Besides Zoan, Heliopolis, or ‘On of the North,’ was a chief centre of Hyksos power. It was the oldest and most celebrated sanctuary of Egypt, where ancient schools of learning were established, and from whence the religious system had been disseminated which made the Sun-god the supreme ruler of the universe. The Hyksos had no difficulty in identifying the Sun-god of On with their own supreme deity Sutekh, who was a form of the Canaanitish Baal. On, consequently, once the chief seat of the orthodox faith of Egypt, became the centre of foreign heresy. The Sallier Papyrus, which describes the origin of the war that resulted in the expulsion of the Hyksos, specially tells us that ‘the Impure of (On), the city of Ra, were subject to Ra-Apopi,’ the Hyksos Pharaoh, and the Egyptians changed into Ra, the Egyptian Sun-god, the name of Sutekh, which a scarab of Apopi shows was really prefixed to that Pharaoh’s name.[101] The great temple of the Sun-god of On, accordingly, before which Usertesen of the twelfth dynasty had planted the obelisks, one of which remains to this day, was transformed into a temple of the foreign god; and though its high-priest still continued to bear his ancient title, and perform the ceremonies of the past, it was Sutekh and not the native divinity whom he served. Potipherah—in Egyptian, Pa-tu-pa-Ra—was a literal translation of the Canaanitish Mattan-Baal, ‘the gift of Baal,’ and implied of itself the foreign cult. Potiphar is an abbreviation of Potipherah, and reminds us of similar abbreviations met with in the letters of the Canaanitish correspondents of the Pharaoh in the Tel el-Amarna collection. It is an abbreviation which points to long familiarity with the name on the part of the Hebrew people. The titles, however, given to Potiphar are obscure. The second seems to signify ‘captain of the bodyguard,’ but the first—_saris_ in Hebrew—means an ‘eunuch.’ Ebers, it is true, has pointed out that eunuchs in the East have not only held high positions of state, but have married wives as well;[102] this, however, has been in Turkey, not in ancient Egypt. Perhaps the word is the Babylonian _saris_, ‘an officer’; at all events, the Rab-sarîs of 2 Kings xviii. 17 is the Assyrian Rab-sarisi, or ‘chief officer.’ That Babylonian words should have made their way into Egypt in the age of the Hyksos is by no means strange. We have learned from the Tel el-Amarna tablets that Babylonian was for centuries the literary language of Western Asia, and was studied and written even on the banks of the Nile, while the monuments of Babylonia itself have shown that Babylonian culture had made its way to the frontiers of Egypt at a very remote age. The history of Joseph contains at least one word which bears testimony to its influence. When Joseph was made ‘governor over all the land of Egypt,’ the heralds who ran before his chariot to announce the fact shouted the word ‘abrêk!’ For