“Or that Joseph’s sudden rise
To Comptroller of supplies
Was a fraud of monstrous size
On King Pharaoh’s swart civilians.”
Things get in my brain and they don’t ever leave. This one stuck because of the interesting rhymes, I think: “millions” with “civilians.”
This last is, in fact, literally true, if one accepts the Genesis account. First, Joseph charged the fellahin cash for the stored grain. Then he took their farm animals in trade. Then he made them sign over their land to the government, thus eliminating secure private ownership of land in Egypt up to the present day.
He was a swindler of (pardon the phrase) Biblical proportions. It’s a good thing nobody in the Obama administration reads the Bible!