iii. 8), a Mesopotamian district which lay opposite to the Hittite

city of Carchemish. Amenôphis III. married a wife from the royal house of Mitanni; and the offspring of this marriage--Amenôphis IV.--in his turn married Tadukhepa, daughter of Duisratta, the Mitannian king. He was thus doubly drawn to look favourably upon the Mitannian form of faith, which, like that of the Semites, included the adoration of the winged solar disk. Meantime the Egyptian conquest of Palestine, whose petty kings and governors now ruled as satraps for the Egyptian monarch, had paved the way for strangers from Canaan and Syria to rise into favour at Pharaoh’s court. Amenôphis IV. surrounded himself with Semitic officers and courtiers, thus offending the nobles of Egypt; and by forsaking the ancient religion of his country, brought about a rupture with the powerful priesthood of Thebes. Forced to go forth, the “heretic king” built a new capital on the edge of the desert to the north. Here he assumed the name of Khu-en-Aten, “the glory of the solar disk,” while his architects and sculptors consecrated a new and peculiar style of art to the new religion, and even the potters decorated the vases they modelled with new colours and patterns.

“The archives of the empire were transferred from Thebes to the new residence of the king, and there stored in the royal palace, which stood among its gardens at the northern extremity of the city. But the existence and prosperity of Khu-en-Aten’s capital were of short duration. When the king died he left only daughters behind him, whose husbands assumed in succession the royal power. Their reigns lasted but a short time, and it is even possible that more than one of them had to share his power with another prince. At any rate it was not long before rulers and people alike returned to the old paths. The faith which Khu-en-Aten had endeavoured to introduce was left without worshippers, the Asiatic strangers whom he and his father had promoted to high offices of State were driven from power, and the new capital was deserted never to be inhabited again. The great temple of the solar disk fell into decay, like the royal palace, and the archives of Khu-en-Aten were buried under the ruins of the chamber wherein they had been kept.”

It is these archives which have now come to light, and which furnish such extraordinary information concerning the state of Egypt and Palestine in the century before the Oppression. In the winter of 1887 the fellahin of Egypt, searching for nitrous earth with which to manure their fields, discovered some three hundred ancient tablets inscribed with Babylonian cuneiform writing. The tablets are copies of letters and despatches from the kings and governors of Babylonia and Assyria, of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Eastern Cappadocia, of Phœnicia and Palestine, exchanging information with the Pharaoh of Egypt, or making reports as to the state of the country they governed. Among the correspondents of the Egyptian sovereigns were Assurynballidh of Assyria and Burnaburyas of Babylonia, which thus fix the date of Khu-en-Aten to about 1430 B.C. This shows incidentally that the Egyptologists have been quite right in not assigning the Exodus to an earlier period than 1320 B.C., that is to say, the reign of Menephtah, the son and successor of Rameses II.

At the date of the despatches Palestine and Phœnicia were garrisoned by Egyptian troops, and their affairs were more or less directed by Egyptian governors. But in some cases the native prince was allowed to retain his title and a portion of his power. Thus Jerusalem (which was then called Uru-’Salim--the seat or oracle of the god Salim, it is supposed, whose temple stood on the mountain of Moriah)--was ruled over by Ebed-tob. He appears to have been a priest rather than a king, since he tells us that he was appointed by an oracle of the god; and in that case the state over which he presided would be a Theocracy. Dr Sayce considers that an unexpected light is thus thrown on the person and position of Melchizedek. He was priest of El-Elyon, the “Most High God,” and king only in virtue of his priestly office. His father therefore is not named. [“Records of the Past.” New Series, vol. v.] There were as yet no signs of the Israelites coming into the land. But the Canaanite population was already threatened by an enemy from the north. These were the Hittites, to whom references are made in several of the despatches from Syria and Phœnicia. After the weakening of the Egyptian power, in consequence of the religious troubles which followed the death of Khu-en-Aten, the Hittites were enabled to complete their conquests in the south, and to drive a wedge between the Semites of the East and the West. With the revival of the Egyptian empire under the rulers of the nineteenth dynasty the southward course of Hittite conquest was checked; but the wars of Rameses II. against the Hittites of Kadesh on Orontes desolated and exhausted Canaan and prepared the way for the Israelitish invasion. Phœnicia seems to have been the furthest point to the north to which the direct government of Egypt extended. At any rate the letters which came to the Egyptian monarch from Syria and Mesopotamia were sent to him by princes who called themselves his “brothers,” and not by officials who were the “servants” of the king.

It is wonderful to find that in the fifteenth century before our era, active literary intercourse was carried on throughout the civilised world of Western Asia, between Babylonia and Egypt and the smaller states of Palestine, of Syria, of Mesopotamia, and even of Eastern Cappadocia. And this intercourse was carried on by means of the Babylonian language and the complicated Babylonian script. It implies that all over the civilised East there were libraries and schools, where the Babylonian language and literature were taught and learned. Babylonian in fact was as much the language of diplomacy and cultivated society as French has been in modern times, with the difference that whereas it does not take long to read French, the cuneiform syllabary required years of hard labour and attention before it could be acquired. There must surely have been a Babylonian conquest. In fact, Mr Theo. G. Pinches now finds, from a text of about B.C. 2115 to 2090, that Animisutana, king of Babylon at that time, was also king of Phœnicia among other places. [“Records of the Past” New Series, vol. v.]

One of the facts which result most clearly from a study of the tablets is that, not only was a Semitic language the medium of literary intercourse between the Pharaoh of Egypt and his officers abroad, but that Semites held high and responsible posts in the Egyptian Court itself. Thus we find Dudu, or David, addressed by his son as “my lord,” and ranking apparently next to the monarch; and there are in the Egyptian National Collection not only letters written by officials with Egyptian names, like Khapi or Hapi (Apis), but with such Semitic names as Rib-Addu, Samu-Addu, Bu-Dadu (the Biblical Bedad) and Milkili (the Biblical Malchiel). A flood of light is thus poured upon a period of Egyptian history which is of high interest for the student of the Old Testament. In spite of the reticence of the Egyptian monuments, we can now see what was the meaning of the attempt of Amenophis IV. to supersede the ancestral religion of Egypt. The king was in all respects an Asiatic. His mother, who seems to have been a woman of strong character,--able to govern not only her son, but even her less pliable husband,--came from the region of the Euphrates, and brought with her Asiatic followers, Asiatic ideas, and an Asiatic form of faith. The court became Semitised. The favourites and officials of the Pharaoh, his officers in the field, his correspondents abroad, bore names which showed them to be of Canaanite and even of Israelitish origin. If Joseph and his brethren had found favour among the Hyksos princes of an earlier day, their descendants were likely to find equal favour at the court of “the heretic king.”

We need not wonder, therefore, if Amenophis IV. found himself compelled to quit Thebes. The old aristocracy might have condoned his religious heresy, but they could not condone his supplanting them with foreign favourites. The rise of the nineteenth dynasty marks the successful reaction of the native Egyptian against the predominance of the Semite in the closing days of the eighteenth dynasty. It was not the founder of the eighteenth dynasty (Aahmes, who drove out the Hyksos) but the founder of the nineteenth dynasty that was “the new king who knew not Joseph.” Ever since the progress of Egyptology had made it clear that Rameses II. was the Pharaoh of the Oppression, it was difficult to understand how so long an interval of time as the whole period of the eighteenth dynasty could lie between him and that “new king,” whose rise seems to have been followed almost immediately by the servitude and oppression of the Hebrews. If Aahmes began the Oppression, how was it that a whole dynasty passed away before the Israelites cried out? The tablets of Tell-el-Amarna now show that the difficulty does not exist. Up to the death of Khu-en-Aten the Semite had greater influence than the native in the land of Mizraim.

How highly educated this old world was we are but just beginning to learn. But we have already learned enough to discover how important a bearing it has on the criticism of the Old Testament. It has long been tacitly assumed by the critical school that the art of writing was practically unknown in Palestine before the age of David. Little historical credence, it has been urged, can be placed in the earlier records of the Hebrew people, because they could not have been committed to writing until a period when the history of the past had become traditional and mythical. But this assumption can no longer be maintained. Long before the Exodus Canaan had its libraries and its scribes, its schools and literary men. The annals of the country, it is true, were not inscribed in the letters of the Phœnician alphabet on perishable papyrus; the writing material was imperishable clay, the characters were those of the cuneiform syllabary. Though Kirjath-Sepher (_i.e._, Book-Town) was destroyed by the Israelites, other cities mentioned in the Tell-el-Amarna tablets, like Gaza, or Gath, or Tyre, remained independent, and we cannot imagine that the old traditions of culture and writing were forgotten in any of them. In what is asserted by the critical school to be the oldest relic of Hebrew literature, the Song of Deborah, reference is made to the scribes of Zebulon “that handle the pen of the writer” (Judges v. 14); and we have now no longer any reason to interpret the words in a non-natural sense, and transform the scribe into a military commander (an officer who arranges men in a row instead of arranging letters and words). Only it is probable that the scribes still made use of the cuneiform syllabary, and not yet of the Phœnician alphabet. At all events the Tell-el-Amarna tablets have overthrown the primary foundation on which much of this criticism was built, and have proved that the populations of Palestine, among whom the Israelites settled, and whose culture they inherited, were as literary as the inhabitants of Egypt or Babylonia.

