It taught the people who lived along its
banks the noble art of ``team-work.'' They depended upon
each other to build their irrigation trenches and keep their
dikes in repair. In this way they learned how to get along
with their neighbours and their mutual-benefit-association quite
easily developed into an organised state.
Then one man grew more powerful than most of his neighbours
and he became the leader of the community and their
commander-in-chief when the envious neighbours of western
Asia invaded the prosperous valley. In due course of time
he became their King and ruled all the land from the Mediterranean
to the mountains of the west.
But these political adventures of the old Pharaohs (the
word meant ``the Man who lived in the Big House'') rarely
interested the patient and toiling peasant of the grain fields.
Provided he was not obliged to pay more taxes to his King
than he thought just, he accepted the rule of Pharaoh as he
accepted the rule of Mighty Osiris.
It was different however when a foreign invader came
and robbed him of his possessions. After twenty centuries of
independent life, a savage Arab tribe of shepherds, called the
Hyksos, attacked Egypt and for five hundred years they were
the masters of the valley of the Nile. They were highly un-
popular and great hate was also felt for the Hebrews who
came to the land of Goshen to find a shelter after their long
wandering through the desert and who helped the foreign
usurper by acting as his tax-gatherers and his civil servants.
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