2. The Israelites in Egypt

The political condition of Egypt under Joseph. – The chief centres of the country’s life. – The accession of the Eighteenth Dynasty and its foreign and domestic policy. – The social position of the lower classes of the Egyptian population. – The condition of the Israelites under the former dynasty. – The influence of Egyptian culture upon them. – The change in the government’s attitude toward them and its causes. – Egyptian bondage. – The persecuting Pharaoh. – Monumental traces of the Hebrews’ sojourn in Egypt. – Brick-making. – The grievousness of the labour and the cruelty of the overseers. – The fury of despotism and the gleam of deliverance.

When the Arabs were selling Joseph in the slave market of Memphis, Egypt already had millennia of historical life behind it; sixteen dynasties had succeeded one another at its head, governing its destinies in turn. There now reigned the seventeenth dynasty, known by the name of the Shepherd, or Hyksos, dynasty. It belonged to a foreign people that had forcibly invaded Egypt and seized the throne of the Pharaohs. It is not known precisely whence the conquerors came nor to what tribe they belonged; but there is no doubt that Egypt owed this upheaval to one of those movements of peoples which from time to time arose out of the depths of Asia and whose waves spread ever farther and farther to the west. Egypt had carefully to guard its north-eastern frontier against the incursions of nomadic peoples, and for this purpose several fortifications were built there, together with a continuous wall, in the manner of the Chinese one. Yet the nomadic tribes nevertheless penetrated beyond the wall and, with the permission of the Egyptian government, settled in the north-eastern corner of the country. So long as the power of the state was strong, it successfully repelled external attacks and held in subjection the foreigners settled in the Delta; but the representatives of the sixteenth dynasty, owing to their weakness, let the power slip from their hands, the country was divided into several independent appanages, whose rulers weakened the state by their rivalry. The Hyksos took advantage of this, made an assault upon Egypt and, with the help of the foreigners, subdued the country and seized the throne. The first period of Hyksos rule was marked by every kind of manifestation of savage barbarism, by pillage and murder; but little by little the culture of the conquered country exerted its civilizing influence upon the conquerors, they submitted to it, and the court of the new dynasty took on entirely the customary Egyptian aspect, with all the pomp and luxury of the court of the Pharaohs. The Hyksos had their own religion, but they also tolerated the religion of the Egyptians, and even officially patronized it. Sutekh, the national god of the conquerors, was identified with the Egyptian god Set, and temples were built to him, as to the other Egyptian divinities. The sphinxes belonging to this period have a wholly peculiar type of countenance, distinct alike from the Egyptian and from the Hebrew, and evidently represent the type of this foreign people. It was, apparently, under one of the representatives of this dynasty that Joseph governed Egypt. Only under a Pharaoh of the Shepherd dynasty was it conceivable that an insignificant slave, sprung from the shepherds despised by the native Egyptians, could be appointed to the post of supreme governor of the country. The name of this Pharaoh was Apopi, or in the Greek pronunciation Apophis[1]. Under him the Shepherd dynasty attained its highest splendour, and the country, after its disorders, began once more to recover in its internal prosperity. But at the same time, among the native Egyptian princes who were in subjection to the Pharaoh, political stirrings began to be noticed, directed toward the liberation of the country from foreigners. Sensing the danger, the Shepherd dynasty naturally took care to secure its position, and patronized the foreigners, distributing to them for settlement the best tracts of land, with the aim of finding in them faithful allies in case of need. By such a policy may also be explained the fact that Pharaoh Apophis gave the newly arrived settlers one of the richest districts of the country.

The district of Goshen lay on the north-eastern frontier of Egypt. Various nomadic newcomers had already settled there in earlier times, for it was distinguished by its excellent pastures. At the present day, in consequence of many centuries of desolation, this district presents a melancholy wilderness, covered with sand, friable stone, and salt-marshes; but the signs of its ancient fertility may be seen along the banks of the canal led by Lesseps from the Nile to the Suez Canal. Wherever the water passes, the desert revives and blossoms wildly[2], showing that moisture alone is needed to turn the whole district into fertile fields and luxuriant pastures. Napoleon I very justly observed that under a good government the Nile subdues the desert, but under a bad one the desert subdues the Nile. The government of the ancient Pharaohs took very great care for the irrigation of the country, as is attested by the network of canals running in all directions; for this reason Egypt was distinguished by an extraordinary fertility, incomprehensible amid its present desolation. The towns and villages nestled upon special dikes that held back the overflow of the water. Owing to the lowness and the uniform level of the soil, only rows of tall palms gave notice that in their shade lay hidden a village or a town. Such a picture does Egypt present now; and such, no doubt, it presented also in the days of Joseph.

