Those who remained in a servile position were not in the least in the condition of being separately bought and sold like cattle, as in American slavery. They were organized in regular families, with their scribes or “officers” of themselves, under the “commanders of tribute” of the Egyptians.[11] In short, their labour was a sort of tribal tax which they had to render, and for which their own headmen were responsible. How and when the individual worked was the affair of his own family and clan, and could not be dictated by the Egyptian so long as the total output was maintained. This is an important part of the status of labour, whether its system is autonomous or is an individual slavery. It seems that the status was that of a tribe heavily taxed for labour, but left to follow its own arrangements. This could only be carried out where there was a solid block of the Israelite population, as in the land of Goshen, the Wady Tumilat. It does not therefore imply any special tax or disability upon those who—like the sculptor just named—had entered on various trades and work scattered in the country. Probably they were gradually lost to sight in mixture with the general population.
During the age of the Judges there was a continuous decadence in Egypt, so that on both sides it is improbable that trade led to any Jewish settlements. The rise of the Jewish kingdom, and the regular horse trade established by Solomon, together with his marriage to the royal family of Tanis, Zoan, and consequent connection with the royal family Bubastis,[12] must have led to some mercantile establishments. Still greater familiarity with Egypt came during the increasing troubles of the close of the Jewish kingdom. About seventy years before the fall of Jerusalem the new Saite King, Psamtek, had established a great frontier fort on the road to Palestine, at Tahpanhes; this was a settlement of Greek troops, and hence open to foreign residents.[13] Whenever there was trouble in Judæa, especially from Assyria, this fortress would be the natural asylum of any refugees, and Greek and Jew first mixed here and learned each other’s ways. The results of this mixture are evident in the reference to five cities speaking the language of Canaan, and swearing by the Lord of Hosts, and in the address of Jeremiah to the Jews which dwelt in the land of Egypt, which dwell at Migdol, the desert frontier, and at Tahpanhes, the Delta frontier, and at Noph, Memphis, and in the country of Pathros, Upper Egypt,[14] calling their attention to the desolation of Jerusalem and exhorting them therefore to give up burning incense to other gods in the land of Egypt, where they had gone to dwell already, more than ten years before the fall of Jerusalem. Their reply that they had prospered when they sacrificed to the queen of heaven was met by the prophecy that Pharaoh-Hophra should be given into the hand of his enemies and into the hand of them that seek his life.[15] The meaning of this lay in the politics of Egypt. Hophra was of the party that favoured Greeks and foreigners; but there was a strong Nationalist party of Egyptians who would exclude foreigners, and they sought the life of Hophra, and finally dethroned and murdered him. This led to the exclusive policy which restricted foreign residence under Amasis. This declaration was therefore a warning against trusting to the continuance of the open policy, under which Egypt had been a refuge to the Jews. The fugitive remnant of the royal family and court had found what seemed a safe refuge at Tahpanhes, where the palace-fort had been assigned to them in the Greek camp by Hophra. There Jeremiah had buried stones in the outside platform before the entry of Pharaoh’s house, and the fort is still called “The palace of the Jew’s daughter.” Their patron, however, was to fall, and the open policy with him, and Amasis was—twenty years later—to revive the Nationalist control. He closed down all the Greek settlements and garrisons, only leaving one treaty-port to Greek trade—that of Naukratis;[16] and they paid for this Nationalist movement by falling into the power of Persia in the next generation.