ing geographical site as far north as possible, at all events not near the Wady Tùmilât; but conjecture on this point is worthless. Pi-hariroth is unknown; the element pi- is of course the Egyptian house of found in the names of various towns; I have sometimes wondered whether this place-name might not be a corruption of POS Pr-Ḥthrt House-of-Hathor, mentioned in the description of Pi-Ra'messe in Anastasi III (3, 3). This, however, is the merest conjecture and in no case to be used even as corroborative evidence. Of the other names mentioned in the narrative of the Exodus the identification of Succoth with e) Theku, i. e. Tell elMaskhûteh, must be definitively abandoned. It had plausibility only so long as Rameses was believed to lie in the Wady Tumilât, and the Sea of reeds was interpreted as the Red Sea; from the outset a popular etymology conforming the Egyptian name to the Hebrew sukkoth

booths had to be assumed. With the name Etham nothing serious can be done.

Now the theory here propounded comes into conflict with a view which has genuine ancient authority, namely the view advocated by the Septuagint. In rendering yamsaph by ἐρυθρὰ θάλασσα «Red Sea " and by their insertion of at Heroonpolis into the land of Ramesses in Gen., XLVI, 28-9, the Septuagint translators seem to stand committed to the belief later advocated by the Abbess Aetheria. As I have pointed out elsewhere, this belief arose directly from the passage Ex. 1, 11 And they built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses." The argument started from the known fact that Pithom was the same as Heroonpolis, the chief city of the Wady Tùmilat. From the considerations (a) that the children dwelt apart in the land of Goshen, and (b) that Pithom and Raamses are associated in Ex., 1, 11, it was concluded

(J.E.A., V, 186.

See J.E.A., V, 266, n. 1, where the old identification, though alrea ly doubted, is still wrongly retained,

›3) J, E. A,, V, 263,

that Rameses was situated near Pithom in the Wâdy Tûmilât. Possibly the identification of the Sea of reeds » with the Gulf of Suez was largely due to this southern » hypothesis of the route of the Exodus.

The Septuagint interpretation too clearly bears the mark of its harmonistic origin to be admitted as carrying on the authentic old Hebrew tradition. Nevertheless it is a conceivable theory that the author responsible for the Biblical account of the Exodus may likewise have had the Wâdy Tûmîlât and the Gulf of Suez in view. Let us examine this hypothesis. If the anthor in question knew the true location of Rameses near Pelusium, the hypothesis would assume for the first two days an impossibly circuitous route through the cultivated land via Saft el-Henneh to beyond Theku. If the Wâdy Tûmilât theory is to be retained, we must necessarily suppose that the Hebrew author erroneously postulated Tell el-Kebîr or Tell elRetâbeh as the site of Rameses, and this supposition has all the disadvantages and none of the advantages of my contention that he erroneously fixed that site at Tanis. For when Etham was reached hypothetically at the east end of the Wady Tùmîlât- any retirement except back in the direction of Succoth could not fail to take the Israelites out into the desert, and the story as outlined above presupposes that this was just what they wished to avoid the Israelites clung to the Egyptian soil because they were frightened of the desert. Nor indeed could they reach the Red Sea without crossing a tract of desert (1), and this the story forbids. To me it appears certain that the Hebrew author cannot have had the Wâdy Tûmîlât in his mind.

To sum up the legend of the Exodus, in the form in

(1) Küthmann (Die Ostgrenze Ägyptens) is undoubtedly right in contending that there are no grounds for supposing that the Gulf of Suez extended further north than Suez in the Egyptian New Kingdom. Even with this supposition in the modified form supported by KITTEL, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, 3rd. ed., 542-544, we should have to conceive of the extended arm of the sea as surrounded on both sides by desert.

which it has come down to us, assumes first a longish journey over Egyptian territory to the desert, then a short diversion in a backward direction which placed the Sea of reeds between the Israelites and the wilderness, finally the crossing of the sea by the Israelites and the overwhelming of the Egyptian host by the returning waters. This picture accords but extremely ill with the real geographical facts, the one certain detail of which is the localization of Rameses at Pelusium. In any case, therefore, the geography of the Exodus must display a semi-legendary, fanciful character, exactly as the event itself, as described in the Old Testament, appears to be quite unhistorical. If the Hebrew writers had any distinct geographical theory in their minds, the easiest hypothesis is to assume that they identified Rameses with Tanis and Etham with el-Kantareh. Migdol is also displaced in a westerly direction and on the other side of Menzaleh, and Menzaleh (or whatever corresponded to it in antiquity) may be presumed to have supplied the notion of the Sea of reeds » wherein the Egyptians were drowned.

It will be noted that in this theory no use has been made of passage b, which states that the Israelites avoided the Kantareh-Gaza road. The reason given the hostile attitude of the Philistines is in any case an anachronism. But there is another puzzling detail: the statement that the Israelites were led about in the direction of the wilderness to the Sea of reeds suggests, though in an obscure way, that a desert tract intervened between the end of the Egyptian soil and the shore of the Sea of reeds(). If this is really what is meant, then passage b represents a different tradition from the remaining passages which I have discussed.

(1) So Driver supposes; see his note on Ex., xiii, 18.

LE TERME GÉOGRAPHIQUE «HAUTE-ÉGYPTE ET LE TITRE,

PAR

M. HENRI GAUTHIER.

Le signe hiéroglyphique, servant à écrire le mot Haute-Egypte, et qui a été pendant longtemps et à tort appelé la plante du Sud », n'a pas encore été scientifiquement identifié. M. Griffith, en 1896), a proposé d'y reconnaître une laîche (sedge), et M. Spiegelberg, en 1904(2), y a vu reine Pflanze aus der Leinwand oder ein anderer Stoff bereitet werden kann, also in weiterem Sinn, eine Spinnfaserpflanze», une plante textile (3). Mais les plantes textiles susceptibles d'avoir été cultivées sur le sol de l'antique Égypte ne sont pas nombreuses : le lin s'appelait maḥ (Ma21), le chanvre n'était pas connu des anciens habitants de la vallée du Nil, et l'on ne voit pas trop quelle autre plante textile pourrait avoir été le végétal·

(1) Beni Hasan, Part III, p. 40 et pl. III, fig. 20.

(2) Recueil de travaux, XXVI, p. 165-166.

୪

13:

(3) Voir le cadeau de beau tissu de Haute-Egypte pour vêtements » (†) offert par le roi Pépi II au notable Zâou (SAYCE, Rec. de trav., XIII, p. 66; MORET, ibid., XIX, p. 134; SETHE, Urk. des Alten Reichs, p. 146; DAVIES, Deir el Gebráwi, Part II, pl. XIII, 1. 13, et p. fine linen of the south for cloth). Voir aussi Pap. Harris no 1, passim, et Pap. no 3055 de Berlin (rituel d'Amon), où le mot est écrit, 70 ou 8. Voir enfin, parmi les vingt-quatre noms d'étoffes relevées par M. Jéquier sur les frises d'objets des sarcophages du Moyen Empire, les trois noms (var. ↓), 1† et, qu'il n'est pas parvenu,

du reste, à identifier de façon précise,