been collected in books and monographs. Thirty years ago, Ebers, best known through his novels, wrote the first volume of his still unfinished work, "Egypten und die Bücher Moses"; and twenty-three years ago, Brugsch wrote his monograph "L'Exode et les Monuments Égyptiens." These works attracted much attention; there were, of course, some less notable earlier attempts than these, and many have since followed, but there is, unfortunately, no book which utilizes the available material up to date. Of the recent works on Egypt and Israel, not one is written by a competent hieroglyphic scholar. Indeed, little toward solving the

back as Ramses II, in the thirteenth century B. C., it was the route of the canal, which still existed in Strabo's time, forming a navigable connection between the Mediterranean (by way of the Nile) and the Red Sea. It is to-day the natural route of the fresh water canal flowing from the Nile at Cairo to the Suez region, where it supplies Port Said, Ismailiya, and Suez with fresh water. Following this canal and the Wadi is also the railway connecting Cairo and Ismailiya. These facts demonstrate the immense importance of this Wadi as a line of connection between the Nile Delta and the east. In excavating the heap of ruins at

problem of Israel's sojourn in Egypt, of the Pharaoh of the Oppression, and similar questions was achieved by the scholar until excavations having this particular end in view were undertaken. In the spring of 1883, the excavations of the newly-organized "Egyptian Exploration Fund" were carried on by Naville at Tellel-Maskhutah, a site twelve miles from Ismailiya in the Wadi-Tumilat. This Wadi is a narrow valley of uncertain fertility, sparsely grown with vegetation, extending into the Arabian Desert like a river from the Nile Delta eastward toward the Isthmus of Suez. It is the natural line of approach to the Delta from the east, and was fortified against the incursions of the Asiatic Beduin nearly 3000 B. C. As far

Tell-el-Maskhutah Naville laid bare a large rectangular inclosure of about 55,000 square yards. The immense surrounding wall is of sun-dried brick, some twentyfour feet in thickness; it proved to be the wall of the city. Inscribed monuments found within this inclosure show this site to have been the ancient Pithom of the Pharaohs, the Heroopolis of the classic geographers. The region in which it was situated was called in hieroglyphic by a name strikingly similar to the Hebrew Succoth, of the Exodus account. It will be remembered that the Hebrews are said to have built for the Pharaoh the "store-cities, Pithom and Raamses" (Ex. i: 11). Here, then, was identified for the first time the city which the Hebrews helped to build.

In the southwest corner of the inclosure was the ancient temple and near this, a little east of north, was found a curious structure built of sun-dried brick. It consisted of a series of chambers entirely without connection, and open, therefore, only from the top. Now this is the usual form of the Egyptian magazine or storechamber, familiar to us in the wall-scenes of the tomb-chapels, where we see the peasantry, in a number of cases, pouring grain through a trap-door in the roof. This striking agreement between the building found at Pithom and the phrase "store-cities" of the Exodus narrative is remarkable. But Naville's remarks betray a tendency to push details to a degree that is really amusing. In referring to these store-chambers, he says: "As for the nature of the bricks, I cannot do better than quote the words of a distinguished visitor, Mr. Villiers Stuart, who came to see the excavation: 'I carefully examined the chamber-walls, and I noticed that some of the corners of the brickwork throughout were built of bricks without straw. I do not remember to have met anywhere in Egypt bricks so made. In a dry climate, like that of Egypt, it is not necessary to burn the bricks: they are made of Nile mud, and dried in the sun. Straw is mixed with them to give them coherence." We can only say that Mr. Stuart's observations cannot have been very extended, for ancient bricks without straw are common enough in Egypt. The identification of Pithom, of course, determines more conclusively than before, the route of the Exodus, showing clearly that it could not have been northward along the Mediterranean coast, as Brugsch and Schleiden had maintained. According to the Exodus account of the journey, the "children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth." (Ex. xii: 37). As Succoth is the region in which Pithom was located, the point of departure from Egypt is pretty well determined to have been in the vicinity of Pithom. The identification by Naville of the further geographical names in the Exodus route cannot be said to be at all certain. further progress of the journey is, therefore, still undetermined.

