We are told that when the Pharaoh had made Joseph “ruler over all the land of Egypt” he gave him a new name, Zaphnath-paaneah (Gen. xli. 45). According to Dr. Brugsch, this name is the Egyptian Za pa-u nt pa-aa-ankh, “governor of the district of the place of life,” that is, of the district in which the Israelites afterwards built the towns of Raamses and Pithom, and in which the land of Goshen seems to have been situated. In after times Egyptian legend confounded Joseph with Moses, and changing the divine name which formed the first element in his into that of the Egyptian god Osiris, called him Osar-siph. The Jewish historian, Josephus, has preserved for us the story which made Osar-siph the leader of the Israelites in their flight from Egypt.
The seven years' famine, which Joseph predicted, is a [pg 053] rare occurrence in Egypt. In a country where rain is almost unknown, the fertility of the fields depends upon the annual inundation of the Nile when swollen by the melting snows of Abyssinia. It is only where the waters can penetrate, or can be led by canals and irrigating machines, that the soil is capable of supporting vegetation; but wherever this takes place the mud they bring with them is so fertilising that the peasantry frequently grow three luxuriant crops on the same piece of ground during the same year. For the inundation to fail in any single year is not common; for it to fail seven years running is a most unusual event. The last recorded time when there was a seven years' failure of the river, and a consequent famine, was in A.D. 1064-1071, under the reign of the Khalif El-Mustansir Billah. A similar failure must have taken place in the age of the twelfth dynasty, since Ameni, an officer of King Usurtasen I, who has engraved the history of his life at the entrance of his tomb among the cliffs of Beni-Hassan, states that “no one was hungry in my days, not even in the years of famine. For I had tilled all the fields of the district of Mah, up to the southern and northern frontiers. Thus I prolonged the life of its inhabitants, and preserved the food which it produced. No hungry man was in it. I distributed equally to the widow as to the married woman. I did not prefer the great to the humble in all that I gave away.”[2]
Another long famine of the same kind happened at a later date, and may possibly be that against which Joseph provided in Northern Egypt. The sepulchral tablet of a nobleman, called Baba, far away at El-Kab in Southern Egypt, informs us of the fact. In this the [pg 054] dead man is made to say: “When a famine arose, lasting many years, I distributed corn to the city each year of famine.”
Baba is supposed to have lived shortly before the establishment of the eighteenth dynasty; and this would agree very well with the date which we must assign to Joseph. As we shall see in the next chapter, we now know the exact period of Egyptian history at which the Exodus must have taken place; and if we count 430 years, “the sojourning of the children of Israel who dwelt in Egypt” (Exod. xii. 40), back from this, we shall be brought to the reign of the Hyksos king Apophis or Apepi, the very king, in fact, under whom, according to ancient authors, Joseph was raised to be the adon, or second ruler of the state. It was not until the Hyksos were driven out of the country, and Aahmes, the founder of the eighteenth dynasty, was pursuing with bitter hatred both them and their friends that “there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.”
