"I will now resume my history of the Hebrews, my dear Sesostris," said the prince, "and will be brief, as we must return to On. The Prince Joseph, as I have said, obtained for his father and brethren all this fair plain, the heart and beauty of Egypt. Here they dwelt when the old man died, after seventeen years' residence in Egypt; and the Hebrew prime minister of the king made for his father a funeral such as few kings receive. It is said to have been more magnificent than that of Osirtasen I., of which our poets have sung. By Pharaoh's command, as his favorite wished to bury his father in Palestine, a vast army went up with the body,--chariots, horsemen, and footmen,--so that to this day the splendor and pomp of the funeral is a tradition throughout the lands they traversed. Joseph then returned to Egypt, and ruled sixty-one years, until both he and Apophis the king were waxed in years. At length he died, and was embalmed, and his body placed in the second pyramid, which you behold a little to the right of Memphis. There his body does not now rest, for, after the expulsion of the Phœnician dynasty, the Hebrews secretly removed it, and its place of concealment is known only to themselves. There is a saying among them that the bones of this prince shall rise again, and that he shall go with them forth from Egypt to a new and fair country beyond Arabia." "Then they have a hope of being one day delivered from their present condition?" I asked. "It is a part of their faith, and inborn, if I may so speak. It is this hope, I think, which makes them bear up so patiently under their servitude." "And how, noble Remeses, were they reduced to bondage in the fair land wherein they once dwelt so peacefully, under the benign sway of their mighty brother?" "The answer to this question, my Sesostris," said the prince, "will involve a history of the overthrow of the dynasty of the Phœnician conquerors, which lasted over two hundred years, with a succession of six kings. Upon the death of the Prince Joseph in his one hundred and tenth year, Apophis the king, being also of great age, became incapable of managing his kingdom, which he had for sixty years intrusted to the hands of his Hebrew prime minister. Ignorant of the true condition of his government--known to but few of his subjects--aged and imbecile, he was incapable of holding the reins of state, left by the Hebrew in his hands. The ever-jealous and watchful king of the Thebaïd, in Upper Egypt, did not delay to take advantage of an opportunity like this to attempt the restoration, in Lower Egypt, of the ancient throne of the native Pharaohs, by the expulsion of the usurping dynasty. But, my Sesostris, you know well the subsequent history--how Pharaoh Amosis, with his Theban hosts, drove them from city to city, and finally pursued them into Arabia, whence they settled in the land of the Philistines, and, capturing Salem, made it their capital city--at least such is one of the traditions."