The

The monuments of Pithom furnish us a further indication of value in connection with Israel. The Exodus narrative nowhere mentions the Pharaoh of the Oppression by name, for "Pharaoh " is a title,

not a name. Although Naville did not clear qut all the chambers in the storehouse at Pithom, a piece of work, by the way, which ought still to be done; nevertheless, it is not probable that any monuments still lying in these chambers are earlier in date than Ramses II, for he is the earliest king mentioned on any of the blocks taken out by Naville. He was, therefore, in all likelihood, the builder of Pithom; and, being builder of Pithom, was, according to the Exodus narrative, the oppressor of the Israelites. tainty of Brugsch on this matter, however, is entirely unjustified; he says: "To begin with, the fact stands as firm as a rock, that Ramses II must be looked upon as the oppressor of the Hebrew people ." ("Steininschrift und Bibelwort,” p. 143). Until the remaining chambers of the Pithom storehouse can be cleared, no such certainty can be entertained.

The cer

It was Brugsch, however, who, just two years before the excavations of Naville at Pithom, was able to settle the geography of the region in which Israel sojourned, so that Naville might successfully continue its study. In the museum, then at Bulaq, now at Gizeh, Brugsch noticed the fragments of a huge monolithic shrine of black granite, erected by Nektanebo II, the last of the Pharaohs (p. 66). It bore a number of inscriptions containing geographical references to a nome or district northeast of Cairo in the vicinity of the point where the Wadi-Tumilat leaves the Delta. According to Brugsch's statement, the fragments of this shrine or naos had been found in this same district in the house of a native official at Zagazig, who had obtained them from Saft, a neighboring village. In December, 1885, Naville came upon other fragments of the same shrine in the village of Saft, half submerged in the waters of the subsiding inundation. From the inscription on these new fragments, it became evident that the region around Saft was early called Ges, a name which is spelt Gesem in the geographical lists of the Ptolemaic temples. This writing immediately recalls the writing of Goshen in the Greek translation of the Old Testament. For here the Greek translators of the second or third century B. C., dently familiar with the region referred to, have rendered the Hebrew Goshen by Gesem; tradition also, as well as some

evi

other earlier evidences would point toward the same conclusion, that the region in which the Hebrews had been permitted to pasture their flocks at the request of Joseph was in and around the western end of the Wadi-Tumilat, down which their descendants on the Exodus journey moved eastward through Pithom and its region, Succoth. It is possible, as Naville suggests, that Saft, where the shrine was found, is the hitherto unidentified city of "Rameses" (Ex. xii: 37), from which the fleeing Israelites journeyed to Succoth.

It will be seen from these results that the investigations of the scholar have been incalculably aided by the excavator's spade, and, from that time until two years ago, the scholar alone made little progress in the study of this question. Again, it was the spade of the excavator which brought to the scholar new material. On the western shore of the Nile, among the splendid ruins of Thebes, facing the river, stand the two colossal statues of Amenhotep III, which were known to the Greeks as statues of Memnon. Such colossi regularly stood on either side of the portal of a temple, flanked by the huge pylons of the temple façade. The temple which stood behind these surviving colossi is described by its builder, Amenhotep III, as follows:

"He made it as his monument for his father, Amon, Lord of Thebes; making for him a superb temple on the west of Thebes, an eternal, everlasting stronghold of fine white sandstone, wrought with gold throughout; its floor is adorned with silver, its gates all with electrum. It is made very wide and large; it is made splendid forever and adorned with this very great monument,* merous in royal statues of elephantine granite, of costly conglomerate, of every costly stone, superb and excellent as everlasting works. They are lofty; shining more than the heavens. Their rays are in the faces (of men) like the sun, when he shines early in the morn

nu

* Referring to the Rock tablet on which this inscription is cut.

ing. It is supplied with a royal tablet wrought with gold and many costly stones. Flagstaves are set up before it. wrought with electrum; it resembles the horizon in heaven when Re (the SunGod) rises therein. Its lake is flooded with every great inundation. Fish and fowl bathe . . . ? its storehouse is filled with male and female slaves; with the princes of all countries of the captivity of his majesty. Its storehouse contains good things innumerable. It is surrounded with settlements of Syrians, peopled with the children of princes. Its cattle are like the sands of the shore, amounting to millions."