But apart from such side-lights as these upon ancient history, the discovery of the Tell-el-Amarna tablets has a lesson for us of momentous interest. The collection cannot be the only one of its kind. Elsewhere, in Palestine and Syria as well as in Egypt, similar collections must still be lying under the soil. Burnt clay is not injured by rain and moisture, and even the climate of Palestine will have preserved uninjured its libraries of clay. Such libraries must still be awaiting the spade of the excavator on the sites of places like Gaza, or others whose remains are buried under the lofty mounds of Southern Judea. Kirjath-Sepher must have been the seat of a famous library, consisting mainly, if not altogether, of clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform characters. As the city also bore the name of Debir, or “Sanctuary,” we may conclude that the tablets were stored in its chief temple, like the libraries of Assyria and Babylonia. When such relics of the past have been disinterred--as they will be if they are properly searched for--we shall know how the people of Canaan lived in the days of the Patriarchs, and how their Hebrew conquerors established themselves among them in the days when, as yet, there was no king in Israel.

[The information contained in this section is derived almost exclusively from the writings of Dr A. H. Sayce, who has taken a chief part in England in the decipherment of the Tell-el-Amarna inscriptions. See “Proc. Soc. Bib. Arch.” “Records of the Past.” New Series, vols, ii., iii., iv., and v.; “Victoria Institute Annual Address, 1889.” See additional facts in the _Contemporary Review_, Dec. 1890, and opinions in Naville’s _Bubastis_. For later excavations at Tell-el-Amarna, by Mr Flinders Petrie, see the _Academy_, 9th April 1892. For a suggestion by Conder that the tablets are in the Phœnician or Amorite language and writing of that time, see _Quarterly Statement_, July 1891.]

6. _Israel in Egypt._

We have seen how well the general political circumstances in Egypt and Palestine, in the centuries before the Exodus, supplement the Bible narrative, explaining on the one hand why the Israelites were oppressed, and showing on the other how Canaan was prepared for their easy conquest. But while the fact that Rameses II. was the Pharaoh for whom Israel built “treasure cities” is demonstrated beyond reasonable contradiction, it is remarkable that the inscriptions do not say anything about the Israelites. We must suppose, with Brugsch, that the captives were included in the general name of foreigners, of whom the documents make very frequent mention. It would be satisfactory, no doubt, to find upon some contemporary Egyptian monument, a record of the arrival of Jacob, or the tasks imposed upon the Israelites, or the destruction of Pharaoh’s host in the Red Sea. But the Egyptians were not accustomed to record their defeats, and as to the labours imposed upon the Israelites, they were but a matter of course in the case of captives.

But short of direct mention, the Egyptian monuments and records afford ample confirmation to the Biblical account of the Sojourn. The Scripture references to Egyptian manners and customs are, in all respects, accurate; and this absolute accuracy could only result from actual contact and intimate acquaintance.

The Bible history of Abraham implies that when he visited Egypt, driven thither by famine, that country was already under a settled government, having a king, and princes who acted as the king’s subordinates. It requires us to believe that the king was called Pharaoh, or by some name or title which conveyed that sound to Hebrew ears. And further, it assumes that Egypt was so fruitful and so prosperous, as to be a granary for surrounding nations in years of famine. On all these points the Bible is in harmony with what we learn from other sources.

Again, according to Genesis xii. 12, Abram feared for Sarai his wife, lest the Egyptians should take her from him, and should kill him in order to make the proceeding safer. The possibility of such a thing being done by a people so civilised and cultured as the Egyptians has sometimes been doubted: but M. Chabas has called attention to a papyrus which actually states that the wife and children of a foreigner are by right the lawful property of the king. In the “Tale of the Two Brothers” also--an Egyptian romance of the days of Seti II.--we are told that the king of Egypt sent two armies to bring a beautiful woman to him, and to murder her husband.

In this same tale of The Two Brothers the wife of the elder solicits the love of the younger in almost exactly the same way that the wife of Potiphar tempts Joseph. The whole story of Joseph agrees minutely with what we learn of Egypt from her own records. The outward details of life, the officers of the court, the traffic in slaves, the visits for corn, are all pictured on temple walls and stone slabs. No feature in the Bible narrative is out of harmony with what we know of the country from other sources. “Potiphar” appears to be a good Egyptian name, and Egyptologists have pointed out that its probable equivalent in hieroglyphs signifies “Devoted to the Sun-god.” Joseph’s new name, Zaphnath-paaneah, means “Storehouse of the house of Life,” and was given to him when he entered Pharaoh’s service, just as a new name was given to the Hittite princess when she became Pharaoh’s wife. The king’s absolute authority appears abundantly from Herodotus, Diodorus and others. He enacted laws, imposed taxes, administered justice, executed and pardoned offenders at his pleasure. He had a bodyguard, which is constantly seen on the sculptures, in close attendance on his person. He was assisted in the management of state affairs by the advice of a council, consisting of the most able and distinguished members of the priestly order. His court was magnificent and comprised various grand functionaries, whose tombs are among the most splendid of the early remains of Egyptian art. When he left his palace for any purpose, he invariably rode in a chariot. His subjects, wherever he appeared, bowed down or prostrated themselves.[5] The civilisation of the Egyptians, even at a period long before the Israelitish Sojourn, comprised the practice of writing, the distinction into classes or castes, the peculiar dignity of the priests, the practice of embalming and of burying in wooden coffins or mummy cases, the manufacture and use of linen garments, the wearing of gold chains, and almost all the other points which may be noted in the Bible description.

In Genesis xl. 20, Pharaoh held a feast on his birthday, and the chief butler being restored to favour, gave the cup into Pharaoh’s hand. We know from the Rosetta Stone that as late as the reign of Ptolemy Epiphanes it was customary to make great rejoicing on the king’s birthday, to consider it holy, and to do no work on it. That it should be a day on which pardons were granted as an act of grace, is more than probable. Cups such as the king would have taken his wine from are portrayed on the monuments; baskets such as the baker would have carried his bakemeats in are used even unto this day, and may be seen in the British Museum. Before Joseph entered the royal presence he shaved himself and changed his raiment: and here, again, the monuments and profane history offer us illustrations. The Egyptians only allowed their hair to grow during the times of mourning, and to neglect the hair was considered very slovenly and dirty. When a man of low station had to be represented, the artist always drew him with a beard. The British Museum possesses Egyptian razors of various shapes; and in a tomb at Beni-Hassan the act of shaving is actually represented.

With regard to the seven years of famine, it is true that Egypt was less likely to suffer in this way than the countries round about; yet still, when the inundation of the Nile fell below the average, it was liable to this scourge. History tells of numerous cases in which the inhabitants have suffered terribly from want, and several famines are even mentioned on the monuments. Professor Rawlinson refers us to a case which furnishes a near parallel to the famine of Joseph. In A.D. 1064 a famine began in Egypt which lasted seven years, and was so severe that dogs and cats, and even human flesh, were eaten; nearly all the horses of the Caliph perished, and his family had to fly into Syria.

When Jacob goes down into Egypt, he is advised to tell Pharaoh that he and his sons are keepers of cattle, so that the land of Goshen may be assigned to them, shepherds being an abomination unto the Egyptians. The Egyptian contempt for herdsmen appears plainly on the monuments, where they are commonly represented as dirty and unshaven, and are sometimes even caricatured as a deformed and unseemly race. When Jacob dies, his body is embalmed by the physicians, forty days being taken up with the processes, and seventy days being spent in mourning. The methods of embalming are described by Herodotus and Diodorus, and it is stated that in preparing the body according to the first method the operators commenced by extracting the brain and pouring in certain drugs. Then they made an incision in the side of the body with a sharp Ethiopian stone, and drew out the intestines, filling the cavity with powder of pure myrrh, cassia, and other fragrant substances, and sewing up the aperture. This being done, they salted the body, “keeping it in natron during seventy days,” after which they washed it and wrapped it up in bands of fine linen smeared on their inner side with gum. Remarking upon the number of days, seventy or seventy-two, mentioned by the two historians, Sir Gardner Wilkinson says there is reason to believe it comprehended the whole period of the mourning, and that the embalming process only occupied a portion of it.

