land; and when in his old age a new Pharaoh sent messengers to say that his political offences were forgiven, and that he might return to Egypt, Sinuhit left his Arab wife and children and went back once more to his own country.[161] Like Sinuhit, Moses also fled to the eastern desert, beyond the reach of the Egyptian power. He did not feel himself safe till he found himself in Midian. The Sinaitic Peninsula—Mafkat, as it was called—was an Egyptian province, and the mines of malachite and copper on its western side were garrisoned by Egyptian troops. The ‘salt’ desert of Melukhkha, moreover, which lay between Egypt and Palestine, was equally under Egyptian control; and, as we learn from the Tel el-Amarna tablets, supplied contingents to the Pharaoh’s army.[162] But in Midian Moses was safe from pursuit; and the ‘priest of Midian,’ like the shêkh of Kedem with whom Sinuhit had to do, gave him a kindly welcome, and married him to Zipporah, one of his daughters. Government by a priest was a peculiarly Semitic institution. Assur, the primitive capital of Assyria, had been governed by high-priests before it had been governed by kings, and so too had Saba or Sheba in the south of Arabia. There, as we learn from inscriptions, the Makârib, or High-priests, had preceded the kings. Tradition has handed down more than one name for the high-priest of Midian. In one part of the narrative in Exodus he is called Reuel, in another part Jethro. Jethro is a distinctively north Arabian name, for which there is monumental evidence, and it is probably more correct than Reuel.[163] Whatever may have been his name, however, Moses remained with him for some time; but instead of being treated like a prince, as Sinuhit had been among the Kadmonites, he was set to keep the flocks of his father-in-law. It was while thus shepherding the flocks of Jethro that Moses came one day to Horeb, ‘the mountain of God,’ which rose into the sky at the back of the desert. Here he beheld a _seneh_ or ‘thorn-bush,’ lighted up with fire, which nevertheless did not consume it.[164] Approaching nearer, he heard a voice which he believed was that of God Himself, and which told him that the mountain whereon he stood was holy ground. Moses was then ordered to return to Egypt, and there in the name of the God of Israel to command Pharaoh to let His people go. Wonders and signs were to be performed before consent would be wrung from the obdurate heart of the Egyptian king, and ten sore plagues were to be sent upon the inhabitants of the Delta who had joined with the Pharaoh in his oppression of the Israelites. At the same time, God revealed Himself under a new name, which was henceforth to be that of the national God of Israel. On the slopes of Horeb the name of Yahveh was first made known to man.[165]