loved object as long as human power and skill could reach, have all contributed to this result. The wars, the amusements, the meals, the employments, the portraits, nay even the very bodies, of those ancient fathers of the civilized world are still amongst us. We can form a clearer image of the court of the Pharaohs, in all external matters, than we can of the court of Augustus. And, therefore, at each successive disclosure of the state of Egypt in the Sacred narrative, we find ourselves amongst old friends and familiar faces. We know not whether we may not have touched a human hand that was pressed by the hand of Jacob or Joseph. 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 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, 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, which indicates its strange and unique significance 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

1 See Mr. Goodwin's Essay (Cambridge Essays, 1858, p. 248).

2 "Ior" and "Sichor" (Sinai and Palestine, Appendix, § 36). In Egyptian it was "Hapi-Mu," the genius (Apis) of the waters (mu). The

word "Nile" is derived from an Egyptian word signifying "blue." Wilkinson, v. 57; Sharpe, 145.

3 Job viii. 11; Isa. xviii. 2; Ex. ii. 3. 4 Gen. xli. 2; Sinai and Palestine, App. § 18.

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 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 annihilate all "the resources of life and all the means of subsist" ence. The famine began large numbers emi

grated.

66

dogs.

The poor ate carrion, corpses, and

They went further, devouring even little

"children. The eating of human flesh became so com"mon 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 hun

66

ger and exhaustion, God alone knows what it was.

A traveller often passed through a large vil

"lage without seeing a single living inhabitant.

"In one village we saw the dwellers of each house "extended dead, the husband, the wife, and the chil❝dren. 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

1 It is explained by Osburn (Monumental Egypt, ii. 135) by the bursting

of a great inland lake, and the consequent reaction.

66

1

"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. Thou hast saved our lives; let us "find grace in the sight of my lord, and we will be "Pharaoh's 'slaves."" What were the per- Joseph as manent results of the legislation ascribed to viceroy. Joseph, and what its relations to the regulations ascribed to others in 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

66

1 The whole narrative is given by Abd-el-Latif (Relation de l'Egypte, ii. ch. 2, A. D. 1200). Large extracts are given in Miss Martineau's Eastern

Pharaoh's

Travel, ch. 20. The earlier famine (A. D. 1064-1071) is described by ElMacrizi (see Dr. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, “Famine ").

3

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.1 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 some Egyptian shout (Abrech!),2 evidently resembling those which now in the streets of Cairo clear the way for any great personage driv ing 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, -Zapnath Paaneach, "Revealer of secrets," or Psonthom Phanêch, "Saviour of the age." He becomes the son-in-law of the High Priest of the Sun-God in the sacred city of On. 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 order, each with their arms intertwined 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

1 See Wilkinson, plate 80.

2 Gen. xli. 43.

3 Compare 1 Sam. viii. 11; 2 Sam. xv. 1; 1 Kings i. 5.

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

to the countless fish swarming in the great Egyptian river.1 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, even 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 cornfield, 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

66

Israel in

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

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

2 Joshua, xxiv. 32.

3 Ps. lxxvii. 15; lxxviii. 67; lxxx 1; lxxxi. 5.