Very soon the famine pressed upon the Egyptian people, for they had no corn in reserve; the reserve was in the hands of the government.  But this reserve Joseph did not deal out gratuitously, as the Roman government, under the emperors, dealt out food to the citizens.  He made the people pay for their bread, and took their money and deposited it in the royal treasury.  When after two years their money was all spent, it was necessary to resort to barter, and cattle were given in exchange for corn, by which means the King became possessed of all the personal property of his subjects.  As famine pressed, the people next surrendered their land to avoid starvation,—­all but the priests.  Pharaoh thus became absolute proprietor of the whole country; of money, cattle, and land,—­an unprecedented surrender, which would have produced a wide-spread disaffection and revolt, had it not been that Joseph, after the famine was past and the earth yielded its accustomed harvest, exacted only one-fifth of the produce of the land for the support of the government, which could not be regarded as oppressive.  As the King thus became absolute proprietor of Egypt by consent of the people, whom he had saved from starvation through the wisdom and energy of his prime minister, it is probable that later a new division of land took place, it being distributed among the people generally in small farms, for which they paid as rent a fifth of their produce.  The gratitude of the people was marked:  “Thou hast saved our lives:  let us find grace in the eyes of my lord, and we will be Pharaoh’s slaves.”  Since the time of Christ there have been two similar famines recorded,—­one in the eleventh century, lasting, like Joseph’s, seven years; and the other in the twelfth century, of which the most distressing details are given, even to the extreme desperation of cannibalism.  The same cause originated both,—­the failure of the Nile overflow.  Out of the sacred river came up for Egypt its fat kine and its lean,—­its blessings and its curses.

The price exacted by Joseph for the people’s salvation made the King more absolute than before, since all were thus made dependent on the government.

This absolute rule of the kings, however, was somewhat modified by ancient customs, and by the vast influence of the priesthood, to which the King himself belonged.  The priests of Egypt, under all the dynasties, formed the most powerful caste ever seen among the nations of the earth, if we except the Brahmanical caste of India.  At the head of it was the King himself, who was chief of the religion and of the state.  He regulated the sacrifices of the temples, and had the peculiar right of offering them to the gods upon grand occasions.  He superintended the feasts and festivals in honor of the deities.  The priests enjoyed privileges which extended to their whole family.  They were exempt from taxes, and possessed one-third of the landed property, which was entailed upon them,