IN THE LAND OF GOSHEN
Come with me this bright Sunday morning for a look at the old Land of
Goshen, where the Israelites settled when they first came into Egypt.
I am writing this at Zagazig not far from the road down which Joseph
was carried by the caravan of Ishmaelites, or Bedouins, who had bought
him of his brothers and were on their way to sell him to Potiphar. It
was over that same road that the brothers of Joseph came to buy corn
in the seven years of famine. It was probably near Zagazig that Joseph
met them and had the cup hidden in Benjamin’s sack, and from Zagazig he
came out in his chariot to meet his old father Jacob when by his advice
the patriarch came into Egypt to live. Through him Goshen became a land
of the Israelites, where they remained and prospered until he died, and
those “who knew not Joseph” reigned in his stead.
The Land of Goshen is to-day one of the finest parts of the Nile Valley.
My whole way from Cairo to Zagazig was through rich crops of cotton,
sugar cane, and clover. There was green everywhere, and I could ride from
here twenty miles more to the eastward before reaching the desert. The
railroad from Cairo to the Suez Canal goes directly through Goshen. It
strikes the canal at Ismailia and then branches off north and south,
following the canal to Suez on the Red Sea, and to Port Said on the
Mediterranean. The first section is over the road which led from Arabia
to Memphis and Heliopolis, cities long since replaced by Cairo, the
metropolis of Egypt. Zagazig, where I am stopping, is one of the chief
cities in the Delta. It is on the freshwater canal and the big irrigation
ditch which leads to the Nile. It is famous as a cotton port, and to-day
camels are coming into the town with bales on their backs, and long
trainloads are starting out for Alexandria and Port Said, whence the
cotton will be shipped off to Europe and America.
The cotton scenes are features of the landscape unknown in the days of
Joseph and Jacob. At that time the only clothes made in Egypt were of
flax or wool. Nobody knew of the cotton plant, and it was not until the
Middle Ages that Europe learned anything about it. The first knowledge
of it was brought by the traveller, Sir John Mandeville, who said that
the East Indians had a shrub or bush, half vegetable and half animal. It
was called the vegetable lamb of Tartary. According to Sir John, it was a
plant which blossomed out at the top in a living sheep that bent down and
ate the grass growing luxuriantly about it. The sheep had a thick coat of
wool, and from this came the cotton of India. Sir John wrote that this
plant beast had flesh, bones, and blood, and that he had not only seen
but eaten it. He closed with the statement that all thought it wonderful
but that “God is marveyllous in his werkes.”
This was about 1350 A.D., and many years before the real nature of cotton
became known in Egypt and cotton seeds were planted. Now the crop is
grown everywhere in Goshen, and thrives on almost every spot where the
feet of the Israelites trod. It covers the Delta and large plantations
have been set out even in old Nubia and the Sudan. Cotton has supplanted
grain as a money-making crop and is worth far more than the grain that
Joseph had cornered when the years of famine began.
This Land of Goshen is a fine stock country. Camels, buffaloes, and
donkeys are staked out in the fields, and flocks of sheep and goats feed
there, watched by shepherds. There are also droves of camels grazing
or lying on the ground, chewing their cuds. All have their herdsmen.
There are no fences in Egypt; the fields are bounded by imaginary lines.
Sometimes the limits are marked by water ditches, or little embankments
made for irrigation.
It was as stock raisers that the Israelites came into Egypt. Perhaps it
was because they were a pastoral people that Joseph had Pharaoh give them
this Land of Goshen, the eastern part of which is fringed by the desert,
with patches of scanty vegetation where the stock could graze. The Bible
says that Joseph advised his brethren to say to Pharaoh, “Thy servants’
trade hath been about cattle, from our youth even until now, both we and
also our fathers”; for said he, “Every shepherd is an abomination unto
the Egyptians.”
To-day the land is well cultivated. Most of the fields are kept like
gardens, and I see half-naked men bending over and digging the soil
with great mattocks. Here the farmers are ploughing, using the same
one-handled plough of the days of the Scriptures. Some of them have
donkeys and buffaloes hitched together, while now and then one sees a
plough dragged along by a cow and a camel. There is much artificial
irrigation. Sometimes the water is lifted from level to level by men
with buckets and baskets to which ropes are slung. In other places it is
raised by the _sakieh_, a rude wheel turned by the cogs of another wheel
set at right angles to it. Clay jars are fastened on this perpendicular
wheel, and as this moves through the water, the jars fill and empty
themselves into the troughs which lead to the little canals. The motive
power of the _sakieh_ is a blindfolded camel, bullock, or donkey, the
animal going around like a horse in an old-fashioned bark mill. Many of
the fields are now under water and the silvery streams shine out through
the emerald green of the crops.
