pastoral life spent in tending the flocks upon the hillsides and the
magnificence of the city of Pharaoh, and how strange a romance it is
to think of the little slave boy eventually becoming the virtual ruler
of the most wealthy and most highly cultured country in the world!

And then in course of time the very brothers who had so cruelly sold
him into bondage were forced by famine to come to Joseph as suppliants
for food, and, in their descendants, presently to become the meanest
slaves in the land, persecuted and oppressed until their final
deliverance by Moses.

How long ago it all seems when we read these old Bible stories! Yet,
when 4,000 years ago necessity compelled Abraham, with Sarah his wife,
to stay awhile in Egypt, they were lodged at Tanis, a royal city
founded by one of a succession of kings which for 3,000 years before
Abraham's day had governed the land, and modern discoveries have
proved that even before _that_ time there were other kings and an
earlier civilization.

How interesting it is to know that to-day we may still find records of
these early Bible times in the sculptured monuments which are
scattered all over the land, and to know that in the hieroglyphic
writings which adorn the walls of tombs or temples many of the events
we there read about are narrated.

Many of the temples were built by the labour of the oppressed
Israelites, others were standing long before Moses confounded their
priests or besought Pharaoh to liberate his people. We may ourselves
stand in courts where, perhaps, Joseph took part in some temple rite,
while the huge canal called the "Bahr Yusef" (or river of Joseph),