The story of Joseph and Pharaoh is well known. Poets have retold it and painters have redrawn it so often that most of us mainly remember Joseph's kindness towards his cruel brothers while the darker shadows behind his figure are forgotten.
     In Genesis the old traditions of the patriarchs have been a much-disputed subject among learned and sceptical orientalists. Alternatively the names seem to be names of persons or names of tribes. However, the modern excavations in Mesopotamia and the findings in Egypt confirm so many details in the tradition that we may conclude that in between myth and poetry historical facts do exist.
     Joseph-like Benjamin-was the son of Jacob and Rachel, while their ten older brothers were sons of other wives. Jacob loved Joseph, the child of his old age, and gave him "a coat of many colours" which seems to have been such an unusual garment as to hurt the hearts of the less well-clad with snakebite of envy. As it seems that Joseph was something of a telltale, some of the brothers bore a grudge against him.(Gen.xxxvii 3)
    "And Joseph had a dream." His sheaf arose, and also stood upright, and beholds, his brothers' sheaves made obeisance. He saw the sun and the moon and eleven stars make obeisance to him. Joseph was a dreamer.
     One day as young Joseph went into the fields, the brothers said one to another: "Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now therefore, and let us slay him." (Gen. xxxvii 19, 20) Through Reuben's intercession, however, his life was spared. The loving brothers sold him as a slave to some Ishmaelites, who were on their way to Egypt with a caravan. The Midianite merchantmen sold him again to one of Pharaoh's geldings, Potifar, captain of the guard. We recall how the brothers showed Joseph's beautiful, detested coat to Jacob, well dipped in the blood of a kid-how Joseph won the confidence of Potifar-and how that officer's hot-blooded wife tempted Joseph to breach of confidence. On a false charge of having attempted to seduce this seductive lady, the chaste and faithful Joseph was thrown into prison. This motive is well known from old Egyptian literature.
     In prison Joseph gained the jailer's favour and had the good fortune of being able to interpret two fellow-prisoners' dreams. One of them, the butler of the king, was later reappointed at the court, as Joseph had predicted, and the other, the king's baker, was hanged.
     Two years passed, and the butler of the king had forgotten the little interpreter of dreams, but then Pharaoh had a dream. He dreamed he was standing by the river, and up came seven wellfavoured kine and fatfleshed, and they fed in a meadow. After them seven other cows came up from the Nile, ill favoured and leanfleshed, and they ate up the seven cows that were plump and fatfleshed. (Gen xli. 1-4)
     As nobody was able to interpret the dream, the butler came to think of Joseph. Then Pharaoh sent and called for Joseph, and they washed and shaved him and brought him from the dungeon to Pharaoh. Having heard the dream Joseph said: "What God is about to do he sheweth unto Pharaoh. Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt. And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land ... by reason of that famine following for it shall be very grievous." (Gen. xli 28-31) Therefore he advised Pharaoh to appoint a supervisor for the whole of Egypt, who was to collect one fifth of the harvest during the good years and fill the granaries and keep it for the bad years. Pharaoh and Joseph went together into a great speculation in corn, almost like making a corner in grain in the Chicago of today. Joseph's office as a Grand Vizier was to organise the whole thing. "And Joseph went out over all the land of Egypt ... And Joseph gathered corn as the sand of the sea." ( ibid. 45-49)
     In his famous "History of Egypt", Professor James H. Breasted describes the functions of an Egyptian vizier as follows: "He was a veritable Joseph, and it must have been this office, which the Hebrew narrator had in mind as that to which Joseph was appointed." Joseph was married to the daughter of the priest of On-the later Heliopolis. Periods of great famines are well known in Egyptian inscriptions, and their deadly effect on the population is shown on a relief from Sakkarah, dating from an earlier period than Joseph's. In Pithom, in the land of Goshen, ruins of granaries and grain silos have been found. 

After the years of great plenty came the years of bad crops. Farming was a failure, but the corn-speculation turned out a success. Prices rose, and the hungry people demanded corn from Pharaoh who referred them to Joseph. "And Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold unto the Egyptians." (Gen. xli. 56) Still the spell of drought continued, and when money failed the Egyptians came unto Joseph and sold their cattle. And the famine was over all the face of the earth and they said: "We will not hide it from my lord, how that our money is spent: my lord also hath our herds of cattle; there is not aught left in the sight of my lord, but our bodies, and our lands; Wherefore shall we die before thine eyes, both we and our land? Buy us and our land for bread, and we and our land will be servants unto Pharaoh; And give us seed that we may live and not die, that the land will be not desolate." (Gen. xlvii. 18, 19)
     They were trapped. As it is written: "And Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh; ... only the land of the priests bought he not; for the priests had a portion assigned them of Pharaoh, and did eat their portion which Pharaoh gave them; wherefore they sold not their lands" (ibid. 20-22)
     Joseph dealt out bread and seed and said: "Behold, I have bought you this day and your land for Pharaoh; here is seed for you, and ye shall sow the land. And it shall come to pass in the increase that ye shall give the fifth part unto Pharaoh."(ibid, 23,24) This was a 20 per cent mortgage interest or a copyhold rent from farmers who had lost their independent occupying ownership. "And Joseph made it law over the land of Egypt unto this day that Pharaoh should have the fifth part; except the land of the priests only, which became not Pharaoh's." (ibid 26)
     Here we see the land monopoly in all its might, the worst of the Egyptian plagues; the power of kings, the power of nobles, the power of the priesthood, used and misused in order to swallow up the income and production of the working people. As a young dreaming boy Joseph was sold as a slave to Egypt. As a mature and realistic statesman he in his turn enslaved the Egyptians. And the bondage of Egypt was hard.

In the second year of the great famine Joseph's relations had moved to Egypt and had been assigned land in Goshen, the narrow, fertile valley, Wadi Tumilat, which stretches from the Delta to the Bitter Lakes once connected with the Red Sea. Here lie the towns Rameses and Pithom mentioned in the Bible as built by the Israelites. Tradition gives Moses a leading part in their construction in that period of his life when he lived as a young prince at Pharaoh's court. In this part of the country the Israelites thrived and multiplied, faithfully keeping to their religious hopes and traditions from the days of Abraham.
     "Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph." (Exod. 1. 8.) Forgotten was the gratitude, and fear arose that the Israelites might support a potential aggressor in this place of strategic importance, this gateway of Egypt for trade and invasions. As we recall, this fear was wellfounded. The Semitic Hyksos tribes had conquered Lower Egypt about 1800 BC, and controlled the Delta till about 1600 BC. Joseph must have lived at the end of the Hyksos period and at the beginning of the 18th dynasty, when King Ahmoses I expelled the Hyksos. Sir Flinders Petrie mentions that the word of homage: "Abrek", by which the Egyptians cheered Joseph is a Semitic word of Babylonian origin.
     The results of Joseph's land-policy now affected his own people. As a natural consequence of the landmonopolisation, Pharaoh resorted to well-known means: "Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens." (ibid 11) Poverty increased and the pleasures of work and production changed into the misery of slavery: "And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour." (Exod. i. 14.) And the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives: "If it be a son, then ye shall kill him." (ibid. 16.) Heavy taxation, birth control, the burden of Egypt! Rather modern conditions. 

Egypt is a long country, the intestine of Africa, where the mud from the rising Nile makes the soil extremely fertile; a narrow oasis surrounded by vast deserts, where nothing grows and few come. Even if the Nile valley is thousands of kilometres long, the arable area of Egypt is smaller than that of Denmark. Only the tropical rain in the interior of Abyssinia and Africa, which makes the river rise in the autumn, saves the Nile valley from being a desert.In order to develop the favourable natural conditions fully, the construction of dikes and embankments and a network of canals was necessary and only possible through co-ordination. Organised co-operation was essential and was to each person's material advantage, because thereby he obtained a higher standard of living, but at the same time it restricted his independence. Under powerful rulers this was to the benefit of Egypt as long as they made it their concern to maintain law and order and organise the community, without exploiting the working man.
     As the deserts made flight and emigration almost impossible, the people were completely at the mercy of those despots who had sufficient forces and an organised bureaucracy behind them. This system was greatly supported by the priests and enormously strengthened by the important fact, which Professor John A. Wilson in his wonderful book, "The Burden of Egypt" states as decisive: Pharaoh was looked upon as a god.
     Henry George says: "Consider what Egypt was. See the grandeur of her monuments; those very monuments-that after the lapse, not of centuries but of millenniums, seem to say to us, as the Egyptian priests said to the boastful Greeks: 'Ye are children! '-testify to the enslavement of the people, are the enduring witnesses of a social organisation that rested on the masses an immovable weight. That narrow Nile valley, the cradle of the arts and sciences, the scene, perhaps, of the greatest triumphs of the human mind, is also the scene of its most abject enslavement. In the long centuries of its splendour, its lord, secure in the possession of irresistible temporal power, and securer still in the awful sanctions of a mystical religion, was as a god on earth, to cover whose poor carcass with a tomb befitting his state, hundreds of thousands toiled away their lives."
     He, who could take the land from the people, owned them and what they produced. Despots arose and cartels who realised this. King Ahmoses I who laid the foundation of the l8th dynasty, came into power about 1580 BC after having expelled the Hyksos people. He built his power on the army, the temples and the bureaucracy and extirpated the feudal lords who had opposed him. Breasted says: "There seems to have been but few of the local nobles who thus supported Ahmoses and gained his favour. The larger number opposed both him and the Hyksos and perished in the struggle. As their more fortunate rivals were now nothing more than administrative, military or court officials, the feudal lords thus practically disappeared. The lands which formed their hereditary possessions were confiscated and passed to the crown, where they permanently remained." 