Egypt at this time stood upon a high stage of civilization. The pomp of the Pharaoh’s court, the splendour of its military might, its grandiose buildings, its science and art, made it altogether a land of wonders and carried the report of it to all the bounds of the earth. The chief centres of its life were the cities of Memphis, Thebes, and On, or Heliopolis, each of which was the focus of a particular aspect of the state’s life. Memphis was the capital of the country in the time of Joseph; in it was the residence of the Pharaoh. It lay on the left bank of the Nile, some fifteen versts south of present-day Cairo, and occupied a vast area, about 20 versts in circumference. Within the city wall stood palaces and magnificent temples, while beyond it stretched gardens and meadows, the view of which from the city wall was celebrated among Greeks and Romans for its loveliness. Owing to its advantageous position in the narrows of the Nile valley, it held in its hands all the commerce of the country. Its bazaars swarmed with merchants arriving from every quarter, and its squares were thronged with masses of people coming to worship in its temples and to take part in its solemn religious processions. As the residence of the Pharaoh, Memphis at this time eclipsed in its importance Thebes, the capital of the native Egyptian kings; but there too were famous temples and palaces, and, above all, there continued to live the spirit of political discontent at the rule of the foreign dynasty. But the centre properly of the religious and intellectual life of the country was On, or Heliopolis, the “city of the sun,” lying on the southern border of Goshen. Here was the most famous university of the country, which drew within its walls the sages of the whole world. Its majestic temple in honour of the sun was, in the days of Joseph, at the height of its glory. Colleges of priests dwelt in special quarters specially appointed for them in the porches of the temple. Besides these, there were attached to the temple a multitude of learned priests belonging to the religious, medical, and historical faculties of the temple, which was the chief seat of the science for which Egypt was renowned. Attached to this same temple was the famous observatory, and to the priest-astronomers of Heliopolis we owe the exact calculation of the length of the year. Its high priest was reckoned the supreme priest of all Egypt and, by the loftiness of his rank, stood immediately after the Pharaoh. From among the priests of this temple persons were preferentially chosen for the court council of priests. To the daughter of one of these famous Heliopolitan priests Joseph also was married, which brought him into connection with the highest aristocratic class of the country[3].

The Shepherd dynasty under Joseph attained the highest degree of flourishing and power. But already under Apophis, toward the close of his reign, there began in Thebes a movement of the native princes toward independence, and under the next Pharaoh it passed into open revolt, which set as its aim the overthrow of the foreign dynasty and people. A stubborn and protracted struggle began. The Hyksos defended their position step by step, but under the pressure of force were obliged to fall back ever farther and farther toward the north-east, until they were driven out of Egypt altogether. There came to the throne a new, eighteenth dynasty, the founder of which was Aahmes, or Amosis I. It chose Thebes for its residence, as the centre of the country’s political independence, and gave Egypt a succession of great Pharaohs under whom it attained the summit of its external might and internal development. The period of this dynasty’s reign was especially marked by the development of military power. The martial spirit, encouraged by success in the struggle for independence, did not stop at this one success, but sought satisfaction in conquests. Long oppressed by foreigners, the Egyptians now sought, as it were, to avenge themselves upon all foreigners by their oppressions and conquests. Considerable numbers of Hyksos, who preferred slavery on the banks of the Nile to exile in the desert, were subjected to every kind of oppression and were obliged, as slaves, to perform the heavy earthwork and building labours laid upon them by the new government. Not content with this vengeance within the country, the Pharaohs sought to efface the shame of foreign domination by the splendour of conquests in the surrounding lands. The Egyptian legions began boldly to penetrate beyond the north-eastern frontier and laid a beaten road into the depths of Asia. For several centuries the annals of Egyptian history are filled with accounts of bold campaigns and conquests, extending from the banks of the Nile to the Euphrates, and the Hebrews, who dwelt in the district of Goshen, were involuntary witnesses and eyewitnesses of the triumphal processions of the princes and generals returning from their military operations. Here victorious armies were continually passing, leading with them prisoners of war and booty of every kind: now they led parties of negroes, now parties of northern barbarians, with some strange head-coverings, in beast-skins and with painted faces. A victory over the Rutennu in Syria, the capture of some Syrian commercial centre, or some victory over the Libyans and their allies, rang through the whole country and was the subject of universal talk. The thunder of the war-trumpets and drums in these solemn and victorious processions became a usual occurrence, and many of the sons of Israel were doubtless among the masses of the people that filled the air with rapturous cries, drowning out the peaceful songs of the sacred choirs that went before the marching regiments. Such bold and distant campaigns were undertaken already by the second Pharaoh of the new dynasty, Amenophis I, but they became a passion in his son and successor Thothmes I. Under him the Egyptian standards penetrated for the first time as far as the banks of the Euphrates, and to the south penetrated into the depths of the African lands more than a thousand versts from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. These campaigns did not remain without influence also upon the internal life of the country. Plundered riches accumulated in Egypt and fostered luxury. At the same time the campaigns brought the Egyptians into collision with other peoples and laid the way for more peaceful commercial intercourse, the more so as certain Eastern lands subjected to the Egyptian invasion stood at a considerable height of civilization, as is shown by the military booty which the Egyptians seized from them. War-chariots finished with gold and silver, magnificent suits of armour and artistically wrought weapons of every kind, gold, silver, and copper vases, household utensils of every kind – show that in Canaan and western Asia culture was at a high stage of development long before its conquest by the Hebrews under Joshua. The Egyptians borrowed much from the peoples they had conquered, as may be judged from the monuments of this period.

