2. Also that the people subsisted mainly by agriculture, not pasturage; that their soil was exceedingly fertile and the country one of great wealth. The facts on these points also are beyond question. The Nile has always made Egypt rich in soil and in agricultural productions. Its periodical inundations have sustained the fertility of that valley for thousands of years. Alternations of years of plenty with years of famine have been their common experience in all ages, though probably never so extreme and protracted as in the age of Joseph.
3. The history by Moses records the fact that in the early stages of this great famine the lands passed over largely to the crown, but were leased to the farmers for a certain portion (one-fifth) of the crops (Gen. 47: 20–26).——Testimony from sources other than sacred proves these points. Herodotus was told by the priests of Egypt that the king gave each Egyptian laborer a square piece of land of equal extent and collected from each a yearly rent. Diodorus states that all the land of Egypt belonged either to the king, the priests, or the military caste. Strabo says that the farmers and tradesmen held their lands subject to rent. In the Egyptian sculptures as shown by Wilkinson, only kings, priests, and the military orders are represented as land-owners. [See “Hengstenberg and the Books of Moses,” pp. 62–70.]
4. The history by Moses makes an important exception in the case of the priests. Being supported directly from the royal treasury, they were not obliged to alienate their lands during the great famine and consequently continued to hold them (Gen. 47: 22). With this all profane testimony concurs.
5. This fact implies an organized priesthood as a favored and therefore powerful class in Egyptian society. Egyptian history confirms this and shows moreoverthat they were not merely priests, performing religious functions, but were the learned and scientific men of the nation; had charge of education; held in their body the art and the “wisdom” of the nation and performed largely the administrative functions of government. “The thirty judges (says Drumann) priests of Heliopolis, Thebes, and Memphis, were maintained by the king, and without doubt, the sons of the priests also, all of whom over twenty years of age were given to the king as servants; or, more correctly, to take the oversight of his affairs.” “The ministers of the court were in Egypt the priests, just as the state was a Theocracy, and the king was considered as the representative and incarnation of the Godhead.” (Hengstenberg, p. 68).——It was by virtue of this usage that Joseph married into the class of the priesthood, Asenath his wife being a daughter of Potipherah priest of On (Gen. 41: 50).——The reader will perhaps recall the striking analogy between the Egyptian system and the Hebrew Theocracy, particularly in the point that the ministers of religion were also ministers of civil law and prominent in its administration. The judges in the civil courts were taken chiefly from the tribe of Levi.
6. Joseph’s arraignment of his brethren—“Ye are spies; to see the nakedness of the land are ye come”—suggests an inquiry into the relations of Egypt to foreign powers. The suspicions of Joseph obviously assume a consciousness of great liability to foreign invasion. Such was the fact; and the reasons for it will readily appear. We have only to think of the powerful tribes scattered over vast Arabia, the Hittites and other tribes of Canaan and of the regions North and East—all stalwart men, all poor and subsisting on precarious supplies, yet possessed of fleet animals—horses, dromedaries, camels—with which they were able to move masses of men with great celerity. Let such men see the tempting bait of corn in plenty in Egypt, and the marvel is how Egypt could protect herself against sudden and formidable invasion. The monuments of her early history testify to her long and bloody wars with the Hittites and other tribes of Western Asia, often carrying the war into their country as a wiser policy no doubt than to stand behind her own walls on the defensive. Suffice it to say here thatwhen those Asiatic countries were famishing for bread and it was well known there was corn enough in Egypt, the suspicion expressed by Joseph that those ten men were spies was not only natural but perhaps even a necessary measure of policy to satisfy the Egyptians. They must naturally apprehend danger though he might personally know that these men were harmless.
7. Sacred history drops this incidental remark—“For every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians” (Gen. 46: 34). To some extent this feeling was a natural outgrowth of their relations to the nomadic tribes of South-western Asia—to which we have recently referred. But there is some reason to suppose among them a certain special antipathy against the sheep, more intense than against any other domestic animal unless swine be an exception. They had so much respect for the cow that they made her and her species objects of worship. Although they attained great skill in the manufacture of linen, cotton, and silk, I meet with no allusion to wool. Woolen cloths are never found upon Egyptian mummies; linen and cotton were used.——Some writers have supposed that shepherds were held in special abhorrence because their country had been conquered and ruled by a dynasty of shepherd kings from the North-east; but the precise date of their invasion and of their rule over Egypt is very much in doubt.
8. Both Joseph and his father were embalmed after death (Gen. 50: 2, 3, 26)—a service performed by the physicians. The antiquities of Egypt furnish most conclusive testimony to their skill in this art—a skill far surpassing that of any other people known to history. Great numbers of those embalmed bodies (“mummies”) have been found in Egyptian tombs within the present century, in perfect preservation. On this point the coincidences between sacred and profane history are striking.——The practice was very ancient, some mummies bearing the date of the oldest kings. It was performed by a special class of physicians. In harmony with Moses, Herodotus and Diodorus state that the embalming process occupied forty days; the entire period of mourning seventy. Classic authorities give accounts similar to those in Gen. 50 of greatmourning for the dead. The monuments contain representations to the same effect. Funeral trains, processions, of such sort as Gen. 50 records, are represented abundantly in the oldest tombs at Elithias, also at Sagguarah, at Gizeh, and at Thebes. (Hengstenberg’s Egypt and Moses, pp. 70–78).——Acoincidence so minute as this is noticed; that mourners forbore to shave their hair or beard; but none might appear before the king unshorn. Consequently we observe that in the mourning scene of Gen. 50, Joseph does not come before the king in person but “spake unto the house of Pharaoh” requesting them to speak in his behalf to the king (Gen. 50: 4–6).
Quite in contrast with the usual oriental custom, women were exempt from seclusion and moved in society with apparently entire freedom. This appears in the family of Potiphar. The ancient sculptures and paintings found in their tombs give a very full view of the domestic life of the ancient Egyptians, no point of which is more striking than the high social position of woman and the entire absence of the harem system of seclusion. “The wife is called the lady of the house.” (See Smith’s Bible Dictionary, p. 677). According to the monuments the women in Egypt lived under far less restraint than in the East, or even in Greece. Wilkinson’s Egypt is full of testimony to this point (Vol. II., p. 389). Hengstenberg’s Moses, p. 24.
Sad to say there is abundant evidence from profane sources of a very lax morality among married women—of which the history of Joseph in Potiphar’s house is an illustration. Herodotus gives a fact in point: “The wife of one of the earliest kings was untrue to him. It was a long time before a woman could be found who was faithful to her husband. When at last one was found, the king took her without hesitation for his wife.”
Yet other points might be adduced of coincidence between the sacred and the profane records of Egypt as the former appear in Moses. The above may be taken as specimens. Most amply do they testify that the author of Genesis was entirely familiar with Egyptian life and manners. The sharpest and most unfriendly criticism has hitherto detected no point of discrepancy between these respective records—no point in which itcan be made to appear that Moses wrote without well understanding the Egyptian life of which he speaks.——The corresponding coincidences in Exodus will be suggested in their place.