*

the game described by Homer to have been played by Halius and Laodamas, before Alcinöus, in which one party threw the ball as high as he could, and the other, leaping up, caught it on its fall, before his feet again touched the ground.

When mounted on the backs of the losing party, the Egyptian women sat sidewise. Their dress consisted merely of a short petticoat, without a body, the loose upper robe being laid aside on these occasions: it was bound at the waist with a girdle †, and was supported by a strap over the shoulder, nearly the same as the undress garb of mourners, worn during the funeral lamentation on the death of a friend.

There is no appearance of any thing resembling rackets; nor is the Roman game of striking the ball with the hand ‡ represented in the Egyptian sculptures but we can draw no inference from their absence; and, considering the remote antiquity of the paintings, it is singular that any should have been preserved to this late period, to give us an insight into their customs and amuse

ments.

The balls were made of leather or skin, sewed

* Homer Od. 0. 374. : :

“ Την ετερος ριπτασκε ποτι νεφεα σκιόεντα

Ιδνωθεις οπίσω ο δ' άπο χθονος ύψος αερθεις Ρηϊδίως μεθέλεσκε, παρος ποσιν ουδας ικεσθαι” Vide J. Poll. ix. 7.; and wood-cut, No. 303. fig. 1.

+ As the women in mourning, επεζωσμεναι, και φαίνουσαι τους palove. Herod. ii. 85.

One of these was the follis, inflated like our football, called also pila, or pila velox, and struck with the arms; the other was smaller, and struck with the hand, on which they wore a sort of gaunt

with string, crosswise, in the same manner as our own, and stuffed with bran or husks of corn; and those which have been found at Thebes are about three inches in diameter. Others were made of

the stalks of rushes, platted together so as to form a circular mass, and are, like the former, covered with leather; instances of both which occur in the British Museum. They appear also to have had a smaller kind of ball, probably of the same materials, and covered, like many of our own, with slips of leather of a rhomboidal shape, sewed together longitudinally, and meeting in a common point at both ends*, each alternate slip being of a different colourt; but, as these have only been met with in pottery, it is uncertain whether they were really imitations of leather balls, or solely made of those materials, and used for some other purpose connected with the toys of children.

Sometimes, in their performances of strength

*Wood-cut, fig. 2.

+ Homer describes one of a purple colour, Od. e. 372.:

and dexterity, two men stood together side by side, and, placing one arm forward and the other

behind them, held the hands of two women, who reclined backwards, in opposite directions, with their whole weight pressed against each other's feet, and in this position were whirled round; the hands of the men who held them being sometimes crossed, in order more effectually to guarantee the steadiness of the centre, on which they turned.

* Woodcut, No. 306.

Sometimes two men *, seated back to back on the ground, and passing the elbows of the opposite arms within each other, endeavoured to rise in

that position, without touching the ground with the disengaged hand; each, probably, trying to rise before his companion, and striving to prevent his success, in order to obtain the merit or the reward of superior dexterity.

Another game consisted in throwing a knife, or pointed weapon, into a block of wood, in which each player was required to strike his adversary's, or more probably to fix his own in the centre of a ring painted on the wood; and his success depended on being able to ring his weapon most frequently, or approach most closely to the centre.

Conjuring appears also to have been known to them, at least, the game of cups, in which a ball

No. 308.

Conjurors, or thimble rig. From the work of Professor Rosellini.

was put, while the opposite party guessed under which of four it was concealed.

The Egyptian grandees frequently admitted dwarfs and deformed persons into their household, originally, perhaps, from a humane motive, or from some superstitious regard for men who bore the external character of one of their principal