As early as the days of the exode of Israel, the Egyptians had ensigns of different kinds. We ob serve on the montiments*--r. Thrones or palan quins, indicating the great and sacred centre of an army. 2. Royal fans attending the sacred centre ; they are the `Efthoudehs of India ;' always carried by princes, or sons of the Pharaoh, on the summit of long poles, and therefore intended as signs of honour, not for use as umbrellas. 3. A long spar borne on the shoulders of a row of men, surmoun ted by a globe with an enormous double feather, apparently twelve or fourteen feet high, and four or five broad, coloured green, white, and red. This has been denoniinated the standard of Sesostris, and was most likely the signal ensig-n of encamp ment, which was fixed before the royal tent, and when set un must have been visible hieh above all the other signa. 4. Standards of lower elevation, always with two great feathers issuing from a globe, and the foot set in a portable frame ; which we take to be the sign of castrametation and of direc tion, sertring as temporary guiding posts, indica tions of wells, lines of front in camp, etc. 5. We have found several tablets on poles, similarly set in frames, but with particular symbols above the tablet, and two, three, or four arms holding objects that can be inserted or taken off, and the arms themselves apparently movable, the whole having the appearance of a complete telegraph. 6. Be sides these there are very many varieties of effigial ensigns, with and without shawls beneath them, ensigns of particular temples, idols, citics, nomes. 7. Square tablets on poles borne by the file-leader of a tribe. 8. Ostrich-feather ensigns, carried as marks of honour by princes and sometimes seen stuck at the back in a broad 'belt.
Ostrich feathers occur again as an ensign of the Lebanon people, or a nation of Palestine, which is represented submittino. to Sesostris. These ensigns are not necessarily male of plumes of the bird, and they occur white, white with a black bar, and barred red and white, red, white and black, and red, white, and green ; so that there were many belonging to different appropriations. Indeed this ensign is still in use in Yemen and the southern desert, where many sheiks have it borne on bam boo poles as the cognisance of their clans.
These details we have deemed necessary in order to show that at the time when Israel departed mit of Egypt, most if not all of these kinds of ensigns were well known, and that therefore it is likely they were, under proper modifications, adopted by that people when about to become wanderers over desert regions where order and discipline, directing signals, telegraphs, and indications of water would be most useful ; and as the Egyptians, in cornmon with other organised nations, had a tensa a'eol UM, or sacred centre for their gods and the royal tent, so also had the chosen race a sacred centre, the twelve tribes taking their well-known stations around it—that centre rendered the more awful and sublime by the cloud hovering, or the light shining, above it. [ENcAmPMENT.1 From the kind of service which each class of ensign was to rendcr, we may take for granted that the tribal standard &rt, deghel), at all times required to be distinguishable 'afar off,' would be elevated on high poles with conspicuously marked distinctions, and that therefore, although the mot toes ascribed to the twelve tribes, and the symbo lical effigies applied to them, may or may not have been adopted, something like the lofty flabelliform signa of Egypt most likely constituted their parti cular distinction ; and this is the more probable as no fans or umbrellas were borne about the ark and, being royal, no chief, not even Moses himself, could assume them ; but a priest or Levite may have carried that of each tribe in the form of a fan, as the distinction of highest dignity, and of service rendered to the Lord. They may have had beneath
them vittx, or shawls, of the particular colour of the stone in the breastplate of the high-priest (although it must be observed that that ornament is of later date than the standards) ; and they may have been embellished with inscriptions, or with figures, which, at a time when every Hebrew knew that animal-forms and other objects constituted parts of written hieroglyphic inscriptions, and even stood for sounds, could not be mistaken for idols, the great lawgiver himself adopting effigies when he shaped his cherubim for the ark and balls for the brazen sea. In after ages we find typical figures admitted in the ships carved on the monuments of the Maccabees, being the symbol of the tribe of Zebulon, and not even then prohibited, because ships were inanimate objects. As for the 'abomi nation of desolation,' if by that term the Roman eagle was really meant, it was with the Jews more an expression of excited political feeling under the form of rcli,gious zeal, than of pure devotion, and one of the many signs which preceded their national doom.
There is reason ta believe that the mishpachoth, r ensigns of the clans, and rm.: (aoth), were, at least in the earlier ages, symbolical figures ; and that the shekels ascribed to David, bearing an olive or citron branch to 'Nehemiah with three lilies, to Herod Agrippa with three ears of corn, and to Tryphon with a helmet and star, were so many types cf families, which may all have been borne as sculptured figures, or, when the purism of later times demanded it, may have been painted upon tablets, like the supposed family or clan motto on the ensign of the Maccabees ozzn). The practice was equally common among the heathen Egyptians, Persians, and Greeks ; and perhaps the fig-ures of those actually used in Jeru salem are represented in the sculptured triumphal procession on the arch of Titus, where the golden candlestick and other spoils of vanquished Judah are portrayed. A circumstance which confirms the meaning of the objects represented upon the Jewish shekels is, that on the reverse of those of Herod Agrippa is seen another sovereign-ensign of Asia— namely, the umbrella (chattah, chntah of India), always attending monarchs, and sculptured at Chehel Minar, and at Nacshi-Boostan, where it marks the presence of the king. It is still the rayal token through all the East and Islam Africa ; and it appears that in the Macedonian era it was adopted by the Grano-Egyptian princes ; for An tony is reproached with joining the Roman Eagles to the state umbrella of Cleopatra :— Interque signa (turpe militaria Sol aspicit conopium.'—Hor. Epod. ix.
The ensign of the family or clan of the royal house then reigning, of the judge of Israel, or of the captain of the host, was no doubt carried before the chief in power, although it does not appear that the Hebrew kings had, like the Pharaohs, four of them to mark their dignity ; yet from analogy they may have had that number, since the practice was also known to the Parthian kings subsequently to the Byzantine emperors, and even to the Welsh princes—C. H. S.