by the shepherd Philition,' who used to feed his flocks at thei base, it was an echo of the long-protracted hatred which the Egyptians still cherished against the memory of the pastoral tribe of Palestine. 'Thy servants are shepherds, thy servants' 'trade hath been about cattle from our youth, even until now; 'both we and also our fathers; they have brought their flocks 'and herds and all that they have.' 2 They were a Bedouin tribe still, as truly as the Arab tribes who now tend their camels underneath the Pyramids. The only incidents of their history during this period belong to this pastoral state,—the incursion of the inhabitants of Gath to drive away the cattle of the Ephraimites, and the revenge of the Ephraimites. The land of Goschen was the frontier land, reckoned as in Arabia rather than in Egypt; on the confines of the green valley, yet on the verge of the yellow desert, they fed their flocks, they watched the royal herds. In one of the most ancient of all the tombs of Egypt, that called, from the wild Arab tribe which once dwelt in it, Beni-Hassan,-the children of Hassan,-is depicted a procession which used once to be called the presentation of Joseph's brethren. This it certainly is not. There is no person in the picture corresponding either to Joseph or Pharaoh. Nor is there any exactness of likeness either in the numbers of the persons represented, or of the produce which they bring. But, though not bearing any direct reference to this special event, it is yet a forcible illustration of the general relation of the Israelites to Egypt. The dresses, physiognomy, and beards of the procession point them out to be foreigners! 5 whilst their attitude and appearance equally show that they are not captives. The produce they bring is evidently from the desert, long herds of ostriches. The character which pervades the whole-children carried in panniers on the backs of asses -exactly agrees with the Patriarchal nature of the first Israelite settlement. 1 Herod. ii. 127. 2 Gen. xlvi. 32, 34; xlvii. 3. I Chron. vii. 21-23; viii. 13. El-Arish is the traditional scene of the overtaking of Joseph's brethren by Pha raoh's officers (Denon. ii. 90). 6 The servitude of Israel. 2. If this, and like indications, illustrate the earlier portion of the stay in Egypt, the ancient representations and the modern customs, which seem to have retained, through all the changes of government, a peculiar character of their own, illustrate the second p`rtion. When the 'new king arose that knew not Joseph,' whether from change of dynasty or character, they sank lower still; they became, like so many ancient tribes in older times, the public serfs or slaves of the ruling race. Like the Pelasgians in Attica, like the Gibeonites afterwards in their own Palestine, they were employed, if not in those gigantic works which still speak of the sacrifice and toil of the multitudes by whom they were erected, yet in making bricks for treasure cities and fastnesses, as may be seen in the representations of the Theban tombs, where Asiatics at least, if not Jews, are shown working by hundreds at this very occupation. Not only was there the wellknown brick pyramid, probably long anterior to the Israelite migration, but all the outer enclosures of cities, temples, and tombs, were high walls of crude brick. And they were also drawn away from their free trade of shepherds to the hard labour of 'service in the field,' such as we still see along the banks of the Nile, where the peasants, naked under the burning sun, work through the day, like pieces of machinery, in drawing up the buckets of water from the level of the river for the irrigation of the fields above.3 The cruel punishment which is described as aggravating their bondage, as when Moses saw the Egyptian striking the Israelite, and as when the Israelite officers set over their countrymen were themselves beaten for their countrymen's shortcomings, is the exact likeness of the bastinado, which appears equally on the ancient monuments and in the modern villages of Egypt. The complaint of the Israelites against their own officers is the same feeling which in popular songs is heard from modern Egyptian peasants, for the same reason, against the chiefs of their own village: 'The chief 2 See the engravings in Brugsch, 106, 174, 176. 2 Deut. xi. 10. 3 See Lane's Modern Egyptians, ch. 14, 'the Shadoof.' 6 ‘of the village, the chief of the village, may the dogs tear him, 'tear him, tear him!' It is said that in the gangs of boys and girls set to work along the Nile are to be heard the strophe and antistrophe of a melancholy chorus: They starve us, they 'starve us,'—'They beat us, they beat us;' to which both alike reply, 'But there's some one above, there's some one 'above, who will punish them well, who will punish them well.'1 This, with but very slight changes, must have been the cry which went up from the afflicted Israelites by reason of their 'taskmasters.' III. Whatever may have been the precise length of their sojourn or their bondage, it was at any rate long enough to have rendered Egypt thoroughly familiar to them. their stay in They seem indeed to have left but slight traces of themselves on Egypt or its monuments. Effects of Egypt. Memphis, which would have been most likely to retain indications of their visit and of their Exodus, had been buried or swept away; and no direct mention of the Jews occurs in any Egyptian sepulchre or picture, till the representation of the conquest of Judah by Shishak, many centuries later.2 But on the Israelites, whether by way of contrast or illustration, the Egyptian worship and manners left an impression almost as distinct and as durable as that which the Roman Empire, under analogous circumstances in long subsequent ages, implanted on the customs and feelings of the early Christian Church. Heliopolis. 