THE EXODUS
of Retenu hastened to send, among ather tribute, a chief's daughter with her thirty slaves and sixty-five other slaves. This went on yearly and what with "tribute" and "booty" from two or three hundred to two or three thousand were added each year. In the eighth campaign for example, there were included in the booty three princes and their thirty wives, eighty nobles (or freeman) and 606 slaves; in the tribute were 513 slaves.
This state of things was still going on in the Amarna period. Often, and perhaps as a system, the young children of Syrian princes were held as hostages and educated in the Egyptian schools—and these, it is well known, were open in some measure to poor as well as rich. The Hebrew scribes under the Egyptian taskmasters as described in the book of Exodus are thus not only natural but inevitable. The chances are that not only Eldad, Medad, and the Seventy Elders
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