"And

bourhood of the chief city of Egypt. Thus in Gen. xlv. 10: thou shalt dwell in the land of Goshen, and thou shalt be near to me," (to Joseph who dwelt in the principal city of Egypt). The Pentateuch nowhere expressly mentions which was this chief city of Egypt, just as the surname of no one of the reigning Pharaohs is mentioned by Moses, and for the same reason. Yet the necessary data for designating this city are found. It must at any rate have been situated in Lower Egypt, for this appears in the Pentateuch generally as the seat of the Egyptian king. But the remarkable Num. xiii. 23: "And Hebron was built seven passage, years before Zoan of Egypt," points us directly to Zoan or Tanis, and at the same time plainly shows that the reason why the author did not mention the chief city by name, can be sought in anything rather than in his ignorance concerning it. That Zoan is here directly named by way of comparison, implies, first, that it was one of the oldest cities in Egypt.2 Secondly, that it held the first rank among the Egyptian cities, and stood in the most important connection with the Israelites. Hebron, the city of the patriarchs, could be made more conspicuous only by a comparison with the chief city of Egypt, arrogant and proud of its antiquity, and there was no motive for such a comparison, except with a city which by its arrogance had excited the jealousy of the Israelites. The designation, Zoan of Egypt, which means no more than that the city lay in Egypt, also indicates that this was the chief city. What is here only intimated is expressly affirmed in Ps. lxxviii. 12, 43; where it is said, Moses performed his wonders "in the field of Zoan." In accordance with the foregoing intimations, which bring us into the neighbourhood of the chief city, Moses is exposed on the bank of the Nile, Ex. ii. 3, and at the place where the king's daughter was accustomed to bathe, v. 5, and the mother of the child lived in the immediate vicinity, v. 8. They had fish in abundance, Num. xi. 5; they watered their land as a garden of herbs, Deut. xi. 10.

Further, the land of Goshen, on the one hand, is described as a pasture-ground. So in the passage above referred to, Gen. xlvi. 34, and also in chap. xlvii. 4 : They said, moreover, unto Pha

So also in chap. xlvi. 28, 29.

66

2 That Tanis already existed in the time of Remeses the Great, appears from the monuments yet existing among its ruins. Wilk. Vol. I. p. 6. Rosellini, I. 2. p. 68.

raoh, To sojourn in the land are we come; for thy servants have no pasture for their flocks; for the famine is sore in the land of Canaan; now therefore, we pray thee, let thy servants dwell in the land of Goshen."

Also in verse 11

On the other hand, the land of Goshen appears as one of the most fruitful regions of Egypt, chap. xlvii. 6: "In the best of the land make thy father and brethren to dwell." of the same chap. : "And he gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Rameses." The Israelites employed themselves in agriculture, Deut. xi. 10, and obtained in rich abundance, Num. xi. 5, the products which Egypt, fertilized by the Nile, afforded its inhabitants.

All these circumstances harmonize, and the different points, discrepant as they may seem, find their application, when we fix upon the land of Goshen as the region east of the Tanitic arm of the Nile1 as far as the Isthmus of Suez or the border of the Arabian desert, Ex. xiii. 20. Goshen then comprised a tract of country very various in its nature. A great part of it was a barren land, suitable only for the pasturage of cattle. Yet it also had very fruitful districts, so that it combined in itself the peculiarities of Arabia and Egypt. To it belonged a part of the land on the eastern shore of the Tanitic branch of the Nile; also the whole of the Pelusiac branch with both its banks, which as late as in the time of Alexander the Great was navigable-through it his fleet pressed into Egypt, but is now almost entirely filled up with the sand of the desert, while the Tanitic arm, being further removed from the desert, has sustained itself better.3 Between two branches of the Pelusiac canal lies the island Mycephoris, which in ancient times was inhabited by the Calasiries, or a part of the military caste.

The view of our author with regard to the position of the land of Goshen agrees, substantially, with that of Dr Robinson and other scholars of the present day. “This tract," it is said, in the Biblical Researches, Vol. I. p. 76," is comprehended in the modern province esh-Shŭrkîyeh, which extends from the neighbourhood of Abu Zaʼbel to the sea, and from the desert to the former Tanaitic branch of the Nile; thus including also the valley of the ancient canal."

"On which see Ritter also, Afrika, S. 827.

See Malus, Memoire sur l'état ancien et moderne des provinces Orientales de la basse Egypte, Descr. 18. 2. p. 18.

66

Of this island Ritter1 says: "At this present time it is a well cultivated plain, full of great palm-groves and opulent villages.' Generally," continues the same author, "the country here is by no means barren; the water of the canal diffuses its blessings everywhere. Thus there lies upon the canal, about fifteen miles below Bustah, the little modern village Heyeh, surrounded by rich palmgroves, which is almost entirely unknown to recent Geographers, but in its vicinity is a luxuriance of vegetation which makes the country appear like a European garden." So is it even now with this region, notwithstanding the great bogs and sand heaps which have been here formed in the course of a hundred years.3 Even in the interior of the ancient land of Goshen, there is still a large tract of land good for tillage, and fruitful. There is, for example, a valley which stretches through the whole breadth of this province from west to east, and in which, as we shall hereafter see, the ancient chief city of this province lay. This tract of land, from the ancient Babastis on the Pelusiac arm of the Nile even to the entrance of the Wady Tumilat, is, according to Le Père, even now under full cultivation, and is annually overflowed by the Nile. Also a great part of Wady Tumilat is susceptible of cultivation, and likewise the eastern part of the valley, which is very accurately delineated upon the chart of Lower Egypt in the Atlas of Ritter's Geography, the tract from Ras el Wady to Serapeum,

