their land to avoid starvation,--all but the priests. Pharaoh thus
became absolute proprietor of the whole country; of money, cattle, and
land,--an unprecedented surrender, which would have produced a
wide-spread disaffection and revolt, had it not been that Joseph, after
the famine was past and the earth yielded its accustomed harvest,
exacted only one-fifth of the produce of the land for the support of
the government, which could not be regarded as oppressive. As the King
thus became absolute proprietor of Egypt by consent of the people, whom
he had saved from starvation through the wisdom and energy of his prime
minister, it is probable that later a new division of land took place,
it being distributed among the people generally in small farms, for
which they paid as rent a fifth of their produce. The gratitude of the
people was marked: "Thou hast saved our lives: let us find grace in the
eyes of my lord, and we will be Pharaoh's slaves." Since the time of
Christ there have been two similar famines recorded,--one in the
eleventh century, lasting, like Joseph's, seven years; and the other in
the twelfth century, of which the most distressing details are given,
even to the extreme desperation of cannibalism. The same cause
originated both,--the failure of the Nile overflow. Out of the sacred
river came up for Egypt its fat kine and its lean,--its blessings and
its curses.

The price exacted by Joseph for the people's salvation made the King
more absolute than before, since all were thus made dependent on the
government.

This absolute rule of the kings, however, was somewhat modified by
ancient customs, and by the vast influence of the priesthood, to which
the King himself belonged. The priests of Egypt, under all the
dynasties, formed the most powerful caste ever seen among the nations