4

We are sure as we gaze on the contemporary pictures of regal or social life, that we are seeing the very same customs and employments in which they partook; we recognise in the commerce of the Arabian merchants who carried off the Hebrew slave, the articles specially needed for Egyptian worship-the spices and myrrh for embalmment, the frankincense for the temples. We see Pharaoh surrounded by the great officers of his court, each at the head of his department, responsible, as at the present day, for the conduct of every one beneath him; the prison,' the bakery, the vintage,2 the executioners,3 the wise men, the stewards, the priests, the high priest. The Nile presents itself to us for the first time under its peculiar Hebrew name,5 which indicates its unique and significant position amongst the rivers of the earth. The papyrus, which then grew in its stream, is now extinct; but the green slip of land, achu,—' meadow,' as it is translated,' -runs along its banks now, as then. Out of its waters, swimming across its stream, come up the buffaloes or the sacred kine, as in Pharaoh's dream, the fit symbols of the leanness or the fertility of the future years. The drought which withers up the herbage of the surrounding countries, brings famine on Egypt also. The Nile (so we must of necessity interpret the vision of Pharaoh and its fulfilment), from the failure of the Abyssinian rains, fell short of its due level. Twice only, in the eleventh and in the twelfth centuries of the Christian era, such a catastrophe is described by Arabian historians in terms which give us a full conception of the calamity from which Joseph delivered the country. The first

8

...

lasted, like that of Joseph, for seven years of the other the most fearful details are given by an eye-witness. Then the year presented itself as a monster whose wrath must annihi'late all the resources of life and all the means of subsistence. The famine began large numbers emigrated. 'The poor ate carrion, corpses, and dogs. . . . They went 'further, devouring even little children. The eating of human 'flesh became so common as to excite no surprise. . . . The 'people spoke and heard of it as of an indifferent thing. . . 'As for the number of the poor who perished from hunger ' and exhaustion, God alone knows what it was. . . . A 'traveller often passed through a large village without seeing a single living inhabitant. . . . In one village we saw the 'dwellers of each house extended dead, the husband, the wife, ' and the children. . . . In another, where till late there had 'been four hundred weaving shops, we saw in like manner the weaver dead in his corn-pit, and all his dead family round ' him. We were here reminded of the text of the Koran, ""One single cry was heard, and they all perished." The 'road between Egypt and Syria was like a vast field sown with 'human bodies, or rather like a plain which has just been swept by the scythe of the mower. It had become as a 'banquet-hall for the birds, wild beasts, and dogs, which gorged on their flesh.' These are but a few of the horrors which Abd-el-Latif details, and which may well explain to us how the land of Egypt fainted by reason of the famine,'how the cry came up year by year to Joseph: 'Give us bread, ' for why should we die in thy presence? Wherefore shall we 'die before thine eyes, both we and our land? Buy us and our land for bread, and we and our land will be "slaves to Pharaoh; and give us seed that we may live and not die, ' and that the land be not desolate.

'The whole narrative is given by Abdel-Latif (Relation de l'Egypte, ii. ch. 2, A.D. 1200). Large extracts are given in Miss Martineau's Eastern Travels, ch. 20. The earlier famine (A.D. 1064-1071) is described by El-Macrizi (see Dr. Smith's

. . Thou hast saved our

Dictionary of the Bible, 'Famine'). A famine, under Sesortason I., in which the governor of the district prides himself on having preserved his own territory, is said to be recorded in the tombs of BeniHassan.

Joseph as
Pharaoh's

lives; let us find grace in the sight of my lord, and we will 'be Pharaoh's "slaves." What were the permanent results of the legislation ascribed to Joseph, and what its relations to the regulations ascribed to others in viceroy. Gentile historians, are questions which belong to the still obscure region of Egyptian history. But there is no difficulty in conceiving from what is to be seen in the past and the present state of Egypt the causes and the nature of Joseph's greatness; how the Hebrew slave, through the rapid transitions of Oriental life, became the ruler of the land; in language, dress, and appearance, a member of the great Egyptian aristocracy, 'binding their princes at his pleasure, and teaching their senators wisdom.'. He is invested with the golden chain or necklace as with an order, exactly according to the investiture of the royal officers, as represented in the Theban sculptures. He is clothed in the white robe of sacred state, that appears in such marked contrast on the tawny figures of the ancient priests. He bears the royal ring, such as are still found in the earliest sepulchres. He rides in the royal chariot that is seen so often rolling its solemn way in the monumental processions. Before him goes the cry of an Egyptian shout (Abrech !),2 evidently resembling those which now in the streets of Cairo clear the way for any great personage driving through the crowded masses of man and beast. His Hebrew name of Joseph disappears in the sounding Egyptian title, whichever version of it we adopt, Zaphnath Paaneach, Revealer of Secrets,' or Psonthom Phanêch; 'Saviour of the Age,' or 'Peteseph.' 5 He becomes the sonin-law of the High Priest of the Sun-God in the sacred city of On, Petephre or Potipherah ('he who belongs to the Sun'). He and his wife Asenath, the 'servant of' the goddess 'Neith’ (the Egyptian Athene or Minerva), may henceforth be conceived, as in the many connubial monuments of the priestly

6

1 See Wilkinson, plate 80.

3

2 Gen. xli. 43. Comp. Wilk. ii. 24, who says it is the word used by the Arabs to make a camel kneel.

3 Comp. 1 Sam. viii. 11; 2 Sam. xv. 1;

I Kings i. 5.

