Genesis 47:11: The best of the land, and the name of the city they will build in chains

"Then Joseph settled his father and his brothers and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded." The word for what they are given is the word the book has been saving. A possession — achuzzah — is the same term used for exactly one other thing in Genesis: the field and cave at Machpelah that Abraham weighed out four hundred shekels for, so that he would own one hole in the ground in the country he had been promised the whole of. That was a burial plot bought at full price in Canaan. This is prime delta pasture handed over by royal command in Egypt, and Genesis uses the same word for both, which is either a comfort or a warning and turns out to be a warning. Rameses is Goshen under the name the district carried later, and the sources put both at Qantir, the Ramesside capital in the eastern delta. Exodus 1 uses the name again in the worst sentence available: they built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses. The ground given to this family as the best of the land is the ground their descendants lay bricks on under a taskmaster. Genesis does not point this out. It just writes the name down twice. So the map holds both names on one frame, Egypt and Rameses, in the same red — because they are the same country and the point of the red is that it never stops being Egypt, however good the pasture is. Two verses later Jacob is standing in front of Pharaoh, blessing him, and telling him that the days of the years of his sojourning have been few and evil. Seventeen years after this verse he dies, and the last thing he asks for is to be taken out of this land and put in the other one.