1 S. 824.

cr

3 Comp. Deut. xi. 10, as a garden of herbs."

Ritter, S. 834. Prokesch, (In den Erinnerungen aus Aegypten und Kleinasien, Th. 2. S. 130,) says: "There is no country that cannot better dispense with the arts of civilized life, than Egypt. By them it can be made a paradise, and without them a desert. During the century of modern Greek, Arabian, Mameluke and Turkish dominion, when, with the exception of some short intervals, nothing was done for the country, the inhabitants lived upon the inheritance which descended from the flourishing century under the Pharaohs, Ptolemies, and Romans. It is no merit to them that desert and morass have not swallowed up all of their arable land. The canals and dykes existed and still exist on such a foundation, and in so great numbers, that a thousand years would not be sufficient to make of Egypt what the country between the cataracts is at this day. The tillable land of Egypt has by degrees decreased in quantity, as the public works of the ancients have gradually crumbled, until half its extent has gone, but the remainder is yet sufficient to furnish sustenance for a people proportionally less than formerly."

• Memoire sur le canal des deux mers, in the Descr. t. 11. p. 116. Le Père, p. 117.

furnishes not merely pasture grounds, but also land suitable for cultivation.1

It is certain, that the Pentateuch in the intimations, evidently undesigned, which it gives of the position and nature of the land of Goshen in the most disconnected passages, is always consistent with itself, as, for example, in one whole series of passages, it alludes to the fact, that the Israelites dwelt upon the Nile, and in another, that they dwelt in a border-land in the direction of Arabia. This fact, as also the circumstance that all its allusions to the position and nature of the land are substantiated by actual geography without the most distant reference to an imaginary land, are not explicable, if the author was dependent on uncertain reports for his information. On the contrary, the whole serves to impress us with the conviction, that he, as would be the case with Moses, wrote from personal observation, with the freedom and confidence of one to whom the information communicated comes naturally and of its own accord, and from one who has not obtained it for a proposed object.

THE LOCATION OF PHARAOH'S TREASURE-CITIES, PITHOM AND RAAMSES.

We go further. In Ex. i. 11, it is said: "And they built for Pharaoh treasure-cities, Pithom and Raamses." There can be no doubt that in the view of the author, these cities, upon whose fortifications the Israelites were compelled to labour, were situated in the land of Goshen. It is most natural to suppose that the Israelites built where, according to the foregoing account, they dwelt; moreover, all doubt is precluded, since one of these cities, Raamses, is afterwards represented as the place of rendezvous from which the Israelites commenced their departure from the land. The question now is, whether these cities really lay in the land of Goshen, or did the author probably, out of the number of the names of Egyptian cities known to him, take two at random?

Before we answer these questions, we remark, that even the circumstance that the author represents the king of Egypt as building treasure-cities in the land of Goshen, is in favour of his knowledge of Egypt, or rather of his credibility as a historian. Nowhere are the treasure-cities more in place than precisely there.

Le Père, p. 121.

That they were fortified, even the Seventy understood, for they translate the Hebrew word here directly, walled cities. The same thing is evident from 2 Chron. viii. 3-6, according to which they were placed in the particularly insecure border land (Hamath), and are designated as "fenced cities, with walls and gates and bars." Compare xi. 12, where the store-cities are spoken of in connection with castles. But that such walled cities, provided with stores of provisions, were nowhere more needed than on the eastern boundary of Egypt, is indeed evident from the circumstance, that according to the accounts of profane writers, just upon this border, the most exposed of all, the military power of the Egyptians was concentrated. "It is clear from Herodotus," says Heeren, "that almost the whole military force of Egypt was stationed in Lower Egypt; four and a half districts within the Delta were possessed by the Hermotybies, and twelve others by the Calasiries. On the contrary, only one district was possessed by each of these in all Middle and Upper Egypt, namely the district of Chemmis and Thebes." Of the land on the east side of the Tanitic arm of the Nile, Ritter 2 says: "This is believed to be the land of the ancient Calasiries, who were here to guard the ancient ports of Egypt against eruptions from Asia."

We will now endeavour to determine the position of the two cities named. With regard to the first, this can be determined without difficulty. It will be denied by no one, that it lay within the land of Goshen. Pithom is incontestably, and by universal admission, identical with the Patumos of Herodotus. Speaking of the canal which connected the Nile with the Red Sea, this author says: "The water was admitted into it from the Nile. It

2 S. 829.

4

1 S. 37. The declarations of ancient writers with regard to the chief stations of the military caste in Egypt, are of no small importance respecting another passage of the Pentateuch. They show how appropriate it is, when the author, in Ex. xiv., represents the Egyptian host as ready forthwith to pursue after the Israelites, and as able to overtake them in a short time. "In Mosaic times," says Heeren, S. 37, "the military caste first make their appearance in Lower Egypt. The suddenness with which the Pharaoh who then ruled could assemble the army with which he pursued the Israelites in their Exodus, shows distinctly enough, that the Egyptian military caste must have had their head-quarters in just the same region in which Herodotus places them."

4 Book 2. c. 158.