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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 passage, Num. 13: 23: "And Hebron was built seven 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. 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 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. 78: 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 neighborhood of the chief city, Moses is exposed on the bank of the Nile, Ex. 2: 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. 11: 5; they watered their land as a garden of herbs, Deut. 11: 10.

Further, the land of Goshen, on the one hand, is described as a pasture-ground. So in the passage above referred to, Gen. 46: 34, and also in chap. 47: 4: "They said moreover

* 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.

unto Pharaoh, 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,"

On the other hand, the land of Goshen appears as one of the most fruitful regions of Egypt, chap. 47: 6: "In the best of the land make thy father and brethren to dwell." Also in verse 11 of the same chap. : 66 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. 11: 10, and obtained in rich abundance, Num. 11: 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 Nile as far as the Isthmus of Suez or the border of the Arabian desert, Ex. 13: 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.t 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. Of this island

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

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

Ritter* 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 palm-groves, 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. 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

* S. 824.

+ Comp. Deut. 11: 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."

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

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. 1: 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,

* Memoire sur le canal des deux mers, in the Descr. t. 11.

+ Le Père, p. 117.

Le Père, p. 121.

p. 116.

upon whose fortifications the Israelites were compelled to labor, 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 favor of his knowledge of Egypt, or rather of his credibility as a historian. Nowhere are the treasure-cities more in place, than precisely there. 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. 8: 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 11: 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

* S. 37.

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