Poole, Reginald S.: The cities of Egypt (London, 1882)

IO

CITIES OF EGYPT.

became the region of death, the symbol of ' God's under-
world,' ' the hidden land,' ' the West, the ancient, the
perfect, the vast.'

It is in such figures as these, in the use of an epithet,
in the natural expression of surprise or pleasure or awe,
that the ancients show us their sense of nature in terse
utterances whose force puts to shame our modern
attempts to picture in words. Thus the sudden view of
the plain of the Delta as its green expanse refreshes the
eye wearied with the monotony of the parched yellow
desert is brought before us in a single sentence. The
plain of Jordan ere it was blasted was ' well watered
everywhere,' ' as the garden of the Lord, like the land of
* Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoan ' (Gen. xiii. io).1

After the long and bitter bondage Egypt did not
always wear this pleasant colour to the Hebrew eye. It
had a Janus face. It was the land of plenty where they
had eaten freely the abundant and varied produce of the
earth, the land of kindly folk who did not share in the
stern policy of their rulers, and had always a welcome

1 Zoan for Zoar here seems the better reading, unless we may
suppose Zal or Zar, the Egyptian name of Zoan, to be meant : Zoar
of Palestine can scarcely be intended, for the passage would then
be unlike the simple style of Genesis.