Subsequently to the burial of his father, Joseph himself died, and his body also was embalmed. At some later period there arose a king who knew not Joseph. This monarch is generally supposed to be Rameses II., and if the identification were correct, the indications of his character afforded by the Book of Exodus agree exactly with what the monuments reveal concerning that haughty oppressor; but, as already stated, the reference is probably to Rameses I. The slavery of the Israelites was of a kind to which all hostile or conquered people were reduced by the Egyptians. Thothmes III., during his many campaigns, brought to Egypt unnumbered prisoners of every race, and made them labour like convicts on the public works, under the superintendence of architects and overseers. On the walls of a chamber in a tomb at Thebes there is a very instructive pictorial representation of such forced labour, and the Asiatic countenances of the workers strongly resemble those of the Hebrew race. The date is too early, and we may suppose them to belong to some other nation of the Semitic family; but the picture none the less shows the method of working under taskmasters. Some carry water in jugs from the tank hard by; others knead and cut up the loamy earth; others, again, by the help of a wooden form, make the bricks, or place them carefully in long rows to dry; while the more intelligent among them carry out the work of building the walls. The hieroglyphic explanations inform as that the labourers are captives whom Thothmes III. has carried away to build the temple of his father Amon. They explain that the baking of the bricks is a work for the new building of the provision house of the god Amon of Apet (the east side of Thebes), and they finally declare the strict superintendence of the steward over the foreigners. The words are--(Here are seen) the prisoners which have been carried away as living prisoners in very great numbers; they work at the building with active fingers; their overseers show themselves in sight, these insist with vehemence, obeying the orders of the great skilled lord [the head architect] who prescribes to them the works, and gives directions to the masters; (they are rewarded), with wine and all kinds of good dishes; they perform their service with a mind full of love for the king; they build for Thothmes III. a holy of holies for (the gods), may it be rewarded to him through a range of many years.

The overseer speaks thus to the labourers at the building: “The stick is in my hand, be not idle.”

Some of the captives thus set to labour by Thothmes belonged to a people called the Aperiu; and in the days of Rameses II. they are mentioned as still in a condition of servitude, quarrying and transporting stone for the great fortress of the city of Paramessu or Tanis.

Diodorus tells us that Rameses II. put up an inscription in each of his buildings, saying that it had been erected by captives, and that not a single native Egyptian was employed on the work. Again, this king manufactured bricks for sale, and, by employing the labour of captives, was enabled to under-sell other makers. The use of crude bricks baked in the sun was universal throughout the country for private and for many public buildings, and the dry climate of Egypt was peculiarly suited to those simple materials. They had the recommendation of cheapness, and those made three thousand years ago, whether with or without straw, are even now as firm and fit for use as when first put up. When made of the Nile mud or alluvial deposit they required straw to prevent their cracking; but those formed of clay taken from the torrent beds on the edge of the desert held together without straw; and crude brick walls frequently had the additional security of a layer of reeds or sticks placed at intervals to act as binders.

[_Authorities and Sources_:--Brugsch’s “Egypt under the Pharaohs.” Wilkinson’s “Ancient Egyptians.” Birch’s “Egypt” (Series, Ancient History from the Monuments). G. Rawlinson’s “Historical Illustrations of the Old Testament.” E. A. Wallis Budge, “Dwellers on the Nile.” M. E. Harkness, “Egyptian Life and History.”]

7. _Buried Cities of the East--Preliminary._

If the buried cities of the East had been altogether destroyed and lost, and we possessed only a brief record of their disappearance, the subject might not possess much interest for us, and there would be no material for writing a book. But we are now witnessing a resurrection of some of them, and are recovering a story of the past, such as revived Egyptian mummies might be able to tell. Nay, not only Egyptians who walked about--

“In Thebes’s streets three thousand years ago, When the Memnonium was in all its glory,”

but Chaldean shepherds who watched the stars and were perhaps the first to give names to the signs of the Zodiac. The ancient relics and records which are now being recovered from Egypt, Palestine, Assyria, and Babylonia, revive forgotten stories of human struggle, and furnish material for new chapters in the history of Art, Science, Laws, and Language, of Mythology, Morals, and Religion. They also throw frequent side lights upon the Bible narrative, and enable us to compare the Israelites more fairly with their contemporaries and predecessors.

The catastrophes which led to the partial destruction, and the eventual burial of the cities of the East must have seemed nothing less than pure calamities at the time; but one of the results has been the providential preservation of the remains for the enlightenment of the present generation. When a buried city is unearthed, it serves to confute the scepticism which had been growing up, and to rectify the errors which had found their place in books of history. We are familiar with the fact that the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii were overwhelmed--the former by streams of lava, the latter by showers of ashes, pumice, and stones, from the crater of Vesuvius, in A.D. 79. The existence of those cities had come to be doubted, and for ages they were spoken of as “the fabulous cities;” nevertheless, after sixteen centuries, they were brought to light, and they present us with a picture of Roman life, such as history by itself could never have supplied. The site of Pompeii had always borne the name of _Civita_, or the city; and in 1748, a Spanish colonel of engineers, having heard that the remains of a house had been discovered, with ancient statues and other objects, obtained leave to excavate. In a few days his labours met with encouraging reward, and eventually about one third of the ancient city was uncovered. We may now walk about in Pompeii, observing how its houses were built, and how its streets were paved. We see the ruts worn by the wheels of chariots, we note the public fountains, the temples, the theatre, which would seat 10,000 people. We notice the corn-mills in the bakers’ shops, the vats in the dyers’ shops, and in private houses we observe with interest the many articles of domestic use. Excepting that the upper stories of the houses have been destroyed--either burnt by the red-hot stones, or broken down by the weight of matter which fell upon them--“we see a flourishing city in the very state in which it existed nearly eighteen centuries ago--the buildings as they were originally designed, not altered and patched to meet the exigencies of newer fashions; the paintings undimmed by the leaden touch of time; household furniture left in the confusion of use; articles, even of intrinsic value, abandoned in the hurry of escape, yet safe from the robber, or scattered about as they fell from the trembling hand, which could not pause or stoop for its most valuable possessions: and in some instances, the bones of the inhabitants, bearing sad testimony to the suddenness and completeness of the calamity which overwhelmed them.”[6]

Remains of Roman London are found 16 or 17 feet underground, in the neighbourhood of the Bank of England and the Mansion House, although London has not been buried in volcanic ashes. Rome itself is a buried city, for the capital of modern Italy stands upon the ruins of the city of the Cæsars. In Eastern countries the site of an ancient city is sometimes occupied by a squalid village, which is its degenerate successor; in other instances the site is quite deserted, and only a _tell_ or mound remains to call attention to it. Ancient sites have also occasionally become submerged beneath the waters of seas or lakes. Thus the Lake of Aboukir in Egypt was drained lately, in order to reclaim the area for cultivation, and when the floor was laid bare from the water, there appeared everywhere traces of streets, of stone-covered ways, and of fields for tillage marked out by lines of shells.

Professor Maspero describes the process by which Egyptian temples become buried. “Just as in Europe during the Middle Ages the population crowded most densely round about the churches and abbeys, so in Egypt they swarmed around the temples, profiting by that security which the terror of his name and the solidity of his ramparts ensured to the local deity. A clear space was at first reserved round the pylons and the walls; but in course of time the houses encroached upon this ground, and were even built up against the boundary wall. Destroyed and rebuilt, century after century, upon the self-same spot, the _débris_ of these surrounding dwellings so raised the level of the soil that the temples ended for the most part by being gradually buried in a hollow, formed by the artificial elevation of the surrounding city. Herodotus mentions this of Bubastis, and on examination it is seen to have been the same in many other localities. At last, when the temple had been thrown down and was forsaken, the rubbish covered it up, and so the ruins have been preserved to reward the modern explorer.”

8. _Biblical Sites in Egypt._

It is justly remarked by Rev. Greville J. Chester that there is scarcely a better or more striking commentary upon the prophets of Israel than the present condition of the ancient Biblical cities of Lower Egypt. For information regarding these cities--or what remains of them, buried in the soil--we are largely indebted to the Egypt Exploration Fund, which was founded in 1883, for the purpose of promoting historical investigation in Egypt, by means of systematically conducted explorations. Particular attention is given to sites which may be expected to throw light upon obscure questions of history and topography, such as those connected with the mysterious Hyksos period (the period of the Shepherd Kings), the district of the Hebrew Sojourn, the route of the Exodus, and the early sources of Greek art. Explorers have been sent out every season, and each year has been fruitful in discoveries. The objects of antiquity discovered are first submitted to the Director and Conservators of the National Egyptian Museum; and those which can be spared are divided between the British Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, U.S.A.

_Excavations at San._--San, in the north-eastern part of the Delta, is the Tanis of the Septuagint and the Greek historians, and the Zoan of the Bible. At the time of the Exodus Zoan was the capital of Egypt, and the Pharaoh resided there. The wonders wrought by Moses and Aaron are referred to by the Psalmist as having been manifested in the field of Zoan (Psalm lxxviii. 43). We are told that Hebron was built only seven years before Zoan (Num. xiii. 22), and therefore, since Hebron was flourishing in Abraham’s time, Zoan also must have been a very ancient city.

