tian god, and Isis that of a goddess. On the monuments, too, we often find representations of the kings sacrificing to their ancestors, and of the gods serving them. One of the Egyptian princes (Amenophis III., about 1500 B.C.) went so far as to raise a temple for the worship of himself.

Where royalty was regarded in such a light, the authority of the kings must have been unlimited; and a proof that it really was so may be found in the gigantic works they executed; for they could never have carried them out unless they had had free command of the labor of their subjects. Hundreds of thousands of laborers had to toil year after year not only upon canals, from which the people at least derived some benefit, or temples to the building of which their piety may have contributed, but also upon the magnificent palaces and the gigantic pyramids, which only served to immortalize the names of princes, and furnish them with dwellings in their lives and mausoleums after their death. Sometimes the laborers perished by thousands from exhaustion and insufficient food; but what price was too high to pay for the glory of an Egyptian prince?

It follows naturally from the unlimited character of the royal authority that the Pharaoh was really the sole proprietor of the land; for since he had absolute command of the very lives of his subjects, how much more must he have had power over their possessions! This was more or less characteristic of all eastern countries. But in Egypt the rights of the princes with regard to the soil and its produce were more accurately defined than elsewhere, and so attracted the attention of the foreigners who visited the country. The accounts they give, however, do not agree with one another. Our writer tells us, for instance, that all the land belonged by law to the king, who let it to his subjects for the payment of one-fifth of the yield, while none but the priests possessed land of their own. A certain Greek writer on the other hand tells us that the land was divided into three parts, of which one belonged to the king, one to the priests, and one to the soldiers. Another says that King Ramses the Great, of whom we shall have more to say presently, had the whole country divided into equal squares and gave one of them to each Egyptian.

Whether the account of the Israelite or that of the first Greek writer is the true one, in either case the state of things described must have arisen gradually. It is impossible to believe that within the space of a few years a free people became

a nation of slaves and that their land passed out of the hands of the people into those of the king. That the inhabitants were suddenly compelled by want to put all their goods and their very bodies at the king's disposal, is just as inconceivable as that once upon a time a prince divided the country into square fields of equal size and gave each of his subjects one of them. And yet there must be some reason why the king's rights over the land were so much more accurately regulated in Egypt than elsewhere. This reason is not difficult to find. The state, that is, the king, could not fail to gain great power in Egypt, from the fact that a regular and settled government was a pressing necessity there not only on extraordinary occasions, but at all times. For as we have seen already, the fertility of the soil, the welfare of the country, and the peaceable disposition of the citizens towards each other, all depended upon the manner in which the overflowings of the Nile were regulated and the boundaries of the fields marked out. It could not be left to the citizens themselves to make provision for all this. The matter must be taken in hand by the prince himself, who soon gained enormous power by this control of the public works. The feeling, then, of the pressing necessity of co-operation and unity had been stamped upon the Egyptians by their peculiar circumstances from the most ancient times. Thus the two primeval kingdoms that of Memphis in Lower and of Thebes in Upper Egypt- were united together as early as the year 2300 B.C., and the king was consequently called "the lord of both the countries." One of these kings, Amenemha III., called Moeris by the Greeks, had a lake of enormous dimensions dug out near Memphis. A canal conducted a supply of water from the Nile into this lake, where it could be collected and retained when the flood was so high that there was danger of marshes being formed. It was allowed to run off again when the river did not rise as high as usual, and the flood was therefore slight. This artificial sea existed for centuries. At last the works were neglected by a careless government, and the water inside broke through and formed a natural sea near the present Fayum.

Now the construction and keeping up of such works as these, the necessity of testing the condition of the river, and opening and closing the sluices at the right time, so as to regulate the supply of water in the stream, all this not only gave the kings a great deal of power generally, but also gave them a special right over the land, the fertility of which was,

to a large extent, dependent upon their care. If we take the story of Joseph, then, in a typical rather than a literal sense, it is perfectly true. The prince who knew how to lay by in time of plenty, so as to have a supply ready for times of want, might well be called Saphnat-Paneah, or deliverer of the country, and no one in Egypt must "raise hand or foot" against his will. It was but right that he should deal with his subjects just as the general interest required, and that they should always have to pay a heavy tribute; for was not he who had command of the waters of the Nile the "lifewaker" of the people?

According to our Israelite narrator, the priests of Egypt enjoyed many privileges. They were supported by supplies sent them directly from the king, so that they had no occasion to sell their lands. This sounds simple enough; but the real state of things cannot, of course, be so easily described. For in Egypt, as in every other ancient country, there was a motley mixture of various religions. The Egyptian gods and goddesses were numerous, and their temples, great and small, covered the land. Now one god, and now another, rose to the highest honor, as the preference of the king or some other circumstance dictated; and with the greater or smaller amount of honor that fell to the lot of any deity, the income of the priests, of course, rose and fell; but, generally speaking, they were not only free from the cares of want, but lived in abundance, and exercised a great deal of power, for the Egyptians were a very superstitious people, and nothing is more profitable to a priesthood than this.

