Division Jj'j Section ^"13^ J THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT STELE OK SETY I, 1320 B.C. — SERABIT Frontispiece THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT A SUMMARY OF RESULTS OBTAINED BY EXPLORATION IN EGYPT UP TO . ^^vc^^ ACCOUNT OF THOSE BEARING ON THE/ OLD TESTAMENT QQJ g pgg J. GARROW DUNCAN, B.D. BLACKIE SCHOLAB, 1894-5; INTEEIM-DIBECTOE OF EXCAVATIONS AT NDFFAE, 1895-6; WILSON AECH^OLOGICAX FELLOW (ABD».)i 1905-6; JOINT- ADTHOE WITH DE FLINDEES PETRIE OF " HTKSOS AND ISBAELITE CITIES," 1906 WITH 100 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS PUBLISHED BY FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO PRINTED BY TCRNBULL A\D SPEARS, EOINaUEGlI ^0 MY WIFE PREFACE The following pages are the outcome of work done and experience acquired under the guidance of Dr Flinders Petrie at Nagada in 1894-5, but particularly in Goshen during the winter of 1905-6, where, as Wilson Archaeological Fellow (Abdn.), I had the privilege of excavating and recording five sites. This work has been supplemented by some additional chapters, intended to give a succinct and popular account of Biblical Egyptology up to date, and others descriptive of modern oriental life. The illustrations are mostly from my own camera, but I have to acknowledge several from Dr Petrie and Mr T. Butler Stoney. I am further indebted to Dr Petrie and to his publishers (Messrs Methuen & Co.) for the use of two blocks from the third volume of his " History of Egypt." To Mr Claude Gilbart Smith, Education Department, Egypt, for his edifying suggestions during our sojourn in Goshen ; to the Bev. J. Bobertson Duncan, Lhanbryd, for his assistance in editing the MS. and revising the proofs ; and to my wife for helpful criticism, I tender my warmest thanks. J. G. D. The Mansf, Kirkmichael, Banffshire, September 190S. Note. — In the Sketch Maps the identification of sites by Dr Flinders Petrie has for the most part been adopted. J. G. D. CONTENTS Ca\P. PAGE I. THE WORK, METHODS, AND EXPERIENCES OF THE EXCAVATOR ...... 9 II. STRIA AND PALESTINE BEFORE THE EXODUS, FROM EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS .... 29 III. FORMER DISCOVERIES IN EGYPT BEARING ON THE OLD TESTAMENT ..... 70 y IV. THE TOWN AND DISTRICT OF GOSHEN IN THE ISRAELITE PERIOD ..... 106 V. THE CEMETERY OF GOSHEN, EXAMINED IN 1905-6 — POTTERY, JEWELLERY, AND BURIAL CUSTOMS OF THE ISRAELITE PERIOD . . . .116 VI. CEMETERY OF GOSHEN AT SUWA AND A LI MAR AH . 130 VII. MODERN INHABITANTS OF GOSHEN — THE PEOPLE AND THEIR OCCUPATION ..... 142 VIII. MODERN INHABITANTS — THE POSITION OF WOMAN . 149 IX. MODERN INHABITANTS OF GOSHEN — SOME MARKED CHARACTERISTICS . . . . .157 X. THE TREASURE CITY — RAMESES . . . 167 XI. BELBEYS— BAILOS IN THE " WATER OF RA" . 176 XII. THE MOUND OF THE JEW .... 186 A I 2 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT CHAP. PAGE XIII. THE MOUND OF THE JEW — BURIAL CUSTOMS OF EARLY CHRISTIAN CENTURIES . . . .196 XIV. THE MOUND OF THE JEWISH LADY — THE MOUND AND TEMPLE OF ONAIAS .... 208 XV. THE MOUND OF THE JEWISH LADY— THE HYKSOS FORT, AVARIS . . . . .217 XVI. "fountain of HORUS" — A STOREHOUSE FORT OF THE ISRAELITE PERIOD .... 223 XVII. THE DATE OF WRITING .... 233 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Stele of Sety I., 1320 b.c. — Serabit . . Frontispiece FACING PAGB A Group of our Men ..... 14 Our Camp — Belbeys ...... 14 Ninepins, 4500 b.c. ...... 19 Flint-Knives, 4500 b.c— Nagada . . . .19 Flints, 4500 b.c. — Nagada . . . . .23 Ivory Spoons and Harpoons, c. 4500 b.c. — Nagada . 23 Wood and Ivory Combs, 4500 b.c, — Nagada . . 26 Alabasters, 4500 b.c. — Nagada . . . .26 Map of Syria of T. A. Letters . . . .30 Map of Palestine under Thothmes III. and Succeeding Kings ....... 40 Merenptah — Pharaoh of the Exodus . . .69 Rameses II.— Last Pharaoh of the Oppression . 69 Bethel-Shelter — Serabit ..... 72 Map of Egypt and Sinai — Route of Exodus . . 76 Canal Ferry — Goshen ..... 85 Near Goshen Cemetery . . . . .85 A Strolling Musician ..... 92 Tillage Pond, Suwa — Women Washing . . .92 Goshen Town — Saft . . . . . .113 Ruins of Goshen . . . . .113 Large Pot — Ears Inscribed . . . .115 Bes Face Pot — Infant-Burial .... 115 8 4 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT FACING PAGE COFFIN-LiD, XVIII. DYN. — AVARIS . . . .117 COFFIN-LiD, XVIII. DYN. — GoSHEN .... 117 Pot Inscribed Skiaksal — Child-Burial . . .11^ Water-Pitcher Used in Child-Burial . . . 11^ Cypriote Pottery — Israelite Period . , . 122 Ushabtis — Israelite Period .... 122 Cornelian Necklaces— Israelite Period . . 124 Scarabs — Goshen Cemetery . . . .124 Child's Blue Glaze Necklaces — Israelite Period . 126 Blue Glaze Bracelets — Israelite Period . . 126 Gold Ear-Rings — Israelite Period . . . 12S Gold Ear-Rings and Silver-Gilt Hair (or Ear) Rings — Israelite Period ..... 128 Child's Necklace (xxvi. dyn.), Double-Face Pendant, AND Bronze Bells (Toys) . . . .131 Child Pot-Burial in Position .... 131 Child's Toy Pottery — Ptolemaic .... 133 Drinking-Cup — Israelite Period. Greek Vase . 133 Tables of Offerings — Suwa .... 135 Blue Glaze Kohl Tubes (xxii. dyn.), Roman Glass Vases, and Bracelet . . . . .138 Roman Glass Vases and Drinking-Cup . . . 138 Bronze Situlae for Drink-Offerings . . . 140 Lady with Mandoline, 1000 b.c. — Goshen Cemetery . 140 A Princess of the Desert — Rheyta . . .142 Bedawin Children ...... 142 Making Drills . . . . . .145 Ploughing ....... 145 Water-Wheel— Sagyah ..... 147 Field Laid Out ...... 147 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 5 FACING PA.GK Young Girls ....... 149 At Eventide ....... 156 Going to Draw Water — Morning . . . 156 Children at School — BeLbeys . . . .158 Children Sabakhin on Sand Waxl of Burru Yusef . 158 Interior of Skeikh Sadun's Tomb, Showing Rags Attached . . . . . .160 The Healing-Block (Sand Wall of Avaris in Dis- tance) ....... 160 Rameses II. Smiting a Syrian Captive before Atmu — Rameses ....... 165 So-Called Dyad of Moses and Aaron . . . 165 The Great House— Rameses .... 172 Frog-Bowl— Rameses . . . . .172 Sheikhs' Tombs — Tell Sadun .... 177 Buried Houses— Belbeys ..... 177 SooKH — Coppersmiths ..... 179 Suffeh Unearthed— Burru Yusef . . .179 Sookh — Pottery ...... 181 The Sookh — Drapers ..... 181 Sookh— Bakers ...... 183 The Sookh— Grain Merchants .... 183 Sheikh's Reception Hut — Babylonia . . 186 Cattle Sookh ...... 186 The Sookh — Drink-Seller ..... 188 Sookh— Water-Seller . . . ' . .188 Gold Ear-Rings (Syrian), Silver Pendants (Early Christian) — Rheyta ..... 190 Glass Mirrors (Early Christian) — Rheyta . . 190 Alabaster Ointment-Boxes — Early Christian, c. 250 a.d. 192 6 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT FACING PAGE Soldiers' Graves— Eheyta ..... 197 Prehistoric Buriax— Nagada .... 197 Degenerate Slipper-Shaped Coffins, c. 300 a.d. — Ehetta ....... 204 Prehistoric Burial, Nagada — Showing Swathing . 204 Passover Cylinder — Built Up . . . .211 Passover Cylinder . . . . . .211 Wall of Onaias' Mound . . . . .213 Ostrakon — Brick Account with Name Abram (Leon- topolis) ....... 213 Hyksos Pottery — Avaris ..... 