probably chosen because it was near Canaan, whither they were to return, for, as they told Pharaoh afterwards, their purpose was to sojourn not to settle in Egypt, had been inhabited by the fierce Shepherd Kings and their adherents, who maintain ed themselves by force in it for a considerable time, until they were finally excluded by the native Mizraim. The interval which elapsed between the retreat of the Shepherds and the entry of the Israelites is uncertain. It was an unoccupied district, yet from its fine qualities there was no necessity that it should have been so, unless we account for it by the secession or expulsion of its Shepherd occupants. Manetho expressly informs us that the Second Shepherds, by whom he means the Israelites, succeeded to the places which had been deserted by the others, and also that the city Avaris, which had been built by the first Shepherd King, was given to those of their body who were employed in the quarries. It is remarkable that the country of Goshen was the first which the Cushite Shepherds inhabited when they invaded Egypt, and the last from which they retired. The Egyptians were not a pastoral people, and this being a territory exclusively adapted for pasturage, it does not appear to have been inhabited after the expulsion of the Shepherds, for if it had, it is not likely that it would have been readily granted to the Hebrews. Dr Hales properly points out the wise policy of the Egyptian court in assigning Goshen to the Hebrews. The country "formed the eastern barrier of Egypt towards Palestine and Arabia, the quarters from which they most dreaded invasion, whose naked ness was now covered in a short time by a numerous, a brave, and an industrious people, amply repaying, by the additional security and resources which they gave to Egypt, their hospitable reception and naturalization."

Joseph advanced to meet his father, and after the affecting embrace and salutations from a long-lost and illustrious son, he instructed his brethren how to conduct themselves when they arrived

in Egypt. He informed them that he would represent them to Pharaoh as being literally shepherds, who had come to him from the Land of Canaan, where the famine was "sore”—Canaan being a high country, and the grass sooner burnt up in it than in Goshen that their trade had been to feed cattle—that they had brought their flocks and their herds, and all that they possessed, with them— and that when Pharaoh should question them, they were to answer exactly as he had instructed them, "for," said he, "every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians." The Jewish historian informs us that "the Egyptians were prohibited to meddle with the feeding of sheep," from which he seems to infer that they hated or despised the pastoral employment in the time of Joseph; but Bishop Cumberland has ably shown they rather hated the Canaanite or Phoenician Shepherds, who had enslaved them for upwards of two centuries. It was the recollection of the tyranny of the Shepherd Kings which made them hold every shepherd in abomination; it was not so much the literal profession of a shepherd

as Josephus himself tells us that Pharaoh's (or the king's) shepherds dwelt at Heliopolis-against which they had an inveterate prejudice, or to the rearers of cattle as such, as to that class who associated the rearing of cattle with habits and pursuits which rendered them hated and feared by a settled and civilized people like the Mizraim. It was every nomade shepherd who was an abomination to the Egyptians; not those cultivators who, being proprietors of the soil, reared cattle amidst their other occupations, but those nomade tribes who inhabited the borders or dwelt within the limits of Egypt-of Arabian and Libyan descent-who were also disliked as foreigners, and whose turbulent and aggressive habits, as well as entire independence, or at least the uncertain control which could be exercised over such tribes, were continual sources of annoyance to a wellorganized nation. The members of the priestly caste, from the recollection of the

