X. EGYPT AS A CORN COUNTRY

Nor is this all with regard to Egypt wherein is seen the image and superscription of truth. An argument for the Veracity of the New Testament has been found in the harmony which pervades the very many incidental notices of the condition of Judea at the period when the New Testament professes to have been written. A similar agreement without design may be remarked in the occasional glimpses of Egypt which open upon us in the course of the Mosaic History. For instance, I perceive in each and all of the following incidents, indirect indications of this one fact, that Egypt was already a great corn country, though I do not believe that such a fact is directly asserted in any passage in the whole Pentateuch. Thus, when Abram found a famine in the land of Canaan, “he went down into Egypt to sojourn there.” [Gen. 12:10.] There was a second famine in a part of Canaan, in the days of Isaac: he, however, on this occasion went to Gerar, which was in the country of the Philistines, but it appears as though this was only to have been a stage in a journey which he was projecting into Egypt; for we read, that “the Lord appeared unto him and said, Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of.” [Gen. 26:2.] There is a third famine in Canaan in the time of Jacob, and then “all countries came unto Egypt to buy corn, because the famine was so sore in all lands.” [Gen. 41:57.] Again, I read of Pharaoh being wroth with two of his officers—they are spoken of as persons of some distinction in the court of the Egyptian King—and who were they? One was the chief of the Butlers, but the other was the chief of the Bakers [Gen. 40:1.] . Still I see in this an indication of Egypt being a corn country; of bread being there literally the staff of life, and the manufacturing and dispensing of it an employment of considerable trust and consequence. So again I find that, in the fabric of the bricks in Egypt, straw was a very essential element; and so abundant does the corn crop seem to have been—so widely was it spread over the face of the country, that the task-masters of the Israelites could exact the usual tale of the bricks, though the people had to gather the stubble for themselves to supply the place of the straw, which was withheld [Exod. 5:7.] Still I perceive in this an intimation of the agricultural fertility of Egypt,—there could not have been the stubble-land here implied unless corn had been the staple crop of the country. Then when Moses threatens to plague the Egyptians with a Plague of Frogs, what are the places which at once present themselves as those which are likely to be defiled by their presence? “The river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into thine house, and into thy bed-chamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneading-troughs.” [Exod. 8:3.] And of these kneading-troughs we again read, as utensils possessed by all, and without which they could not think even of taking a journey; for on the delivery of the Israelites from Egypt, we find that “they took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading-troughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders.” [Exod. 12:34.]

Now it may be said that we all know Egypt to have been a great corn country—that the thing admits of no doubt, and never did—I allow it to be so; and if such a fact had been asserted in the writings of Moses as a broad fact, I should have taken no notice of it, for it would then have afforded no ground for an argument like this; in such a case, Moses might have come at the knowledge as we ourselves may have done, by having visited the country himself, or by having received a report of it from others who had visited it, and so might have incorporated this amongst other incidents in his history; but I do not observe it asserted by him in round terms; it is not indeed asserted by him at all—it is intimated—intimated when he is manifestly not thinking about it, when his mind and his pen are quite intent upon other matters; intimated very often, very indirectly, in very various ways. The fact itself of Egypt being a great corn country was, no doubt, perfectly well known to Dr. Johnson, but though so much of the scene of Rasselas is laid in Egypt, I will venture to say, that there are in it no hints of the nature I am describing; such, I mean, as would serve to convince us that the author was relating a series of events which had happened under his own eye, and that the places with which he combines them were not ideal, but those wherein they actually came to pass. Nay, more; when anything of this kind is attempted in fiction, how sure is it to fail? Witness the Phileleutherus Lipsiensis of Dr. Bentley, which it is impossible to read without speedily detecting, from internal evidence, that the author of it is no man of Leipsic; even his very attempts to make himself appear so, betraying him.

Surely, then, it is very satisfactory to discover concurrence thus uniform, thus uncontrived, in particulars falling out at intervals in the course of an artless narrative which is not afraid to proclaim the Almighty as manifesting himself by signal miracles, and which connects those miracles, too, in the closest union with the subordinate matters of which we have thus been able to ascertain the probable truth and accuracy.