once more the noble lad's life was saved on that day. But the Ishmaelites paid their twenty pieces of silver (a cheap bargain), and took their goodly slave among their other merchandise, and went their way up the gradual ascent, by the road which Joseph had so eagerly traversed on his anxious father's errand. It is easy to ascertain that spices must have formed a most important part of the traffic with Egypt, where enormous quantities were needed for compounding the incense of the temple-worship, and for embalming the dead. The three kinds of produce mentioned are the same as those afterwards sent by Jacob as a gift to Joseph, namely, the gum of the Astragalus tragacantha, still called naka'at by the Arabs, the identical name used in the narrative, nekōth; the balm of Gilead, tsori; and the ladanum, from the Cistus ladaniferus, which was introduced into Egypt for cultivation in Ptolemaic times, and before that imported from the East. Dr. Ebers has found two of these, under the names nekpat and tsara, among the ingredients of the celebrated incense Kyphi in an Egyptian papyrus1. These precious things were brought from the Lebanon and Gilead, and the spices of Canaan and of Syria are repeatedly mentioned in general terms in the papyri of Egypt. But however valuable these gums and aromatics were in the eyes of the Ishmaelites of Midian, it is certain that slaves were still more coveted; and male and female slaves from Khal, or Syria, were most highly esteemed, and, as Brugsch writes, 'were procured by Aegypten, &c. p. 290. distinguished Egyptians at a high price, whether for their own houses or for service in the holy dwellings of the Egyptian gods1.' There is something in the gradation of value among slaves in Egypt which especially affects the life of Joseph in more ways than one. He was, like his mother Rachel, and Sarah before her, fair of countenance, and the same beauty of complexion which brought Sarah into so great peril would make Joseph the more esteemed as a slave. Dr. Ebers writes on this subject with regard to the Egyptians: Their complexion itself had become darkened through climatic influence and obscuration of the blood by admixture of race with blacks, for on the one hand we see, even on the oldest monuments, the men and women of rank painted more fair than the ordinary man; on the other hand, the word ami, the fair-complexioned, stands distinctly for "belonging to a higher class," and, taken in opposition to hon and hon-t (male and female slave), used for "free man in the sentence: "fair people 5, slaves and female slaves with their children 15792." It seems likely that the fair and goodly Joseph would not be regarded as an ignoble captive, but as high and well-born, when "stolen out of the land of the Hebrews."" In the anguish of his soul, Joseph was carried away past his father's green valley and deep well, past his mother's grave, past the very home at Hebron, on the distant height, where Jacob had so lately bid him farewell on his brotherly errand. If he even saw them now, it was for the last time. But it is perhaps more likely that the Ishmaelites wrapped him up on the camel, for fear of 1 Hist. vol. i. p. 222. Aegypten, &c. p. 52. 2 rescue or flight, as Sir Samuel Baker's lad was hurried away hidden in a gum-sack1. Meanwhile the cruel and unnatural brethren carry out to the uttermost their scheme. Jacob had used the 'goodly raiment' of Esau and the dainty meat of the kid to deceive his father. His sons bring the coat of Joseph dipped in the blood of a kid to their father, with the cynical challenge: 'Know now whether it be thy son's coat or no.' Jacob rends his mantle and clothes his loins in sackcloth, and refuses comfort: 'For I will go down to my son mourning to Sheol.' Of course he did not mean 'into the grave,' as it is unfortunately given in our Authorised Version, but into Hades, where he should yet meet his Joseph, whom the wild beast had devoured: while his own wearied body might lie in the Makpelah, or beside Rachel in the wayside of Ephrath. The misery of Jacob must have been all the more severe, since this 'most foul and most unnatural' act of cruelty must have been committed almost immediately on Jacob's coming to Hebron, as Dean Alford has shown in a note to this effect. Isaac's age was sixty at Jacob's birth3. Jacob was one hundred and twenty years old at Isaac's death, and one hundred and thirty at the migration to Egypt, when Joseph was between thirty-nine and forty. But, as Joseph was seventeen when sold, and Jacob's migration was twenty-three years later, Isaac must have survived Joseph's sale between twelve 1 Vigouroux, La Bible, &c. vol. ii. p. 20. 8 Gen. xxv. 26. 5 Cf. Gen. xli. 46, 47, and xlv. 6. • Gen. xlvii. 9. and thirteen years, until the time of his grandson's exaltation in Egypt. Hence also Joseph was sold immediately on Jacob's coming to Hebron. And how soon after his mother's death1! 1 Delitzsch, New Commentary, Gen., vol. ii. pp. 219, 237, 265. CHAPTER IV. THE EGYPT OF JOSEPH. HERE seems more and more reason to hold the ancient belief that Joseph entered and ruled Egypt during the domination of the Hyksôs, or Shepherd-kings. The best historians of Egypt support this conclusion, as Birch, Brugsch, Maspero, Wiedemann. Eusebius (about A.D. 300) gives the tradition, and George the Syncellus (about A.D. 800) specifies Aphōphis as the Pharaoh of Joseph. The name is an authentic record of the title of two, at all events, of the Hyksôs kings, both in Manetho's lists and on the monuments. The name Apepi is inscribed on the right shoulder of the grim and striking sphinxes found among the ruins of Sân (Zoan). It is true that Professor Maspero considers this as an usurpation of an older statue. But Mr. Flinders Petrie still believes that the stern features which look out of those shaggy lions' manes are really those of the Shepherd-king. Moreover, in his last and highly important excavations among the ruins of Bubastis (the Pibeseth of Scripture and Tel-Basta of |