According to the story in Genesis, Joseph is taken into the priestly caste; for the fine linen garment in which he is clothed forms the costume of the priests, who were never allowed to dress themselves in anything but linen. Moreover, he marries the daughter of the priest of On. At the same time the distinctive mark of royalty, the golden necklace is hung upon his neck, and he is placed in the same rank as the royal princes, for he rides in the king's second chariot, and every one has to kneel down before him. These two sets of distinctions go very well together, for in Egypt the king was also the high priest. Every other Egyptian had to approach the gods through a mediator, but the king had not.

It appears from what has been said already that the writer of the legend of Joseph was pretty well acquainted with some of the conditions and ideas of Egyptian life; and he shows

the same familiarity with them in his remark that shepherds and goatherds are an abomination to the Egyptians, that Joseph the Egyptian might not eat at the same table with the Hebrews, and that the border land of Goshen was assigned to them as their dwelling-place. But we should be quite mistaken if we were to suppose from his words that the Egyptians possessed no sheep or goats, or that the keepers of these animals were held in dishonor among them; for this was by no means the case. Our knowledge of Egyptian life is principally drawn from the pictures upon the pyramids and the walls of palaces and temples; and in these pictures we often find flocks of small cattle both at the stall and at pasture; and, indeed, the story of Joseph itself speaks of them.1 Ancient historians tell us that the Egyptian shepherds were very clever at their trade, and, amongst other accomplishments, showed great skill in the treatment of their sick beasts. In some districts we even find sheep and goats used for sacrifices.

The Egyptians, then, did not hold all shepherds and goatherds in abomination, but they had a rooted aversion to the foreign shepherd tribes that hung upon the north-eastern boundary of their country pasturing sheep and goats. Dislike of all foreigners was remarkably intense in Egypt, but it was more especially against these special tribes that the hatred of the native population was directed. This hatred was not unfounded; for about the year 2100 B.C. the whole kingdom of Memphis fell into the power of certain tribes of Syrian shepherds. They had pushed into the country unexpectedly, and, after having conquered it without much difficulty, had maintained themselves there for more than four centuries. They were called the Hyksos, that is, the shepherd kings. At last, about the year 1660 B.C., Upper Egypt rose against them, under the leadership of King Amosis, and succeeded in regaining its freedom; but Lower Egypt long remained in their power. On the eastern bank of the Nile the Hyksos had built themselves a fortified camp, in which they placed their possessions in safety, and from which they ruled the Delta. At last King Thutmosis undertook the siege of this fortress, but he was obliged to consent to a treaty by which the Hyksos, with a force of two hundred and forty thousand fighting men, went off to Syria. The site of this camp was called Avaris [that is, Hebrews (?)], and afterwards Pelusium [that is, Philistines (?)]. By the year 1580 B.c. Egypt was once more free. So, at least, several scholars have read the old monu

1 Genesis xlvii. 17.

ments of Egypt; but much of all this is uncertain, and other scholars dispute the justice of this view of the history. It is a fact, however, that the land was oppressed for a considerable time by tribes of Arab shepherds.

It was not unnatural that after this the Egyptians should feel the strongest aversion to all foreigners, and especially to the shepherd tribes that came from the desert of Arabia. The ancestors of the people of Israel were soon to feel this hatred to their cost, as we shall presently see.

CHAPTER XXIX.

RETROSPECT.

T the end of our First Book we may well pause for a

A moment, for it would not be surprising were the picture

beginning to swim before the eyes of many of my readers, and were they somewhat at a loss to give a reasonable account of what they have been reading. All these legends that place us in such a strange world, and are sometimes at variance with each other, and sometimes so marvellously woven together that it is almost impossible to keep hold of the thread that is to lead us out of the labyrinth, all these legends begin at last to get so inextricably confused that we find it impossible to take a general view of them at all. How utterly different the final impression one retains as a child, when, with no deep thought on the matter, and content with any kind of solution of the difficulties that arise, one drinks in the stories of the first human generations and of the patriarchs, - delighting in them, more because they feed the imagination and work upon the feelings than because they are good for the heart or head!

Let us cast a glance backward then, that, while each of the stories still speaks for itself, we may take a general view of the whole.

The first point that excites our attention is the extraordinary manner in which the book of Genesis is put together! We cannot help asking, "How could sensible men by any possibility write such a book?" For what is it that we have observed? That this book is made up of portions of at least three works. First of all, to begin with the latest, there was a "Book of Origins," from which, however, but few of the