When the ancient Hebrew shepherd from Midian first demanded audience with Meneptah, Egypt was autocrat of the earth and mistress of the seas. Her name was Glory and Perpetual Life and her substance was all the fullness of the earth and the treasures thereof. But eight months after the Hebrew shepherd had gone forth from that first audience, how had the mighty fallen! She was stripped of her groves and desolated in her wheat-fields; her gardens were naked, her vineyards were barren, and the vultures grew fat on the dead in her pastures. About the thrice-fortified walls of her cities her gaunt husbandmen were camped, pensioners upon the granaries of the king. Her commerce had stagnated because she had no goods to barter; her society ceased to revel, for her people were called upon to preserve themselves. Her arts were forgotten; only religion held its own and that from very fear. Egypt was on her knees, but the gods were aghast and helpless in the face of the hideous power of the unsubstantial, unimaged God of Israel.
Never had a monarch been forced to meet such conditions, but in all the mighty line of Pharaohs no feebler king than Meneptah could have faced them. In treating with the issue he had fretted and fumed, promised and retracted, temporized with the Hebrew mystic or stormed at him, hesitated and resolved, and reconsidered and deferred while his realm descended into the depths of ruin and despair.
It would seem that the dire misfortunes would have pressed the timid monarch into immediate submission. But a glance at conditions may explain the cause of his obduracy.
At this period in theological chronology, human attributes for the first time were eliminated from the character of a god. Moses depicted the first purely divine deity. Omnipotence was ascribed to the gods, but Pantheism being full of paradoxes, the gods were not omnipotent. Loud as were the panegyrics of the devout, the devout recognized the limitations of their divinities. None had ever dreamed of a deity that was actually omnipotent, actually infinite. Meneptah measured the God of Israel by his own gods. Furthermore, the miracles did not amaze him as they appalled Egypt. He was exceedingly superstitious; in his eye the most ordinary natural phenomenon was a demonstration of the occult. No matter that the advanced science of his time explained rainfall, unusual heat or cold, over-fruitful or unproductive years, pestilence and sudden death, eclipses, comets and meteors,—he believed them to be the direct results of sorcery. Calamitous as the effects may have been upon other people, he had ever escaped harm from these sources. It was not strange that in time he ceased to fear miracles, and the demonstrations of Moses were not so terrifying, inasmuch as they did not greatly affect him.
His horses died, but Arabia was near to replenish his stables; the pests annoyed him, but his servants fended them from him; the blains troubled him, but his court physicians were able and gave him relief; the thunders frightened him, but his fright passed with the storm. Whenever the sendings became unendurable he had but to yield to gain a respite, and then he forgot the experience in a day. Meanwhile he ate, slept and walked in the same luxury he had known in happier years.
Therefore, Meneptah neither realized his peril nor was personally much aggrieved by the troublous times.
It did not occur to him that all the people of his realm were not sheltered against the plagues by wealth and many servants. He could not understand why Egypt should be restive under the same afflictions that he had borne with fortitude. Summoning all evidence from his point of view, he was able to present to himself a case of personal persecution and ill-use. The Hebrews belonged to him, and because he held them their God afflicted Egypt. Egypt complained and would have him sacrifice his private property, his slaves, for its sake. To the peevish king the demand was unreasonable. Yet he was not extraordinary in his behavior. Unselfishness was not an attribute of ancient kings.
Meneptah was a man that wished to be swayed. He craved approbation and was helpless without an abettor. His puny ideas had to be championed by another before they became fixed convictions. After the plague of locusts, the Hebrew question reached serious proportions. Har-hat had estranged most of the ministers, and in his strait Meneptah felt vaguely and for the first time that he needed the acquiescence of others in addition to the fan-bearer's ready concord.
One early morning, in a corridor leading from the entrance, he met
Hotep. A sudden impulse urged him to consult his scribe.
"Where hast thou been?" he asked, noticing Hotep's street dress.