MIRAGE (me'razh'), an optical illusion fre quently witnessed in the East (Heb. shaw rawb', "parched ground," Is. xxxv:7 ; "heat," xlix:to). (See PARCHED GROUND.) (Heb.171;', meer-yawm', bitterness; Sept. MaptdA, Alariam ; Josephus, Main dihrm, Alariamne).
1. Sister of Moses and Aaron, and supposed to be the same that watched her infant brother when exposed on the Nile; in which case she was probably ten or twelve years old at the time (Exod. :4, sq.). When the Israelites left Egypt, Miriam naturally became the leading woman among them, She is called 'a prophetess' (Exod. xv :20). After the passage of the Red Sea, she led the music, dance and song, with which the women celebrated their deliverance (Exod. xv: 20-22). The arrival of Moses' %vife in the camp seems to have created in her an unseemly dread of losing her influence and position. and led her into complaints of and dangerous reflections upon Moses, in which Aaron joined. For this she %vas smitten with leprosy, and, although healed at the intercession of Moses, was excluded for seven days from the camp (Num. xii; Dent. xxiv:9). Her death took place in the first month of the fortieth year after the Exodus, at the encampment mirrors used in ancient times were of metal; and as those of the Hebrew women in the wilderness were brought out of Egypt, they were doubtless of the same kind as those which have been found in the tombs of that country, and many of which now exist in our museums and collections of Egpytian antiquities. These are of mixed metals,
chiefly copper, most carefully wrought and highly polished; and so admirably did the skill of the Egyptians succeed in the composition of metals that this substitute for our modern looking-glass was susceptible of a luster %vhich has even been partially revived at the present day in some ot those discovered at Thebes, though buried in the earth for so many centuries. The mirror itself was nearly round, and was inscrted in a handle of wood, stone, or inetal, the form of which varied according to the taste of the owner. (See Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, iii:384-386.) The metal of which thc mirrors werc com posed, being liable to rust and tarnish, required to be constantly kept bright (Wisd. vii :26: Ec clus. xii :11). This %vas done by means of pounded pumice-stone. rubbed on with a sponge, which was generally suspended from the mirror. The obscure image produced by a tarnished or im perfect mirror appears to be alluded to in I Cor. xiii :12. (Smith, Bib. Dia.) (See GLAss ; Looic INC-GLASS.)