This is the form given to the name in the Septuagint. See Knobel's Genesis, 284.

Chæremon, in Joseph. c. Apion. c. 32.

4

order, with their arms intertwined each round the other's neck, each looking out from the other's embrace with the peculiar placid look which makes these old Egyptian tablets the earliest type of the solemn happiness and calm of a stately marriage. The multiplication of his progeny is compared, not to the stars of the Chaldæan heavens or to the sand of the Syrian shore, but to the countless fish swarming in the great Egyptian river. Not till his death, and hardly even then, does he return to the customs of his fathers. He is embalmed with Egyptian skill, and laid in the usual Egyptian case or coffin. He rests not in any Egyptian tomb, but yet not, as his father, in the ancestral cave of Machpelah. An Israelite at heart, but an Egyptian in outward form, 'separate from his ' brethren,' by the singular Providence that had chosen him for a special purpose, he was to lie apart from the great Patriarchal family, in the fairest spot in Palestine marked out specially for himself. In the rich corn-field, hard by his father's well, centuries afterwards, 'the bones of Joseph, which 'the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, buried they ' in Shechem, in the parcel of ground which Jacob bought of 'the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for a hundred 'pieces of silver.' The whole region round became by this consecration' the inheritance of the sons of Joseph.' 2 And if the name of Joseph never reached the same commanding eminence as that of Abraham or Jacob, it was yet a frequent designation of the whole people, and a constant designation of the larger portion.'

3

II. Thus ended the career of the Hebrew viceroy of the Pharaohs. And so 'Israel abode in Egypt, and Jacob was a

Stay of
Israel in
Egypt.

'stranger in the land of Ham.' In this transplantation of the Chosen People, the vine was to strike its first roots. From the same valley of the Nile, whence flowed the culture of Greece, was to flow also the religion of Palestine. That same land of ancient learning, which in the

1 Gen. xlviii. 20, Heb. (with Mr. Grove's comments in Dictionary of the Bible, 'Manasseh').

2 Josh. xxiv. 32.

3 Ps. lxxvii. 15; lxxviii. 67; lxxx. I lxxxi. 5.

schools of Alexandria was, ages afterwards, the first settled home and shelter of the wandering Christian Church, was also the first settled home and shelter of the wandering Jewish nation. Egypt was the meeting-point, geographically and historically, of the three continents of the ancient world. It could not but bear its part in the nurture of that people which was itself to influence and guide them all.

2

In considering the stay of Israel in Egypt, two complicated questions arise. The first refers to the relation of Israel to the dynasty of the Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, of whom we read in Manetho. Were they the same? or, if different, did the Shepherd Kings precede, or accompany, or succeed the settlement of the Israelites? The second question, partly dependent on the first, refers to the length of the period of the Israelite settlement. Was it two hundred and fifteen years (according to the Septuagint), or four hundred and thirty years. (according to the Hebrew), or a hundred, or a thousand years, according to the modern computations of Egyptian chronology? We need not enter on any detailed answer. Not only are the present materials too conflicting and too scanty to justify any certain conclusion, but there is, we may trust, a reasonable prospect that any conclusion now formed may be modified or reversed by fresh discoveries in Egyptian investigations. Two facts, however, emerge out of the obscurity, essential to the understanding of the future history.

1. First, whatever may be the true version of the Invasion of the Shepherd Kings, the migration of the Israelites into Egypt was undoubtedly that of a pastoral people, distinct in manners, customs, and origin from the nation with whom they sojourned.

The
Shepherd

Kings, and
pastoral
state of
Israel.

The shepherds,'

even then, 'were an abomination to the Egyptians;

and when Herodotus was told that the Pyramids were built

'Joseph. c. Apion. i. 26.

2 For the 215 years: (1) LXX. and Samaritan text of Ex. xii. 40; (2) Jos. Ant. ii. 15, § 2; viii. 3, § 1; (3) the division implied in Gal. iii. 17 ; (4) πέμπτῃ γενεᾷ. Ex. xiii. 18, LXX.; (5) Genealogy of

Moses, Ex. vi. 16-20.

For the 430 years: (1) Hebrew of Ex. xii. 40; (2) Gen. xv. 13-16; () Acts vii. 6; (4) Jos. B. 7. ii. 9, 1 ; v. 9, 4; (5) 600,000 fighting men; Genealogy of Joshua, 1 Chron. vii. 27.