Israel would have been
distinguished by the names of their actual forefathers. They would have
been "the sons" of Reuben or Judah, of Simeon or Gad. But they were all
families within a single family. They were all "Israelites" or "sons of
Israel," and in an inscription of the Egyptian king Meneptah they are
accordingly called _Israelu_, "Israelites," without any territorial
adjunct. They lived in Goshen, like the Bedawin of to-day, and their
social organisation was that of Arabia.

The immediate occasion of the settlement of Israel on the outskirts of
Egypt was that which has brought so many Bedawin herdsmen to the valley
of the Nile both before and since. The very district of Goshen in which
they settled was occupied again, shortly after their desertion of it, by
nomads from Edom who had besought the Pharaoh for meadow-land on which
to feed their flocks. The need of pasturage from time immemorial has
urged the pastoral tribes of the desert towards the fertile land of the
Nile. When want of rain has brought drought upon Canaan, parching the
grass and destroying the corn, the nomad has invariably set his face
toward the country which is dependent for its fertility, not upon the
rains of heaven, but upon the annual overflow of its river. It was a
famine in Canaan, produced by the absence of rain, which made Jacob and
his sons "go down into Egypt."

But besides this immediate cause there was yet another. They were
assured of a welcome in the kingdom of the Nile and the gift of a
district in which they might live. One of the sons of Jacob had become
the Vizier of the Egyptian Pharaoh. Joseph, the Hebrew slave who had
been sold into bondage by his brothers, had risen to be the first
minister of the king and the favourite of his sovereign. He had foretold
the coming years of plenty and dearth; but he had done more--he had
pointed out how to anticipate the famine and make it subserve the
interests of despotism. He was not a seer only, he was a skilful
administrator as well. He had taken advantage of the years of scarcity
to effect a revolution in the social and political constitution of
Egypt. The people had been obliged to sell their lands and even
themselves to the king for bread, and become from henceforth a
population of royal slaves. The lands of Egypt were divided between the
king and the priests; the peasantry tilled them for the state and for
the temples, while the upper classes owed their wealth and position to
the