86 
Sheaves are represented in Egyptian harvest-scenes, very 
neatly bound and laid on their sides. This illustrates the 
words, “ my sheaf arose , and also stood upright ; and lo, your 
sheaves stood,” &c. 
In the other dream, “ the eleven stars,” making with him- 
self twelve, cannot refer to the signs of the zodiac, but we 
are reminded of the two sets of twelve stars each which 
Diodorus describes as north and south of the zodiac : Professor 
Sayce* * * § suggests that east and west would be more correct. 
“ The twelve stars of Martu, or the West,” whose names he 
gives, would be the twelve of Josephus dream. 
Shekhem and Dothan . 
Joseph was sent by his father to Shekhem, and thence he 
was directed into Dothan. 
It is worth while to inquire whether the real origin of the 
name Shekhem or Sekhem, EDP, is to be sought in its 
ancient sanctuary, for Sekhem in Egypt meant the holiest 
inner chamber of the Temple ;f and, as Ebers has mentioned 
in this connection, Pa- sekhem was the name of a city in Lower 
Egypt- 
Dothan (or Dothain) is identified by Dr. Haigh { with a place 
mentioned in the Karnak lists of Thotmes III. It is true 
that Mariette-Bey§ gives Yutah (Jos. xv. 55) but Dothain 
seems nearer to the Egyptian Tuthina , of which the final letter 
must be dropped, and the T may be equivalent to D. These 
most important geographical lists bear date not much more 
than a century later than Joseph, if we are right in placing 
him towards the end of the Hyksos period. 
Dothan still keeps its ancient name, Tell Dothan, and lies || 
on the ancient route from Damascus into Egypt. 
Describing the old empty cisterns, contracted towards the 
top, Dr. Thomson writes : “ When peering into these dark 
demijohn cisterns I have often thought of poor Joseph, for 
it was doubtless a forsaken cistern ( beer is the word both in 
Hebrew and Arabic) into which he was thrown by his barbarous 
brethren. The leer was empty — there was no water in it — 
* T.S.B.A. III. 176. 
f Brugsch., Hist. I. 377, 380, 386. Pierret, Vocab. 531. Ebers, ZEg. u. 
die, B.M. 231. 
X Zeitschr., 1875, 101. 
§ Listes, p. 15, No. 9. o ^ "jj (j (j ^ 
1! Tristram L. of Israel, 132. 
