Two sons had been born to Joseph by his Egyptian wife, whom the Israelites knew by their Hebrew names. They had been born before the death of his father, and had thus received his blessing. Joseph himself lived ‘an hundred and ten years.’ This was the limit of life the Egyptian desired for himself and his friends, and in the inscriptions the boon of a life of ‘an hundred and ten years’ is from time to time asked for from the gods. It is the term of existence a court poet promises to Seti II. ‘on earth,’ and Ptah-hotep, the author of ‘the oldest book in the world,’ who flourished in the days of the fifth dynasty, assures us that, thanks to his pursuit of wisdom he had already attained the age.[125] Joseph was embalmed, but his mummy was not carried to Hebron for burial, like that of his father. If Apopi II. had been the Pharaoh who had transformed him from a Hebrew slave into the highest of Egyptian officials, the War of Independence must have broken out long before his death. The Hyksos dynasty was hastening to its decay. Its strength had departed from it, and the Pharaohs of Zoan, who had lost all power in Upper Egypt, would still more have lost all power in Asia. Their soldiers were needed for other purposes than that of escorting the coffin of the dead vizier across the desert of El-Arish. Moreover, Joseph was an Egyptian official, and by his marriage into the family of the high priest of Heliopolis had become as much of an Egyptian as his Hyksos master. We are told that he made the Israelites swear to carry his corpse with them should they ever return to Palestine; the triumph of the Theban princes was growing more assured, and Joseph knew well that the vengeance of the victorious party would be wreaked upon the dead as well as upon the living. The history of Egypt had already shown that the tomb and the mummy were the first to suffer. A change of sepulchre was no unheard-of thing. King Ai of the eighteenth dynasty had two, if not three, tombs made for himself, and the mummy could be transported from one place of burial to another. All knew where it was interred; year by year offerings were made to the spirit of the dead, and in many cases the estate of the deceased was taxed to support a line of priests who should perform the stated services at the tomb. As long as the sepulchre of Joseph was in the neighbourhood of his people it would have been easy to protect his mummy from violence, and to carry the coffin out of Egypt when the needful time should come. Footnote 1: See Brugsch, _Egypt under the Pharaohs_, Eng. tr., second edit., ii. p. 134. Footnote 2: _Records of the Past_, new ser., v. pp. 66 _sqq._ Footnote 3: Thus in an Assyrian hymn (K 890), published by Dr. Brünnow in the _Zeitschrift für Assyriologie_, July 1889, we have (line 8) _istu pan Khabiriya iptarsanni âsi_, ‘from the face of my confederates he has cut me off, even me.’ Footnote 4: _Records of the Past_, new ser., vi. p. 39. Footnote 5: