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With regard to the seven years of famine, it is true that Egypt was less likely to suffer in this way than the countries round about; yet still, when the inundation of the Nile fell below the average, it was liable to this scourge. History tells of numerous cases in which the inhabitants have suffered terribly from want, and several famines are even mentioned on the monuments. Professor Rawlinson refers us to a case which furnishes a near parallel to the famine of Joseph. In A.D. 1064 a famine began in Egypt which lasted seven years, and was so severe that dogs and cats, and even human flesh, were eaten; nearly all the horses of the Caliph perished, and his family had to fly into Syria.

When Jacob goes down into Egypt, he is advised to tell Pharaoh that he and his sons are keepers of cattle, so that the land of Goshen may be assigned to them, shepherds being an abomination unto the Egyptians. The Egyptian contempt for herdsmen appears plainly on the monuments, where they are commonly represented as dirty and unshaven, and are sometimes even caricatured as a deformed and unseemly race. When Jacob dies, his body is embalmed by the physicians, forty days being taken up with the processes, and seventy days being spent in mourning. The methods of embalming are described by Herodotus and Diodorus, and it is stated that in preparing the body according to the first method the operators commenced by extracting the brain and pouring in certain drugs. Then they made an incision in the side of the body with a sharp Ethiopian stone, and drew out the intestines, filling the cavity with powder of pure myrrh, cassia, and other fragrant substances, and sewing up the aperture. This being done, they salted the body, “keeping it in natron during seventy days,” after which they washed it and wrapped it up in bands of fine linen smeared on their inner side with gum. Remarking upon the number of days, seventy or seventy-two, mentioned by the two historians, Sir Gardner Wilkinson says there is reason to believe it comprehended the whole period of the mourning, and that the embalming process only occupied a portion of it.