Military spoils enriched the country, but these riches naturally were concentrated in the hands of the government and the upper classes, where they fostered extreme luxury. For the masses of the people all these brilliant campaigns were a grievous calamity, since they increased the military and other state burdens, which lay wholly upon the lower classes of the people. The condition of the common people was always hard in Egypt. Long before the settlement of the Hebrews in Egypt the banks of the Nile resounded with the groans of an oppressed people, and more than once bloody revolts took place against the oppressors. In recent times many broken and disfigured statues of Cheops have been discovered, which was evidently the consequence of one of these revolts of the oppressed people against this great builder of the pyramids[4]; but, of course, the revolt entailed yet greater oppression. The people were led off in parties to the mines, were compelled to dig new canals, to build new pyramids, in order to wash away with the bloody sweat of the popular masses the insult inflicted upon the Pharaonic majesty. And with what toil the building of the pyramids was attended may be seen from the example of the building of the Great Pyramid. In order to convey the stone from the landing-place of the Nile to the site of the building, 100,000 men were employed, relieved every three months, over the course of ten years, which together makes up 4,000,000 men; and then the building itself was carried on over the course of twenty years, with 360,000 workmen labouring each year, so that upon this stately monument there toiled some 7,000,000 workmen, who cemented it not so much with mortar as with their bloody sweat. The Pharaohs of the various dynasties, from political considerations, and in part also from the caprices of a despotic will, transferred their residence now to one city, now to another, and the people were bound to raise new buildings for the adornment of these residences. Beneath the merciless rod of the overseer, the workmen had to toil from morning till night to obtain a wretched sustenance for themselves and their families. From this period there has been preserved a letter of a scribe to his son, in which he describes the unbearably hard condition of all craftsmen in general, from the smith to the cobbler, and by this seeks to dissuade his son from entering the craftsman’s estate and to make him learn the art of letters[5]. Ebers, on the basis of the monuments, thus portrays one of the scenes of the labouring life of ancient Egypt, in the days of Moses. “Beneath a spreading sycamore a vendor of victuals, of spirituous drinks, and of acids for cooling water had set up his table, and beside him a throng of boatmen and drivers was shouting and disputing about something. The sailors lay upon the decks of the vessels and on the shore – some in the shade of the palms, others under the burning rays of the sun, from which they shielded themselves by covering the face with part of the cloth that served them for clothing. Past them there passed convicts and slaves, sunburnt and black, in long files, one after another, bending under the pressure of the heavy burdens which had to be delivered to their destination at the temples for sacrifices or to dealers in various wares. Masons dragged blocks of stone, brought from the quarries of Khennu or Suan, guiding them down wooden ramps to the site of the building of a new temple or palace; the workmen poured water over the ramps, that they might not catch fire under the friction of the blocks. All these workmen were urged on by the rods of the overseers and sang their labour-songs, but the voices of the leaders sounded subdued and hoarse, though they grew lively in the hour of rest, after their scanty dinner. Dense swarms of vicious dog-flies pursued these suffering parties of workmen, who with dull and crushed patience endured alike the stings of the insects and the blows of their overseers”[6].