The modern village of San is a small collection of mud hovels, situated on the banks of a canal, which was once the Tanitic branch of the Nile. Near the village there are huge mounds which contain a ruined temple and other ancient remains. The place has been to a large extent explored by Mr W. M. Flinders Petrie, and the Memoir containing his interesting results is published by the Egypt Exploration Fund.

Rameses II., the Pharaoh of the Oppression, seems to have fixed upon Zoan and made it a new capital, because by its position it commanded the northern route to Syria and placed the king, after the conquest of that country, in easy communication with all his dominions. It was also close to the very centre of the Hyksos rule, which was only lately ended.

The Hyksos were the so-called Shepherd Kings, who appear to have come from the Arabian desert, or perhaps beyond, and established themselves in Lower Egypt at a period when native rule was weak. “The monuments of the Hyksos are among the most curious in Egypt; and it is to San that we owe the greater number of those brought to light. They are all distinguished by an entirely different type of face from any that can be found on other Egyptian monuments, a type which cannot be attributed to any other known period; and it is therefore all the more certain that they belong to the foreign race. Another peculiarity is that they are without exception executed in black or grey granite. The Hyksos only held the Delta, and occasionally more or less of Middle Egypt, and so they had no command of the red granite quarries of Assouan, which remained in the power of the native rulers. Whether the black granite came from Sinai or from the Hammamat district is not certain.” Mr F. Ll. Griffith, the coadjutor of Mr Flinders Petrie, mentions several interesting monuments of a kind peculiar to this people. One is a group of two men, with bushy plaited hair and long beards: they stand with a tray of offerings in front of them, on which lie fishes, with papyrus plants hanging round. The details are beautifully worked, the flowers and buds being most delicately wrought. The black granite sphinxes made by the Hyksos have been often described. They have the flat, massive, muscular, lowering face, with short whiskers and beard around it, the lips being shaven; and the hair is in a mat of thick, short locks descending over the whole chest, a style copied from the great sphinxes of the twelfth dynasty. It is a curious fact that the inscriptions on Hyksos sphinxes, &c., are always in a line down the right shoulder, never on the left. Mr Petrie suggests that this honouring of the right shoulder by this Semitic people is analogous to the particular offering of the right shoulder continually enjoined in the Jewish law.[7] The Egyptians missed this idea, and inscribed either side indifferently, showing no preference for the left, although that was their side of honour.

Here at San, or Tanis, was discovered the famous Stone of San or Decree of Canopus, which is now preserved in the National Museum of Egypt. It bears the text of a decree made by the priests of Egypt, assembled at Canopus (which was at that time the religious capital of the country) in the ninth year of Ptolemy Euergetes (B.C. 254). It ordains the deification of Berenice, a daughter of Ptolemy’s just dead, and creates a fifth order of priests, to be called Euergetæ, for the better paying of divine honours to the king and queen. The chief value of the monument consists in the circumstance that the inscription is tri-lingual, the characters being hieroglyphic (sacred), demotic (those of everyday business), and Greek (the chief language of foreigners in Egypt); so that, like the Rosetta Stone, it is of great use in helping scholars to decipher the Egyptian monuments. There is a plaster cast of this stone in the British Museum.

Mr Griffith finds that the early monuments of Tanis are suggestive of having been brought by Rameses II. to adorn his new capital. The truth about the age of Tanis can only be ascertained when deep excavations are made in the mound itself, or a sufficient examination of the extensive cemeteries has been carried out. But while the explorer is waiting, the cemeteries are in danger of being worked out by the Arabs, and the tombs are being destroyed for the sake of amulets to sell to dealers and travellers.

_Tell Nebesheh_--About eight miles S.E. of Tanis (modern San) is the low mound of Tell Nebesheh, originally known as Tell Farun--_i.e._, the mound of Pharaoh, because of the great monolith shrine called Ras Farun, or Pharaoh’s Head. Here Mr Petrie found, among other things, the remains of a temple, the altar of which contained important inscriptions. They were engraved by a certain “chief of the chancellors and royal seal-bearer,” whose name and further titles are effaced. This person was one of a series of officials whose titles were singularly parallel to the English Lord High Chancellor and Lord Privy Seal. The altar appears to belong to the Hyksos period, and it is suggested by Mr Petrie that these officials--who were so powerful that one of them actually appropriated for his inscriptions the royal monuments in a public temple--were native Egyptians, the Hyksos conquerors being only a military horde, without much civil organization, or organizing capacity, and taking over as they found it the native bureaucracy, who managed all the details of the needful administration of the country. So there appears to have been a series of viziers, men who acted for the king over the treasury and taxes, and over the royal decrees and public documents, bearing the king’s seal.

After some further discussion of the position and importance of these viziers, Mr Petrie says that yet one further document may be quoted as giving and receiving light on this question: the account of Joseph in the Book of Genesis undoubtedly refers to the Hyksos period, and there we read, “Let Pharaoh look out a man discreet and wise, and set him over the land of Egypt”--not, let Pharaoh give orders to his own officers. “And Pharaoh said unto Joseph.... Thou shalt be over my house, and according unto thy word shall all my people be ruled: only in the throne will I be greater than thou. And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, See, I have set thee over all the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh took off his signet-ring from his hand, and put it upon Joseph’s hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck; and he made him to ride in the second chariot which he had; and they cried before him, ‘Abrech;’ and he set him over all the land of Egypt.” Here we read of the investiture of a vizier under the Hyksos, creating him royal seal-bearer, and giving him the honour of the second chariot. This we now see was not an extraordinary act of an autocrat, but the filling up of a regular office of the head of the native administration.

_Excavations at Tell Basta_, the ancient Bubastis. A little to the south of Zagazig, Mr Naville and Mr Griffith have made important discoveries. Bubastis was the seat of the worship of Bast or Pasht, the cat-headed goddess, whose temple is described by Herodotus as the most beautiful in Egypt. It was surrounded, he tells us, by a low wall, having figures engraved upon it. Here, accordingly, in April 1887, our explorers began their work, in the rectangular depression surrounded on all sides by the mounds of houses, which must have been higher than the temple. In a short time they disclosed the site of a grand hypostyle hall, strewn with fallen monolithic columns of twelfth dynasty workmanship, and a hall without columns, but lined, as it should seem, with elaborate bas-relief sculptures representing a great religious ceremony, and containing tens of thousands of minutely-executed hieroglyphic inscriptions. The columns and the architraves of the hypostyle hall, though of an earlier period, are emblazoned with the ovals of Rameses II. (nineteenth dynasty). The inscriptions of the festival hall commemorate Osorkon II., of the twenty-second dynasty, and his Queen Karoama. Besides the two historical landmarks thus determined, various blocks bearing the names of Usertesen III. and Pepi Merira testified to the existence of the edifice not only in the days of the first great Theban Empire, but in the very remote age of the Pyramid kings of the sixth dynasty. At the same time a small tentative excavation at the western extremity of the site yielded the name and titles of Nectanebo I., of the thirtieth and last native dynasty. Such being the outcome of but four weeks’ labour at the close of the season, it seemed reasonable to hope for important results when the excavations should be resumed. This hope was more than fulfilled in 1888. As the work in this instance was not carried on in the desert, but quite near to a busy railway station, many travellers visited the place. The scene was curiously picturesque. “Here, grouped together on the verge of the great cemetery of Sacred Cats, are the tents of the officers of the Fund; yonder, swarming like bees at the bottom of the huge crater-like depression which marks the area of the temple, are seen some three to four hundred labourers--diggers in the trenches and pits, basket-carriers clearing away the soil as it is thrown out, overseers to keep the diggers at work, ‘pathway-men’ to keep the paths open and the carriers moving, gangs of brawny ‘Shayalîn,’ or native porters, harnessed together by stout ropes, and hauling or turning sculptured blocks which have not seen the light for many centuries; girls with bowls of water and sponges, to wash down the carved surfaces preparatory to the process of taking paper ‘squeezes;’ and small boys to run errands, help with the measuring tapes, and keep guard over the tents and baggage. With so many hands at work and so many overseers to keep them going, it is not wonderful that the excavations make rapid progress. The two large pits which were opened last season are now thrown into one, and are being enlarged from east to west, following the axis of the structure. The sides are also being cleared, and before another month shall have expired the whole temple--of which, apparently, not one stone remains upon another--will be visible from end to end. Its entire length is probably about 700 or 800 feet; but measurements, of course, are as yet purely conjectural.”

Among the discoveries at this second exploration was a third hall, dating from the reign of Osorkon I., the walls of which were sculptured with bas-reliefs on a large scale, representing the king in the act of worshipping Bast and the other deities of the city. It appears that one great divinity honoured here was Amon; and another was the god Set.

