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

INTRODUCTORY.

11

for the fugitive from Palestine ; but it was also the house
of bondage, where as in a furnace of iron they had toiled
under the burning sun, while the taskmaster smote their
bare shoulders with a continual stroke. The meaner
souls, as they grew weary of the wilderness or waxed
feeble in the struggle for existence against Canaanite and
Assyrian, could not forget the flesh-pots of Egypt. The
runaway Saneha, whose adventures are preserved in
a papyrus roll, when he tells us in the story of his flight
how he wandered on the border faint and hungry, mea-
sures his progress by the Egyptian supper-time.

To the land of plenty the Hebrew and the Arab have
always fled when their pastures have been smitten by
drought. Rarely have they come in vain. For there
can be no dearth in Egypt unless the river fail, and this
is most unusual. Thus the regular rise of the Nile
came to be expected, and was no doubt ascribed by the
people to the river-god, rather than to the Divine Ruler
of all things. Perhaps this tendency struck the native
poet who in his beautiful hymn to the Nile makes the
genius of the river a manifestation of the hidden divin-
ity who cannot be graven by the sculptor, unseen,
whom no offering reaches, who cannot be drawn to the