| 462 Farewell to earth-now joys immortal rise,
Sing loud hosanna's as you mount the skies.
Almighty power! protect our little band,
Increase our faith, our virtue and our love,
Nor let our foes e'er get the upper hand,
To drive our people from their chosen land-
Surround us with a HALO from above.
Minutes of a conference of the elders of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, held at Tuscaloosa Co., Ala., on the 10th of February, 1844.
Conference met according to previous appointment, and organised [organized] by calling elder John Brown to the chair, and appointing George W. Stewart clerk; after which a hymn was sung, and the throne of grace addressed by the president
Resolved, That the clerk take the names of all the official members present, which were as follows:
Of the Seventy, H. W. Church.
Elders, John Brown, Wm. Stewart, Joseph Turnlow, Zimri Kitchens, George W. Stewart, Wm. Matthews.
Priest, Augustus Skinner.
Teacher, William Townsend.
Deacons, James Skinner and James Turnlow.
Representation of branches:-Cypry branch, represented by William Steward, consists of 57 members, five elders, one priest, one teacher, and one deacon.
Boguechetto branch, represented by James Turnlow, consists of 43 members, two elders, one teacher, and one deacon.
Buttehalchy branch, represented by William Matthews, consists of 23 members, two elders, one priest, one teacher, and one deacon.
Resolved, That the saints uphold the presidency by their prayers.
Resolved, That the president and clerk transcribe these minutes after their true meaning, and forward them to the editor of the Times and Seasons, requesting them to be published.
JOHN BROWN, Pres't.
Geo. W. Stewart, Clerk.
From the Southern Reformer.
ANCIENT EGYPT.
The last of the csurse [course?] of Mr. Gliddon's lectures on Ancient Egypt was delivered before the Lowell institute of Boston on Friday evening. It was (says the Transcript) on the "The cubit," and existence of a perfect system of authentic measures in Egypt in the times before the pyramids, and, as he thought, even prior to the days of mathematical Science-coeval with the hand of our first father Adam!
"The primitive sources of all ancient or modern metrical systems were application of different members of the human body; the hand and the foot, in whole or in part, gave origin to all our ideas of length. Mr. Gliddon said that the adoption of the hands and feet as measures had probably been taught by Mizraim to his Egyptian children, more than 1,000 years before Cadmus, or 2,000 years before Romulus, with reference to Greece and Rome. In fact, like the art of writing, (which in his public characters, the lecturer shows to have existed before Noah) he carries the cubit also back into antediluvian periods quoting the command in the 5th verse of the 6th chapter of Genesis, with reference to the ark of "Gophir [gopher] wood." And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of; length of the ark shall be 300 cubits, the breadth of it 50 cubits, and the height of it 30 cubits.
"Gliddon proceeded to show the cubit in the hieroglyphical writings, and its phonetic sign with regard to the cubit, or human arm from elbow to end of middle finger; and also its existence in the modern Coptic and Hebrew language, as derived from Egyptian pictorial [pictorial] symbol. The Egyptians had two cubits-the royal and the common. An arm, or common cubit, is exactly two spans of the hand, of six handsbreadth or palms, or twenty-four digits; and thus we have the cubits. The royal cubit is an arm and one palm.
The lecturer presented a "facsimile" of an ancient Egyptian mason's rule, the original of which was found among the ruins of the Propylea of Karnac. One of the pylons (or gateways) had been erected by Pharoah Hor, of the 18th dynasty, B. C. 1661; and during the process of some workmen who (after the outer-casing, by the Pasha's orders, had been blown off with gunpowder, in 1839) were employed to remove some of the interior blocks, a seeming stick was picked up by an Arab laborer. This had fallen between the stones on the first building of the structure, and being covered up with masonry, had remained where it first fell 3,500 years before.
"A French gentleman Mons. Prisse, an eminent hierologist and professional architect, then residing at Thebes, was present, and found it to be a mason's rule, marked off into divisions and subdivisions. He purchased the useful relic, and, having shown it to many a scientific gentleman, he ceded it to A. C. Harris, esq. of Alexandria, in whose collection it now is. Mr. Gliddon exhibited a precise copy of this measnre [measure], its exactly length being three feet five inches and three-tenths, divided into fourteen compartments, with subdivisions. With this rule he illustrated the application of the human hand in measuring, suiting the action of his statements, and introducing many calculations and ad-measurements, impossible for us to attempt here to transcribe, and rendered more interesting
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