215 Hyksos Burial — Avaris . . . . .215 Two Statues from Avaris . . . . .218 Plastered Sloping Face of Hyksos Wall . .218 Shrine of Bast on Statue of Admiral Hor . . 220 Admiral Hor— 650 b.c. . . . . .220 The Mound of Onaias ..... 222 The Large Mound — Burru Yusef . . . 222 The Ancient Ruins — Burru Yusef . . . 227 The Ancient Brick Wall— Burru Yusef . . 227 Staircase— Mound of Onaias .... 229 The Storehouses — Three of the "Pits of Joseph" . 229 Trial-Piece— Burru Yusef .... 232 Trial-Piece — Burru Yusef (Obverse) . . . 232 Inscribed Ears of Pot ..... 238 Inscription of Sinaitic Miners — Serabit . . 238 BIBLICAL REFERENCES PAGE 98 (rinvRcsm xii 14 S5 56. PAGE 77, 229 Heb. vii. 3, 63 xlvi fi-11 . 108 Mark xiv. 3, . 191 28-29, . 109, 129 1 Chron. vi., . 99 34 . 142 2 Chron. xii. 2, 97 T^ATATT TCIX 13 77 Deut. i. 1, . . 87 18-lQ 208 215, 216 Exodus i. 8, . 110 TtT'DU'TW villi O HitiirjS/L. Aim., . . 104 >> iv. 20, . 85 TrfcCXTTT A iv 1 0KJOt±\J A. 125.. i-^f • • 63 )) V. 15, . 241 ,, XUl., 49, 50 >> vi. 24, . 1 IVIriGs IX. ZO, . 86 )) xii., 211 ,, AlV. ^Of 97 >> xii. 37, 170, 172 ^ JjLlJNbtO A.V11. ^U— "lA, • 74 )) xiii. 20, 82, 172 AAltl. . 100 >» xiv. 2, . 82 ^TTH/r'RTi''RC! I Xl| U iVli>£.l&o 1. , . . 88 j> xiv. 3, 21, . 83 iii 22 ,, 111. , 90 >> XV. 4, 22, 27, 84 87 ,, xvi. 49, . 90 >» xvi. 1, . 84 , , xxi. 4, . 87 944. j> xvii. 1, 11, . 86, 89 , , XXV. 9, . xxxii., . 244 XXVI., EzEKiEL viii. 14, 65 ,, AAAlll. L\Jf X^, >> XXX. 17, 77 1 ft A Twm?r 1 X kjAJuUXilj 1., t . QQ Genesis xii. 10, 228 ,, VIJ. ^, 98 >) xiv., . 229 „ viii. 12, . 148 >> xvi. 7, 14, . . 84 xiii. 14, 16, 97, 98 }> XXV. 18, 84 2 Samuel v. 4, 5-7, . . 98 >) xxviii. 10-19, . 73 „ vi. 2, . 98 7 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT I THE WORK, METHODS, AND EXPERIENCES OF THE EXCAVATOR There is perhaps no work which, for its successful completion, demands higher qualifications, or more intense concentration, than the work of the excavator. An accurate knowledge of all past records of the country's history, and of discoveries up to date, is absolutely essential, and with that must go also an intimate acquaintance with the results of archaeology in other lands, especially those with which commercial and political relations are known to have existed in the past. Indeed the wider the excavator's fund of general knowledge, the more successful he is likely to be. He has to know a little of everything — of stones and metals ; of languages and religion ; of surveying and levelling ; of the anatomy of the human body ; of the action of different chemicals upon different substances ; and above all he must be possessed of a keen power of observation, and if possible of more than an average share of common-sense. It will be greatly to the excavator's advantage also, 9 10 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT in time, money, and efficiency, if he is a thoroughly practical man, and can apply his hand to the building of his own hut, the making of cases, and the actual work of digging as well, for otherwise he cannot know when a place is exhausted, or the work done properly. There are things which the merest tyro can do, but the results will be meagre and colourless if there be no master mind at his back to link the details into an inductive chain that leads to the establishment of some historical facts. The work is no haphazard work, and in proportion to the meagreness of the excavator's knowledge and ability, the greater will be the risk of loss in historical results. What in the hands of the expert would prove the keystone of the arch, might be passed over and lost by the unqualified. There are other essentials which go to the equip- ment of the successful explorer. He must know exactly what link in the chain of history he wants to discover. Past work may have pointed to a certain conclusion, for the establishing of which some details of confirmation are still wanting. He must know where these details are most likely to be found, and must choose his site accordingly. Or from his knowledge of the past history of a site, that has been identified, he will arrange the lines on which his work is to proceed. In either case he comes to a site with some knowledge of what he may expect to find, gathered from past history recorded, though it by no means follows that he may find what he expects. It is therefore equally essential that he approach his w^ork without the slightest bias, and with- out any preconceived theory, to which he is immovably THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 11 chained. Though he may ardentl}^ hope for certain results, he must be prepared for surprises, and according to Dr Flinders Petrie, who speaks from many years' experience, surprises are the rule and not the exception. His mind must consequently be ever on the alert, and his power of observation whetted to the keenest possible edge. He must not only see what he wants to see, but he must be prepared to give full value also to those details, which appear somewhat unexpected and discon- certing. In other words, if he has a preconceived idea of the site, he must be ready to sacrifice it at any moment. He has to put himself unreservedly in the hands of his site, so to speak, and allow it to lead him to the secret of history which it conceals. As often as not, it will be the opposite of what he expects, but it will always be interesting. His faculty of elimination and induction he is thus continually called on to exercise, and it is here that past knowledge and experience enable him to assign to each detail its true historic value. Though large finds, such as fine pieces of sculpture, statuary, furniture, or jewellery, are of the utmost value, and indeed used to be sought after almost to the entire neglect of the little things which were thus often heed- lessly passed over or destroyed, it is quite clear that the explorer, who would seek to reconstruct the life of a people, cannot afford to neglect even the most insig- nificant things which would throw light on their manners or customs. The clearing out of a refuse heap, or lumber room, or a middle-class cemetery, is produc- tive of far more valuable historical assets than the finely furnished chamber tomb of a wealthy family 12 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT might afford, and when it comes to the real work of building up the history of the past, the practised explorer knows which he would prefer. Huts or Having secured his site, along with the necessary Tents. permit from the Government, which keeps matters right with the local officials, the excavator must come pro- vided with such things as a prolonged stay at a dis- tance from European civilisation may render neces- sary for his work and comfort. The site itself will determine whether he is to build huts or pitch tents. If there is the ruin of an ancient town near at hand, it is advisable to erect huts of the bricks. Usually the wall of the temple or some large building of the old town will serve as an excellent back-wall, and to this he can build on as many rooms as he needs with the minimum of expense. While exploring the prehistoric cemetery of Nagada in 1894-5 we lived in huts of bricks from an eighteenth dynasty town close