Freeholding disappeared. Breasted says: "All Egypt was now the personal estate of the Pharaoh, just as it was after the destruction of the Mamelukes by Mohammed Ali early in the nineteenth century. It is this state of affairs which in the Hebrew tradition was represented as the direct result of Joseph's sagacity."
     In his book, "From Joseph to Joshua", Professor H. H. Rowley is of the opinion that Joseph lived under the reign of Amen-hotep IV (Ikhn-aton), but the land policy of this Pharaoh was the opposite and consisted mainly in the confiscation for a short period of the enormous estates of the Amon temples.
     The l8th dynasty resided in Thebes with the huge temples of Karnak. The Danish Professor Hartvig Frisch asks the question: "What things do the big temples in Luxor and Karnak gloat over? Is it merciful and generous gods haunting these colossi of stone? Modern research has brought the truth to light. The land monopoly is the deepest secret of the Amon temple."
     Frisch also points to the importance of what happened under Ahmoses who "confiscated all land with the exception of that of the temples, and all Egypt was now the personal estate of the Pharaoh." Most scholars agree that Joseph must have lived in this period.
     The famous Papyrus Harris gives a list of the great riches of the Karnak temple: 107,000 slaves, three quarters of a million acres of land, half a million head of cattle and 53 shipyards. That is why the temples were so magnificently adorned and the ceremonies so elaborate. Frisch says: "But behind all this we find an important reality: The priesthood! When the cult of Osiris and Amon later on spread all over Egypt, it was actually an economic concentration, similar to the endowments of the Middle Ages and the trust foundlings of modern times. Behind the stereotyped forms a living and real power lurked, nourishing on the muddied channels of superstition."
     At the courts of the Pharaohs a glittering luxury prevailed, stretching far into the royal tombs of the Valley of Kings, where now the robbed sepulchral chambers mock the vanity of the rulers. The tomb of Tut-ankh-amon, the young and insignificant king, was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922 and appeared to be practically undisturbed. To look at the riches of gold, ivory and lapis lazuli in this tomb gives one an idea of what the contents of the tombs of the mighty kings must have been like.
     The land monopoly reached its prime in Egypt, where the wealth of the princes and the splendour of the temples little by little was overspun by a cobweb of red tape and the creepers of an excessive bureaucratic system of innumerable writers and supervisors. The strength of the people was eaten up from within and the country was ruined. The common man sank into poverty and apathy through taxation and suppression, a poverty and apathy lasting to this very day. The well favoured cows and fatfleshed ate up the ill favoured and leanfleshed. Pharaoh had a dream.

Moses was born in Egypt in years of great distress. In the beginning of Exodus it is told how he barely escaped Pharaoh's anti-Semitic decree of birth control when his mother made a little boat of papyrus stalks and daubed it with pitch-a way of making riverboats used in Egypt all through her history. She placed it in the reeds on the bank of the River Nile, where the daughter of Pharaoh used to go bathing, and when the Princess saw the child and heard him crying, a maternal feeling surged through her heart "and he became her son".
     Later sources add different incidents. The Acts of the Apostles have: "Pharaoh's daughter took him up, and nourished him for her own son. And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds." (Acts. vii. 21, 22) The Midrashim relate how high in the good graces of Pharaoh and his daughter Moses was. Flavius Josephus and Phio Judæus actually established Moses as heir to the Egyptian throne, and as in Egypt the succession to the throne often followed the female line, an adopted heir to the throne was a possibility. Josephus and Eusebius refer to Moses as Egyptian commander of the army against Ethiopia, which evidently would explain his ability of organising a great emigration.
     The name Moses is Egyptian, derived from a word meaning "child" or "born of". About the time of Exodus, names containing the word "Mose" or "Moses" were in general use among the Pharaohs: Ka-Mose, Thut-Mose, Ah-Mose, Ptah-Mose. It also forms part of the name Rameses. It is, therefore, a possibility that the first part of Moses' name has been thrown away on account of it being a name of an Egyptian god.
     We cannot read in the scriptures the name of the Pharaoh under whom Moses grew up and carried through the emigration, but tradition and the scriptures connect Moses and the Israelites with the construction of the two towns in Goshen: Rameses and Pithom. As Naville found ruins here from the days of Rameses II, and his name is used in the town name, it seems probable that Moses grew up under the stern King Sethi I (1318-1301), and organised the Exodus under his arrogant son Rameses II (1301-1234), and, from what we know about the character of these kings, this is very probable. (Rowley. Noerdlinger)Rameses was not the heir to the throne, but through court intrigues he eliminated an older brother and usurped the power. In the temple walls of Karnak there is a relief showing King Sethi I in his war-chariot with the carved figure of Rameses II behind depicted as a crown prince. It is a fake from the days of Rameses, because the figure and inscription are superimposed on an erasure, where the name and portrait of the original crown prince has been removed. (Breasted 419.) That erased figure might have been the one of Moses-as Noerdlinger guesses.