To such a condition of the lower classes there contributed not only the social relations, but the very religion itself, which consisted in a coarse deification of animals. A few of the high priests preserved a particular religious mystery concerning the existence of a single God, the “Father and Son,” who is “today, yesterday, and tomorrow,” “He who is”[7], – but this mystery they kept to themselves, leaving the people to content themselves with the gross idolatry which more nearly corresponded to their animal social condition. Therefore religion in no way contributed to the moral elevation of the popular masses, but rather debased their moral self-consciousness. It inspired no respect for man as a person, but reduced him either to the level of an animal, or else exalted him to equality with a god. The Pharaohs gloried in their descent from the gods, and even during their lifetime were worshipped as gods, while the whole lower population of the country was an animal labour-force, serving to satisfy the caprices of the government and of the upper classes of the country. The people could meet with no sympathy even in the priests, who, as members of a privileged caste, were on the side of the despotic government, which had seized into its hands all the lands of the state – a thing to which, among other things, the policy of Joseph during the seven-year famine had also contributed. Humiliated socially and oppressed politically, the people sought satisfaction in immorality. For all their endurance in labour and cleanliness in life, the Egyptians were extremely unrestrained in base passions. Brought up under the immoral influences of a religious cult which consisted in the deification of sensuality, the people themselves gave themselves over to an immoral life. Every kind of unnatural vice was a common occurrence among them[8]. The great annual religious festivals were usually marked by the most savage debauchery of the senses, and such immoral festivities as those at Bubastis and Dendera were so popular that hundreds of thousands of people gathered to them[9].

Amid such political and social conditions the Israelites lived in Egypt. But they occupied an exceptional position in the country. As a tribe akin to a high court dignitary, and owing in general to the patronage of the Shepherd dynasty, which from political considerations granted special privileges to the shepherd peoples inhabiting the north-eastern margin of the country, they enjoyed a better social position than the mass of the native Egyptian population. In the free and fertile fields of Goshen they rapidly grew in numbers and waxed rich. The family of Jacob grew into a whole tribe, which, by the number of its progenitors, was divided into twelve or thirteen tribes, which preserved the consciousness of their kindred unity. Primacy among them should by right have belonged to the tribe of Reuben, but Jacob in his deathbed blessing deprived it of this right of the firstborn, because he “went up to his father’s bed and defiled his couch”[10]. The headship among them, as was natural, was held in Egypt by the tribes that had as their progenitors the sons of Joseph – Ephraim and Manasseh; but among them there rose especially the tribe of Levi, which, having appropriated to itself, more than the others, the good sides of Egyptian civilization, attained the moral headship among its people and afterwards occupied the privileged position of the priestly class among its nation. Enjoying considerable autonomy, they worked out their own form of self-government, in accordance with the peculiarities of their clan life. Each tribe had at its head a particular representative or prince and was divided into several smaller groups, each of which had its own particular elder. Thus the Hebrews constituted a fairly organized community, united by the bonds of kinship and mutual interest. Nevertheless, each tribe had its own distinctive peculiarities in the character of its life. The tribes of Reuben, Gad, and Simeon held firmly to the pastoral life, the tribe of Benjamin was distinguished by its warlikeness, the tribe of Levi by its civic spirit and its love of the sciences and arts. Life in a foreign land developed in them a feeling of union among themselves, and it found expression for itself in assemblies of the representatives of the people. At every important event touching their life, the representatives or heads of the tribes and of the smaller groups gathered in counsel and deliberated upon their condition under the given circumstances.

Thus, both by reason of their place of settlement in a remote district, and by reason of the character of their self-government, the Hebrews lived apart from the rest of the Egyptian population. Nevertheless, time of necessity drew them closer to the natives, and the traces of this drawing-together were reflected in many sides of their life. The high civilization of Egypt little by little subdued to itself the nomadic newcomers, and they gradually grew accustomed to a settled life and took up agriculture and crafts. At the same time there penetrated into their midst the Egyptian sciences and arts, the traces of which appear distinctly throughout the whole of their further historical life. In Egypt they borrowed the knowledge of arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, hitherto wholly foreign to them, and likewise learned the art of fashioning various fancy articles of gold, silver, wood, and stone, of preparing costly and many-coloured fabrics[11], of cutting and grinding precious stones[12]. But an especially important acquisition for them was the art of writing, the knowledge of which is not mentioned in the patriarchal period, whereas Moses, after the exodus from Egypt, writes for the people laws which the people are bound to read. Into the very language there entered many Egyptian words. The Hebrew measures are called by Egyptian names. The Nile, after the Egyptian custom, is in the biblical text simply called the river (ye’or). The month Adar closely recalls the Egyptian name, likewise of a month, Athyr. Adon – the name of the ark of the covenant, and teba – the name of the little basket in which Moses was saved – are purely Egyptian, and many other words and customs disclose the Egyptian influence upon the Hebrews.

