When, in the first century of our era, the geographer Strabo, a thoughtful man and a good observer, was travelling in Egypt, he made the following entry in his journal :

At the time when I was staying at Alexandria, the sea rose so high about Pelusium and Mount Casius that it inundated the land, and made the mountain an island, so that the road, which leads past it to Phoenicia, became practicable for vessels.'-(Strabo, i. p. 58.)

Another event of the same kind is related by an ancient historian. Diodorus, speaking of a campaign of the Persian king Artaxerxes against Egypt, mentions a catastrophe which befel his army in the same place1:— 'When the king of Persia (he says) had gathered all his forces, he led them against Egypt. But coming upon the great lake, about which are the places called the gulfs, he lost a part of his army, because he was unaware of the nature of that region.'

Without intending to make the least allusion to the passage of the Hebrews, these authors inform us incidentally of historical facts, which are in perfect agreement with all that the sacred books tell us of the passage of the Hebrews across the sea.

Far from diminishing the value of the sacred records on the subject of the departure of the Hebrews out of Egypt, the Egyptian monuments, on the faith of which we are compelled to change our ideas respecting the passage of the Red Sea-traditions

their use, at the will of God and the signal given by Moses, constitute the miracle, without which all becomes unmeaning.—ED. 1 Diodorus, xvi. 46.

cherished from our infancy-the Egyptian monuments, I say, contribute rather to furnish the most striking proofs of the veracity of the biblical narratives, and thus to reassure weak and sceptical minds of the supreme authority and the authenticity of the sacred books.

If, during the course of eighteen centuries, the interpreters have misunderstood and mistranslated the geographical notions contained in Holy Scripture, the error is certainly not due to the sacred history, but to those who, without knowledge of the history and geography of ancient times, have attempted the task of reconstructing the Exodus of the Hebrews, at any cost, on the level of their own imperfect comprehension.

From

Permit me still one last word on the sequel of the march of the Hebrews, after their passage across the gulfs. The sacred books tell us: 1 Then Moses led the Israelites from the sea of weeds, and they went out into the desert of Shur, and having gone three days in the desert, they found no water. thence they came to Marah, but they could not drink of the waters of Marah, because they were bitter. Wherefore the place was called Marah (bitter). Then they came to Elim, where were twelve wells of water and seventy palm-trees; and they encamped there by the waters.' 2

All these indications agree-as might have been expected beforehand-with our new views on the route of the Israelites. After reaching the Egyptian

1 Exod. xv. 22, 23.

2 Exod. xv. 27.

fortress near the sanctuary of the god Baal-zephon, which stood on one of the heights of Mount Casius, the Hebrews found in front of them the road which led from Egypt to the land of the Philistines. According to the command of God, forbidding them to follow this route, they turned southwards, and thus came to the desert of Shur. This desert of the Wall'so called from a place named in Egyptian the Wall' and in Greek Gerrhon,' a word which likewise signifies the Wall,' as I have shown above--lay to the East of the two districts of Pitom and Ramses. There was in this desert a road, but little frequented, towards the Gulf of Suez (as we now call it), a road which the Roman writer has characterized as rugged with mountains and wanting in water-springs.'"

The bitter waters, at the place called Marah, are recognized in the Bitter Lakes of the Isthmus of Suez. Elm is the place which the Egyptian monuments designate by the name of Aa-lim or Tent-lim, that is 'the town of fish,' situate near the Gulf of Suez in a northerly direction.

When the Jews arrived at Elim, the words of Holy Scripture-But God caused the people to make a circuit by the way of the wilderness, towards the Sea of Weeds,' were definitively accomplished.

3

To follow the Hebrews, stage by stage, till their arrival at Mount Sinai, is not our present task nor within the scope of this Conference. I will only say

1 Exod. xiii. 17.

2 Plin. H.N. vi. 33: asperum montibus et inops aquarum.' 3 Exod. xiii. 18.

that the Egyptian monuments contain all the materials necessary for the recovery of their route, and for the identification of the Hebrew names of the different stations with their corresponding names in Egyptian.'

See the mention, in the prefixed Advertisement,' of the Memoir on this subject in Dr. Brugsch's Bibel und Denkmaeler.

INDEX.

The variations of orthography, which occur in the text (see Vol. ii. p. 320), arc harmonised as
far as possible, in the Index.