CHAPTER II
IN THE LAND OF GOSHEN
Come with me this bright Sunday morning for a look at the old Land of Goshen, where the Israelites settled when they first came into Egypt. I am writing this at Zagazig not far from the road down which Joseph was carried by the caravan of Ishmaelites, or Bedouins, who had bought him of his brothers and were on their way to sell him to Potiphar. It was over that same road that the brothers of Joseph came to buy corn in the seven years of famine. It was probably near Zagazig that Joseph met them and had the cup hidden in Benjamin’s sack, and from Zagazig he came out in his chariot to meet his old father Jacob when by his advice the patriarch came into Egypt to live. Through him Goshen became a land of the Israelites, where they remained and prospered until he died, and those “who knew not Joseph” reigned in his stead.
The Land of Goshen is to-day one of the finest parts of the Nile Valley. My whole way from Cairo to Zagazig was through rich crops of cotton, sugar cane, and clover. There was green everywhere, and I could ride from here twenty miles more to the eastward before reaching the desert. The railroad from Cairo to the Suez Canal goes directly through Goshen. It strikes the canal at Ismailia and then branches off north and south, following the canal to Suez on the Red Sea, and to Port Said on the Mediterranean. The first section is over the road which led from Arabia to Memphis and Heliopolis, cities long since replaced by Cairo, the metropolis of Egypt. Zagazig, where I am stopping, is one of the chief cities in the Delta. It is on the freshwater canal and the big irrigation ditch which leads to the Nile. It is famous as a cotton port, and to-day camels are coming into the town with bales on their backs, and long trainloads are starting out for Alexandria and Port Said, whence the cotton will be shipped off to Europe and America.
The cotton scenes are features of the landscape unknown in the days of Joseph and Jacob. At that time the only clothes made in Egypt were of flax or wool. Nobody knew of the cotton plant, and it was not until the Middle Ages that Europe learned anything about it. The first knowledge of it was brought by the traveller, Sir John Mandeville, who said that the East Indians had a shrub or bush, half vegetable and half animal. It was called the vegetable lamb of Tartary. According to Sir John, it was a plant which blossomed out at the top in a living sheep that bent down and ate the grass growing luxuriantly about it. The sheep had a thick coat of wool, and from this came the cotton of India. Sir John wrote that this plant beast had flesh, bones, and blood, and that he had not only seen but eaten it. He closed with the statement that all thought it wonderful but that “God is marveyllous in his werkes.”
This was about 1350 A.D., and many years before the real nature of cotton became known in Egypt and cotton seeds were planted. Now the crop is grown everywhere in Goshen, and thrives on almost every spot where the feet of the Israelites trod. It covers the Delta and large plantations have been set out even in old Nubia and the Sudan. Cotton has supplanted grain as a money-making crop and is worth far more than the grain that Joseph had cornered when the years of famine began.
This Land of Goshen is a fine stock country. Camels, buffaloes, and donkeys are staked out in the fields, and flocks of sheep and goats feed there, watched by shepherds. There are also droves of camels grazing or lying on the ground, chewing their cuds. All have their herdsmen. There are no fences in Egypt; the fields are bounded by imaginary lines. Sometimes the limits are marked by water ditches, or little embankments made for irrigation.
It was as stock raisers that the Israelites came into Egypt. Perhaps it was because they were a pastoral people that Joseph had Pharaoh give them this Land of Goshen, the eastern part of which is fringed by the desert, with patches of scanty vegetation where the stock could graze. The Bible says that Joseph advised his brethren to say to Pharaoh, “Thy servants’ trade hath been about cattle, from our youth even until now, both we and also our fathers”; for said he, “Every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians.”
To-day the land is well cultivated. Most of the fields are kept like gardens, and I see half-naked men bending over and digging the soil with great mattocks. Here the farmers are ploughing, using the same one-handled plough of the days of the Scriptures. Some of them have donkeys and buffaloes hitched together, while now and then one sees a plough dragged along by a cow and a camel. There is much artificial irrigation. Sometimes the water is lifted from level to level by men with buckets and baskets to which ropes are slung. In other places it is raised by the sakieh, a rude wheel turned by the cogs of another wheel set at right angles to it. Clay jars are fastened on this perpendicular wheel, and as this moves through the water, the jars fill and empty themselves into the troughs which lead to the little canals. The motive power of the sakieh is a blindfolded camel, bullock, or donkey, the animal going around like a horse in an old-fashioned bark mill. Many of the fields are now under water and the silvery streams shine out through the emerald green of the crops.
When the Israelites first came to Goshen they probably lived in tents such as the Bedouins use to-day. These are made of sheep’s wool or goat’s hair rudely woven by hand. They are held up by ropes and poles and are so low that the people must crawl into them. We know that Abraham lived in a tent, and it is likely that this was the case with Isaac and Jacob.