When the Israelites first came to Goshen they probably lived in tents
such as the Bedouins use to-day. These are made of sheep’s wool or goat’s
hair rudely woven by hand. They are held up by ropes and poles and are so
low that the people must crawl into them. We know that Abraham lived in a
tent, and it is likely that this was the case with Isaac and Jacob.
After coming to Goshen the Israelites probably copied the houses of the
Egyptians, building villages of mud huts not unlike those I now see.
These homes are rude to an extreme. Many of them are less than twenty
feet square; they have flat roofs and are often so low that I can see
over them as I ride by on a camel. They have no gardens or lawns. Facing
the street, they are huddled together without regard to beauty or comfort.
The roofs form the woodyards of the people below. The only fuel they
have is cornstalks, straw, or the bushes from which the cotton has been
picked. This stuff is tied up in bundles and laid away on the roofs until
used.
There are but few trees to be seen. Now and then an acacia grows along
the roadway, and here and there are clumps of date palms. There are
occasional fruit gardens, and I have seen many green orchards loaded with
oranges.
The roads are usually high above the rest of the country. They run along
the canals, and consist of the dirt banked up to hold back the waters.
The side roads are chiefly camel paths or foot paths, and one sees
everywhere the traffic moving along through the fields. Even on the main
roads there are few wagons. Most of the freight is carried on donkeys
and camels, which are the common riding animals as well. Long-legged
Egyptians in turbans and gowns sit on the rumps of little donkeys, their
feet almost dragging; and fierce-looking Bedouins, their headdresses tied
on with ropes, bob up and down as they ride on their camels, their heads
bowing at every step of the beasts. There are camels loaded with alfalfa,
the grass so covering them that they look like haystacks on legs. There
are donkeys laden with boxes and bags, and mules and bullocks carrying
freight of one kind or another. Out in the fields one now and then sees a
buffalo with a half-naked boy perched on it, and at nightfall the paths
are lined with men coming from the fields riding these ungainly beasts
and balancing their one-handled ploughs in front of them.
It was in Goshen that the Israelites worked after they were enslaved by
the Egyptians. Here they built for Pharaoh the treasure cities of Pithom
and Rameses, referred to in Exodus, from which they were sent out to
build other cities and towns in various parts of the Nile Valley.
[Illustration: The Land of Goshen still gets much of its water by the
primitive wheel turned by a blindfolded and resentful camel. This is
the land which fed Jacob and his family through the years of famine in
Canaan]
[Illustration: It was through rocky wastes such as this that Moses
climbed to the top of Mount Sinai and there received the Ten
Commandments, and there the Lord spoke with Moses “face to face, as a man
speaketh unto his friend”]
The archæologists now excavating in Egypt tell me that they frequently
find bricks which were undoubtedly made by them, and assert that the
sun-dried bricks of to-day are practically the same as those the children
of Israel moulded under the lash of their taskmasters.
This is true of the ruins of Bubastis, or the city of the worship of
the cat. The remains of this town, which was situated within a stone’s
throw of the Zagazig of to-day, are still to be seen. Its many buildings
of mud brick have crumbled almost to dust, but here and there the walls
are plainly visible. There are several hundred acres of such ruins and I
spent an hour or so to-day driving through them.
Bubastis dates back to the times when the Pyramids were young. It is
supposed to have been built by the Israelites, and was a great city until
it was captured by the Persians about 352 B.C. It was noted for its
temples devoted to the cat-headed goddess. This lady had the form of a
lioness with the head of a cat and held in one hand a lotus leaf as a
sceptre. Herodotus tells of her and of this city, saying that the temples
were gorgeous and that the stone road leading to them was one thousand
eight hundred feet long. He says that as many as seven hundred thousand
worshippers came to the annual festivities. He relates that many of the
worshippers were women who often danced and acted “in an unseemly manner.”
Driving out to the Bubastis, I found there a brickyard in full swing.
