HOUSE (rrs ; okos). Houses are often men tioned in Scripture, several important passages of which cannot be well understood without a clearer notion of the houses in which the Hebrews dwelt, than can be realised by such comparisons as we naturally make with those in which we ourselves live. But things so different afford no grounds for instructive comparison. We must therefore bring together such facts as can be collected from the Scripture and from ancient writers, with such de tails from modem travellers and our own observa tions, as may tend to illustrate these statements ; for there is every reason to conclude that little sub stantial difference exists between the ancient houses and those which are at this day found in south western Asia.
The agricultural and pastoral forms of life arc described in Scripture as of equally ancient origin. Cain was a husbandman, and Abel a keeper of sheep. The former is a settled, the latter an un settled mode of life. Hence we find that Cain, when the murder of his brother constrained him to wander abroad, built a town in the land where he settled. At the same time, doubtless, those who followed the same mode of life as Abel, dwelt in tents, capable of being taken from one place to another, when the want of fresh pastures con strained those removals which are so frequent among people of pastoral habits. We are not required to suppose that Cain's town was more than a collection of huts.
Our information respecting the abodes of men in the ages before the Deluge is, however, too scanty to afford much ground for notice. The enterprise at Babel, to say nothing of Egypt, shows that the constructive arts had made considerable progress during- that obscure but interesting period ; for we are bound in reason to conclude that the arts pos sessed by man in the ages immediately following the Deluge existed before that great catastrophe [ANTEDILUVIANs].
We may, however, leave this early period, and proceed at once to the later times in which the Hebrews flourished.
The observations offered under ARCHITECTURE will preclude the expectation of finding- among this Eastern people that accomplished style of building which Vitruvius requires, or that refined taste by which the Greeks and Romans excited the admira.
tion of foreigm nations. The reason of this is plain. Their ancestors had roved through the country as nomade shepherds, dwelling in tents ; and if ever they built huts they were of so light a fabric as easily to be taken down when a change of statior. became necessary. In this mode of life solidity ixt the structure of any dwelling was by no means re quired ; much less were regular arrangement and the other requisites of a well-ordered dwelling matters of consideration. Under such circum stances as these, no improvement in the habitation takes place. The tents in which the Arabs now dwell are in all probability the same as those in which the IIebrew patriarchs spent their lives. It is not likely that what the Hebrews observed in Egypt, during their long sojourn in that country., had in thzIr respect any direct influence upon their own subsequent practice in Palestine. The reasons for this have been given under ARCHITECrURE.
Nevertheiess, the information which may be de rived from the figures of houses and parts of houses in the Egyptian tombs, is not to be overlooked or slighted. We have in them thc only representa tions of ancient houses in that part of the world which now exist ; and however different may have been the state architecture of Egy-pt and Palestine, we have every reason to conclude that there was considerable resemblance in the private dwellings of these neighbouring countries. Such a resem blance now exists, and the causes which produce it equally existed in ancient times : and, which is more to the purpose, the representations to which we refer have almost the same amount of agree ment and of difference with the prcsent houses of Syria as with those of modern Egypt. On these and other grounds we shall not decline to avail ourselves of this interesting source of illustration ; but before turning to its details, we shall give a general statement, which may render them more intelligible.