It had not been suspected that Bubastis was the site of an important Hyksos settlement; but from the type of the statues and other things which have been found, that turns out to have been the case.

The chronographers have preserved the names of several of the Hyksos kings, recording them as follows:--Silites (or Salatis), Beon, Apachnas, Tannas (or Tanras), Asseth, and Apophis (in Egyptian, Apepi). Mariette, in his very successful excavations at Tanis, found the name of Apepi written on the arm of a statue, although the statue was of older date. Mr Naville has found, at Tell Basta, a colossal statue which he takes to be the statue of Apepi. It is now in the British Museum. This is particularly interesting, because Syncellus relates that Apepi was the king in whose reign Joseph rose to the high position described in Genesis. One remarkable object found at Tell Basta is part of a seated statue, upon which the royal name reads “Ian-Ra,” or “Ra-Ian.” The name is new to us, but when Mr Naville went over to Boulak, where the Museum of Antiquities then was, and showed a copy to Ahmed Kemal-ed-Deen Effendi, the learned Mohammedan official, he exclaimed at once--“You have found the Pharaoh of Joseph. All our Arab books call him Reiyan, the son of El Welid.” European scholars do not place absolute reliance on Arab chronicles, which are often fanciful; yet it is remarkable that the statue of Ian-Ra, Joseph’s king, according to the Arabs, should be found at Tell Basta, in close proximity to the statue of Apepi, Joseph’s king, according to Syncellus. Mr Naville distinguishes Ian-Ra from Apepi, and thinks he is the same as Ianias or Annas, mentioned by Josephus as the fifth king out of six. Mr Naville has also found at Tell Basta the names of twenty-five Pharaohs who were known already, including Cheops and Chephren, the builders of the pyramids, about 3700 B.C.

That Joseph served a Hyksos king has long been accepted by the majority of Egyptologists as a very probable hypothesis, both chronologically and from the internal evidence of the Biblical narrative. The Arab writers represent the Hyksos as Amalekites of Midian. Mr Naville agrees with those who think they came from Mesopotamia, and already possessed a high degree of civilisation and culture.

Bubastis seems to have been a favourite place of residence with the Shepherd Kings; and thus Joseph would be but a short distance from his brethren in the land of Goshen, where they looked after the king’s herds of cattle.

_Saft-el-Henneh or Goshen._--In more than one season Mr Naville carried on operations to discover the locality of Goshen, which had always been matter of conjecture and controversy. He has come to the conclusion that Goshen was a city a little to the east of the modern Zagazig, and situated in a district of the same name. The land of Goshen may be described as a district roughly triangular in shape, with its apex to the south; having Zagazig at its north-west angle, Tel-el-Kebir north-east, and Belbeis at the lower extremity. The town of Goshen appears to have been at Saft-el-Henneh, nearly half-way between the eastern and western points of the triangle. Here we find the name Tel Fakûs, the Phakusa of the Greeks, and apparently the same as Kesem, Gesem, or Goshen. Saft-el-Henneh itself is a large village, standing in the midst of a country peculiarly fruitful, corresponding thus to “the best of the land,” which was given to the Israelites.

“At the first glance,” says Mr Naville, “one sees that Saft-el-Henneh stands on the site of an ancient city of considerable extent. The whole village is constructed on the ruins of old houses, many of which are still to be seen on the south side.”

The monuments discovered at Saft include a colossal statue, in black granite, of Rameses II., which, probably, belonged to a temple of some importance; and a shrine of Nectanebo II., with a dedicatory hymn, and the information that the place where the shrine was erected was called Kes.

The Book of Genesis tells us that Goshen was a pasture land. We may thence infer that it was not thickly inhabited, and not yet organized into a province with its capital, its temples, its priests, and its governor. Since then the name is absent from the earliest Egyptian lists of provinces--namely, those of Seti I. and Rameses II. (the Pharaoh that oppressed Israel)--Mr Naville maintains that the hieroglyphic records which simply omit the name, and the Bible narrative which incidentally shows us the reason why, are remarkably in accord.

_Heliopolis._--No excavations have yet been undertaken at Heliopolis, the City of the Sun, which is situated some nine miles from Cairo in a north-easterly direction. It was a very ancient city, of great celebrity as a seat of the worship of the sun god _Ra_, whose symbol in the form of the living bull Mnevis, was there kept and cared for and reverenced. In the Bible the city is called On or Beth Shemesh. Joseph probably served Potiphar in this city; and Pharaoh afterwards gave him to wife Asenath, daughter of Potiphera, a priest of On. There can be little doubt, either, that Moses, who was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, was educated at this seat of learning. We must believe, therefore, that he often looked upon the six obelisks which stood in front of the temple of Ra--one of which remains to this day--for they had been erected centuries before his birth. Four of them were set up by Thothmes III. and his family, about 1600 years before the Christian era, and the other two by Usertesen I. upwards of 3000 years B.C. Two of the Thothmes obelisks were at a later period transferred to Alexandria, to adorn the approach of a magnificent temple erected in honour of the Cæsars; and it is one of these two which has become known as Cleopatra’s Needle and now stands on the Thames Embankment. The one obelisk which remains at Heliopolis is the oldest object of the kind in the world.

Scarcely anything is now to be seen of the city itself. It no doubt served as a handy quarry to the builders of Cairo; but since the surviving obelisk is buried 3 or 4 feet in Nile mud, it is not improbable that many small objects of antiquarian interest are buried also. Moreover, the sides of the vast enclosure in which the temple was situated are still marked by mounds or walls of crude brick, and these, on the north side, have their continuation in the ruins of the ancient town. Here are frequently found scarabæi or images of the sacred beetle, with other sacred images, emblems in porcelain, and other antiquities, so that apparently the place would repay a systematic search.

_Tell Defenneh_, the Biblical Tahpanhes.--In June 1886 Mr Flinders Petrie had the felicity to discover “Pharaoh’s House,” to which Jeremiah was brought, after the calamities in Judea, and where he hid the great stones, as a symbolical act, in the mortar of the brickwork. It lies in the sandy desert bordering on Lake Menzaleh, about two days’ journey from San, some hours distant on the one hand from the cultivated Delta, and on the other hand from the Suez Canal. Here in the midst of the plain are the brick ruins of a large building; and on the first evening of his arrival in the district Mr Petrie heard to his surprise that the building was known as the _Kasr el Bint el Yehudi_, or the Palace of the Jew’s daughter. Obviously this might refer to the daughter of King Zedekiah who accompanied Jeremiah in his exile; and there could now be no doubt that Defenneh represented the ancient Daphnai and Tahpanhes. It was a frontier fortress or advanced post, to guard the great highway into Syria.

By the associations of Tahpanhes we are at once carried to Scripture. “The children of Noph and Tahpanhes have broken the crown of thy head” (Jer. ii. 16). This was after the slaying of Josiah, the deposition of Jehoahaz, the setting up of the tributary Jehoiakim, and the removal of Jehoahaz into Egypt--events which marked the first period of intercourse between Jews and Greeks. “This intercourse, however, was soon to be increased; three years later, Nebuchadnezzar invaded Judea, and all who fled from the war would arrive at Tahpanhes in their flight into Egypt, and most likely stop there. In short, during all the troubles and continual invasions and sieges of Jerusalem, in B.C. 607, B.C. 603, and B.C. 599 (in which a wholesale deportation of the people took place), and, above all, in the final long siege and destruction of 590-588 B.C., when “the city was broken up,” and all the men of war fled, every one who sought to avoid the miseries of war, or who was politically obnoxious, would naturally flee down into Egypt. Such refugees would necessarily reach the frontier fort on the caravan road, and would there find a mixed and mainly foreign population, Greek, Phœnician, and Egyptian, among whom their presence would not be resented, as it would be by the still strictly protectionist Egyptians further in the country. That they should largely, or perhaps mainly settle there would be the most natural course; they would be tolerated, they would find a constant communication with their own countrymen, and they would be as near to Judea as they could in safety remain, while they awaited a chance of returning.

“The last and greatest migration to Tahpanhes is that fully recorded by Jeremiah, which gives us the pattern of what doubtless had been going on long before. After Nebuchadnezzar had retired with his spoils, Gedaliah, the governor whom he set up, was quickly slain, the country fell into anarchy, and all the responsible inhabitants who were left fled into Egypt to avoid the vengeance of Nebuchadnezzar. ‘Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the captains of the forces, took all the remnant of Judah, that were returned (from all nations, whither they had been driven), to sojourn in the land of Judah; the men, and the women, and the children, and the king’s daughters [Zedekiah’s], and every person that Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, had left with Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and Jeremiah the prophet, and Baruch the son of Neriah; and they came into the land of Egypt; for they obeyed not the voice of the Lord: and they came even to Tahpanhes’ (Jer. xliii. 5-7).” This migration was undertaken in spite of the warnings of Jeremiah.

