2. Tin Pharach of Joseph.— 'Between the Pharaoh of Abraham and the Pharaoh of Joseph there was an interval of two hundred years. During this period there maj have been various changes of dynasty, art, and religion in Egypt of which we derive no informa- tion from Scripture; while the notice of the former king and of the state of the country in his time is so brief thai we cannot by comparison arrive at any con- clusion upon this point. < if the political position and character of the latter, and the condition of Egypt in bis time, Scripture gives us very important informa- tion from his intimate connection with Joseph anil the chosen | eople of God.
Wilkinson identifies this Pharaoh with Osirtesen I. one of the kings of his sixteenth dynasty of Tanites, whose reign he supposes to have exceeded forty-three years {Egypt, i, 42, 43). Bunsen prefers to identify him with Osirte en 111. of the seventeenth dynast)' of Memphites, who is. according to him, the Sesostris of classical writers (Trevor, Egypt, p. 254). Osburn thinks him to have heen Apophi* t/W. p. •Jim. as Ku- sebius states, changing the date so as to tit. The identification obviously depends simply upon a com- parison of the Hebrew and Egyptian chronologies. Whether he was of one of the dynasties of the Shepherd kings is a question on which authorities differ, accord- ing to their view* of the date of the Shepherd rule, and their interpretation of the scriptural account of this king. Wilkinson is decidedly of opinion thai he was not a shepherd king, an opinion with which Trevor agrees. Josephus says that he was a Shepherd. We are decidedly of opinion from the incidental notices of Scripture that he was not of a Shepherd dynasty. If we are to accept Manetho's account, we must suppose that these shepherds conquered the most of Egypt, ruled with the greatest tyranny and cruelty over the Egyptians, disregarded the old laws of the country, and demolished its temples (Josephus, Ap. i, 14). Their rule was not one of policy and conciliation, but of I rute force and tenor, an idea strongly corrol orated by the abomination in which the Bible tells us all shepherds were held in Egypt, and by the testimony which the monuments hear to the detestation and scorn iii which they were universally held (Wilkin- son, ii. 16; iv. 126). The Shepherds being such, it seems to us quite inconsistent with the Biblical narra- tive to Buppose that Joseph's Pharaoh was a she], herd king. Thus we find thai the Egyptian prejudice against shepherds was carefully and jealously respect- ed I iy this kine;. The Israelites on coming into Egypt were by him located in the herder-land (Hengsten- berg, Egypt, p. 12) of Goshen, where they would Ferve as a barrier against the Bhepherd-hating Egyptians (Gen. \1\ i. 34 I. We cannot Buppose a shepherd king to act thus. He would not thus consult a natn e | rej-
Udice hostile to his own dynasty, while his own Shep- herd garrisons occupied the strongholds of Egypt. Again, Pharaoh's court and household, bo far as w<
know them, were composed of native Egy] tians. Such was Potiphar, the captain of the king's b< dy- gnard, probably the most trusted officer of Pharaoh (Gen. xxx ix, 1 i ; while the < bief butler and I aki r of
\\\< court an- the well-known officers of the native court of the Pharaohs (Trevor, p. 256). The officials of Pharaoh's prime minister, Joseph, are also native Egyptians, whose feelings of caste towards foreigners were can fully consulted (Gen. xliii. 32; see Rawlin- son's Hero 'otus, bk. ii. c. H, note 9). In the midst of universal destitution, when all ethers were reduced to serfdi m. and the lands of Egypt passed into the pi s- Bession of Pharaoh, the property of the native Egyp- tian priests alone was religiously respected, and they received, without any return, an ample maintenance from Pharaoh's stores for themselves and their fam- ilies (Gen. xlvii, 22). When Pharaoh Bought to be- stow upon Joseph marks of the highest honor for his preservation of the country, one of these marks was the bestowal on him in marriage of Asenatb, the daughter of Potipherah, priest of < In or Heliopolis, who is thus distinguished as one of the highest and most honored personages in the land (Gen. xli. 45). These considerations lead us to conclude that this Pharaoh was a native Egyptian, not a Shepherd king, and that lie ruled after the expulsion of the Shepherd?, or during their supremacy, while the memory of their tyranny was still vivid in the national mind. Raw- linson (Herod. Lk. ii. c. 108, note 2) seems to think that horses were unknown in Egypt till the time of Amosis i I!.( '. I'll!) i. and would thus give a low date for this monarch, in whose time horses were in use for ordinary purposes as well as for war (Gen. xlvii. 17). The testimony of Herodotus on which he comments seems, however, opposed to this view. According to 1 the chronology which we adopt, the period of Jose] h's deliverance from prison was B.C. 1883, which will fall, according to our view of the Egyptian dynasties, under the reign of Aphobis, the fourth king of the fifteenth (Shepherd) dynasty. But as the Shepherd kings do