Thus, surrounded by royal wealth and state, Moses grew up. When his keen intelligence awoke, all Egypt's mathematics and astronomy was open to him. When his soul began to thirst for investigating the Force behind everyday life, he was introduced into the rituals and mysticism of the Egyptian temples-the wisdom of the Egyptians. This elaborate cult was the privilege of the ruling classes, while the common man was put off with superstition and magic-embalmed cats and crocodiles.
    Moses had everything that ordinary men wish-luxury, intellectual refinements, hunting, sport-but one day it all crumbled into dust among his fingers. Why?
    He met real life. The cruelty and unrighteousness of life upset him. He saw Egypt as it was: The slaveholder smiting the Hebrew. His violent reaction is expressed in one single line: "He slew the Egyptian". With this act of passion Moses enters the stage of World History.
    He has had a difficult temperament - righteous indignation-rankling doubt of his own self-firm belief in God-but also a bitterness towards a God who tolerated the unrighteousness of life-it was all hidden as red and rusty fruits in the tangle of his thorny heart. But, suddenly the thornbush was ablaze. God spoke to him. 

The name of Moses means child-and Moses was a child of his time. It is of little importance whether some of the laws and commandments were made later on. It was Moses who conveyed to his people the spirit and inspiration, still working in World History, the belief in a righteous and loving God: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might-thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." (Deut. vi 4,5; Lev xix 18)
     He saved the Israelites, who lived in Egypt, from the clasping claws of the stone sphinx and led them to the border of The Promised Land. To Moses this was not only a geographical conception of Canaan, but a new social structure contrary to that of Egypt. Since the days of Joseph, Pharaoh had the conception that the land belonged to him. "And Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh." (Gen xlvii 20) Pharaoh had a dream, but Moses had a vision, a spiritual revelation. In sharp contrast to the pharaohnic despotism Moses frankly and openly declared before Pharaoh: "The earth is the Lord's." (Exod. ix 29)
     Half a century before Sethi J, King Amen-Hotep IV (1380-1362) had tried to create a sort of monotheistic religion in Egypt, and-what is important-at the same time he tried to crush the power of the Amon priests by confiscating their enormous land-estates. It was a revolution, and Moses must have known the tradition of this heretical king. The rabbinical tradition claims that some of the Psalms are composed by Moses-and there certainly is an extraordinary parallelism, both in thought and structure, between the 104th Psalm and King AmenHotep's sun hymn from Tell-el-Amarna. (Breasted 371. Wilson 227.) The idea of one, eternal and invisible God and the ban on idols and carved images must be seen on the background of the medley of all the old Egyptian gods.
     Moses is reported to have said: "In Egypt the living are working for the dead." The death cult had existed for milleniums in the twilight of the temples, and pious priests no doubt believed in life beyond death, but the leading hierarchy of the temples clearly understood the value of land in this world.
     The revelation of the living God and salvation by his spirit is like daylight breaking the sinister twilight of the old gods. Professor Johannes Pedersen wrote as follows about the Hebrew view of salvation: "Life and happiness is connected with this world. One is saved to the world, not from the world." (255-258)
     The enslaved Hebrew people were stuck in the mud of the Nile Valley and its bondage, but they were on firm ground with The Ten Commandments, which Sir Winston Churchill calls: "The most decisive leap-forward ever discernible in the human story." To Moses God was not a theological abstraction but a living reality here and now, a God of the market place. A God of the working place. 