Pharaoh Hophra, the reigning monarch in Egypt, had been an ally of King Zedekiah’s, and so he placed at the disposal of his friend’s daughter the palace in this frontier fortress of Tahpanhes, which had been a royal residence sometimes. Here we may suppose the fugitives would have been comparatively contented, and thought themselves safe, only that Jeremiah vehemently prophesied that Nebuchadnezzar would come and destroy the place. This, according to Josephus, he did--“He fell upon Egypt, ... and took those Jews that were there captives, and led them away to Babylon; and such was the end of the nation of the Hebrews” (Ant. ix. 7). Josephus is not always believed, and it has even been denied in recent years that Nebuchadnezzar was ever in Egypt at all. But a recently discovered inscription tells us that he was in the country, and penetrated as far south as Assouan;[8] and now at last Mr Petrie discovers the palace to have been plundered, dismantled, and burnt, apparently in fulfilment of Jeremiah’s prediction.

The existing remains of Tahpanhes are extensive, and show that the ancient city was a large one. Under the corners of the chief buildings were found _plaques_ of metal and of stone, engraved with the cartouche of Psammetichus I.; and under the south-east corner the teeth and bones of an ox, sacrificed at the ceremony when the building was founded. Among the antiquities found are beautiful painted Greek vases, plaques, &c., of gold, silver, lead, and copper, articles of carnelian, jaspar, and lapis lazuli.

A most interesting thing is the finding of the brickwork or pavement spoken of in Jeremiah xliii. 8. “Then came the word of the Lord unto Jeremiah in Tahpanhes, saying, Take great stones in thine hand, and hide them in mortar in the brickwork which is at the entry of Pharaoh’s house in Tahpanhes, in the sight of the men of Judah; and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: Behold I will send and take Nebuchadnezzar the King of Babylon, my servant, and will set his throne upon these stones that I have hid; and he shall spread his royal pavilion over them, &c.” This brickwork or pavement at the entry of Pharaoh’s house has always been misunderstood, and served as a puzzle to translators. “But” (says Mr Petrie) “as soon as the plan of the palace began to be recovered, the exactness of the description was manifest. On the north-west of the fort was a great open air platform of brickwork, such as is now seen outside all great houses, and most small ones, in Egypt. A space is reserved outside the door, generally along the side of the house, covered with hard beaten mud, edged with a ridge of bricks if not much raised from the ground, and kept swept clean. On this platform the inhabitants sit when they wish to converse with their neighbours or the passers-by. A great man will settle himself to receive his friends and drink coffee, and public business is generally transacted there. Such seems to have been the object of this large platform--a place to meet persons who would not be admitted to the palace or fort, to assemble guards, to hold large _levées_, to receive tribute and stores, to unlade goods, and to transact the multifarious business which in such a climate is best done in the open air. At the same time the actual way into the palace was along a raised causeway which rose at the back of this platform.

“This platform” (continues Mr Petrie) “is therefore unmistakably ‘the brickwork or pavement which is at the entry of Pharaoh’s house in Tahpanhes.’ Here the ceremony described by Jeremiah took place before the chiefs of the fugitives assembled on the platform, and here Nebuchadnezzar ‘spread his royal pavilion.’ The very nature of the site is precisely applicable to all the events. Unhappily, the great denudation which has gone on has swept away most of this platform, and we could not expect to find the stones whose hiding is described by Jeremiah.”

Another discovery, made some years ago, looks like evidence that Nebuchadnezzar actually came to Tahpanhes. A native sold to the Boulak Museum three cylinders of terra cotta, such as would be used for foundation memorials, the text on them being an inscription of Nebuchadnezzar’s referring to his constructions in Babylon. These cylinders were said to come from the Isthmus of Suez, but it is strongly suspected that they were found at Defenneh, after the platform had become denuded.

_Tell-el-Yahoudeh_, the Mound of the Jew.--This place should be interesting to us, if only from the fact that a temple was built here, which some have fancied would be the counterpart of the Temple at Jerusalem. If any considerable remains of the temple can be found, they may assist materially the right understanding of the descriptions which have come down to us of the more important structure on Mount Moriah.

Tell-el-Yahoudeh is about twenty miles from Cairo, on the way to Ismailia, near the Moslem village of Shibeen-el-Kanater, and is supposed to be the city of Onias. Josephus tells us that at the time of the conquest of Judea by Antiochus Epiphanes, Onias, son of the high priest, fled from the persecution, and took refuge in Egypt (B. C. 182). Onias, feeling encouraged by a prophecy of Isaiah’s that a time should come when there would be “an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt” (Isaiah xix. 19), begged the Egyptian king, Ptolemy Philometor, to grant him permission to build a temple, on the site of a deserted shrine or fortress. The request was granted, and Onias built a small city, after the model of Jerusalem, and a temple, after the pattern of the temple of Solomon.

The mound now existing measures about half a mile from east to west, and a quarter of a mile from north to south, and has the appearance of a fortress. It has been more or less ransacked at various times; but would probably still repay a thorough exploration. In the absence of a full investigation there remains a little doubt about the genuineness of the site; but Professor Sayce, on one occasion, found here a fragment of stone, bearing two ancient Hebrew letters; and the decisive proof that it was a Jewish settlement has been furnished by the discovery of a Jewish cemetery, about one mile further east in the desert. The ground there, for the length of more than half a mile, is quite honeycombed with tombs. Here and there a body was found _in situ_, and there were no traces of embalming, nor any ornament of any kind, but invariably a brick under the head, which was a distinctive mark of Jewish burials. A few tablets had escaped the general destruction, and the names which they contained fully confirmed the conclusion suggested by the mode of burial: “Eleazar” was one name and is purely Jewish: some others were Jewish with a Greek ending, as Salamis, Nethaneus, Barchias; and others still were Greek names of frequent use among the Jews, as Aristobulos, Onesimas, Tryphania.

_Tell-el-Maskhuta_ or Pithom-Succoth.--The Pharaoh who enslaved the Israelites appears to have been Rameses II., son of Seti I., of the nineteenth dynasty. This dynasty only began with Rameses I., the grandfather of Rameses II. The store cities built by the Israelites were called Raamses and Pithom; and when the Exodus took place the starting point was Rameses and the first resting-place Succoth (Ex. i. 11; xii. 37). None of these places were known, and it had hardly been suspected that Pithom and Succoth were so closely associated as they are now found to be. But the site of Pithom has lately been discovered. We all remember Kassassin, where Sir Garnet Wolseley halted the British troops, in the campaign of 1882, just before that silent midnight march to storm Arabi’s entrenchments. It is twelve miles west of Ismailia on the Suez Canal. Close by Kassassin is a low mound called _Tell-el-Maskhuta_, the Mound of the Statue. Here, at the end of the last century, was found a red granite monolith, representing Rameses II. sitting between the two solar gods Ra and Tum. In 1860 M. Paponot’s men came across another monolith, and it is probable that the pair stood symmetrically at the entrance of some edifice. Further excavation brought to light two sphinxes in black granite, placed also on each side of the avenue; and then, farther on, a shrine or _naos_ in red sandstone, and a large _stele_ in red granite, lying flat. All these monuments had been dedicated to the god Tum.

The excavations recently made by M. Edouard Naville, of Geneva, are described in his Memoir written for the Egypt Exploration Fund, from which Memoir we glean the following interesting information. The city was called Pi Tum, which means the house or abode of Tum (the god of the setting sun), and the surrounding district was called Thuku or Thukut, which is equivalent to Succoth. It is a mere philological accident that the Hebrew language has a word succoth, signifying _tents_. The inscriptions appear to show that it was Rameses II. who caused the city to be built; and in this they do but confirm the view previously entertained by Egyptologists. Pithom was both a store city and a fortress, and so was surrounded by very thick walls, part of which are yet preserved. The civil city of Thuku extended all round the sacred buildings of Pithom. We have first of all a square area enclosed by enormous brick walls, the space within being equal to 55,000 square yards. In the south-west angle is a small temple. The wall enclosure is honeycombed with rectangular chambers, well built, the bricks being of Nile mud, and united by mortar. It is a curious fact that some of the bricks contain straw, while others are without. These chambers M. Naville believes to be the granaries into which Pharaoh gathered the provisions necessary for armies about to cross the desert, and perhaps for caravans and travellers, who were on the road to Syria.

Pithom, according to the Coptic version of the Scriptures, was the place where Joseph went up to meet Jacob--“near Pithom, the city in the land of Rameses” (Gen. xlvi. 28). It is true that the LXX., supported by Josephus, make Heroopolis to be the meeting-place; but it is not unlikely that Heroopolis was a later name for Pithom itself. The Greeks were succeeded by the Romans, traces of whose habitations are to be seen on all sides.