How long the Hebrews, after the death of Joseph, enjoyed peace, prosperity, and independence – it is very difficult to determine. But it may with probability be supposed that their condition changed for the worse with the accession to the throne of a new native Egyptian dynasty. “There arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph”[13], and at the same time he could not acknowledge the right of his descendants to those special privileges which they had enjoyed under the former dynasty. Canon Cook, an authoritative investigator of this question, says that “the expressions employed in the Book of Exodus to describe the Pharaoh who first began to oppress the Israelites are applicable, in the fullest and most literal sense, to Amosis. The name of Joseph, as minister of a deposed dynasty, might have been unknown to him (or he might simply not have acknowledged his services). At the same time it is understandable with what feelings a king in his position might regard the Israelites. They were privileged subjects, they enjoyed the special favour of the deposed dynasty, under which they possessed one of the richest districts of Egypt, commanding the approach to the very heart of the country”[14]. The hatred and enmity toward the deposed dynasty he naturally transferred also to the tribe it had favoured. But upon the development of a special hostility toward the Israelites other, purely political conditions may also have had an influence. The struggle of the Egyptian princes with the Shepherd dynasty and people took place chiefly in the district of Goshen, where the Hyksos, entrenched in fortified camps, long repelled the onset of the Egyptians. In this struggle the Israelites too must involuntarily have taken some part, and there is nothing improbable in their having supported the side of the Hyksos, as a people akin to them in their tribal peculiarities, and as a dynasty to which they were so greatly indebted. From the native Egyptians they could expect nothing for themselves, since to them every shepherd was an “abomination” and all shepherd tribes were held in contempt. This alliance of theirs with the Hyksos made them political enemies of the Egyptians, and when the Hyksos were finally driven out of the country, the Israelites had to pay for their treachery to the native Pharaohs by bondage. The fear of the Pharaoh that the Israelites, as a numerous and strong tribe, might in case of war join with the enemy and take up arms against the Egyptians, had every real ground and was confirmed by the past history of Egypt. The Hyksos had conquered Egypt precisely with the help of shepherd tribes, which, like the Hebrews, had with the permission of the Pharaohs settled in the north-eastern districts of the country and “in time of war joined the enemies”[15]. And so, from purely state interests, there begins toward them a policy of pressure and oppression.

First of all, of course, the new government deprived the Israelites of those advantages and liberties which they had enjoyed under the former dynasty; but then it passed also to their positive oppression, and began to “afflict them with heavy labours.” In the present case there was no need even to invent these labours artificially: they presented themselves as a natural requirement of the very locality of the Israelites’ habitation. After the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt, it was necessary for the future to secure the country against the incursion of wild foreigners, and therefore the government found it needful to build several new fortifications in this margin, and for these heavy earthworks the unpaid labour of the Israelites was employed. The labour was evidently penal, and the biblical historian recounts these works with bitterness. “The Egyptians,” he says, “with cruelty compelled the children of Israel to labour, and made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field; all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour”[16]. Thus, they “built for Pharaoh Pithom and Rameses, treasure cities.” The name of the last of these cities, Rameses, gave occasion to certain Egyptologists, and at their head to Brugsch, to conclude that their building belongs to the time of the Nineteenth Dynasty, to the reign of Rameses I or II, which was two or three centuries later. This view compels one to prolong the time of the Hebrews’ sojourn in Egypt by such a period as can only with difficulty be reconciled with the chronological data, and it raises fairly strong objections; but at the same time it cannot soundly rest upon the fact just indicated. Both as a name and as a place-name, Rameses was fairly common in Egypt and cannot by any means be exclusively assigned to the Pharaohs of this name. When the brothers of Joseph first came to Egypt to settle – that is, a century earlier – there already existed in the district of Goshen a tract of land under the name of Rameses, which was assigned to them for settlement[17]. The most recent discoveries shed yet more light upon this fact. From them it appears that a Pharaoh of the new dynasty had a son by the name of Rameses[18], and in that case there is nothing surprising, but on the contrary it is wholly natural, if a Pharaoh named one of the newly built fortified cities in honour of his son. The same applies also to the name of the other city, Pithom, which likewise is met with in the annals belonging to a period far earlier than that to which the reign of the Rameses belongs[19].

