It appears not unlikely that the Hebrews learned from the Egyptians how to prepare the leaven they made use of. The period at which an allusion is made to it for the first time, in the Bible, renders this supposition likely. It is when the people of God were about to escape from the slavery of the Egyptians, and are preparing to celebrate the Passover, on the eve of their setting out for the Desert.[IV-14] The Israelites, therefore, knew how to make bread more digestive and of better taste than is generally believed--not so good, perhaps, as our delicate fancy bread, but better than the clumsy lumps of paste baked under the ashes, in the frying-pan, or on the gridiron.[IV-15] They had also ovens at a very distant period of their history--some four thousand years ago.[IV-16] These ovens were made with bricks or clay; afterwards they used iron and brass;[IV-17] but nothing in the Holy Writings shows us that any one exercised among them the trade of a baker, at least at this early period, nor, indeed, very much later. The chief baker or butler, whose punishment and death Joseph foretold, when he interpreted that officer’s dream, was an Egyptian, and belonged to King Pharaoh.[IV-18] Hitherto an infallible book has been our guide; let us now dive into the dark and almost boundless regions of fabulous antiquity. The most frightful god of which the fevered imagination of man could possibly form an idea--a god with the face and legs of a goat, the horrible Pan!--according to some credulous writers, taught mortals the art of making and baking bread. The name even of this food, they say, furnishes an incontestable proof of this assertion.[IV-19] You are mistaken, reply more sensible writers; it is in the Greek word _pan_, signifying _all_, that we must seek the etymology of this nutritious substance, which accompanies all other aliments, takes their place if needful, and agrees equally with all mankind.[IV-20] This, one would think, is conclusive; but the learned, the philologist, and every Procrustes of literature, protests against a halt with so fair a field before him. It is from the word _pascere_,[IV-21] proudly exclaims another interpreter, that the substantive, bread, is derived.[IV-22] This word has been rather disfigured on its way: think of the length of time it has been travelling down to us.