at him,
hesitated and resolved, and reconsidered and deferred while his realm
descended into the depths of ruin and despair.

It would seem that the dire misfortunes would have pressed the timid
monarch into immediate submission. But a glance at conditions may
explain the cause of his obduracy.

At this period in theological chronology, human attributes for the
first time were eliminated from the character of a god. Moses depicted
the first purely divine deity. Omnipotence was ascribed to the gods,
but Pantheism being full of paradoxes, the gods were not omnipotent.
Loud as were the panegyrics of the devout, the devout recognized the
limitations of their divinities. None had ever dreamed of a deity that
was actually omnipotent, actually infinite. Meneptah measured the God
of Israel by his own gods. Furthermore, the miracles did not amaze him
as they appalled Egypt. He was exceedingly superstitious; in his eye
the most ordinary natural phenomenon was a demonstration of the occult.
No matter that the advanced science of his time explained rainfall,
unusual heat or cold, over-fruitful or unproductive years, pestilence
and sudden death, eclipses, comets and meteors,--he believed them to be
the direct results of sorcery. Calamitous as the effects may have been
upon other people, he had ever escaped harm from these sources. It was
not strange that in time he ceased to fear miracles, and the
demonstrations of Moses were not so terrifying, inasmuch as they did
not greatly affect him.

His horses died, but Arabia was near to replenish his stables; the
pests annoyed him, but his servants fended them from him; the blains
troubled him, but his court physicians were able and gave him relief;
the thunders frightened him, but his fright passed with the storm.
Whenever the sendings became unendurable he had but to yield to gain a
respite, and then he forgot the experience in a day. Meanwhile he ate,
slept and walked in the same luxury he had known in happier years.

Therefore, Meneptah neither realized his peril nor was personally much
aggrieved by the troublous times.

It did not occur to him that all the people of his realm were not
sheltered against the plagues by wealth and many servants. He could
not understand why Egypt should be restive under the same afflictions
that he had borne with fortitude. Summoning all evidence from his
point of view, he was able to present to himself a case of personal
persecution and