70 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



But war also brings in its train crop 

 shortage by withdrawing from the fields 

 the men required to till the soil, and by 

 devastating harvest land in order that an 

 enemy may be vanquished through star- 

 vation. 



Even when the fires of conflict have 

 burned themselves out, the grip of famine 

 frequently has remained upon a land be- 

 cause the husbandman either cannot or 

 will not immediately resume his product- 

 ive function. Oftentimes a whole peo- 

 ple's industrial fiber has been impaired by 

 the hardships of war and by moral de- 

 generacy incident to camp life, so that a 

 full generation has been required to re- 

 store their country's thrift and enter- 

 prise. 



Pestilence is the inevitable handmaiden 

 of both famine and war, for the dead of 

 the battlefield breed contagion which finds 

 easy victims among those whose powers 

 of resistance have been sapped by lack of 

 nourishment. 



Thus the three great agencies of whole- 

 sale destruction constitute a terrible tri- 

 angle, each force coordinating with the 

 other two ; and famine is the base line. 



KARUEST RECORD OF A FAMINE 



Among the earliest authentic records 

 of history is the famous "stele of fam- 

 ine," recently discovered carved on a 

 tomb of granite on the island of Sahal, 

 in the first cataract of the Nile. Egyptol- 

 ogists differ as to its exact antiquity, but 

 there is evidence to prove that it was 

 chiseled in the time of Tcheser (or To- 

 sorthrus), who held sway over Egypt 

 nearly two thousand years before the 

 time of Abraham. 



"I am mourning on my high throne," 

 lamented this monarch of ancient times, 

 "for the vast misfortune, because the 

 Nile flood in my time has not come for 

 seven years. Light is the grain ; there is 

 lack of crops and of all kinds of food. 

 Each man has become a thief to his 

 neighbor. They desire to hasten and can- 

 not walk. The child cries, the youth 

 creeps along, and the old man ; their souls 

 are bowed down, their legs are bent to- 

 gether and drag along the ground, and 

 their hands rest in their bosoms. The 

 counsel of the great ones of the court is 



but emptiness. Torn open are the chests 

 of provisions, but instead of contents 

 there is air. Everything is exhausted." 



Thus runs the first chronicle of man- 

 kind's suffering in days of famine. 



A period greater than that which 

 stretches between the Crucifixion and the 

 present day elapsed after the famine of 

 Tcheser's reign before Joseph arrived to 

 hold sway over this same land of Egypt. 

 As the chief administrator for one of the 

 Hyksos Pharaohs, he prepared for seven 

 lean years which were to drive his broth- 

 ers and his aged father, Jacob, out of 

 Canaan, down into the valley of the Nile 

 in search of corn. 



the famine oe Joseph's day 



While the suffering which accompanied 

 this famine was perhaps in no degree 

 comparable to the devastation wrought 

 by the failure of crops in subsequent pe- 

 riods of the world's history, no other has 

 a stronger hold upon the imagination of 

 western civilization, for the details of the 

 dearth are set forth in Biblical records 

 of engrossing interest. 



It was during Joseph's administration 

 that there was inaugurated the system of 

 land rentals in Egypt which has survived 

 to this day in many parts of the earth, 

 notably in India. By the end of the sec- 

 ond year of the famine the people had 

 given to the Israelite all of their money 

 and all of their cattle in exchange for 

 corn. They had naught else with which 

 to purchase food except their land. This 

 they eventually surrendered and the Pha- 

 raohs became the great land-owners of 

 the Nile Valley, while the peasants be- 

 came serfs, paving thereafter to their 

 masters a full fifth of the yield of their 

 farms each year. 



In all, ten famines are recorded in the 

 Bible ; but none, save this in which Jo- 

 seph plays so important a role, was of 

 more than restricted significance, either 

 as to territory or influence on history. 



One of the other nine, however, is 

 worthy of mention for its romantic in- 

 terest — a ten-year famine which drove 

 Naomi and her husband out of the land 

 of Judah into the country of the Moab- 

 ites. At the end of the decade of crop 

 failures, when the widowed and child- 



