When next we hear of Egypt in the Old Testament, it is when Israel is about to become a nation. Joseph was sold by his brethren to merchants from Arabia, who carried him into Egypt. There he became the slave of Potiphar, “the eunuch of Pharaoh and chief of the executioners,” or royal body-guard. The name of Potiphar, like that of Potipherah, the priest of On, corresponds with the Egyptian Pa-tu-pa-Ra, “the Gift of the Sun-god.” It has been asserted by Egyptologists that names of this description are not older than the age of the twenty-second dynasty, to which Shishak, the contemporary of Rehoboam, belonged; but because no similar name of an earlier date has hitherto been found, it does not follow that such do not exist. As long as our materials are imperfect, we cannot draw positive conclusions merely from an absence of evidence. That Potiphar should have been an eunuch and yet been married seems a greater obstacle to our acceptance of the story. This, however, it need not be. Eunuchs in the modern East, who have risen to positions of power and importance, have possessed their harems like other men. In ancient Babylonia it was only the service of religion which the eunuch was forbidden to enter. Such was doubtless the case in Egypt also. Egyptian research has brought to light a curious parallel to the history of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. It is found in one of the many tales, the equivalents of the modern novel, in which the ancient Egyptians delighted. The tale, which is usually known as that of “The Two Brothers,” was written by the scribe Enna for Seti II. of the nineteenth dynasty when he was still crown-prince, and it embodies the folk-lore of his native land. Enna lived under Meneptah, the probable Pharaoh of the Exodus, and his work was thus contemporaneous with the events which brought about the release of the Israelites from their “house of bondage.” How old the stories may be upon which it is based it is impossible for us to tell. Here is Professor Erman’s translation of the commencement of the tale:—