Shepherd Kings, contrived to keep alive a bitter hatred and scorn towards them, and all intercourse was strictly prohibited. Dr Hales calculates that the Arabian, Cushite, or Shepherd Kings, after ruling Egypt in the most tyrannical and insult ing manner for two hundred and sixty years, were expelled, or withdrew, to Palestine about twenty-seven years before Joseph's elevation to be prime minister of Egypt; "and as the memory of the tyranny which they had suffered must have been fresh in the minds of the Egyptians, this appears to account for the fact that every shepherd was an abomination to the Egyptians, without recurring to the supposed dislike of the Mizraim to pastoral people on account of their pursuits and mode of life. Their dislike must have been the more marked against persons who, like the Hebrews, came from the very country to which their expelled enemies had withdrawn. They might not unreasonably have suspected that their Hebrew visiters were a party of the same people; and the harsh reception they met with from Joseph, the strict examination they underwent, and the charge of being spies come to see the nakedness of the land, is probably what would have happened had they been personally unknown to the governor of Egypt." This opinion, that the Egyptians did not personally dislike shepherds or rearers of cattle, is farther proved from the circumstance, that when Joseph informed Pharaoh of the arrival and occupation of his father and brethren, he was told by the king, "The Land of Egypt is before them in the best of the land make thy father and brethren to dwell: in the Land of Goshen let them dwell; and if thou knowest any men of activity among them, then make them rulers over my cattle." Here we see that the Egyptian kings, like those of the East, raised part of their revenue from cattle, having special officers to superintend the shepherd class; and it is not likely that Pharaoh, who received the Israelites with kindness and hospitality, would recommend Joseph to appoint his brothers to

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stations which were mean, unpopular, and odious to a superstitious people. So far as the hatred of the Egyptians to shepherds arose from their religious preju dices, it was connected almost entirely with the cow-the only pastured animal which they considered sacred; for their priests themselves ate beef and veal with. out scruple, and the Egyptians sacrificed and used sheep and goats in various districts.

Pharaoh held a very interesting interview with Jacob, from which we learn that the age of the Patriarch was one hundred and thirty years. He describes "the days of the years of his life" as "few and evil," for though he had in general been a prosperous man, he had encountered some severe trials; and he adds, that he had "not attained unto the days of the years of the life of his fathers in the days of their pilgrimage," alluding to the life of his father Isaac, which was one hundred and eighty, and of his grandfather Abraham, which was one hundred and seventy-five years. Other subjects. were doubtless discussed between Jacob and Pharaoh, for we are told that immediately before he took his leave he "blessed" the king; but this interview is chiefly remarkable as illustrating what Herodotus says respecting the reverence which the Egyptians paid to age, in which they surpassed all the Greeks, the Lacedæmonians excepted. "When the Egyptians meet they do not speak, but make a profound reverence, bowing with the hand down to the knee:" and Savary corroborates this statement of Herodotus by observing that the same reverence exists at this day in Egypt, and is exhibited on every occasion to those advanced in years. Joseph placed his father and his household in Goshen, or the "Land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded,” so called by anticipation, where the Israelites afterwards built a city of that name for Pharaoh, and hence the name was sometimes given to the country.

In the succeeding narrative of this celebrated Egyptian famine we have some notices of the proceedings of Joseph in

his hazardous situation. He collected all the money of Egypt and of Canaan, and deposited it in the king's treasury. But when the money of the Egyptians was exhausted, they parted with their cattle; and in the last year of the famine they sold their lands, some of them even offering themselves as slaves, rather than die of hunger. We are told that the Egyptians "sold every man his field, so the land became Pharaoh's." This gives us a view of the distribution of property in Egypt, before the people became by this act the king's bondmen, and their lands held of the crown. They required seed, that they might provide a crop on the following year, being aware that they were in the last year of the famine. Joseph also removed the Egyptians to cities. From this we may infer that the population had been chiefly scattered over the country, by which many families in such a season of distress might be left destitute of friendly advice and assistance; but the Hebrew governor, being absolute master of the country, employed his power to enforce the enlightened and liberal yet difficult task of persuading men to combine together in communities. "Joseph," says Dr Hales, "did not, as some have imagined, transplant the people to cities remote from their residences, but, consulting their convenience, only to the cities adjacent; the people round about each store-city he brought into that city; and this he did throughout the whole extent of the country. The lands, thus voluntarily sold by the people, he farmed to the occupiers again, at the moderate and fixed crown-rent of a fifth part of the produce; thus he provided for the liberty and independence of the people, while he strengthened the authority of the king; and to secure the people from farther exaction, Joseph made it a law over the Land of Egypt, that Pharaoh should have the fifth part,' which Moses says existed unto this day,' or in his time. By this wise regulation the people had four-fifths of the produce of the lands for their own use, and were exempted from any further taxes, the

king being bound to support his civil and military establishments out of the crown rents." These are also the sentiments of Josephus, and are in unison with the exclamations of the people as recorded by Moses, "Thou hast saved our lives, let us find grace in the sight of my lord, and we will be Pharaoh's servants." "They rejoiced," says the Jewish historian, "when they became unexpectedly owners of their lands, and diligently observed what was enjoined them. By this means Joseph procured to himself a greater authority among the Egyptians, and love to the king. The law, obliging them to pay the fifth part of their fruits as tribute, continued until their later kings."

