BEARD. With the Jews, as with all Oriental nations, the heard was an object of care and im portance. They viewed it as the special mark of manly dignity, and the loss of it as a disgrace or degrading punishment (2 Sam. x. 4 ; Is. vii. 20 ; Ezra v. 1-5). They encouraged its growth, and were careful to trim it, dress it, and anoint it with perfumed unguents (Ps. cxxxiii. 2). Where inti macy permitted, the beard was the object of salu tation, and Joab availed himself of this to deceive Amasa (2 Sam. xx. 9). Only in seasons of sorrow and calamity did they neglect their beards ; in deep affliction they cut them off, or tore them out, or covered them up (2 Sam. xix. 24; Is. xv. 2 ; Jer. xli. 5 ; Ezra ix. 3 ; Ezek. xxiv. 17, 22). They were forbidden by Moses to round off the corners of their beards (Lev. xix. 27 ; xxi. 5), a practice which was common among the Arabians, and had with them an idolatrous significance (Herod. iii. 8), on which account, doubtless, it was forbidden to the Jews. There is a reference to this practice as a characteristic of heathenism in Jer. ix. 25 ; xxv. 23 (See Henderson Comment, on the places). The preservation of the beard established a distinction between the descendants of Abraham and the Egyptians, among whom they sojourned, as the latter shaved off the beard entirely, though they most of the nations bordering on Egypt and tine. In nearly all of them we see that the upper edges of the beard were shaven off, and apparently the hair of the upper lip. In the cut 133, fig. i
represents the head and beard of a Babylonian figure ; fig. 2 is the regal Persian beard, curiously curled and tressed ; fig. 3 is a somewhat similar beard from the recently-discovered sculptures of Xanthus in Asia Minor ; and fig. 4 is Grmco-Syrian, from the sculptures at Palmyra. With these it may be useful to compare the principal varieties of the heard among the modem Orientals, whose tastes in this matter are in general much less fantastic than those of their predecessors. In the following cut the first figure is that of a modern Egyptian adopted the singular practice of fastening false beards upon their chins (Wilkinson, Ant. Egypt. iii. 362). [' In cut 132 is a curious collection of bearded heads of foreigners obtained from the Egyptian monuments, and, without doubt, ing the beards, head-dresses, and physiognomies of (Copt), and the second that of a Persian, exhibiting a remarkable contrast between the amplitude of the one beard and the scantiness of the other. The other two figures we offer with pleasure, as present ing, in all probability, correct resemblances of such beards as were worn by the ancient Israelites. Fig. 3 is that of an Arab sheikh, and fig. 4 that of a Syrian Jew.'—J. K.] (D'Arvieux, Coutumes des Arabes ; Niebuhr, Deser. of Arabia, Sec. xxii. ch. 4; Harmar, Eastern Customs, II. 357-360 ; Horne, Intma'., vol. iii., pt. 4, chap. 2.)—W. L. A.