It would be quite inconsistent with modern Oriental ideas of propriety for women to bathe thus publicly; but among the ancient Egyptians it was admissible. Wilkinson (Anc. Egypt, vol. 3, p. 389) gives a picture from the monuments representing an Egyptian woman of rank bathing, attended by four female servants. The Nile was regarded as a sacred river, and divine honors were sometimes paid to it. Harmer (Obs., vol. 3, p. 531) gives a quotation from Irwin’s travels, in which the traveler tells of a company of dancing girls who went down to the Nile in the spring of the year to bathe in it, and to sing songs while marching along its banks, in honor of the fact that the waters of the river had begun their annual rise and overflow. It may have been some such sacred ceremony in which Pharaoh’s daughter and her maidens were engaged at the time when Moses was found.