With each new reign the burdens grew greater for the people, and not only for the Israelite people, but for the Egyptian as well. The Pharaohs sought, as it were, to outdo one another by their military glory and by the grandiose buildings with which they adorned their residences, and the more famous the Pharaoh, the more brilliant his reign, the more the people groaned under the yoke of unbearable labours and burdens. The most famous Pharaoh of this period was Thothmes III. He was the Alexander of Macedon of ancient Egypt. In the course of his long fifty-four-year reign he created a countless multitude of monuments, majestic temples, and fortifications. Egypt as it was already stood at the head of the world. Its armies penetrated to the bounds of the world then known. Countless riches were gathered in its temples and trading caravans wended their way toward it from all lands. In the inscriptions on the walls of the great temple at Karnak there were set down, as Tacitus attests, “the tributes laid upon the conquered peoples; the weight of silver and gold, the quantity of weapons and knives, of gifts of ivory and of pleasant spices for the temples; how much wheat and objects of every kind each people had to furnish.” Not content with this, Thothmes III, in order to lend yet greater majesty and splendour to his reign and perhaps to satisfy his personal love of glory, undertook no fewer than fourteen campaigns into various lands, from which he constantly returned with rich booty and parties of captives. His legions not only flooded the neighbouring lands of Palestine and Syria, but penetrated into Mesopotamia and even, as may with probability be supposed, into India. On the completion of the campaigns grandiose monuments and temples were required to perpetuate them, and the people had to work and work without rest at their building. The poets composed in his honour rapturous poems, celebrating his glory and his virtues, hailing him as the “adorner of the earth,” while the people groaned under the weight of the burdens and labours required of them for the creation of the celebrated grandeur. The constant wars demanded men and money, and therefore the military burden was increased to the extreme and the monetary exactions intensified. With what violences and extortions the latter were levied may be seen from a letter preserved from this period. In it is related how “the collector of taxes in his bark approaches the landing-place of a certain district to collect the government’s share of the grain-dues. His men armed with rods and his negroes, with palm-cudgels in their hands, cry out: where is your wheat? and there is no way of stopping their extortion. If they are not satisfied, they seize the poor man, throw him on the ground, bind him, drag him to the canal, and throw him into the water head downward; the neighbours scatter, to look after their own grain, and abandon the unhappy man to his own fate. His wife they bind, and her, together with the children, they carry off with them”[20]. After the custom of all the great Pharaohs, Thothmes III undertook a multitude of grandiose structures – temples, palaces, colossal statues, obelisks, and public buildings. By him was built, among other things, the most famous of the Egyptian temples, the so-called “great temple” at Karnak. Its ruins, together with the colossi preserved near it, even now inspire a superstitious astonishment at its grandeur. And for all these structures there was required unpaid, penal labour, which was extorted from the Israelites and the other tribes brought into bondage. All the foreign tribes of Semitic origin inhabiting the Delta had to create with their bloody sweat the grandeur and glory of the Pharaoh. When labouring hands at hand were lacking, hunting-bands were organized to catch negroes in Ethiopia, and thousands of them were brought in chains to the works. In parties the exhausted workmen were led off to the quarries, were compelled to hew out huge blocks of granite and with incredible exertions to drag them to the building-site; were compelled to dig and lead new canals, to give new courses for the excursions of the Pharaoh’s yachts, to make bricks and to knead clay and lime for the buildings being raised, to lift water from the Nile into the canals for the irrigation of the fields – as may be seen even now on the banks of the Nile, where the workmen, naked, work like machines the whole day under the scorching sun, lifting water from the river to lead it over the fields. In a word, “to all manner of service they compelled them with rigour,” under the rod-blows of the inevitable overseers. Yet not only then, in the time of the Israelites’ bondage, but in all ages the life of the lower classes of the people was in Egypt hard and joyless. A despotic will always reigned upon the banks of the sacred river, and for the satisfaction of its caprices sacrificed tens of thousands of human lives. Even in the present century, in the digging of the Mahmoudieh canal, 30,000 men perished, who were compelled to dig the canal with their bare hands, without spades or mattocks, – they perished from exhausting toil under the blows of merciless overseers. Doubtless the ancient Israelites too were burdened with like inhuman labours, and their groans and wailings may be overheard in the soul-rending songs of the fellahin, the present-day pariahs of Egypt. Performing their slave’s labour, the fellahin sing: “our chiefs – may the dogs tear them in pieces, tear them in pieces”; “they starve us with hunger, starve us with hunger”; “they beat us, they beat us”; – “but there is One even above them, and He will punish them cruelly, punish them cruelly”[21].