by, built against the wall of a temple which had been erected there by Thothmes III. The ordinary sands of the desert made an excellent floor, and a reed mat sus- pended from the lintel served as a door. Strong cane bedsteads and flock mattresses can be purchased from the natives for a trifling sum. At Rameses (Retabeh) in 1906 similar huts were built against the ancient wall of the storehouse fort of bricks, which the Israelites may have had a hand in making. These huts, though very dusty, are more comfortable than tents, being cooler in the hot season, and affording more warmth in the wet months. Where bricks can- not be easily secured, the example of the natives may be followed, and a hut built of discarded water jars THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 13 cemented together by the adhesive mud of the country At Nuffar, in Babylonia, where the explorers reside for. years at a stretch, their house is known to the natives as the " castle," and is a handsome two-storied building after the usual oriental design, built entirely of bricks of Naram-Sin, a king who reigned about 3800 B.C., and most of them, if not all, bearing his name stamped upon them. In Upper Egypt there is little or no winter, but in Climate the Delta during December and January one may ex- perience storms of wind and rain, which are startling enough when one's comfort depends on a thin canvas tent and the tenacity of loose sand to keep it from collapsing, or even on a brick hut, whose roof may fly off at any moment. In 1905 we began work in Goshen with the idea that the worst weather we should have to face would be no worse than what we might experience on any summer day at home, but we were speedily disillusioned. We were on the edge of the desert of Suez with no shelter whatever such as trees or rising ground around us might afford. Our dining-room was a hut made of pieces of galvanised iron roofing stuck in the sand, strapped together at the top by wire, and roofed over with loose pieces of the same material, so open that every wind whistled through it. Our bedroom was an ordinary army bell tent. On December 12th the clouds began to look black in the north, but we thought little of it. Without any warning, however, there came a strong gust of wind, and it came to stay. It brought rain with it, of course, rain such as must have gladdened the farmers* hearts, 14 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT though it chilled ours. At first the novelty was amus- ing, but speedily it became serious. One after the other of the pieces of iron on the roof of our hut sud- denly picked itself up and fled a considerable distance over the sand, leaving us with a view of the sky which at any other moment might have been interesting and agreeable, but which was then far from pleasant. During dinner, what time he was not needed in the hut, our cook spent in excitedly chasing these pieces of galvanised iron over the desert, and fetching them back to replace them on the roof with a crash, and the serious view which he took of the matter was really the re- deeming of the situation for us. The noise of the rattling iron with the whistling of the wind made it almost impossible to hear a word we addressed to each other across the upturned box which served as a table. In fact, we could do nothing but laugh at the excite- ment of the cook and the novelty of our position, where we had to dine with one eye on the table and the other on the roof, lest at any moment a piece of it should fall inwards instead of indulging in aerial flight. Cold is not the way to describe it, though the tempera- ture was still two or three degrees above freezing-point. In contrast with the previous warmth, it was cold with a chill that ground our bones, and it rained so as no clothing could keep us many minutes dry. Certainly we were surprised — and the tent ! We practically dis- pensed with undressing for that night, for we never expected that either pegs or ropes could withstand the steady blast. Just as the first grey streaks of dawn appeared in the east, one of our " too " collapsible bed- steads with its occupant came to the floor with a crash, OUR CAMP — BELBEYS p. 14 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 15 and lay half buried in the contents of two cases that stood on end and served as shelves, that side of the tent having given way to the wind. For the next half- hour it was a keen struggle with the blast, the inflated tent every moment threatening to escape us. While we clung to the canvas inside, seven or eight men hung on to the ropes outside, and gradually succeeded in securely driving the pegs into the sand, which now thoroughly soaked held them as in a vice, and once more established our dwelling. By an hour or two after sunrise the storm had spent itself, and we soon found ourselves in what to us was charming summer weather. It is only one of the few discomforts of what is other- wise an enchanting life, and the compensations of being alone in the desert, communing with the shades of men and women that have added their contributions to history some few thousand years ago, are so many and so various that they far outweigh the momentary annoyance of such an experience, or even the all too frequent discomfort of having a dog-fight at your ear the whole night through with only a thin canvas sheet between you and them. One of the first essentials in the practical work of The excavation is a conversational knowledge of the language g^^ge of the country. In Egypt, Babylonia, and Palestine the Arabic spoken by the peasants is very rapidly acquired. It practically amounts to the employment of roots 01 stems with the minimum of respect for inflection and grammatical details. The more literary Arabic spoken by the educated classes, though useful in interviewing officials occasionally, it is not necessary 16 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT to acquire, since most of these are familiar with French. Native The head official is always courteous and pleasant to Officials. ^^^^ with. It is the minor official who occasionally gives trouble. The position of Omdeh, or Provost of his village, while it gives prominence to a man and makes him the represennative of the Government, carries no remuneration with it, and is sometimes used by its holder as a means of raising money in the shape of ''bakshish." In other words, the Omdeh will sometimes put obstacles in the way of one's work, and come offerino- to remove them for a small consideration. For this purpose he will employ some friend to play the part of obstruction, and the two will share the bakshish paid to him for rescuing the victim. When we came to explore the ruins of the ancient town of Goshen, the Omdeh of the modern village on the site informed us that the ruins had become the private property of his nephew by purchase from the Government, and that in consequence our work could not proceed. In such a case, where authentic, the usual method is to pay the owner a sum agreed on, and continue the work. We decided to interview the Mudir of Zagazig on the matter, but when we did so he declared himself unable to say whether the