It was under the terebinth of Moreh before Shechem that Abraham first
pitched his tent and erected his first altar to the Lord. Above him
towered Ebal and Gerizim, where the curses and blessings of the Law were
afterwards to be pronounced. From thence he moved southward to one of
the hills westward of Beth-el, the modern Beitin, and there his second
altar was built. While the first had been reared in the plain, the
second was raised on the mountain-slope.

But here too he did not remain long. Again he "journeyed, going on still
towards the south." Then came a famine which obliged him to cross the
frontier of Egypt, and visit the court of the Pharaoh. The Hyksos
kinsmen of the race to which he belonged were ruling in the Delta, and a
ready welcome was given to the Asiatic stranger. He was "very rich in
cattle, in silver and in gold," and like a wealthy Arab sheikh to-day
was received with due honour in the Egyptian capital. The court of the
Pharaoh was doubtless at Zoan.

Among the possessions of the patriarch we are told were camels. The
camel is not included among the Egyptian hieroglyphs, nor has it been
found depicted on the walls of the Egyptian temples and tombs. The name
is first met with in a papyrus of the time of the nineteenth dynasty,
and is one of the many words which the Egyptians of that age borrowed
from their Canaanitish neighbours. The animal, in fact, was not used by
the Egyptians, and its domestication in the valley of the Nile seems to
be as recent as the Arab conquest. But though it was not used by the
Egyptians, it had been a beast of burden among the Semites of Arabia
from an early period. In the primitive Sumerian language of Chaldæa it
was called "the animal from the Persian Gulf," and its Semitic name,
from which our own word _camel_ is derived, goes back to the very