* Augustus subsequently turned his attention to this canal; hence, suggests Lumbroso (/'Egitto dei Greci, 23), the name of the eastern province, Augustamnica.
+ Cauer in Pauly-Wissowa, RE 810, ‘statue.’
t Maspero still (letter to present writer, 1899) holds this the most probable.
§ Josephus (Ant. x. v. 1), it is true, has Μενδή; but presumably he misread this from Heb. 1720. (See G. A. Smith, Hist Geogr. 405).
i Stade, Geschichte, 1 674.
NECROMANCY
NEGEB 505
247), and, for some years at any rate, the Eeyetiens ener returns to the older spelling ‘neesed’). po
did not venture to interfere in Asiatic tics. In 594 Neco died, and was buried at Sais. The recorded burial of an Apis bull in his 16th year confirms the duration of the reign given by Herodotus. W. E. Crum.
NECROMANCY.—See Sorcery.
NEDABIAH (77273).—A descendant of David, 1 Ch 318 (B Δενεθεί, Α" NaSadlas, Luc. Nadafid).
NEEDLE’S EYE (τρῆμα [var. lec. τρυπήμα] ῥαφίδος, Mt 19%; τρυμαλιὰ ῥαφίδος, Mk 1035; τρῆμα βελόνης, Lk 18*).—The ΠΟΡΟΒΟΙΡΗΣΥ of a camel’s passing through the eye of a needle is used by esus to emphasize the difficulty of a rich man’s entering into the kingdom of God. An attempt is some- times made to explain the needle’s eye as a refer- ence to the small door, a little over 2 ft. square, in the large heavy gate of a walled city. This mars the figure without materially altering the meaning, and receives no justification from the language and traditions of Palestine. There is no custom of calling this small opening ‘the eye’; it is senally named ‘the small door,’ ‘hole,’ or ‘window.’ If there were such a custom, it would not help the interpretation suggested, because Orientals never speak of the eye of a needle; it is simply the s/it or hole, 14 hur, Arab. khurm. The literal meaning is therefore to be preferred.* See, further, Swete on Mk 105, and art. CAMEL in vol. i. p. 345°.
G. M. MAcKIE.
NEEDLEWORK is tr® in AV of two Heb. ex- pressions : (a) 075 avyp (Ex 26% 2716 28% 3657 3818 39%), the exact rendering of which is ‘work of the variegator’ (so OPB uniformly ; RV gives ‘work of the embroiderer’); (ὁ) appr (Jg 5”, Ps 45%, 1 Ch 29, and 8 times in Ezk), a name which also signifies ‘variegated work’ (Moore, Judges, ad loc.), and is used of embroidery in which patterns were worked with a needle in various colours (RV in Jg ‘embroidery,’ in Ps and 7 times in Ezk “broidered work’; once ‘divers colours,’ so also 1Ch 29%, Against this being ‘embroidery,’ see op Dillm. on Ex 26%),
eedlework is much prized and universally ractised in the East. ce is made of great elicacy and beauty of pattern, and designs in different colours of silk, rendered more lustrous by threads of silver and gold, are sewn upon cotton, linen, silk, and woollen materials. Chil- dren devote themselves to it at an early age; among the poorer classes young women earn their mairiage portion by patiently and skilfully pro- ducing work of considerable market value, and among the secluded women of rich Oriental families the gradual progress of a piece of needle- work is a subject of interest and a connecting link in empty hours and aimless days.
G. M. MACKIE.
NEESING.—There are in Middle English two distinct verbs fnese and neese. The former means ‘to breathe hard’ and is connected with the Gr. wvéw; the latter, which is pure Teut., though not found in Anglo-Sax., means ‘to sneeze.’ ‘Sneeze,’ which has now replaced ‘neese,’ is in fact simply a dialectic variety of that word (cf. ‘lightly ἡ and ‘slightly ’). In the 1611 ed. of AV the word ‘neese’ is accepted from Coverdale in 2K 45. ‘the child neesed seven times.’ The meaning is evidently ‘sneezed’ (Heb. τὴν Po. of (m1), prob. onomatopoetic, cf. sternuo), and mod. editors (since 1762) have so spelt it (though Scriv-
* On the ingenious but futile pro to substitute ‘cable’ eo for ‘camel’ (s&umder), found as early as Cyril of Alex- Hastings
ria, see and Nestle in Expos, Times, ix. (1898), B88, 474.
For the word cf. Chapman, Odysseys, xix. 732, 736—
‘This said, about the house, in echoes round, Her son's strange neesings made a horrid sound ; At which the Queen yet laugh’d, and said, ‘‘ Go call The stranger tome. Heard’st thou not, to all My words last utter’d, what a neesing brake From my Telemachus?”’
But in Job 4118 we find in 1611 AV ‘By his neesings a light doth shine,’ which again comes down from Coverdale. Modern editors have re- tained the spelling ‘neesings’ here,
a feeling that the modern ‘sneeze’ di the meaning, as it certainly does not.
erhaps from not express 1 The Heb. (ayy) is a different word from that found in 2 Καὶ 455, and clearly refers to the crocodile’s habit of inflating itself, as it lies basking in the sun, and then forcing the heated breath through its nostrils : this in the sun appears like a stream of light (Dav.). Now this is the meaning not of neese, but of fnese. Wyclif’s word in 1388 ed. is ‘fnesynge,’ and it is probable that Coverdale, by whose time the verb Jnese had gone out of use, adopted ‘neese’ either as the same word or its nearest equivalent. In av case ‘neesings’ should no longer be retained, still less should it be replaced by ‘sneezings’ as in Amer. RV ; the modern word is ‘snortings.’ In Jer 816 Wyclif has (1382) ‘Fro Dan is herd the fnesting of his hors,’ and there, though the Heb. word (7793) is different, the meaning is the same, and AV ‘snorting,’ after Douay ‘snoring (sic) noyse.’ . HASTINGS.