of Diodoros, were looked upon as ‘sacred.’ Nor is it easy to see who could have been the physicians who were the ‘slaves’ of the Hebrew vizier. The physician in Egypt was usually a free man, who followed a profession which brought with it honour and respect. The doctor belonged to the learned classes, and, like the scribe, had no mean opinion of his worth and dignity. But such physicians were employed in healing the sick, not in embalming the dead, and must have stood in a very different position from that of Joseph’s ‘slaves.’ More light is still wanted on the subject from monumental sources; in spite of the papyri which describe the ceremonies attendant on the various acts of the embalmment, we are still ignorant of its practical details. When at last the days of mourning were past, Joseph spoke, we are told, to ‘the house of Pharaoh.’ The expression is purely Egyptian, and refers to the signification of the word ‘Pharaoh’ itself. Pharaoh, the Egyptian Per-âa, is the ‘Great House’; ‘the son of the Sun-god’ was too highly exalted to be spoken of as a man, and it was therefore to ‘the Great House’ that his subjects addressed themselves. Modern Europe is familiar with a similar phrase; when we allude to the ‘Sublime Porte’ we mean the Turkish Sultan, who once administered justice from the ‘High Gate’ of his palace. Jacob was buried in the cave of Machpelah. A long procession of soldiers and mourners, partly in chariots, partly on foot, accompanied the mummy on its way out of Egypt. Such a procession was no unusual thing. The wealthy Egyptian desired to be buried near the tomb of Osiris at Abydos, and it was therefore not unfrequently the custom to convey his mummy in solemn procession to that sacred spot, and then to carry it back once more to its own final resting-place. The procession which accompanied the body of the patriarch must have followed the high-road which led through the Shur, or line of fortification on the eastern border of the desert, and brought the traveller with little difficulty to Southern Palestine. The reference in the narrative to the threshing-floor of Atad, on the eastern side of the Jordan, is an interpolation, which embodies merely a local etymology. The chariot-road from Egypt to Palestine naturally never ran near the Jordan; and the threshing-floor of Atad would have been far out of the way. But popular imagination had seen in the name of Abel-Mizraim, where the threshing-floor was situated, a ‘mourning of Egypt,’ and had accordingly connected it with the great mourning that was made for Jacob. As a matter of fact, however, Abel-Mizraim really signifies ‘the meadow of Egypt,’ _abel_, ‘a meadow,’ being a not uncommon element in the geographical names of ancient Canaan.[124]