Government had sold the ruins or not ! Having no great desire to explore another town site with a cemetery so near, we resolved to transfer our attention immediately to the sandy gezireh close by, which we suspected to be a cemetery of the Israelite period, and which we knew was not the private property of any one. On the first day of our work, however, while we were engaged in removing our tents from the THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 17 town site, one of the workmen came in breathless haste to tell us that work on the cemetery had been stopped by order of the Omdeh of Suwa, the next village, whom we found supported by a band of ugly-looking fellows armed with clubs to terrorise our men. The Omdeh, a crafty little fellow with an evil squint in his eye, told us the gezireh was the property of his village and must not be touched. The game had evidently been trans- ferred to his hands, and its object was apparently the extraction of a few pounds of bakshish. We cleared him off the ground gently, but in utter discomfiture, and his friends slunk away, evidently amazed at the turn of events. How he restored his dignity among them we never enquired. He rode away in high dudgeon, threatening to go to the Mudir for power to remove us. His visit to the Mudir probably explains it, but, whatever the cause, he became from that day our most devoted friend. The Arab respects nothing so much as firmness and decision of character, and he gives his whole-souled admiration to the man who can outplay him with his own weapons. He considers a European fair game, will do his utmost to cheat him, and if he succeed, his success will only augment the contempt which he already has for their insane trust- fulness, ignorance, prodigality, and general incapacity. If, however, in the act of cheating he finds himself outwitted and exposed to ridicule by the deeper scheming of his intended victim, he will have an un- dying respect for, and will probably deal squarely — as squarely as it is possible for an Arab — ever after with the man who was clever enough to outmanoeuvre him. B 18 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT Excava- If the work happen to be within easy distance of a Presence excavator may enjoy the comforts of home Essential, life. As a rule, however, he must be prepared to rough it to a considerable extent. As the site is usually a few miles into the desert from the nearest town, a weekly visit on the market, or " sookh," day for provisions is all that can be accomplished. It is never expedient to live at a distance from the work. It not only leads to very unsatisfactory supervision, but gives the natives on the spot the opportunity of looting during the night ; and though a night-watchman be employed he will only do his work faithfully if a watch is set upon himself, or he will make an arrangement with the local natives for his own profit. Results are never so valuable and reliable when the excavator is not on the spot con- tinually. When objects are uncovered, these must be sketched and recorded in position before the men can proceed further with their work, and if there is no one at hand to do this they must remove them. An im- portant discovery may thus be second-hand to the excavator himself, and rest solely on the word of an Arab workman, which is by no means satisfactory. The excavator must, in fact, be at the call of his workmen every moment of the day, and any carelessness or indifference on his part will speedily communicate itself to them. There is only one case where this is not of vital importance, and that is in excavating a site which has been previously looted, where the position of the objects on this account cannot form a certain basis of inference. "Rough- The explorer must, therefore, be prepared for the rough and tumble life of the desert. He may choose NINEPINS, 4500 B.C. THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 19 to subsist on tinned foods from home, or he may buy meat, bread, and vegetables from the nearest town. There are many, doubtless, who could never accommodate themselves to dining on the bottom of an upturned deal box, sleeping on a cane bedstead with only a three- inch flock mattress, in a room with nothing in the shape of furniture except a few rough packing cases, with the finest sand for a carpet, and only a reed mat suspended to serve as door, just as there are some who, having travelled first-class all their lives, cannot bring themselves to travel second or third ; but the fact is the charm of the life is so all-absorbing, so enchanting, that one drops into the routine of these things uncon- sciously, and is never aware of the slightest discomfort. It is entirely an outdoor life. Night and day the excavator breathes the pure air of heaven. The desert is bracing, and the appetite in consequence needs no delicacies to tempt it. " Eoughing it " is no correct description. It should be described rather as a return to the primitive, a tonic of which our present generation, with its over-eating and neglect of exercise, stands very much in need. If he feels the need of invigoration by a change of side- occupation, the explorer can spend a day of indescribable i^iterests. pleasure in a walk of twenty or thirty miles round the other sites in his neighbourhood ; or, if he is in Upper Egypt, he can indulge in that most delightful of pursuits, the hunting for evidences of prehistoric man in the shape of flint tools and weapons on the top of the highest sand cliffs. Owing to the clearness of the atmosphere distance is very deceptive in Egypt. The jellow cliffs, which appear to be only two or three miles 20 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT off, may in reality be ten or twenty miles distant, but walking in the dry atmosphere and under the blazing sun is by no means so oppressive and exhausting as walking in the damp climate of our own country. At Nagada, in 1895, in the course of a twenty miles' walk on the top of the cliffs with Dr Flinders Petrie, our party picked up a large quantity of prehistoric flints, some of them very fine specimens of flint axes, and all, probably, of the same period as the fine flint knives and spears which we were finding in the graves in the valley below. Perhaps nothing can compare with such a day's experience, either in interesting results, or in invigora- tion and mental stimulus. Strange to say, on the top of these cliffs, where we least of all expected it, the first thing we noted was a small circular spot of moist sand with a succulent green plant in the heart of it — the water by some means or other finding its way to a height of 1500 feet above the level of the Nile. As a rule, however, the work itself supplies all the stimulant necessary. The continual inpouring of fresh finds day by day gives sufficient novelty to keep the interest ever alert and the faculties at fullest stretch. To discover in the course of clearing a few graves in an afternoon, that the children of prehistoric Egypt, more than four thousand years before Christ, played the same game of Ninepins known to ourselves, that the ladies wore ornamental ivory combs much as ladies