8. Both Joseph and his father were embalmed after death (Gen. 50: 2, 3, 26)――a service performed by the physicians. The antiquities of Egypt furnish most conclusive testimony to their skill in this art――a skill far surpassing that of any other people known to history. Great numbers of those embalmed bodies (“mummies”) have been found in Egyptian tombs within the present century, in perfect preservation. On this point the coincidences between sacred and profane history are striking.――――The practice was very ancient, some mummies bearing the date of the oldest kings. It was performed by a special class of physicians. In harmony with Moses, Herodotus and Diodorus state that the embalming process occupied forty days; the entire period of mourning seventy. Classic authorities give accounts similar to those in Gen. 50 of great mourning for the dead. The monuments contain representations to the same effect. Funeral trains, processions, of such sort as Gen. 50 records, are represented abundantly in the oldest tombs at Elithias, also at Sagguarah, at Gizeh, and at Thebes. (Hengstenberg’s Egypt and Moses, pp. 70–78).――――A coincidence so minute as this is noticed; that mourners forbore to shave their hair or beard; but none might appear ♦before the king unshorn. Consequently we observe that in the mourning scene of Gen. 50, Joseph does not come before the king in person but “spake unto the house of Pharaoh” requesting them to speak in his behalf to the king (Gen. 50: 4–6). Quite in contrast with the usual oriental custom, women were exempt from seclusion and moved in society with apparently entire freedom. This appears in the family of Potiphar. The ancient sculptures and paintings found in their tombs give a very full view of the domestic life of the ancient Egyptians, no point of which is more striking than the high social position of woman and the entire absence of the harem system of seclusion. “The wife is called the lady of the house.” (See Smith’s Bible Dictionary, p. 677). According to the monuments the women in Egypt lived under far less restraint than in the East, or even in Greece. Wilkinson’s Egypt is full of testimony to this point (Vol. II., p. 389). Hengstenberg’s Moses, p. 24. Sad to say there is abundant evidence from profane sources of a very lax morality among married women――of which the history of Joseph in Potiphar’s house is an illustration. Herodotus gives a fact in point: “The wife of one of the earliest kings was untrue to him. It was a long time before a woman could be found who was faithful to her husband. When at last one was found, the king took her without hesitation for his wife.”