Page:The Pharaohs and their people; scenes of old Egyptian life and history (IA pharaohstheirpeo00berkiala).pdf/238

 country, unless it were Greece, much of whose early civilisation came from the land of the Nile. Even in the days of harsher servitude at which we have now arrived, there were no such hideous cruelties as we meet with in the blood-stained pages of Roman, Carthaginian, or American slavery. The Egyptian slave was well fed, and by the moral and religious code maltreatment of a slave was an offence. We do not know the legal code on this subject, but the moral tone is clearly shown in the confession every ruler had to make before Osiris: 'I have allowed no master to maltreat his slave.' But moral feeling can grow blunt, and maltreatment was not wanting in the days of Rameses

The Hebrew colony in Goshen, so warmly welcomed by the Hyksos kings, must have been regarded with distrust on the accession of the native dynasty, which 'knew not Joseph,' and had the utmost aversion for aught that was connected with the rulers he had served. Under Rameses, or one of his predecessors, the Hebrews had been reduced to cruel bondage; 'they built for Pharaoh