geance of "woman whose love is scorned," says a Hindu
writer, "is worse than poison"! But the rabbinical version is quite
unique in representing the wife of Potiphar as having aiders and
abettors in carrying out her scheme of revenge: For some days after the
pious young Israelite had declined her amorous overtures, she looked so
ill that her female friends inquired of her the cause, and having told
them of her adventure with Joseph, they said: "Accuse him before thy
husband, that he may be cast into prison." She desired them to accuse
him likewise to their husbands, which they did accordingly; and their
husbands went before Pharaoh and complained of Joseph's misconduct
towards their wives.[68]

[68] Commentators on the Kuran inform us that when Joseph was
released from prison, after so satisfactorily
interpreting Pharaoh's two dreams, Potiphar was degraded
from his high office. One day, while Joseph was riding
out to inspect a granary beyond the city, he observed a
beggar-woman in the street, whose whole appearance,
though most distressing, bore distinct traces of former
greatness. Joseph approached her compassionately, and
held out to her a handful of gold. But she refused it,
and said aloud: "Great prophet of Allah, I am unworthy
of this gift, although my transgression has been the
stepping-stone to thy present fortune." At these words
Joseph regarded her more closely, and, behold, it was
Zulaykha, the wife of his lord. He inquired after her
husband, and was told that he had died of sorrow and
poverty soon after his deposition. On hearing this,
Joseph led Zulaykha to a relative of the king, by whom
she was treated like a sister, and she soon appeared to
him as blooming as at the time of his entrance into her
house. He asked her hand of the king, and married her,
with his permission.

Zulaykha was the name of Potiphar's wife, if we may
believe Muhammedan legends, and the daughter of the king
of Maghrab (or Marocco), who gave her in marriage to the
grand vazir of the king of Egypt, and the beauteous
princess was disgusted to find him, not only very old,
but, as a modest English writer puts it, very mildly,
"belonged to that unhappy class which a practice of
immemorial antiquity in the East exc