ndicated the height to which, at the spot where the
beam was fixed, the waters might be expected to rise. This cross at once
warned the traveller to secure his safety, and formed a standard of the
value of land. Other rivers may add to the fertility of the country
through which they pass, but the Nile is the absolute cause of that
great fertility of the Lower Egypt, which would be all a desert, as bad
as the most sandy parts of Africa without this river. It supplies it
both with soil and moisture, and was therefore gratefully addressed, not
merely as an ordinary river-god, but by its express title of the
Egyptian Jupiter. The crosses, therefore, along the banks of the river
would naturally share in the honour of the stream, and be the most
expressive emblem of good fortune, peace, and plenty. The two ideas
could never be separated: the fertilising flood was the _waters of
life_, that conveyed every blessing, and even existence itself, to the
provinces through which they flowed. One other and most obvious
hieroglyph completed the expressive allegory. The _Demon of Famine_,
who, should the waters fail of their inundation, or not reach the
elevation indicated by the position of the transverse beam upon the
upright, would reign in all his horrors over their desolated lands. This
symbolical personification was, therefore, represented as a miserable
emaciated wretch, who had grown up 'as a tender plant, and as a root out
of a dry ground, who had no form nor comeliness; and when they should
see him, there was no beauty that they should desire him.' Meagre were
his looks; sharp misery had worn him to the bone. His crown of thorns
indicated the sterility of the territories over which he reigned. The
reed in his hand, gathered from the banks of the Nile, indicated that it
was only the mighty river, by keeping within its banks, and thus
withholding its wonted munificence, that placed an unreal sceptre in his
gripe. He was nailed to the cross, in indication of his entire defeat.
And the superscription of his infamous title, 'THIS IS THE KING OF THE
JEWS,' expressively indicated that _Famine, Want_, or _Poverty_, ruled
the destinies of the most slavish, beggarly, and mean race of men with
whom they had the honour of being acquainted" ("Diegesis," p. 187).
While it may very likely be true that the miserable aspect given to
Jesus crucified is copied from some such original as Mr. Taylor here
sketches, we are tolerably certain that the g