king’s counsellors. Over this he hung about Joseph’s neck a chain of fine gold. And Pharaoh gave command that a chariot should be prepared for Joseph that in beauty and richness of workmanship should be but second to his own. Thus Pharaoh appointed Joseph lord over all the land of Egypt.

‘I am the Pharaoh,’ he said, ‘and this is my decree: that not a man shall stir hand or foot in all Egypt without thy consent.’ Pharaoh, moreover, gave Joseph a name which he himself had chosen, Zaphnath- paanear, meaning thereby the saviour of the land, or the revealer of secrets.

From that day onwards, apart from Pharaoh himself, Joseph was first in Egypt in rank and power. He was thirty years of age when he was made Pharaoh’s chief counsellor or vizier. When the king in his splendour, attended by his courtiers and high officers and with his guard of horsemen, rode out in state from city to city throughout the land of Egypt, the chariot of Joseph followed next after his own. And a herald or runner went on before his chariot to announce his coming. And the people in the streets and all who waited everywhere to watch and to see him, bowed the knee to Joseph as he passed by, hailing him with acclamations of ‘’Abrek! ’Abrek! Lo, now, pay heed. Behold the lord of all!’

By the grace of Pharaoh also, Joseph took to wife Asenath, the daughter of a prince of Egypt named Potipherah, who was priest of the Temple of the Sun in the city of Heliopolis or On.

As he had foretold, the harvests of the seven years that followed were marvellously rich and plenteous. In all things according to his command, the officers or stewards whom he had appointed to serve under him collected a fifth of all the crops in Egypt, and laid it up in many-chambered granaries. These—in cities where there was none already for the feeding of the king’s army and his slaves—had been built for this purpose. In every city was a granary wherein was hoarded the grain that was not needed for food in the country surrounding it. The corn thus accumulated throughout Egypt was at last like the sand of the sea for abundance, so that no strict account could be taken of it, for the plenty of it passed all measuring.

In these years two sons were born to Joseph. The first he named Manasseh, a word that means, ‘Causing to forget’, for, as he said to Asenath, the mother of his son, ‘God hath made me forget the labour that is gone.’ And his second son he called Ephraim, which means, ‘Fruitful’, for God had made him to grow and to flourish and had blessed him in a strange land wherein first he had had nothing.

But the seven years of plenty came to an end, and they were followed by seven years of extreme dearth and famine. During these years the mighty river of Egypt which in its annual season flooded the country on either side of its banks, leaving behind it when its waters fell away a rich silt or sediment without which the arid sunbaked sands of Egypt would have borne no crops at all, had flowed further inland than in living memory it had ever flowed before. But in the next seven years its waters ran scant and shallow, so that only a narrow ribbon of land on either side of the dwindling river could be sown with seed. Nor was the famine in Egypt alone, but in all the countries surrounding it.

When the people of Egypt had consumed what corn they had themselves saved and laid aside from their good harvests, and were in great need, they appealed to Pharaoh for food. And Pharaoh made proclamation that any in want should come to Joseph who, as his vizier, had power to ordain all things as seemed best to him.

Then Joseph gave orders to the stewards whom he had appointed in the cities of Egypt that the granaries and storehouses which were stuffed to their roofs with grain, their entries sealed with Pharaoh’s seal, should now be opened up, and that corn should be sold to all that came to buy. And as from time to time he decreed, so was the price fixed.

When rumour spread far and wide that while there was famine in all the countries neighbouring on Egypt, there was plenty in Egypt itself, there came strangers and aliens from all parts into Egypt to buy corn. It had become the warehouse of the world. And Pharaoh’s treasuries were filled to overflowing with the money that was paid to the stewards of the granaries, both by the Egyptians and by the strangers