Notwithstanding that the history of the Israelites’ bondage in Egypt is reflected, so to speak, in every hieroglyph of the ancient Egyptian monuments, yet by a strange chance there has hitherto not been found upon these monuments a single name that would directly refer to the Hebrews and would call them by one of the appellations they bore. The learned Egyptologists apply every effort to discover anything resembling the name “Hebrews,” “Jews,” or “Israelites,” and the efforts remain fruitless. In one inscription Brugsch read the name fenkhu, referring to certain captives who were occupied with the heavy labour of transporting blocks of stone from the quarries of Rufu (Troja, according to Strabo) to Memphis and other cities. The word “fenkhu” means “bearers of the shepherd’s staff,” and the labour of these captives corresponds to the forced labour of the Israelites during the Egyptian bondage. “By this name,” says Brugsch, “were called the shepherd and nomadic tribes of Semitic origin who lived in the neighbourhood of Egypt and, it must be supposed, stood in the same relation to Egypt as the Hebrews”[22]. But this name, as a common noun, has too general a character for it to be possible to refer it specifically to the Hebrews, and moreover it bears no phonetic resemblance to the names of the latter. The Egyptologist Chabas sought to identify another tribe of captives with the Israelites cast into bondage. Some years ago, in one of the papyri of the Leyden museum, he discovered the name of a tribe, which reads: aperiu. This tribe was occupied with the transport of stone for the building of the temple of the sun, raised by Rameses the Great near Memphis, and the Egyptologist maintains that “aperiu” is nothing other than the Egyptian pronunciation of the word Hebrews[23]. But, apart from the chronological difficulties connected with the supposition of the existence of the Hebrews in Egypt during this reign, this opinion is refuted by another discovery, made by Birch, who found the same tribe of aperiu in bondage to the Egyptians under Rameses IV, that is, long after the departure of the Israelites from Egypt[24]. A closer resemblance to the name of the Hebrews is borne by the name found by Birch in the statistical table of the temple at Karnak, raised by Thothmes III. In the list of the various captive peoples, the seventy-ninth named is the tribe hebu, or evu, which sounds fairly close to Haberim, or in our pronunciation – Hebrews. The cause of such silence of the Egyptian monuments concerning the Hebrews is, however, explained by the peculiarities of the Egyptian attitude toward this or that fact of the country’s historical life. The Egyptians were extremely sensitive to the honour and glory of their country, and therefore, if they strove with all their might to perpetuate upon the monuments those historical facts and events which could serve to glorify Egypt, on the other hand they sought by every means to efface all that could serve as a reminder of facts and events of the opposite character. By this, among other things, is also explained the remarkable fact that, notwithstanding the undoubted long-standing domination of the Hyksos in Egypt, the Egyptologists must with difficulty seek out the chance-surviving traces of this period, the unpleasant memory of which has been wiped from the monuments by the Pharaohs of the native dynasties. There were not infrequent cases when a new Pharaoh destroyed all the monuments raised by a predecessor for some reason hateful to him, and effaced the memory of him from the face of the earth. It is for this reason that it sometimes proves so difficult to draw a consecutive line of the reigns of the dynasties and Pharaohs, and with especial difficulty is attended the investigation of that period which relates to the domination of the Hyksos. Since with the sojourn of the Hebrews in Egypt, and especially with their exodus, are connected facts and events that might be reckoned highly humiliating to the proud country and its proud Pharaohs, the latter destroyed all the monuments that could serve as a reminder of these unpleasant events.

