojourn in Egypt, is evident from their application to Pharaoh on arriving in the land of Goshen, which was on the eastern border of Egypt adjoining Palestine and Arabia, to be permitted to remain there on the ground, that from their youth they had been accustomed to tend flocks, whereas “every shepherd was an abomination to the Egyptians[238].” [238] Gen. xlvi. 28.--xlvii. 6. Compare Josephus, Ant. ii. 7. 5.