Chapter I: Egypt and the Bible (3)

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.]