The earlier history of Joseph in the house of Potiphar finds a curious parallel in an old Egyptian romance, known as the Tale of the Two Brothers, which was composed by a scribe named Enna in the thirteenth century b.c. Anepu, it is there said, sent his younger brother, Bata, from the field where they were working, to fetch corn from the village. “And the young brother found the wife of his elder brother occupied in braiding her hair. And he said to her, ‘Rise up, give me seed-corn, that I may return to the field, for thus has my elder brother enjoined me, to return without delay.’ The woman said to him, ‘Go in, open the chest, that thou mayest take what thine heart desires, otherwise my locks will fall by the way.’ And the youth entered [pg 055] into the stable, and took thereout a large vessel, for it was his wish to carry away much seed-corn. And he loaded himself with wheat and grains of durra, and went out with it. Then she said unto him, ‘How great is the burden on thine arm?’ He said to her, ‘Two measures of durra and three measures of wheat, making together five measures, which rest on my arms.’ Thus he spake to her. But she spake to the youth and said, ‘How great is thy strength! Well have I remarked thy vigour every time.’ And her heart knew him!... And she stood up and laid hold of him, and she said to him, ‘Come, let us enjoy an hour's rest. The most beautiful things shall be thy portion, for I will prepare for thee festal garments.’ Then the youth became like the panther of the south for rage, on account of the evil word which she had spoken to him; but she was afraid beyond all measure. And he spoke to her and said, ‘Thou, O woman, hast been to me like a mother, and thy husband like a father, for he is older than I, so that he might have been my parent. Why this so great sin, that thou hast spoken to me? Say it not to me another time, then will I not tell it this time, and no word of it shall come out of my mouth about it to any man whatsoever.’ And he loaded himself with his burden, and went out into the field. And he went to his elder brother, and they completed their day's work. When it was now evening, the elder brother returned home to his dwelling. And his young brother followed behind his oxen, which he had laden with all the good things of the field, driving them before him, to prepare for their resting-place in the stable in the village. And, behold, the wife of his elder brother was afraid because of the word which she had spoken, and she took a jar of [pg 056] fat, and she made herself like one to whom an evil-doer had offered violence. She wished thereby to say to her husband, ‘Thy young brother has offered me violence.’ And her husband returned home at evening, according to his daily custom, and entered into his house, and found his wife stretched out and suffering from injury. She gave him no water for his hands, according to her custom. And the lamp was not lighted, so that the house was in darkness. But she lay there and vomited. And her husband spoke to her thus, ‘Who has had to do with thee? Lift thyself up!’ She said to him, ‘No one has had to do with me except thy young brother; for when he came to take seed-corn for thee, he found me sitting alone, and he said to me, “Come, let us make merry an hour and rest! Let down thy hair!” Thus he spake to me; but I did not listen to him (but said), “See, am I not thy mother, and is not thy elder brother like a father to thee?” Thus I spoke to him; but he did not hearken to my speech, and used force with me, that I might not make a report to thee. Now, if thou allowest him to live, I will kill myself.’ ”[3] Anepu then took a knife, and went out to kill his brother. The cows, however, warned Bata of his danger, and the Sun-God came to his aid, and set a river full of crocodiles between himself and Anepu. When Anepu eventually learned the real truth, he hurried back to his house, and put his wife to death.
No name like that of Goshen, where the Israelites were settled by order of the Pharaoh, has as yet been discovered upon the monuments. Goshen, however, could not have been far from the north-eastern frontier [pg 057] of Egypt, and from Genesis xlvii. 11, we learn that it was in the land of Rameses. Now, Dr. Brugsch has shown that Ramses, or Rameses, was the title given to Zoan by Ramses II, when he raised it anew from the ruins in which it had lain since the expulsion of the Hyksos, and filled it again with stately edifices. Goshen consequently must have been in the neighbourhood of Zoan, as, indeed, we might expect, since Joseph's family would naturally be settled not far from the capital and the residence of the powerful minister. It was from hence that Jacob's body, after being embalmed, as was customary in Egypt, was carried to the old family tomb at Hebron; and we can therefore understand why Zoan and Hebron were brought into such close relation in the well-known passage of Numbers (xiii. 22) where it is said that “Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.” Hebron and Zoan were the two points around which centred the patriarchal history which is set before us in the Book of Genesis.
Chapter III. The Exodus out of Egypt.
Egypt during the sojourn of the Israelites.—The travels of an Egyptian officer through Palestine before the time of Joshua.—Recent excavations at Tel el-Maskhûta.—Discovery of the treasure-chambers built by the Israelites.—Date of the Exodus fixed.—Origin of the word Jĕhovâh.—The rite of circumcision.—Origin of the name Moses.—Illustrations of Hebrew law and ritual from Phœnician and Assyrian monuments.—Tablet describing the duties of a priest of Bel.—The sacrificial tariff of Marseilles.—Phœnician texts found in Cyprus.