Manetho.

They were treated the more cruelly because their numbers made them feared. They had spread widely over Lower Egypt; but Amunothph, says the Egyptian historian, always confounding the Jews with the Phenicians, was warned by the priests to cleanse the country of these unclean persons, who were many of them lepers, and he sent them, to the number of eighty thousand, to live apart from the natives in the spot that had at first been allotted to them. They there chose Moses, a learned priest of Heliopolis, for their leader, who made a new code of laws for them, forbidding them to worship the Egyptian gods and sacred animals. Lastly, they took arms against the Egyptians, and were joined by troops from Canaan; but they were beaten in battle, driven out of the country, and many of them killed by Amunothph, who followed them in their flight to the borders of Syria.

(9) This is very unlike the well-known history in the Old Testament. However late may be the date of the writing, the march of the Jews under Moses is there recorded with strict geographical accuracy; and even now, if we correct the maps with the help of the measurements of the Roman roads in the Itinerarium, we may not only trace their route, but may fix with some probability the spot where they crossed on dry ground through the bed of the Red Sea, and where the Egyptian army was overthrown by the return of the waters (see Fig. 52). The interest which we feel in the journey would excuse even a search for their footsteps in the sand. Moses, on leaving the City of the Sun, called in Coptic Rameses, in Greek Heliopolis, marched the first day sixteen miles along the right bank of the Pelusiac branch of the river. He rested the first night at a village called the Tents, in Hebrew Succoth, in Greek Scenæ. The xiii. xiv. next day's march was of twenty-two miles, and passing by the town of Onion, called in the Roman Itinerary Vicus Judæorum, he encamped the second night at the edge of the desert, near the Egyptian fortified city of Etham. This city was named after the god Chem, there called Athom; and it has been also called Thoum and Pithom, and Patumos. It was ten miles from Bubastis. The number of followers of course increased as he passed through the land of Goshen. At Etham he left the northern

Exodus,

road to Pelusium; and his third day's march was eastward, towards Hiroth or Heroopolis, along a valley, through which the waters of the Nile sometimes flow during the height of the inundation, and through which Necho's canal was afterwards dug. From Hiroth the shortest way out of Egypt was on the north side of the Lower Bitter Lakes, and thence along the shore of the Mediterranean, through the desert to Gaza and the land of the Philistines. But the Egyptians were close in the rear, and the Israelites, to save themselves, had to quit the high road. They turned southward over the uneven sand-hills, and rested the third night, to their great disappointment, on the Egyptian side of the water. They encamped between the sea and a small hill fortress named Migdol, the Tower. This is perhaps the castle of Adjrud, on the shore of Pi-Hahiroth, the Bay of Heroopolis, or, according to modern maps, on the edge of the Upper Bitter Lake opposite to Baal-Zephon, the modern town of Arsinoë. On this southward march all doubt of their fate seemed at an end. They had lost all chance of finding fresh water. On one side was the salt sea, before them and on the other side was the boundless desert, and behind them were the Egyptian chariots, each carrying three soldiers (see Fig. 53). The

Fig. 53.

encroaching sands, which have since left the Greek towns of Arsinoe and Clysma at a distance from the head of the gulf, had not then divided the waters, and cut off the northern tongue of the Egyptian sea. Hence, when the Jews turned southward from Hiroth, which was then near the head of the

gulf to which it gave its name, they seemed to the pursuing army to be hemmed in between the sea and the desert. But other destinies awaited them; they were a people for & purpose. Moses led them southward along the coast during the fourth day; and at night they found a way of escape which they had little hoped for. As they murmured in discontent against their leader, "the Lord caused the sea to go back by means of a strong east wind all that night, and he made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. And the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, and the waters were a wall to them on their right hand and on their left." The Egyptian army rashly followed in the morning. But the wind had fallen, perhaps the tide was rising; the waters suddenly returned, and their forces were overthrown and drowned. This most interesting xi. 15. place we recognise in a spot which, by the encroachment of the sand, has been left dry since the days of Isaiah. Here the hardened sand forms a bank which, though less than two miles wide, and only a foot or two above the high water, now blocks out the Red Sea, and divides the Bitter Lake from the gulf. From the situation of the town of Hiroth, the Israelites could not have appeared hemmed in, when half a day's march to the south of that city, if the lake had been separated from the gulf as it is now. The account of their march seems written with careful geographical accuracy; we have no more certain method of trying the truth of what an ancient historian relates than by examining his geography and natural history.

Isaiah,

xv. xvi.

xvii. Bartlett's

in the

(10) After passing the Red Sea the Israelites turned southward along the coast towards Mount Sinai, and Exodus, the natural features of this desert peninsula are so unchanging that their path may yet be traced, and Forty Days their halting places fixed with much probability. The traveller now meets with the same springs of Desert. brackish water, the same clumps of stunted palms, the same spot where quails can live, and the same watered valley in which he can refresh himself after his thirsty journey over scorching sands and rocks. The road was well known to Moses, who had married a wife from the valleys at the foot of Sinai, and had thence come up to the rescue of his countrymen. After three days in the desert, part of