gyptian cavalry who
accompanied the mummy of Jacob to its resting-place at Machpelah, would
not be the only evidence of the authority claimed by Joseph and his
master in the land of Canaan; Joseph himself would have left his name
there, and his grand-children would have fought against "the men of
Gath."

But these are speculations which may, or may not, be confirmed by
archaeological discovery. For the Book of Genesis Canaan disappears from
sight with the death of Jacob. Henceforward it is upon Egypt and the
nomad settlers in Goshen that the attention of the Pentateuch is fixed,
until the time comes when the age of the patriarchs is superseded by
that of the legislator, and Moses, the adopted son of the Egyptian
princess, leads his people back to Canaan. Joseph had been carried by
Midianitish hands out of Palestine into Egypt, there to become the
representative of the Pharaoh, and son-in-law of the high-priest of
Heliopolis; for Moses, the adopted grandson of the Pharaoh, "learned in
all the wisdom of the Egyptians," it was reserved, after years of trial
and preparation in Midian, to bring the descendants of Jacob out of
their Egyptian prison-house to the borders of the Promised Land.

CHAPTER V

EGYPTIAN TRAVELLERS IN CANAAN

Palestine has been a land of pilgrims and tourists from the very
beginning of its history. It was the goal of the migration of Abraham
and his family, and it was equally the object of the oldest book of
travels with which we are acquainted. Allusion has already been made
more than once to the Egyptian papyrus, usually known as _The Travels of
a Mohar_, and in which a satirical account is given of a tour in
Palestine and Syria. The writer was a professor, apparently of
literature, in the court of Ramses II., and he published a series of
letters to his friend, Nekht-sotep, which were long admired as models of
style. Nekht-sotep was one of the secretaries attached to the military
staff, and among the letters is a sort of parody of an account given by
Nekht-sotep of his adventures in Canaan, which was intended partly to
show how an account of the kind ought to have been written by an
accomplished penman, partly to prove the superiority of the scribe's
life to that of the soldier, partly also, it may be, for the sake of
teasing the writer's correspondent. Nekht-sotep had evidently assumed
airs of superiority on the strength of his foreign travels, and his
stay-at-home friend undertook to d