In the desert, while wandering in the wilderness, Moses was charged with the task of transforming a people of half-nomads into agriculturists. Between the deserts Sin and Sur and Paran was the large Kadesh Oasis, where the Israelites sojourned for years. The learned Professor Martin Buber says:
     "On account of experiences made in Kadesh, Moses found it necessary to lay down the principal rules for the right to own land. They had to be fundamental rules in order to guard the people against the dangers of settling down, which through ownership of land might easily bring in its train a threatening inequality inside the community. They ought not be allowed to supplant others, to impoverish permanently and oppress one another. They should be placed again and again on an equal footing in personal freedom." (262)Conditions in Egypt were such that: "All that was produced belonged to him who produced nothing." (Asch. Wilson.) Against this is set the righteous realism of the sacred law. In Egypt Moses had seen the result of wrongdoing which had prevailed since the days of Joseph, the division of the people into two parts. The few rich and the many poor. Therefore God declared: "The land shall not be sold forever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me." (Lev. xxv. 23.) About the land problem of the cities God declared: "But the field of the suburbs of their cities may not be sold; for it is their perpetual possession." (ibid. 34) In this way the land monopoly and the proletarisation and exploitation of the people was prevented.
     If failure of crops and misfortune forced a man to sell his land, he always preserved the right to re-buy it: "And in all the land of your possession ye shall grant a redemption for the land." (7 ibid. 24) If he was unable to pay his debt, he could, in the year of jubilee, return to his land and have a new start, free of debt and mortgages:
     "And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee; thou shalt not compel him to serve thee as a bondservant: But as a hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of jubilee: And then shall he depart from thee, both he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return." (Lev. xxv 39-41)The Danish orientalist Professor Frants Buhl makes the following remarks on this:
     "As a plot of land is to be returned to the owner in the year of jubilee, the land is in fact not sold, only the annual yield. Therefore, the price becomes lower the nearer the year of jubilee is." (126)Professor Johannes Pedersen, the Danish scholar, says:
     "In that year 'liberty' will be proclaimed in the country, and everyone shall return to his land and to his family. From this it will be seen that every Hebrew slave must be given his freedom, and every purchase of land must be cancelled. Thus this law repeals, in the proper sense of the word, sale of real property. Actually purchase of that kind of property becomes only leaseholding for a certain term of years. The purpose of this legislation is to prevent that Israelitic men become involved in debt and sink into poverty." (56 ff.) 

The problem of land valuation is a practical problem. In the Law we can see its outlines based upon an assessment of the site quality: "And if a man shall sanctify unto the Lord some part of a field of his possession, then thy estimation shall be according to the seed thereof." (Lev. vvvii. 16)
     The wage-earner's problems are dealt with in this passage: "At his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it." (Deut. xxiv. 15)
     The law was neither aristocratic nor an expression of sentimental welfare politics: "Thou shall not wrest the judgement of the poor in his cause." (Exod. xxiii. 23.) "Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgement: thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty: but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour." (Lev. xix. 15)
     The national barriers are hospitably opened up: "But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." (ibid. 34) The spirit of humaneness is growing: "Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." (Exod. xxiii. 9)
     The Law is interested both in the Haves and in the Have-nots. It said to the farmers: "And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shallt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest... Thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger." (Lev. xix. 9, 10)
     Righteousness and love is not restricted to your fellow men, but is extended even to the draught animals: "Thou shall not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn." (Deut. xxv. 4) The Sabbath, the weekly holiday for every man, was a Mosaic invention, a great social improvement. About it is said: "Six days thou shalt do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest: that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and the son of thy handmaid, and the stranger, may be refreshed." (Exod. xxiii. 12) Even of the young fruit-trees it is ordered, that the fruits thereof should not be gathered the first three years. (Lev. xix. 23.)

Moses was the apostle of righteousness and justice. He was the prophet of liberty too. "And proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." (Lev. xxv. 10)     Now, three thousand years later, we have still not attained what Moses had in view. In his famous oration, "Moses, Apostle of Freedom" Henry George said:      "Trace to the roots the cause that is producing want in the midst of plenty, ignorance in the midst of intelligence, aristocracy in democracy, weakness in strength-and you will find it something which this Hebrew statesman three thousand years ago perceived and guarded against. Moses saw that the real cause of the enslavement of the masses of Egypt was, what has everywhere produced enslavement: -the possession by a class of land upon which and from which the whole people must live." 

All the way through the deserts the Israelites had brought with them the embalmed body of Joseph. As for himself Moses wanted to avoid such a fate. He did not want any worship of his dead bones, while his living spirit was forgotten. Therefore, he walked up the mountain of Nebe to the top of Pisgah. There he stood for a long time looking westwards-and the Lord shewed him all the land-the Promised Land, which he himself should never enter.
     From behind, the cold mountain wind caught his old, brown mantle. He finally gathered it round him and then slowly wandered into the barren hills of the Moabitic mountains, where he disappeared. "No man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day."