still wear, that their domestic utensils show a taste and finish quite comparable with our own, and that their orna- mental stone vases possess a grace and finish, in spite of the rude tools at their disposal, which puts our work to THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 21 the blush with all our advantages of machinery, and to find alongside of these the elegant flint knives and tools on which they mainly depended, is a revelation that demands a very serious and sudden alteration of one's mental standpoint, supplies considerable food for reflection, and irresistibly drives one to the conclusion, that there is nothing new under the sun, and that in a sense it may be said, that the progress of evolution has been from the best downwards. Methods of Work. — The nature of the site Mounds must determine the method with which the ex- gjte^^^ cavator is to attack it. In the case of the large mounds in Babylonia, where it would demand a vast expenditure of money to examine the site thoroughly, there is always a temptation to acquire as much information as possible by tunnelling through them, though it may prove a disastrous experiment. It is difficult to distinguish between mere accumulation of mud by the decay of bricks, and the remains of an ancient wall of some building. One may be tunnelling through the temple library of cuneiform tablets at one point, and through absolutely unproductive rubbish at the next, and the finished work can afford no definite outline of the original. In excavating a mound, whose various layers represent the deposits of succeeding civilisations, the recognised method is to begin on the top and remove layer after layer, recording each as the work proceeds. Thus on the summit may be found potsherds and objects of Eoman date, beneath that a layer of material of the Greek period, and below that again succeeding layers of deposits representing various stages in the history of the site, until the original and 22 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT oldest is reached. An exceedingly clever piece of work was done by Dr Flinders Petrie at Lachish some years ago. Having no time left to thoroughly explore the mound there in the above manner, he cut a slice down the side, and by picking out the potsherds exposed at the different levels, he dated each succeeding period of civilisation. Afterwards, when Mr Bliss thoroughly explored it, he found that his results confirmed Dr Petrie's conclusions in every instance. In Babylonia the same site was used again and again at different periods, so that a town ruin there stands often many feet above the level of the plain. It was desirable not only to be raised above the inundation level, but also to avoid encroachment upon the valuable land by appropriating new sites continually. In Egypt they do not seem to have reused old sites with the same freedom, or their towns passed through greater vicissi- tudes ; but whatever the reason, a town site in Egypt never shows the same height of accumulation as in Babylonia. The Egyptians built largely on the low sandy gebel that skirts the edge of the arable land. They were careful, also, to bury in the same unproduc- tive soil, preserving as far as possible all the land under the inundation level for agricultural purposes. In many cases, through the rise of the Nile level, it has happened that a town originally built on the edge of the desert stands now in the heart of cultivated land. Sharhanba is a case in point. The ruins now stand in the midst of cultivated fields, though, in Roman times even, the town must have been quite close to the desert, for they would never have carried the sand for the sand-wall which IVORY SPOONS AND HARPOONS, C. 4500 B.C.— NAGADA p. 23 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 23 they built round it over the two miles of cultivation that now intervenes. This lower gebel being valueless for cultivation, the Egyptians had much more freedom in the choice of sites for town or village, and, consequently, we do not find traces of the same unbroken occupation as in Babylonia. Usually, unless there has been a temple or other large buildings, a town site is unprofitable in results, the most valuable parts often being lumber-rooms, cellars, or rubbish heaps. The clearing of it thus amounts practically to a selection of the parts which are likely to yield results of value, removing the earth, and depositing it where it will be least likely to prove an obstruction afterwards. The expense in turning over the whole site would in very few, if any, cases be justified by the results. Evidences of its various occupa- tions can be picked up in any portion, and the materials found form a tolerably safe clue to the nature and value of what remains unearthed. In the case of a cemetery, if of very early date, there is Ceme- only one method to be adopted. The men must work side by side right through it from the extreme edge, leaving not an inch of ground unturned, and filling up behind them as they go. When objects of late date, which are already well known, and which add nothing new to the knowledge of their period, begin to repeat themselves constantly, and where time and funds are limited, this thorough method has some- times to be replaced by partial excavation and judicious selection of the most promising portions of the site. In this class of work the excavator must be on the spot continually. He must see and record 24 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT every object in position, and he must remove everything and measure the work at regular short intervals, in order that the men may be free to fill up behind them at once. One of the first things to decide is whether the cemetery has been previously disturbed or not. The filling will show this clearly, and it naturally follows that the portions tampered with are greatly diminished in value as evidence. Where objects of a very early date are found among surroundings of a much later period, it is obvious that the former have been found, reused, and reburied by people of a later generation. If the site has never been touched before, it is absolutely essential to locate exactly the position of every article found, and to record each as minutely as possible. Every grave is numbered, and the number indelibly written on everything found in it. Thus at any time by reference to photographs or drawings, the whole may be reconstructed. Nothing is wantonly thrown aside or disregarded, and naturally unique finds are most highly treasured. Fragiles. The removal and preservation of fragiles is one of the most delicate and interesting pieces of work that falls to the hand of the excavator, and the rebuilding of a fine vase from its thousand fragments, though tedious, is an absorbing task whose success well repays the time spent on it. Probably no one has done more in the way of successfully preserving and rebuilding fragiles than Dr Flinders Petrie. He has rescued by skill and patience many valuable specimens which, had they fallen into the hands of a less painstaking explorer, THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 25 would have been lost for ever. An