THE RIDDEN HORSE 133 



his son Dan " an adder in the path, that biteth 

 the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall back- 

 ward." Here is the earliest mention of the 

 ridden horse. It was in Jacob's funeral pro- 

 cession to his native stock range east of Jordan 

 that there appeared " both chariot and horse- 

 men, a great company." 



One suspects a trace of swank in the story 

 of that " great company." Jacob's countrymen 

 were sheep herders, destined to go afoot for 

 centuries to come. The Egyptians used 

 chariots, but never took to riding as a habit. 

 Merchants were trading horses to the Hittites, 

 but that (until Ptolemy Philadelphus made 

 water holes, and a highway in the second 

 century b.c.) was done in face of extreme 

 difficulty. The week's passage of the Desert 

 of Sin could be made only in the first two 

 months of each year, and even then the horses 

 must be refreshed from water bags carried by 

 camels. On the whole it is likely that the 

 great company of chariots and horsemen was a 

 poetic device for making the most of Joseph's 

 posthumous importance. 



According to Manetho, the well-known 

 Egyptian historian, somewhere about the 

 twenty-first century b.c. a most objectionable 

 sheep-herding tribe of Arabs began to infest 



