The Pacha of Egypt has lately established a colony of 500 Syrians in the ancient land of Goshen, for the purpose of cultivating the mulberry and rearing silk-worms.
2. (Josh. xv. 51.) A city in the territory of Judah, which gave the name of the land of Goshen to the country around it.
Heptanomis was so called from the seven Nomi or districts it contained—Lower Egypt, which included what the Greeks call Delta, and all the country as far as the Red Sea, and along the Mediterranean to Rhinocolura, or Mt. Casius.
Hermopolis is in ruins, but its streets, squares, palaces, and some of its private dwellings remain; and while walking through its desolate streets, and standing beneath the gorgeous temples, the traveller cannot but feel lost in admiration at their beauty and splendor.
Heliopolis. At this city, in its palmy days, was a college of great celebrity, where Greeks and Romans, and citizens of other places in Europe, used to resort to acquire knowledge. It was there that the doctrine of the metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls, was taught, and which, by Pythagoras the Samian and other philosophers, was carried over into other countries. Those who entertained a belief in this doctrine supposed that there was a time when every soul was independent of a body; that when a body was afterwards created, a soul entered into it, and there continued till the natural term of its existence had expired; and if, during this state of probation, it conducted with rectitude and propriety, fulfilling all the duties prescribed by the moral law, the soul would afterwards pass into the body of a being of a higher grade than the one it had left, and at the close of every term of its existence, it would go on improving, if it continued to conduct in a blameless manner—at length getting advanced in the scale of improvement beyond human perfection, it would constitute the essence of an angel, or some superior being, and still improving, would finally become incorporated with Deity itself. This was the system of rewards. The system of punishment was of a corresponding nature. If a person conducted ill, the soul, at his death, would enter into the body of an inferior human being, or perhaps an animal—and if