object, which will fall to pieces if moved, may be taken out complete by pouring melted wax into the loose sand around it, and removing the whole lump when it has solidided. Large specimens of pottery have frequently been preserved and safely transmitted by encasing them in several layers of brown paper glued together. In this way many fragile specimens of slipper-shaped pottery coffins have been brought home from Babylonia intact. The only alternative is to remove the fragments, most carefully numbericg each one, so that the whole can be rebuilt afterwards. In the case of inscriptions the best method of Inscrip- securing an exact reproduction of the surface of the stone is by taking a paper squeeze. Paper may be used dry or wet, and is pressed by a brush till a per- fect impression of the stone's surface is left upon it. Had this been done in the case of the famous stele of Mesha, King of Moab, when it was first discovered, the inscription might have been in our hands intact, and the blasting of the stone with gunpowder by the natives would not have so much affected its historical value. From this brief survey it will be seen that the work of excavation is by no means a sinecure, but one which calls for the incessant concentration of one's energy, both physical and mental. From sunrise to sunset the excavator is continually in the field, observing, record- ing, and measuriog, with the exception of two hours at midday, the hottest part of the day. At sunset he has to receive the objects brought in by the men and appraise their market value ; for it has proved the most 26 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT satisfactory arrangement, not only to pay the men for their manual labour, but also at the close of each day to purchase their finds from them at the value which a local dealer would set upon them. This saves them from the temptation to secrete valuable objects with the purpose of selling them to the dealers, who are always hovering, like vultures, around the site, and effectually secures them for the excavator. Many naturally object to this principle on the ground of ex- pense, but when we recollect that to pay a foreman to watch the men is only equivalent to setting a thief to catch a thief, and realise how impossible it is to prevent the men from appropriating their smaller and more valuable finds if so inclined, we are convinced that it is the only practical way to deal with the lax morality of the people and to be certain of securing absolutely everything of value which is found on the site. The few spare hours in the evening, or on the weekly market day, afford the only opportunity of marking all objects in ink, and of keeping photographic work up- to-date. The The work itself needs no word of justification. The Charm of j-Qgui^g already attained, the pages of history now filled Work. which would otherwise have remained blank, are suffi- cient justification of the outlay of money and energy, as well as more than abundant reward to the excavator for the privations he may endure or the risks he may run. Outside of a chemical laboratory or an observa- tory, probably no work in the world is so fascinating. Every day brings its fresh store of surprises. Every day adds a fresh complication to the problems awaiting solution. Every day brings further revelations of the WOOD AND IVUHY lO.MBS, 4500 B.C.— NAGADA ALABA>iTERS, 4500 B.C. — NAGADA THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 27 life and habits of the wonderful people who lived several thousand years ago, and lived on so much higher a plane than their successors do. The advance and decline of every branch of civilisation is not the only lesson learnt. Daily it is borne in upon one, that no race seems capable of sustaining for any length of time its highest standard of art, literature, or morals, but that no sooner has a race given its best and highest to the world, than the pre-eminence in civilisation seems immediately to pass from it to some other nation. This truth has been illustrated perhaps more than once in the history of Egypt. The great civilisation of the first four dynasties passed away, but after many years revived again in a measure in the rulers of the twelfth dynasty. This again was obliterated by the Hyksos dynasties, but was renewed once more under the power- ful and energetic monarchs of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties. Then comes another period of de- cadence from the twentieth dynasty onwards, and finally another faint resuscitation of the glorious past by the rulers of the thirtieth dynasty, who modelled on the twelfth. But whatever period one happens to strike in the course of excavation, the civilisation which one un- earths is far ahead of anything which Egypt can lay claim to at this moment. Indeed, what adds^ piquancy to the work, apart from the undoubted antiquity of the things unearthed, is the strange contrast between the present above-ground and the buried past. One has only to look at the faces of such Pharaohs as Thothmes III., Rameses II., or Amenhotep IV. (Akhenaten), to feel that these were men who had energy, power, aspirations, and ideak 28 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT far above average humanity ; but if you look in the faces of their modern representatives for traces of their unquestionable greatness, or search the present for reminiscences of their past glory, you will look in vain. II SYRIA AND PALESTINE BEFORE THE EXODUS, FROM EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS One of the most interesting chapters in the records of Syria and exploration work in Egypt is that which throws light upon the relations existing between that country and Syria, and indirectly restores to us a portion of the his- tory of Syria and Palestine, which w^ould have otherwise been entirely lost to us. From the earliest times these two countries had been in the habit of going to Egypt for corn and pasture, but until the eighteenth dynasty, 1587 B.C. downwards, we have no evidence of political relations having existed between them, whether of alliance, war, or conquest. Most of the kings of that dynasty, however, appear to have conducted campaigns in Syria, some of them con- quering the land as far as Assyria and Babylonia, and it is from their records of these campaigns, with the lists of peoples and places subdued, that we are able to recon- struct something of the history of Syria and Palestine before the occupation of the latter by the Israelites. The subjoined is a list of the kings of the eighteenth dynasty, with the dates of their respective reigns as cal- culated by Petrie : — 29 30 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 1. Aahmes c. 1587 B.C. 2. Araenhotep I. 1562 „ 3. Thothmes I. . 1541 „ 4. Thothmes II. . 1516 „ 5. Hatshepsut . J) 1503 „ 6. Thothmes III. j» 1503 „ 7. Amenhotep II. j> 1449 „ 8. Thothmes IV. )j 1423 „ 9. Amenhotep III. )) 1414 „ 10. Amenhotep IV. (Akhenaten) 1383 „ 11. Ra-smenkh-ka » 1365 „ 12. Tut-ankh-amen 5) 1353 „ 13. Ay . . . 