Use of Animal Food in Egypt.
“The author,” says v. Bohlen[32] “represents Joseph, Genesis 43:16, in most manifest opposition to the sacredness of beasts to prepare flesh for food.” In his commentary[33] it is said: “The Egyptians partake, at most, of consecrated flesh-offerings, and the higher castes, especially the priests with whom Joseph was connected by marriage, abstain entirely from animal food.” Further:[34] “The hatred of this people to foreign shepherds is founded on the inviolableness of animals, especially of neat cattle, goats and sheep (the author forgets he has denied the existence of these animals in Egypt), which were killed by the shepherds, but accounted sacred by the Egyptians.”
[32] S. LV.
[33] S. 399.
[34] S. 397, uponGenesis 43:16. Our astonishment at the condition of our great critic’s knowledge of Egypt is here again not a little increased, and the credulity, with which so many use such an author’s work on India as good authority, becomes, after the successive developments of his ignorance, unaccountable to us. No one before v. Bohlen has ever thought of asserting that the Egyptians abstain from all animal food. The contrary is found in all works of acknowledged authority. Heeren,[35] for example, says: “Oxen are commonly used for food and offerings.” And Beck:[36] “The Egyptians abstain from the flesh of several animals, some of them sacred, as the cow, and some of them otherwise, as from swine’s flesh.” How also can any one doubt that the Egyptians ate flesh, when Herodotus alone furnishes abundant proof of the fact? According to 2. 18, cows only, not oxen, were sacred among the Egyptians; in 2. 168, the quantity of the flesh of oxen received daily, by each Egyptian warrior, is mentioned. According to 2. 69, even crocodile’s flesh was eaten by the inhabitants of Elephantine; but the most important passage is 2. 37, where it is said that the Egyptian priests receive each day a large portion of flesh.[37] Even Porphyry[38] himself merely says, that at certain times the Egyptian priests abstain from animal food. In this state of things we scarcely need to take the trouble to mention, that upon the monuments, in kitchen scenes and the delineation of feasts, animal food appears in abundance.[39] [35] In den Ideen, Aegypten, S. 170.
[36] In der Weltgeschichte, 1, I. S. 763.
[37]Καὶ κρεῶν καὶ χηνέων πλῆθός τι ἑκάστῳγίνεται πολλὸν ἡμέρες ἑκάστης.
[38] In Schmidt, p. 62.
[39] Wilk. Vol. II. p. 368.There is in the Egyptian room of the British Museum, a stand on which are the remains of some of the animals cooked for an Egyptian feast, in a wonderful state of preservation. Rosellini has given a representation of an Egyptian kitchen, which was probably attached to a palace ; the servants are represented as slaughtering and cutting up a great variety of animals, under the superintendence of the head-cook, who appears, even in the age of the Pharaohs, to have been a person of importance.