But it was impossible to vanquish history, even for the unlimited despotism of the Pharaohs. Even if the particular monuments touching this unhappy and shameful period for Egypt were effaced and destroyed, still the general cast of life and of socio-political relations gives a picture so strikingly faithful to the biblical narrative, that this one general picture alone suffices to betray this unpleasant secret of Egyptian history. But besides this there have also been preserved particular monuments which by their content strikingly recall the events connected with the history of the Hebrews’ sojourn in Egypt and with their oppression on the part of the Pharaonic government. One papyrus belonging to the period under consideration vividly reproduces before us the picture of the making of bricks (brick-making), which formed part of the labour laid upon the Israelites. “Twelve masons,” says the author of the papyrus, “besides the men engaged in the making of bricks in their own towns, were brought hither to work at the building of houses. Let each of them make the appointed number of bricks every day. They are not to slacken their labour at the new house. In this I obey the command given me by my lord”[25]. These masons and their unskilled brick-labourers, brought from their own towns for the building of certain houses and obligatorily working their “appointed number,” if they are not to be identified with the Israelites, nevertheless point to that social condition in which the latter too found themselves during the Egyptian bondage. On the site of the former city of Rameses, built by the Israelites, may be seen huge bricks of Nile mud, dried in the sun and mixed with straw, and even, in the opinion of so cautious an investigator as Ebers, it would be no boldness to suppose that these bricks were prepared by the hands of the Israelites[26]. But the most remarkable monument of Egyptian brick-making was discovered in a tomb on the hill of Abd-el-Qurnah, belonging to the time of Thothmes III. This monument presents a picture depicting the penal labour of brick-making and the building of a certain edifice. The workmen are occupied with various kinds of labour: some carry water in buckets from a pool, others break up blocks of clayey earth, others fashion the bricks themselves, carry them on special yokes to the place of laying, and others, finally, are occupied with the actual laying of the building. Amid this working throng the overseers are clearly distinguished, of whom one is raising his rod over the back of a lazy workman, while the other sits calmly upon a stone lying nearby, holding, however, his rod in a fairly threatening manner. The inscription accompanying this picture explains that these are captives whom Thothmes III brought for the building of a temple to the god Amon, and there too the role of the overseers is described. “The chief overseer says to the builders: the rod is in my hand. Work briskly with your hands. Do not be idle. Do not lag behind!” Some of these captives bear fairly clear features of the Hebrew type and have beards distinguishing them from the Egyptians. Upon the bricks there were usually placed the seals of the Pharaohs under whom this or that building was carried out, and Wilkinson observes that “of bricks bearing the name of Thothmes III far more have been found than bricks of any other Pharaoh,” while Rosellini adds that “the bricks found in Egypt and belonging to this reign always have in them an admixture of straw, though in some that are better made it proves to be present in very small quantity.” In this one cannot but see a striking confirmation of the biblical narrative that the Israelites had to procure straw for the making of the appointed number of bricks laid upon them[27]. In general the Egyptian monuments often speak of the making of bricks by means of the penal labour of certain captives; but that by these captives prisoners of war cannot be understood may be concluded from the fact that the latter were always brought in very small numbers from military operations, so that even in the most brilliant campaigns even the tens and units of them are carefully noted. Most probably by these captives must be understood various foreigners who lived within the bounds of Egypt, whom the Egyptians seized by force in their places of habitation and led off to the works, as was the case also with the Israelites. The compulsory character of these works is also proved by the constant presence of overseers armed with rods, who often inflicted a cruel reckoning upon the workmen who did not satisfy them. In a picture at Beni-Hassan it is depicted how the overseers punish the workmen. Some of the latter are stripped and thrown to the ground, two hold them by the arms and one by the legs, while an overseer mercilessly rains down blows upon the bared back. To the same punishment, in some representations, even women are subjected. As for the overseers themselves, or the chiefs over the works, they were government officials, under whose charge were certain districts, which in turn were divided into smaller tracts, under the charge of lower officials. For the convenience of administering the works, they chose from among the Israelites themselves subordinate overseers, upon whom was laid the responsibility for the soundness of this or that work directly entrusted to them. The latter measure could also have a political significance, since it produced a division in the people (between the overseers and the common workmen) and thereby weakened its moral unity and its political strength.

Notwithstanding, however, all the oppressions on the part of the government, the young people rapidly increased in its numbers and strength, and under the impression, perhaps, of the constant military processions of the Egyptian troops through the land of Goshen, there developed in it a passion for warlikeness, which detachments of bold hunters satisfied by raids upon the neighbouring lands. Thus a party from the tribe of Ephraim made raids upon the Philistine lands and drove off cattle[28]. It is understandable that such inclinations could not but inspire fears in the government, that this warlike people, embittered by oppressions, might cause great political difficulties in case of war, or might by force go out of the country and deprive it of its unpaid labour-force. Seeing that labour, the most penal labour, was powerless to undermine the growth of the young people, the despotic government resolved to resort to the extreme measure of which Eastern despotism alone is capable. At first a secret command was issued to the midwives to kill the newborn male infants; but when this command met with a silent protest in the moral feeling of the representatives of midwifery in ancient Egypt and remained unexecuted, the enraged Pharaoh repeated this command for the whole people and especially the police. And so to the popular groans under the weight of the labours there were joined the groans and wailings of mothers, – but amid these groans and wailings of the Israelite people there was born its great deliverer – Moses.