It was situated right on the edge of the ruins, and the _fellaheen_ of
to-day were moulding the clay used by the Israelites of the past into
building material for the present. As I looked at them my mind went back
to the days of the Pharaohs when Moses saw his people toiling under the
lash. These men and women I watched were working under taskmasters or
overseers. Their half-clad bodies were burnt black by the tropical sun
and they looked not unlike slaves. Here they were grinding the mud, there
they were moulding it into bricks, while farther over they were piling up
those which had been dried in the sun. The bricks were carried by young
girls, bossed by a burly negro with a stick in his hand. At his direction
the girls took the bricks on their heads and carried them off on the
trot. By bribing the negro overseer I got a photograph of this scene,
and I doubt not my picture gives a fair idea of what went on in those
long-ago days, when Pharaoh drove the Israelites to similar work.
Down through Goshen came Joseph and Mary fleeing with the infant Saviour
from the wrath of Herod, the baby killer. This was then on the main
highway from Palestine into Egypt, and there is no doubt that they
stopped at Bubastis as they went on to Heliopolis. Not far from the
obelisk of Heliopolis there is a tree under which Mary and Joseph and
the young Jesus are said to have rested. It is about five miles from
Cairo and guide books speak of it as one of the chief sights of Egypt. I
doubt the reliability of their statements. The tree may be the descendant
of one which stood there in the time of Christ. It is an old sycamore
gnarled with many years and scarred with the names of tourists. It is on
one of the estates of the Khedive, and may be seen through the bars of
a fence which has been built around it to keep off the relic hunters.
During my visit there I tried to climb the fence in order to get a
photograph of it, but some of the Khedive’s servants came up and warned
me not to go in. The tree is surrounded by orange orchards which are
irrigated by _sakiehs_ worked by water buffaloes with blankets over their
eyes.
As I went by I stopped at one of these _sakiehs_ and the men brought
me some oranges from the Khedive’s orchard, selling them at the rate
of eight for ten cents. They were wonderfully refreshing, and as I sat
eating them in the shade of the trees outside the fence I wondered
whether Mary and Joseph had not perhaps thus quenched their thirst in the
same place nearly two thousand years ago. Any resting place must have
been welcome after the long ride through the country to the edge of the
great city of the sun.
There are other stories told of the stay of the Holy Family in Egypt. One
is that Joseph and Mary took the infant Jesus out to the Pyramids, and
from there to the Sphinx. It is said that Mary laid Him in the lap of the
Sphinx, and that He slept for a night on the paws of that mighty stone
beast, half lion, half woman.
As I travel through Egypt, these stories seem more vivid. I went down the
other day to the banks of the Nile where the little baby Moses is said
to have lain in the bulrushes in his boat of papyrus, and as I stood by
the obelisk at Heliopolis I was reminded of the Virgin and the Saviour
by a young girl who had a baby in her arms. She must have been about the
same age that Mary was then, and the little one laughed and crowed as she
rested there under the tropical sun. At the same time a score of other
children ranging in age from two to twelve years gathered around me and
posed for my camera in front of the obelisk. This great monolith was
undoubtedly standing when our Saviour was carried through Egypt, and it
was erected long before the baby Moses was rescued from the waters of
the Nile. The great stone shaft seemed to tie the past and the present
together, and the children of to-day brought to my mind those of the
times of the Saviour.
The children were glad to pose for me, but as I snapped the camera they
rushed to the front with hands outstretched, begging for _baksheesh_. I
was at a loss how to fee so many, and finally gave twenty-five cents to
my coachman and left him, to fight it out with the babies. The little
ones mobbed him and he had to threaten them with his carriage whip to
keep them away. He finally ended the trouble by giving each two children
one half a piastre, so that each received little more than one cent. This
made them quite happy.
As I was about to leave the obelisk a party of American tourists drove
up. Among them was a smart twelve-year-old boy who put his hands in his
pockets and gazed up at the stone as though he were ready to buy it. As
he did so I said to him:
“Hello, my little man, aren’t you an American?”
“You bet I am,” he promptly replied. “I came from Chicago in the state of
Illinois. You are English, aren’t you?”
“No, I am an American, and my home is in Washington.”
“Oh, yes,” said the urchin. “I know all about that place. The President
lives there. Say, what is the name of your ball team?”
That was the interesting thing to him. Out here under the shadow of an
obelisk four thousand years old, on the spot where Joseph was married to
Asenath; where Plato philosophized and where Moses played; within plain
sight of the Pyramids and near enough almost to hear the whisper of the
Sphinx, he cared nothing for them. He was a live boy, and he wanted live
things. Therefore the pitchers, catchers, and shortstops of the great
American diamond were worth more to him than all the stories of history
and all the mummies of the museums.