All the soil of Egypt thus became the property of the crown, "except the land of the priests only, which became not Pharaoh's." The sacerdotal caste, it will be remembered, formed the highest and most privileged class in the Egyptian state. They often comprised the whole body of the nobility; they were royal counsellors, keepers of the public archives, and magistrates. They were obliged to provide the sacrifices, and to defray all the expenses of their religious rites. The Egyptian population, on the other hand, were divided into distinct castes or tribes, of which the priests, like the Brahmins, were the first; the military caste ranked next in dignity to that of the priesthood: then followed the others, as traders, labourers, artificers, husbandmen, swineherds, and slaves, with whom the higher castes never came into communication. Every man belonging to any of these inferior castes was obliged to follow the profession of his fathers, whatsoever it was, and hence no one had the slightest chance of elevating himself out of that rank in which he was born. "I have observed so many marks of resemblance betwixt the Egyptians and Indians," says Dr Larcher, "that I can by no means persuade myself that they are the effect of chance: I love better to believe that India was civilized by those Egyptians who accompanied Bacchus or

Sesostris in their expeditions. I am therefore not at all surprised at finding Egyptian architecture amongst the Indians, the division of the people into tribes which never intermingle, respect for animals, and for the cow in particular, the metempsychosis," &c. In the Egyptian priesthood, not only was the son of a priest also a priest, but he was obliged to be a priest of the same deities to which his father had ministered. Those priests were dispersed throughout the several nomes or districts, and formed the governing body; but those cities at various times the capitals of Egypt contained the great temples, and were the principal seats. Every priest was attached to a particular temple. Each temple had its chief priest, whose office was hereditary; and in the principal cities those hereditary priests appear to have been a kind of hereditary princes also, who ranked next the kings, and enjoyed nearly equal influence and advantages. Such a person was Joseph's father-in-law, the priest of On, who was a prince, as the word implies, as well as a priest.

Jacob lived seventeen years in Egypt, and during that time his descendants rapidly increased. As Joseph resided at Memphis, and the Patriarch probably in the neighbourhood of On, little more than twenty miles distant, he had frequent opportunities, as the inspired narrative intimates, of seeing his favourite son. At length the Patriarch found his death approaching, and summoned Joseph to receive his final commands. His request was that he would not be buried in Egypt, but that he would be "laid with his fathers, and buried in their burying-place." This wish must either have resulted from a feeling common among men to be interred near their relatives, or perhaps from an anticipation that if he was buried in Egypt his descendants would not attempt the conquest of the Promised Land. On this occasion he made Joseph swear an oath to that effect, and the form in which it was done is a curious illustration of Oriental customs. "I pray thee, place thy hand under my thigh, and

deal kindly and truly with me." Abraham, when he "was old and well-stricken in years," made his chief servant, or steward of his household, swear an oath in a similar manner, that Isaac would not marry a Canaanite woman, Gen. xxiv. 2, 3. This was probably an act of subjection and homage done by a servant to his su perior, the servant kneeling and putting his hand under him; and in Jacob's case the Patriarch asserted his superiority over Joseph, although the latter was his superior in rank in Egypt.