When the Romans levelled the ground for their camp, they destroyed without mercy an immense number of inscriptions, which would have been most precious to us now. Of those which remain, by far the most important is the great tablet of Philadelphus, measuring 4 feet 3 inches, by 3 feet 2 inches, which was found near the _naos_. It is stated in the inscription that the king ordered it to be erected _before his father Tum, the great god of Succoth_. It records what was done for Pithom by the king, and his queen and sister Arsinoe. We learn from it that Pithom and the neighbouring city of Arsinoe, which the king founded in honour of his sister, were the starting points of commercial expeditions to the Red Sea; and that from thence one of Ptolemy’s generals went to the land of the Troglodytes, and founded the city of Ptolemais Θηριῶν, for the special purpose of facilitating the chase of elephants. And it was to Heroopolis that the ships brought the animals (so that if Heroopolis was Pithom, and Pithom was Maskhuta, the navigable water must have extended farther northward than it does at present). We learn also that close to Pithom there was a city called Pikerehat, or Pikeheret, apparently the Pi-ha-hiroth mentioned in the narrative of the Exodus.

It was suggested by the late Dr Birch that the Israelites, besides building store cities, were compelled, like convicts or captives of war, to labour on the forts of Tanis, and on the line of the great wall which protected Egypt on the north-east. This long wall extended from Pelusium southwards, and had been built to keep out the tribes of the desert and other invaders from the Asiatic side. From the “Adventures of Sinuhit,” a narrative dating from the twelfth dynasty, it appears to have been of very early construction; for the fugitive there says, “I reached the walls of the prince, which he has constructed to repel the Sittiu and to destroy the Nomiu-Shaiu; I remained in a crouching posture among the bushes, for fear of being seen by the guard, relieved each day, which keeps watch from the summit of the fortress: I proceeded on my way at nightfall.”[9] The wall appears to have been renovated by Seti I. and Rameses II., and strengthened by forts, built after the Canaanite models which the Pharaohs had seen in the course of their campaigns. The Egyptians, not content with appropriating the thing, appropriated also the name, and called these frontier towers by the Semitic name of _Magdilu_ or Migdols. In a later reign, an officer who had been sent to recapture two runaway slaves, reports that he did not overtake them until he had got beyond the region of the wall, to the north of the Migdol of King Seti Menephtah.[10]

[_Authorities and Sources_:--“Biblical Sites in Lower Egypt.” By Greville J. Chester, B.A., in the Survey Memoirs, P. E. Fund. “Tel-el-Yahoudeh.” By Prof. T. Hayter Lewis, F.S.A., in Trans. Soc. Bib. Archæol., vol. vii. “The Store-City of Pithom.” By M. Naville, Egypt Exploration Fund. “Goshen.” By M. Naville, E. E. Fund. “Daphnae.” By W. M. Flinders Petrie, E. E. Fund. “Tanis.” By W. M. Flinders Petrie, E. E. Fund. Murray’s Handbook, “Egypt.”]

9. _The Route of the Exodus._

As Succoth was the first station of the Israelites in leaving Egypt, and we now know the locality, we begin to be able to trace their route. Starting from Rameses--a city not yet identified, but perhaps near the present Zagazig[11]--two courses were open to them. They might go northward, past the city of Zoan, and then skirt the coast of Philistia--the route generally taken by the great conquerors, and by much the nearer way. But there were objections against taking it, for “it came to pass in the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died” (Exod. ii. 23), and the new Pharaoh, Menephtah, son and successor of Rameses II., was holding his Court at Zoan at this time,[12] and had his chariots and his horsemen about him. Nor must we forget the great wall and its fortresses, which in that direction would bar the way. “It was a wall,” says Mr Poole, “carefully constructed, with scarp and counter-scarp, ditch and glacis, well manned by the best troops, the sentinel on the ramparts day and night.” Prudence would seem to say that this route should not be attempted. The course actually taken appears to have been from Rameses eastward, along the valley Tumilat and the line of the canal which had been made by Seti I. They then encamped at Succoth, probably for the same reason that the British encamped there in 1882, namely, that there was abundance of forage and water, and a defensible position. The next station was “Etham, in the edge of the wilderness,” northward from Pithom-Succoth, we may suppose, for they seem to have been marching (perhaps for a feint) as though they would take the short route through the Philistine country. But then they received the command to “turn back and encamp before Pi-ha-hiroth, between the Migdol and the sea, before Baal-Zephon, over against it by the sea.” They obeyed, and to understand the course they actually pursued, we must take into account some recent geological discoveries. It is not the aim of the present writer to put forth original views of his own, but rather to explain the conclusions arrived at by the ablest investigators. In accordance with this design, it will be desirable here to introduce a paragraph from Major Henry Spencer Palmer, who shared with Colonel Sir Charles Wilson the command of the Sinai Survey Expedition.

“The character and scene of the Red Sea passage--the greatest event which ancient history records--have in all ages been the subject of controversy, according to the variously proposed systems of topography, and the extent to which men have admitted or denied the operation of miraculous agency. Some, holding to the strict interpretation of such passages as, ‘The waters were a wall unto them on their right hand and their left’ (Exod. xiv. 20), ‘The floods stood upright as an heap’ (Ps. xv. 8), ‘He made the waters to stand as an heap’ (Ps. lxxvii. 15), have inferred that the deep sea must have been literally parted asunder, and that through the chasm thus formed the Israelites passed, with a sheer wall of water on either side of them. By such, the scene of the passage has been fixed at six, ten, fifty, and even sixty miles below Suez, and the position of the city of Rameses has been varied to meet the several theories as to the crossing place. The advocates of these views, apparently anxious to aggrandise the miracle to the utmost, and discarding from fair consideration the physical agency which Scripture expressly mentions as the direct means by which the passage was made practicable, have, however, overlooked or evaded the difficulty of explaining how the fugitives, with their flocks and herds, could have travelled over the sharp coral rocks, and vast quantities of seaweed which cover the sea-bottom at these points. The obvious difficulty also, that a short way below Suez, the breadth of the sea becomes too great for the passage to have been effected within the limits of time given in the narrative, without some preternatural acceleration of speed, of which Scripture gives no hint or mention, has never been met satisfactorily. There is the yet greater difficulty that a wind strong enough to have produced upon deep water the extraordinary effect which is supposed, would have been much too violent for any man or body of men to have stood up against it. Lastly, there is the impossible supposition that Pharaoh and his host would have been mad enough to rush to their doom in this fearful chasm.”

Of late years, however, the theory of a deep-water passage has been practically abandoned. Modern critics prefer an intelligent interpretation, according to known natural laws, of the words of Exodus xiv. 21, 22, which lay stress upon the _east wind_ as the direct natural agent by which the sea bottom was for the time made dry land.

Major Palmer mentions the presence of marine shells in the Bitter Lake as showing that it was formerly filled with salt water from the Gulf of Suez. He says further:--“This communication subsequently became broken by the gradual elevation of the neck of land eleven miles long which now separates the lakes from the head of the gulf--an interesting fulfilment of the prophecy in Isaiah xi. 15--‘and the Lord shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea.’ Darius, about B.C. 500, restored the connection by cutting a canal through the isthmus, which after a period of disuse was reopened by Ptolemy Philadelphus, about B.C. 250. Traces of Darius’s canal are still seen, in a very perfect state, though its bed has since risen above the level of high water in the gulf. If, as can hardly be doubted, there was a connection, at least tidal, between the lakes and the gulf at the time of the Exodus, the only course eastward from Egypt which would have been ordinarily practicable for the march of hosts, must have passed to the north of the Great Bitter Lake, crossing the belt of dry ground which, interrupted only by the Timsah and Ballah Lakes, extends between it and the Menzaleh Lake, and the Children of Israel must have been following one such route when, at Etham, they were directed to turn and encamp before Pi-ha-horoth.”

These views of Major Palmer’s are shared by M. Naville, by Sir Wm. Dawson, and others, and have been decisively confirmed by the geological survey of the region. In 1883 the Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund sent out Professor Hull, the eminent geologist, accompanied by Major Kitchener, R.E., and other competent men, and this party investigated the geology of Lower Egypt, of the Desert of Sinai, the Valley of the Arabah, and the southern portion of Palestine. The results were very remarkable. It appears, for instance, that at a distant period of the past the waters of the seas, lakes, and gulfs of all this region stood some two hundred feet higher than they do now--the proof being found in the fact that at the height of two hundred feet the limestone rocks have been bored into by the well-known “shell-fish,” the pholas, while the sands and gravels at that height contain shells and corals and crinoids, of the same species as those which still inhabit the waters of the Gulf of Suez. With the waters at that height the whole of Lower Egypt would be submerged, together with extensive tracts on either side of the Gulf of Suez. But this occurred in the distant past, probably many ages before mankind dwelt in these regions at all. There was, however, a more recent period, as the land slowly rose out of the waters--and Professor Hull thinks it may have coincided with the time of the Exodus--when the waters were just 26 feet higher than they are at present, and then, although Lower Egypt would not be submerged, the Gulf of Suez must have extended northward as far as the Bitter Lakes, making an arm of the sea about a mile wide and 20 or 30 feet deep.

