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.”
[Illustration: EGYPT & PENINSULA OF SINAI
_London; Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co._
_F. S. Weller, F.R.G.S._]
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.]