Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 165, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 July 1914 — THE CITADEL OF JOSEPH’S POWER. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE CITADEL OF JOSEPH’S POWER.

(By MELVIN GROVE KYLE, D. D., LL. D., EKYPtologrist; Lecturer on Biblical Archaelogy in Xenia Theological Sewiiz nary; author of "The Deciding Voice of the Monuments in Biblical Criticism.") . ' • “I find mbre sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatever.’’—Sir Isaac Newton. We did not expect to find the citadel of Joseph’s power. Nobody in

Egypt ever expects what he finds or finds what he expects. Professor , Petrie selected this site of the great temple of in Lower Egypt, for his work of exploration in 1912, in the hope that it, might yield great temple sculptures and much treasure of such sort. He dug through nine and a half feet of mud with 18 Inches of water in

the bottom of it, splashed and dabbled and drudged for many weeks, and at the end of It all had scarcely anything to carry away; but he left some great things in the mud and he had found some wonderful history. A modern road runs across in front of the one standing obelisk, which marked the entrance to the great temple. At the side of this roadway, in the level land,' the professor set his ' diggers to work. Almost immediately their hoes struck the solid digging which, to their experienced hands, announced a wan of sun-dried mud brick. They were set to cut straight across it and down to the desert sand underneath it This proved to be a big job, for the wall .was nine and a half feet high, coming now just up to the surface of the soil, as we have seen. It was one hundred and thirty feet broad across the top, and had sloping sides. It showed a curve that would enclose an oval space fifteen hundred feet wide and of a length which H was Impossible yet to determine. This was no house-wall, no mere inclosing wall of a temple area; here was nothing short of a great fortification, the surrounding wall of some citadel of power. Who reigned here!

Different ages and different dynast ties had their peculiar structures and methods. Some eight miles toths north at Tell el-Yehudiyeh, in 1906, Professor Petrie found the great fortified camp of the Hyksos, the dynasty of invaders that ruled Egypt in the days of the patriarchs, Abraham, Jacob and Joseph. This camp, also, was enclosed by a wall one hundred and thirty feet broad, made with sloping sides and enclosing an oval space fifteen hundred feet wide. This was the peculiar construction of the Hyksos kings. Here it is found again at Heliopolis. Now, Heliopolis was the great capital of Egypt in those days. Probably the first camp qf the Hyksos invaders was at Tell el-Yehudiyeh. 'They mastered Lower Egypt and so, sooner or later, they must have taken Heliopolis. And when they did take it, then it was that they built this great wall around the central place of government to enclose the citadel of their power and malfe it secure against attack by the native Egyptians. _ ■ They had already gained possession of Heliopolis in Joseph's time, for the king was able to give Joseph to wife “the daughter of the Priest of On,” L e., Heliopolis. So that this great mud wall which we have cut, now buried beneath the sediment of thirty-seven hundred annual inundations, enclosed the seat of government in Joseph’s day. Here we stand at the entrance of the citadel of Joseph’s power. Within this colossal oval of mud brick the great Hebrew prime minister ruled. There, is no gateway. Probably there was a causeway over the wall, as at the camp of Tell el-Yehudiyeh. By this causeway Joseph’s chariot, the second chariot in the realm, rolled in and out By this way entered the sons of Joseph to buy corn, and here, within this stronghold, came the great patriarch, Jacob, to bless the Pharaoh and to receive the gift of pasture-land in Goshen.