1. Take first the scene with which they were most likely to come into contact. We know not with certainty what was the chief city of the Egyptian empire at the time of the entrance or of the flight of the Israelites. Memphis was probably the capital, at least of Lower Egypt; and the constant mention of the river implies that Pharaoh was then living on its banks. Zoan, or Tanis, is the only town 3 directly mentioned in connexion with this early age. Its situation in the Delta would correspond with the neighbourhood of Goshen ; MS. Journal of a Stay in Egypt, by Mr. Nassau Senior: 1856. * In like manner the camel never appears in the monuments, though it must have been known (Sharpe's Egypt, i. 18). 3 Num. xiii. 22; Psalm lxxviii. 12. and as it was undoubtedly at one period of Egyptian history the seat of a royal dynasty, so it may have been at the time of the Exodus. There is, however, another city, not the residence of the court, but which is constantly brought before us in connexion with the whole history of Israel, which still in part remains, and which, with the illustrations that it receives from the other Egyptian monuments, may well serve as a framework to our whole conception of Egypt as it appeared to the Israelites. On,1 Heliopolis, the City of the Sun, was the spot in which heathen tradition fixed the residence of Abraham, and with more certainty, the education-according to one version, the birth of Moses. It was undoubtedly the dwelling-place of Joseph's bride. It was near the land of Goshen. It was close by the later colony of Leontopolis, set up by the second settlement of Israel in Egypt, after the Babylonian captivity. It contains the sacred fig-tree shown to pilgrims for many centuries. as that under which the Holy Family rested when, for the last time, the ancient prophecy was fulfilled, 'Out of Egypt have I 'called my Son.' It is thus connected with every stage of the Sacred history; but its special concern is with the period preceding the Exodus. Even if it was not actually the school of Moses, it must have been constantly within his sight and that of his countrymen as they passed to and fro between their pastures and the Nile. It stands on the edge of the cultivated ground. The vast enclosure of its brick walls still remains, now almost powdered into dust; but, according to the tradition of the Septuagint, the very walls built by the Israelite bondmen. Within this enclosure, in the space now occupied by tangled gardens, rose the great Temple of the Sun,2 which gave its name and object to the city. How important in Egypt was that worship, may be best understood by remembering that from it were derived the chief names. by which Kings and Priests were called-'Pha-raoh,' 'The 'Child of the Sun,' Potiphe-rah,' 'The Servant of the Sun.' See Brugsch, 254. 2 On=Light. In Jer. xliii. 13 (LXX. Ovv) it is called Bethshemesh (the house of the sun), as it was and is still called In Ain-shems (the spring of the sun). And what its aspect was in Heliopolis may be known partly from the detailed description which Strabo has left of its buildings, as still standing in his own time; and yet more from the fact that the one ancient Egyptian Temple which to this day retains its sculptures and internal arrangements almost unaltered,1 that of Ipsambul, is the Temple of Ra, or the Sun. In Heliopolis, as elsewhere, was the avenue of sphinxes leading to the huge gateway, whence flew, from gigantic flagstaffs, the red and blue streamers. Before and behind the gateways stood, two by two, the colossal petrifications of the sunbeam, the obelisks,2 of which one alone now remains to mourn the loss of all its brethren. Thither, it was believed, came the Phoenix to die. Close by was the sacred spring3 of the Sun, a rare sight in Egypt, and therefore the more precious, and probably the original cause of the selection of this remote corner of Egypt for so famous a sanctuary. This too still remains almost choked by the rank luxuriance of the aquatic plants which have gathered over its waters. Round the cloisters of the vast courts into which these gateways opened were spacious mansions, forming the canonical residences, if one may so call them, of the priests and professors of On; for Heliopolis, we must remember, was the Oxford of ancient Egypt, the seat of its learning in early times, as Alexandria was in later times; the university, or rather perhaps the college, gathered round the Temple of the Sun, as Christ Church round the old monastic sanctuary of S. Frideswide. Thither Herodotus came to gather information for his travels; and thither, centuries later, the more careful and accurate Strabo.4 The city in his time was in a state of comparative desolation; it had never fully recovered the shock of the fanatical devastation of Cambyses. A long vacancy, 1 To this must perhaps be added, though built in the times of the Ptolemies, the recently excavated Temple of Edfou, dedicated to Horus. 2 The 'obelisk' (which is merely the Greek name of 'spit,' applied in a disparaging spirit to the great works of Egypt) is said to be uben-ra, or uben-la='sunbeam,' or petobphra='finger of the sun.' With one exception, in Fayum, it only occurs on the eastern bank. Bunsen, i. 371; Wilkin. son, iv. 294. 3 It is represented in the Prænestine Mosaic. It appears in Breydenbach's plan, and in the Apocryphal Gospels, as the Spring of the Virgin. See Clarke, v. 142. xvii. I. |