1344 „ 14. Hor-em-heb . c. 1332 -1328 „ The thirteen kings, Hatshepsut having acted as Queen-regent, thus cover a period of 260 years, during the whole of which the Israelites occupied Goshen, so that we may call this the Israelite period. Aahmes. Aahmes was the conqueror of the Hyksos. He took their fort Avaris, and expelled them from Egypt. In his pursuit of them he took Sharhana, or Sharuhen, some miles south of Lachish in Palestine, penetrated Zahi (Phenicia), and then returned home, subduing the Mentiu Setet, or Bedawin of the hill country, on the way. The biography of the admiral, Aahmes, of this reign gives a full account of this expedition. The rest of the reign, and of his son's, show no signs of further activity abroad, and were probably spent in the work of consolidation at home. But from the date of the expul- sion of the Hyksos the activity of Egypt in the East begins. W H ATT or KHITA DUNIP (TANEPU) KHILBU (HALEB) NYI (NINA) KEDINA? o PALMYRA o (TADMOR) O ATIRO ? oTIMASHGI K^ALUNNI ^ oKHINNATUNI oBUZRUNA SALIM RI (hebroh) SYRIA of TA.UTTERS. SHARHANA? THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 31 Thothmes I. (1541-1516) conquered all Syria up to Thoth- the Euphrates, and erected his stele of victory in ^' Naharaina, or Upper Mesopotamia. As the biographies of Aahraes and Pen-nekheb, who accompanied him as an official, show, he seems to have gone to Naharaina to punish a rebel, and this implies that the country had been conquered before him, probably by Amenhotep I., though no record of it has been found. The Rutennu, whom he conquered on his way, are the people of the hill country of Northern Palestine. The stele erected by Thothmes III. some years later " alongside of that of Thothmes I.," as he says, shows that Thothmes 1. con- quered the country as far as the town of Niy, on the Euphrates, near Aleppo. Thothmes II. did not extend the conquests of his Thoth- father, and Thothmes III. (1503-1449) merely main- f^^|y^^^- tained the prestige of his predecessors. He, however, made many expeditions into Syria, and as he caused an account of these to be inscribed on a tablet in the temple which he built for the god Amen, we possess a very full record of them. In his twenty-second year (b.c. 1481) he set out from the city of Zalu on a punitive expedition, and came to Sharuhen. On the twenty-third anniversary of his coronation he was at Gazatu (Gaza), from which place he proceeded to Yehem ( Yemma, S. W. of Megiddo). We next find him at Makata (Megiddo), where the Kharu (Syrians) and the Qedshu (men of Qedesh) were en- camped against him under the chief of Qedesh. These he defeated on the plain of Esdrselon, and his annals give an elaborate account of the rout. The Syrians took refuge in Megiddo, leaving their horses and chariots ot silver and gold on the battlefield, being themselves hauled 32 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT into the city over the walls by their clothing. Had his men not given themselves over to the spoils of the field, Megiddo might have been taken at once, but it was seized soon after, and the Syrian chiefs are portrayed on their knees and faces, " smelling the ground," and begging for the breath of their nostrils. Not only Megiddo, but the three storehouses of the chief, Yenuamu, Anaugasa, and Harnekaru, were plundered, and the spoils were enormous both in amount and value. There were chariots mounted in gold and silver, suits of armour, beautiful vases, goblets of gold, chairs, inlaid tables and footstools, and many other things, all of Syrian workmanship. This is distinctly a most valuable part of the information left us by Thothmes III. The spoils and tributary gifts, which the Syrians are represented as bringing in their bands, show that at this early period (B.C. 1480) Syria was not only wealthy but possessed of a civilisation and of arts which were nowise inferior to those of Egypt ; Avhile the figures depicted may be regarded as faithful portraits of the Syrian type of the period. Among the materials mentioned as tribute are malachite, gold, silver, bronze, lapis lazuli, ivory, ebony, and kharub wood. These latter they inlaid with gold and precious stones. A frequently recurring article of their manufacture is the staff with a human head of gold, or of ivory, ebony, or kharub wood inlaid with gold. Perhaps what the Egyptians set most store on was their supply of lapis lazuli. Every tribute contains a quantity of it. 2500 men, women, and children were carried away as slaves. In the twenty-ninth year of his reign (B.C. 1474) he made his fifth expedition into Syria, and on this occasion THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 33 he subdued the Rutennu, Tunep, Aruta (Arvad), and Zahi (Phenicia). Among the spoils of Phenicia are slaves, horses, oxen, goats, silver cups, incense of honey, wine vases, copper, lead, lazuli, green felspar, bread, and fruits of the land. In the following year he is again among the Rutennu, inhabitants of the hill district north of Galilee, and captures the city of Qedeshu (Qedesh). In the tribute of the Rutennu are included the sons of the princes and their brothers, who were sent to Egypt as hostages and perhaps for their education ; chariots adorned with gold and silver, and provided with weapons ; bulls, bullocks, oxen, goats ; copper, gold, lead, and copper eamngs engraved with horses. The harvest of the Rutennu consisted of various corns, wheat, barley, incense, oil, W'ine, and fruit. In the thirty-third year (c. 1470 B.C.) he set up his tablet of victory in Naharaina (Upper Mesopotamia), whose tribute consisted chiefly in slaves, mares, bulls, calves, goats, incense jars, and chariots equipped. Silver vases " made in Phenicia " are also mentioned. Ap- parently the people of this part were not skilled workers in the precious metals, perhaps because these were not plentiful, but they were manifestly farmers or Bedawin. On his way home he encountered the Khita (Hittites), from whom he took tribute of eight silver rings weighing 301 deben (c. 60 lbs.), white precious stones, and zagu wood. For the next year he records an expedition into Zahi with spoils similar to the previous, but he records also an amazing tribute from the Rutennu for the same year, viz. horses ; chariots adorned in gold, silver, and colours ; c 34 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT slaves; 5 5 deben gold (11 lbs.); silver vases; all kinds of gems; 80 native copper blocks; 11 blocks of lead; 100 deben (20 lbs.) colours; incense, felspar, alabaster ; 69 copper vases ; 2080 jars of oil ; 608 jars of wine ; cattle, etc. In tbe thirty-fifth year the spoils from Zahi and Anaugasa include bronze suits of armour, bronze helmets, spears, shields, bows, and quivers. The inscription of Amen-em-heb, an officer of this king, gives further information regarding these con- quests. It mentions Karika-masha (Carchemish) as captured, and relates how the king hunted 120 elephants near Niy, on the Euphrates, for their tusks. From the annals of Thothmes III., we are thus driven to the conclusion that at the period c. B.C. 1481-14G«0 Syria enjoyed a civilisation at least equal, and in some respects superior, to that of Egypt. From this date Egypt seems to be to some extent under the influence of Syria. Though the