It is suggested by M. Naville that the Israelites, when they turned back from Etham, came down on the western side of this arm of the sea, and got into a defile, so that they appeared to be caught in a trap. Pharaoh thought so, and said, “They are entangled in the land, the wilderness hath shut them in;” and so he pursued them, and thought to obtain an easy victory. But Moses had clear knowledge of what he was to do. Although the waters of the gulf were for the most part 20 or 30 feet deep, and quite impassable, there was one place (near the present Châluf) where they were quite shallow, where the land now is 26 feet higher than the waters, and where, at that time, reeds were growing. This part of the gulf was a shallow sea of reeds: and what the Hebrew Bible really says is that the Israelites crossed the sea of reeds--_yam Souph_[13]--which was the former extension of the Red Sea northwards. This place was so shallow that when the north-east wind blew, co-operating with a retreating tide, it was liable to be rendered dry; and because the tribes of the Desert used then to rush in, through this temporary gateway, and carry off the cattle, and plunder the fertile district around Pithom, the Pharaohs had established a watch-tower here--one of their Migdols. The Israelites “encamped between the Migdol and the sea:” then the north-east wind arose and made the passage dry, so that they were able to pass over. Their God had made a way for them. If this explanation, which is now very generally received, should be finally established, it must for ever silence all objections as to the credibility of this part of the Scripture narrative.

[_Authorities and Sources_:--“The Store-City of Pithom.” By M. Naville, Egypt Exploration Fund. “Sinai.” By Major H. Spencer Palmer, R.E. “The Desert of the Exodus.” By Prof. E. H. Palmer. “Sinai and Palestine.” By Dean Stanley. “Egypt and Sinai.” By Sir J. Wm. Dawson.]

10. _The Wilderness Wanderings._

All questions regarding the actual route of the Israelites and the true Mount Sinai were carefully studied during the Ordnance Survey of the Sinai Desert in 1868-9. The expedition was conducted by Major Henry Spencer Palmer, R.E., and Colonel Sir Charles Wilson, R.E., and the results were published in 1872, by authority of the Treasury, in five massive folio volumes. It may be fairly said that this expedition vindicated the accuracy of the Bible narrative; for the late Prof. E. H. Palmer, who was one of the party, and kept his own daily journal as they went along, assures us that the Bible narrative reads exactly like a daily journal kept by a member of a travelling party. A traveller begins by setting down his first impressions, which are often corrected in his later notes as the result of further experience; and Palmer pointed to such evidences of authenticity in the Bible story.

The results of the Survey of Sinai only concern us here so far as they relate to discoveries of ruins and relics of the past.

The mining district of the peninsula of Sinai became subject to Egyptian rule at a very early time--probably some 3200 years before the Christian era--and the sculptured records of their occupation spread over a period of some 2000 years. On tablets at the mouth of one of the caves at Maghárah, King Senefru and his successor Cheops (who built the Great Pyramid) are represented, the one conquering a shepherd of the East, the other striking to the earth an Asiatic foe. “On the opposite cliffs” (says Major Palmer) “are the remains of the ancient settlement, comprising the dwellings of the miners, who probably were prisoners of war, and the barracks of their military guards. Flint and stone implements, such as arrow-heads and spear-heads, flint chisels and knives, and rude hammer-heads of green-stone, are found amongst these ruins.”

At Sarábit el Khádim, ten or twelve miles further inland, where a new field of mining was discovered about the time that Maghárah began to show signs of exhaustion, there are ruins of two temples, built of well-cut stone, without mortar, the walls and vestibule being covered with Egyptian scenes.

But we are chiefly concerned to know whether any traces eremain of the Israelitish Sojourn, and especially any of a character to throw additional light on Scripture. Of course a wandering people, dwelling in tents, would not leave evidence of their passage in buried cities; and what we have rather to look for is deserted camps. One such camp at least is reasonably identified now as Kibroth Hattaavah, where the people were fed with quails (Num. xi. 33). The Scripture narrative says that they journeyed thence to Hazeroth, and abode there. About thirty miles north-east of Jebel Musa, at a spot called _Erweis el Ebeirig_, are some old stone remains to which a legend attaches which very strikingly recalls the Scripture statement, and may very possibly contain some grain of truth. “These ruins” (say the Arabs) “are the remains of a large pilgrim or Hajj caravan, which in remote ages stopped here on the way to Hazeroth, and was afterwards lost in the Tih, and never again heard of.” Hazeroth, the name of which still survives in ’Ain Hudherah, is fifteen miles further on towards ’Akabah. The Bádiet et Tih is by interpretation the wilderness of the wanderings, and is a sort of peninsula of higher ground which projects down into the Sinai desert from the north. Major Palmer tells us that the ruins at Erweis el Ebeirig form a class by themselves, differing from all other ancient remains hitherto found in the peninsula. Though there are a few stone houses, the remains consist chiefly of a great number of small enclosures of stone, mostly circular, and extending over several square miles of country. The stones are not set on end; their arrangement is not unlike that which may be seen on spots where an Arab encampment has been, though they certainly cannot be taken for Arab remains. The large enclosures intended for important personages, and the hearths or fire-places, can still be distinctly traced, showing conclusively that it is a large deserted camp. In the neighbourhood, but beyond the camp area, are a number of stone heaps, which, from their shape and position, are probably burial places without the camp, though none have yet been examined.

Between the Tih wilderness and Judea, is the Negeb or “South Country” of Scripture, now a deserted and barren wilderness, but shown by Professor E. H. Palmer to be full of the most interesting traces of former inhabitants and cultivation. In the Scripture narrative of the wanderings we read about Kadesh Barnea, where Miriam died, and whence the spies went up to Eshkol and obtained the grapes. The identification of Kadesh Barnea had long been difficult and disputed, until it was discovered, in the year 1840, by Dr Rowlands to be _’Ain Gadis_ (or _Qades_) in Jebel Magráh, on the south-west frontier of the Negeb. The name _Gadis_ is identical in meaning and etymology with the Kadesh of the Bible, while the word _’Ain_ means a fountain; so that Kadesh Barnea can scarcely be said to have changed its name. The place is a picturesque oasis, and from under a ragged spur of solid rock, regarded by Rowlands as “the cliff” smitten by Moses, there issues an abundant stream. Professor Palmer, visiting the district some thirty years after, failed to find this great spring, but it was discovered again by Rev. F. W. Holland in 1878, and by Dr Clay Trumbull of America in 1881; and Dr Trumbull’s book on Kadesh Barnea is now the fullest source of information.

Mr Holland’s record of the Sinai Survey Expedition is printed at the end of the volume on the “Recovery of Jerusalem,” published by the Palestine Exploration Fund. Mr Holland endeavours to trace the route of the Israelites, to fix the stations, to identify the spot where the battle of Rephidim was fought, and to make more intelligible the entire story. Traditions of the passage of the children of Israel through the country are common enough, he says. The physical conditions of the country are such as to render it quite possible that the events recorded in the Book of Exodus occurred there. The route of the Israelites has not indeed been laid down with absolute certainty, but much light has undoubtedly been thrown upon it by the explorations that have been made. Mr Holland concludes by declaring that “not a single member of the expedition returned home without feeling more firmly convinced than ever of the truth of that sacred history which he found illustrated and confirmed by the natural features of the desert. The mountains and valleys, the very rocks, barren and sun-scorched as they now are, seem to furnish evidences, which none who behold them can gainsay, that this was that ‘great and terrible wilderness’ through which Moses, under God’s direction, led His people.”

[_Authorities and Sources_:--“Explorations in the Peninsula of Sinai.” By Rev. F. W. Holland (in volume on the “Recovery of Jerusalem”). “Sinai.” By Major H. S. Palmer. “The Desert of the Exodus.” By Professor E. H. Palmer. “The Desert of the Tih.” By Prof. E. H. Palmer (in the volume of Special Papers, P. E. Fund.)]

[Nothing is said in this section about the Sinaitic Inscriptions, because it has long ago been settled by scholars that they are Nabathean pilgrim texts of the third and fourth centuries, A.D., written by travellers who were then visiting the Sinai convent and the hermitage of Wâdy Feirân, and the traders who passed from Petra on the way to Egypt. They were first read by Beer in 1840, and the authoritative work upon them is that of Levy in 1860. In 1868-9, Prof. E. H. Palmer confirmed their results. For further references see Major Conder in _Quarterly Statement_, Jan. 1892.]