e and the beast
of prey.

CHAPTER V

EGYPT

Egypt had been the bondhouse of Israel. It was there that Israel had
grown from a family into a people, which the desert was to transform
into a nation. The Exodus out of Egypt was the beginning of Israelitish
history, the era from which it dated. Down to the last the kingdom of
the Pharaohs exercised upon it an influence more or less profound; the
extravagant splendour of Solomon was modelled after that of the Egyptian
monarchs, his merchants found their best market on the banks of the
Nile, and the last Canaanitish city which passed into Israelitish hands
was the gift to him of the Pharaoh. The invasion of the Egyptian king
prevented Rehoboam from attempting to reconquer the revolted tribes, and
in the days of Assyrian ascendancy it was Egypt that was played off
against the Assyrian invader by the princes and statesmen of the west.
The defeat of Necho at Carchemish handed Palestine over to the
Babylonians, and indirectly brought about the destruction of Jerusalem;
even in the age of the Ptolemies Egypt still influenced the history of
Israel, and the Jews of Alexandria prepared the way for the Christian
Church. For centuries Palestine was the battle-ground of the nations;
but it was so because it lay between the two great powers of the ancient
East, between Egypt on the one side and Assyria and Babylonia on the
other.

Egypt is the creation of the Nile. Outside the Delta and the strip of
land which can be watered from the river there is only desert. When the
annual inundation covers the fields the land of Egypt exists no more; it
becomes a watery plain, out of which emerge the villages and towns and
the raised banks which serve as roads. For more than 1600 miles the Nile
flows without an affluent; in the spring it falls so low that its
channel becomes almost unnavigable; but in the late summer, its waters,
swollen by the rains and melted snows of Central Africa, and laden with
the fertilising silt of the Abyssinian mountains, spread over the
cultivated country, and bring fertility wherever they go.

The waters of the inundation must have been confined by dykes, and made
to flow where the cultivator needed them, at a very remote date. Recent
discoveries have thrown light on the early history of the country. We
find it inhabited by at least one race, possibly of Libyan origin, which
for the present we must term pre-historic. Its burial-places are met
with in vari