When the Patriarch died, Joseph commanded "his servants the physicians to embalm his father; and the physicians embalmed Israel." The Egyptians, it is well known, were particularly skilled in this art; and as it is described in another part of the present article, the observations which follow are intended to apply solely to the text of Moses. "Forty days were fulfilled for him," says the inspired writer, "for so are fulfilled the days of those who are embalmed; and the Egyptians mourned for him threescore and ten days." The Egyptian custom of embalming their dead, to preserve the corpse for thousands of generations, resulted from that doctrine of their religion which taught that the continuance of the soul in the region of blessedness depended on the preservation of the body. As the Egyptians believed the metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls, as stated by Herodotus-though Dr Larcher thinks that it did not originate with them, but was introduced by the soldiers of Sesostris after their return from their Indian expedition

it became part of their creed, that when the body perished the banished soul had to begin anew its career in physical existence, and after a migration of three thousand years through "every species," says Herodotus, "of terrestrial, aquatic. and winged creatures, it finally enters a second time into a human body." The belief in this tenet would naturally cause elaborate and careful processes in embalming the dead. But it must not be supposed that such principles stimulated Joseph to embalm his father. If the

remark of Pausanias is correct, "that the Chaldean and Indian Magi were the first who asserted the immortality of the soul, Moses, who lived before the reputed time of Sesostris, whose soldiers are alleged to have introduced the doctrine into Egypt, had heard nothing of it; and it is clear that the immortality of the soul was unknown to the Jews, previous, at least, to the great Assyrian captivity. Moses mentions forty days as the period occupied in embalming Jacob, and seventy days as the time of mourning. Herodotus says that for seventy days the body lay in nitre, which agrees with the time assigned for the mourning; but Diodorus takes no notice of this latter ceremony, which might therefore be sometimes omitted, although he confirms the Mosaic statement of forty days. Bishop Warburton, although his view of it does not obviate these discrepancies, conjectures that the whole period of preparing and embalming the body occupied seventy days, it being laid in nitre thirty days, while the remaining forty were allotted to the proper process of embalming, which was the preparation of it with gums and spices. Diodorus further mentions that the time of mourning for a king was seventy-two days, and hence it has been inferred that Jacob was lamented in a princely manner, assuming the number seventy in the text as a round number for seventy-two. The same historian also gives us a description of the royal mournings, which may perhaps illustrate what is meant by the mourning for Jacob. The temples, he tells us, were shut, and no sacrifices, solemnities, or feasts, were held for seventy-two days; the people rent their clothes, covered their faces and heads with mud, and went about in companies of two and three hundred men and women, with their loins girded and their breasts bare, chaunting plaintive songs, and reciting the virtues of the deceased monarch; they abstained from any generous diet, and ate no animal food, or any thing dressed by fire. The mourning was general, and they appeared as if they had lost their dearest relative or friend.

When the mourning for Jacob had expired, Joseph communicated to Pharaoh's court his father's commands, and requested permission to fulfil them. He did not go in person, because he was a mourner, and being reckoned polluted in that condition, he could not appear in the presence of the king; but "he spake unto the house of Pharaoh"-a custom which seems to have been general in the courts of Oriental princes, Esther iv. 2. Permission was readily granted; and in order that the funeral rites of the illustrious Patriarch should correspond to his station as head of his own people, Joseph was accompanied by a numerous retinue of the king's servants, "and his brethren, and his father's house," the cavalcade consisting of "both chariots and horsemen, a very great company." It has been appropriately observed that the magnificence of the Patriarch's funeral has few parallels in ancient history, consisting as it did of a numerous multitude, “which swelled like a flood, and moved like a river," proceeding nearly two hundred miles into a distant country. This great company halted at the place called the Threshing-Floor of Atad, which Moses says was beyond Jordan, viz. not beyond Jordan with reference to Egypt, but beyond that river as it respected the place where Moses wrote; and there they made a loud lamentation, which continued for seven days. The Canaanites were so astonished at the sight, that they designated the place Abel-Mizraim, or the Mourning of the Egyptians. The Patriarch was buried, in compliance with his request, in the Cave of the Field of Machpelah, and Joseph returned with his attendants to Egypt.

Of the subsequent transactions of the Hebrews in Egypt during the life of Joseph we have little information; we are merely told he "comforted" his brethren, and that he lived one hundred and ten years.

When this illustrious person was drawing near his own death, he made the leaders of the Hebrews take an oath that they would not leave his body in Egypt, but that when "God visited them,