6. Joseph’s arraignment of his brethren――“Ye are spies; to see the nakedness of the land are ye come”――suggests an inquiry into the relations of Egypt to foreign powers. The suspicions of Joseph obviously assume a consciousness of great liability to foreign invasion. Such was the fact; and the reasons for it will readily appear. We have only to think of the powerful tribes scattered over vast Arabia, the Hittites and other tribes of Canaan and of the regions North and East――all stalwart men, all poor and subsisting on precarious supplies, yet possessed of fleet animals――horses, dromedaries, camels――with which they were able to move masses of men with great celerity. Let such men see the tempting bait of corn in plenty in Egypt, and the marvel is how Egypt could protect herself against sudden and formidable invasion. The monuments of her early history testify to her long and bloody wars with the Hittites and other tribes of Western Asia, often carrying the war into their country as a wiser policy no doubt than to stand behind her own walls on the defensive. Suffice it to say here that when those Asiatic countries were famishing for bread and it was well known there was corn enough in Egypt, the suspicion expressed by Joseph that those ten men were spies was not only natural but perhaps even a necessary measure of policy to satisfy the Egyptians. _They_ must naturally apprehend danger though _he_ might personally know that these men were harmless. 7. Sacred history drops this incidental remark――“For every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians” (Gen. 46: 34). To some extent this feeling was a natural outgrowth of their relations to the nomadic tribes of South-western Asia――to which we have recently referred. But there is some reason to suppose among them a certain special antipathy against the sheep, more intense than against any other domestic animal unless swine be an exception. They had so much respect for the cow that they made her and her species objects of worship. Although they attained great skill in the manufacture of linen, cotton, and silk, I meet with no allusion to wool. Woolen cloths are never found upon Egyptian mummies; linen and cotton were used.――――Some writers have supposed that shepherds were held in special abhorrence because their country had been conquered and ruled by a dynasty of shepherd kings from the North-east; but the precise date of their invasion and of their rule over Egypt is very much in doubt.