It will be seen from the inscription how magnificent must have been the temple whose great portal was guarded by the colossi, and they, too, are mentioned in the inscription. But the building has utterly vanished, and no one was able to surmise the cause or manner of its destruction until the excavation of the place in the winter of 1895-96, conducted by Mr. Petrie. These excavations resulted in the discovery of several lost temples, among them, one of Merneptah, son and successor of Ramses II, the probable oppressor of the Israelites. This temple was constructed largely of the magnificent material deliberately stolen by Merneptah from the neighboring temple by Amenhotep III, and ruthlessly broken up for the purpose. This explains the almost total

disappearance of Amenhotep III's splendid temple, which he describes above, once standing behind the well-known colossi of the plain. Now among the building materials thus appropriated, Petrie discovered a superb stela of black syenite, ten feet three inches high; five feet four inches wide, and thirteen inches thick. It had been inscribed with an account of Amenhotep III's pious building enterprises, from which we translated the king's description of the temple behind the colossi, as above. This inscription had been defaced by his son, Amenhotep IV, to erase the name and mention of the hated Amon, whose worship he had forbidden. It was beautifully recut by Seti I, as the column at the top informs us (see view, p. 34). Such had been its history when, over 200 years after its erection, Merneptah saw it and seized it for his temple. There he placed it, face to the wall, and engraved upon the exposed back a hymn of praise to himself, in view of a great victory he had won over the Libyans in his fifth year, a victory with which we were before familiar. It occupies twentyeight lines; of these, twenty-five and part of the twenty-sixth are devoted to the celebration of the victory. The remainder, of less than three lines, contains a list of eight northern peoples and cities, conquered by the king. This list is in poetry, and reads as follows:

1. "The kings are overthrown, saying Salâm; 2. "Not one is holding up his head among the Nine Bows;

3. "Undone is Tehenu;

4.

5.

"Kheta is pacified;

Plundered is Pakanana with every evil;

6. "Carried away is Ashkelon;

7. "Seized upon is Gezer;

8. "Yenuam is made as one that is not; 9. "Israel is desolated; his grain is not; 10. Palestine has become as widows for Egypt; II. "All lands-together they are in peace; 12. "Everyone who rebels is subdued by the King, Merneptah."

These concluding twelve verses of the inscription form a clearly defined strophe. It opens (vv. 1-2) and closes (vv. 11-12) with a couplet containing a general statement of the subjugation of the foreign peoples, while in the eight lines between is a list of these peoples. It is important to note that these opening and closing couplets thus decisively designate the list. of names enclosed between them as those of foreign countries, none of which was in Egypt at this time. The list itself naturally begins with the Libyans just

defeated, who form the nucleus of the North African tribes designated by the "Tehenu" (v. 3). Then follow (v. 4) the Asiatic enemies of Egypt, beginning naturally with the most formidable, the Hittites (Kheta). As far as we know, Merneptah had never broken the treaty of peace made with the Hittites by his father, Ramses II, and the great Karnak inscription states that Merneptah sent supply-vessels to them with grain. This insertion of the Kheta among the list, therefore, seems like gratuitous boasting and throws a good deal of light upon the entire list, indicating, perhaps, the unfounded character of all the boasted triumphs. Why Canaan (called Pakanana, lit. "The Canaan," v. 5) should follow the Hittites is not evident. Among the Egyptians, Canaan was a loose term for nearly the whole of western Syria, which in the north, on the coast, would reach far beyond the southern limits of the Hittites, who were further inland on the Orontes. In lines 6-8, there is possibly a definite grouping of localities and a movement from south to north. Ashkelon, the wellknown Philistine city, marks the southern beginning. Gezer next, in southern Ephraim, just northwest of Jerusalem, carries us a step further to the northward; while Yenuam, inland from Tyre, completes the northern progress. All three are cities.

The reference to Israel (v. 9) is thus far the only mention of this people on any Egyptian monument, and the earliest outside the Old Testament. The meaning of the word here translated desolated, or plundered (Egyptian fk), is established by placing our passage parallel with several others, thus:

"Israel is fk; his grain is not."
Parallel passages:

1. "Those who reached my border are desolated; their grain is not."

2. "The Seped (a tribe) are desolated; their grain is not."

3. "The fire has made entrance to us; our grain is not." (Words of defeated Libyans).

It will be seen in the three parallel examples given, that fk is twice parallel with "desolated” and once parallel with the entrance of fire. This meaning, "to waste" or "desolate," is therefore clear. But the very word occurs elsewhere in the same connection:

4. Their cities are burned to ashes, destroyed, desolated (fk); their grain is not."