The office proposed by Pharoah for the acceptance of Joseph's brethren was one frequently held by the princes of Egypt. "Superintendent of the king's

cattle," is one of the titles of a prince, whose funeral tablet is in the Museo de bei arti, at Florence. It has been there ever since the days of the Medici, and was doubtless found in Lower Egypt. The title is also often written thus: "royal scribe (or enumerator) of the bodies of cattle," or as we should say, "heads of cattle." This was an office evidently sought after and highly esteemed in Ancient Egypt, a circumstance strongly confirmatory of our explanation of the sense in which "every shepherd (or cattle-feeder- means both) was an abomination to the Egyptians." They were religiously unclean, and not allowed to dwell in the cities of Egypt, which were all accounted the precincts of their tutelary gods, that invariably stood in the midst of them. This restriction seems to have gone no further than those who immediately attended upon the cattle.

"And Joseph brought in Jacob his father, and set him before Pharoah: and Jacob blessed Pharoah. And Pharoah said unto Jacob, How old art thou? And Jacob said unto Pharoah, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years; few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage. And Jacob blessed Pharoah, and went out from before Pharoah." Gen. xlvii. 7-10. In this passage is contained the only formal statement. of the fact, that the life of man had undergone a considerable abbreviation in the course of the period that had then elapsed since the creation and the deluge. The

recorded length of the lives of the men of these still earlier times had already made apparent this same fact. It is moreover to be noted, that in the times of Jacob, human life had a much longer average duration than afterwards. This is a fact which will presently demand our attention. It was not until later, that the days of the years of man's life had dwindled down to "threescore years and ten." Ps. xc. 10. These are truths revealed so clearly and obviously, that it is hard to conceive how a distinct denial of them, or even such an explanation of them, as shall make the names of the earlier patriarchs not those of individuals, but of tribes, and the Scripture numbers generally the metaphorical representations of vague, undefined and undefineable lapses of time, can nevertheless consist with expressions of boundless respect for the Old Testa

ment.

Such is the case nevertheless, and with more than one writer of high authority on our subject.

"And Joseph placed his father and his brethren, and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded. And Joseph nourished his father and his brethren, and all his father's household with bread, according to their families." Ver. 12, 13.

This is the narrative of the inspired historian. He applies to the part of Goshen in which Joseph located his father and his tribe, the name which it obtained long afterwards in the days of the captivity (see Exod. i. 11). It is almost needless to remark, that Rameses must have been either another name for Goshen, or a part of Goshen. This appears very evidently from the text and context. Its locality we shall find hereafter.

Thus have we subjected the whole of the inspired narrative of the circumstances which led to the location

in Egypt of the tribe or sept of Jacob, in every single particular, to the most trying ordeal, by which it is possible to test the genuineness of any professed history of the past. We have minutely compared its incidental allusions, those unimportant accessories, in which all feigned narratives invariably betray themselves by blunders and anachronisms, with the yet existing monuments of the time and country of which it purports to relate the history. How the Mosaic narrative comes forth from the torture-chamber, wherein this crucial question has been administered to it,-whether its genuineness or imposture have appeared in the process, we, without one impulse of fear, without one shadow of mistrust, leave to the judgment of the reader the most hostile to its authenticity, that may cast his eye upon our pages.

These contemporary monuments have corrected the mistakes and misapprehensions of twenty-five hundred years. They have restored to significance and perfect harmony with the context, words which, in the days of Ptolemy Epiphanes and the Septuagint, were mere cabalisms. Their import had been long forgotten, and they were only to be represented in the new version by the transcription of their Hebrew characters into Greek.

We have repeatedly remarked, in the course of our investigation, that not one word in the Bible was written in vain: we have now another and similar proposition to lay down. Not one event in Providence has happened in vain. It has not been in vain that the monuments of Ancient Egypt have remained until now deeply hidden beneath the sand of the desert. Neither has their present disclosure taken place for no higher purpose than to supply materials for huge unreadable volumes, in which

the writers may display their learning, their philosophic rejection of the Bible, and their implicit faith in Eratosthenes, Censorinus, and other ancient Greek authorities. That it is for the illustration of the Bible that these materials for the history of Ancient Egypt have been kept by a miracle in Providence, we have long felt convinced. Our purpose in the present work is to demonstrate the

truth of this our conviction.

.

CHAPTER III.

:

THE FAMINE.

"AND there was no bread in all the land; for the famine was very sore, so that the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan fainted by reason of the famine. And Joseph gathered up all the money that was found in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, for the corn which they bought and Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh's house. And when the money failed in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came unto Joseph and said, Give us bread, for why should. we die before thee, for the money faileth? And Joseph said, Give me your cattle; and I will give you for your cattle, if money fail. And they brought their cattle unto Joseph and Joseph gave them bread for horses, for flocks, for herds, and for asses: and he brought them through that year with [the] bread [he gave them]." Gen. xlvii. 13-17.

This was but the third year of the famine. At its conclusion, the whole of the moveable property of Egypt and Canaan is Pharaoh's. The rings of silver and gold are in his treasure-houses. The cattle of all kinds feed on the grassy plains of the Delta, under the supervision of the king's servants.