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.' 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 Stay of 2 II. Thus ended the career of the Hebrew viceroy of the Pharaohs. And so 'Israel abode in Egypt, and Jacob was a '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 Israel in 'Gen. xlviii. 20. Heb. (with Mr. Grove's comments in Dictionary of the Bible, 'Manasseh'). 'Josh. xxiv. 32. Ps. lxxvii. 15; lxxviii. 67; lxxx. 1 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. In considering the stay of Israel in Egypt, two complicated questions arise. The first refers to the relation of Israel to 2 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 shepherds,' even then, 'were an abomination to the Egyptians ;' and when Herodotus was told that the Pyramids were built The Shepherd Kings, and pastoral state of Israel. 'Joseph. c. Apion. i. 26. 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. by the shepherd Philition,' who used to feed his flocks at their 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. Herod. ii. 127. * Gen. xlvi. 32, 34: xlvii. 3. 1 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). See Brugsch, Hist. de l'Egypte, i. 62 Wilkinson, plate xiv. • See below, p. 85. 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. 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. * Deut. xi. 10. 'Sce 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.' Effects of 6 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 Egypt. themselves on Egypt or its monuments. 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. 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). Num, xiii. 22; Psalm lxxviii, 12. |