"What is thy name?" I asked the old man, speaking in Syriac, for in that tongue I had heard him murmur the name of his son; and I have since found that all Hebrews of the older class speak this language, or rather Syro-Chaldaic. They also understand and speak the Egyptian vernacular.
"Ben Isaac, my lord!" he answered.
"I and my children, as my fathers were!"
"What brought thee and thy people into this servitude?"
"It is a sad history, my lord! Art thou then a stranger in Egypt, that thou art ignorant of the story of the Hebrew?"
"I am a Phœnician. I have been but a few weeks in Egypt."
"Phœnicia! That is beyond Edom; nay, beyond Philistia," he said musingly. "Our fathers came farther, even from Palestine."
"Who were your fathers?"
"Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."