Egyptians had come into close contact with other foreign races before, this is the first occasion on which we can see a strong foreign influence laying hold of them, and it manifests itself not only in the importing of their productions, but in the imitation of their arts. According to Petrie, coats of mail were unknown in Egypt before the capture of Megiddo. There Thothmes secured a large number of them, and from that time coats of mail are regularly depicted on their tombs. Similarly, gilded chariots were unknown in Egypt until much later, and even then were confined to royalty ; but in the spoils of Megiddo and succeeding tributes there are mentioned two gold-plated, thirty mounted in gold and silver, nineteen inlaid with silver, THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 35 and many adorned with gold, silver, and colours. This points to opulence unequalled in Egypt, and the gold and silver vases depicted bear out the same fact. Not only were gold and silver abundant in the country, but the people themselves appear to have excelled the Egyptians in the skill and artistic taste with which they handled them, as well as the other precious metals at their disposal ; so much so, that specimens of their handiwork were evidently much sought after in Egypt, and a tide of Syrian imitation set in. There is one channel by which their civilisation must have influenced Egypt. In eleven campaigns no fewer than 8000 captives and slaves are said to have been carried off to Egypt. There cannot be much doubt which class of people the Egyptian would prefer in a tribute of slaves. He might take the sons of their chiefs as hostages, but the majority of the slaves would be skilled artisans, who would impart their skill to Egyptian workmen, and would also supply the Pharaoh in Egypt with the specimens of their handicraft which he so greedily coveted and seized in Syria. ^ 4^ a Dr Petrie says that from this date Syrian influence ^y,^ C^a^ can be traced even in the features of succeeding genera- ^"^^^f^ tions, especially in the upper classes. Large numbers f'^ . - \^ of women were among the captives, and, soon after, it \ ' jt'^ ' . became quite usual for the Pharaoh and leading princes , to marry princesses from S3n'ia, as we learn from the CM-^"^ ^ Tell el Amarna Letters. ^"^ ^^Cx Thus we see that in the fifteenth century B.C. the whole of Syria, including what was later known as Palestine, was in a very prosperous position. It abounded in valuable metals, wood, and precious stones. 86 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT and appears to have been cultivated to a large extent. Its people were famous for their skill and taste in working these metals, especially in Phenicia, as well as for their personal charm and attractiveness. When the Egyptians, more skilled in warfare, subdued them, thousands of Syrian men and women were drafted down into Egypt, chosen for their skill in handicraft, and for their comeliness. The skilled artisans would be em- ployed at their crafts, and the women entering Egyptian families would impart their Syrian language and ideas to their children, and so it may be considered no strange thing that by and by Semitic words, idioms, and thoughts should be transfused throughout Egyptian literature, and the delicate features of the Semitic race should gradually show themselves in a softening and refinement of the Egyptian cast of countenance — a fact which is particularly noticeable in the portraits of Egyptians of the better class preserved to us. We have, however, to bear in mind that at this time Egypt was in every respect at a very low ebb (com- paratively speaking) of civilisation, just recovering, in fact, from the baneful thraldom of the Hyksos, who had recently been expelled. During the occupation of the latter, which had continued for 511 years, the energy of the Egyptians had been spent almost solely in warding off their aggressions and confining them to the Delta, so that the fine arts, and even agriculture, were bound to suffer. That this was so, is proved by the fact that in the eighteenth dynasty Egypt was compelled to import corn from surrounding countries, though previously it had served as the corn emporium of its neighbours. THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 37 Thus we find a regular tribute of corn demanded by Thothmes III. from Syria, and 150,000 bushels were taken from Megiddo. In later days Egypt once more became the corn depot of the east. Such is the beginning of what has been called thevx semiticising of Egypt, traceable in its language, its statuary, flat-relief work, the designs and patterns of its manufactures and furniture ; in its beads, dress, and mode of dressing the hair ; and even in its writing, which in its old stiff, thick, hieratic form had under- gone no change for thirty centuries, but now became " thin, flowing, and flourishing." Here also we are probably to find the germ of the demoralisation of Egyptian art and culture. Enthralled by Syrian in- fluence, the Eg3'ptian, having abandoned his own individuality, is henceforth in a continual state of flux, drifting from one innovation to another, from one ideal to another, and not all the efforts of later dynasties to bring about an archaic revival and lead the Egyptian back to the old ideals which formerly animated him, were able to stem the tide of deterioration which set in with this conquest of Syria and culminated in the hopeless degradation of all Egyptian arts in the Greek period. In all, a list of 1 1 9 places in Upper Ruten, or North Palestine, are mentioned by Thothmes III., and his monuments give three versions of the list. These places have been cleverly identified by Petrie, some with certainty, some with a great measure of proba- bility, and his discussion of them may be found in the Appendix to vol. ii. of his history. The follow- ing is a selected list of the more important identifi- 38 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT cations, in the order given by Thothmes III., and so indicating the scope and direction of his movements in Palestine : — Places and Identifications Galilee. Damas- cus to Beyrout. Tiberias back to Me^ddo. 12. 13. 19. 20. 26. 27. 28. 31. 34. 88. 41. 43. 58. 60. Qedshu — Qedesh or Qadas, near Lake Homs, on the Orontes. Mageta — Megiddo, 19 miles S.E. of Haifa. Then follow several in the vicinity of Nazareth and Akka. Marma — Lake Merom. Tamesqu — Damascus. Then several near Damascus. Baarutu — Beyrout. Mazna — Madon, 5 miles W. of Tiberias. 21-25, places near Tiberias. Qaanau — Waters of Qana, near Megiddo. A'aruna — Ararah (?), near Megiddo. Astartu — Asteroth Karnaim, 21 miles E. of Sea of Galilee. Liusa — Laish, in Dan, 11 miles N. of Merom. Genartu — Kinneroth, near Tiberias. Shenama — Shunem, Solam, 7 miles S. of Nazareth. Geb'a. Suan — Geba, near Nazareth. Yeblamu — Ibleam, modern Yebla, 17 miles E. of Megiddo. 42-56 are all in vicinity of Megiddo. Ashu. Shekhen — Plain of Shechem. Yerza — Yerzeh (modern), 11 miles N.E. of Shechem. THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 39 28-61 thus belong to an expedition across Jordan into Bashan, back to Galilee and Nazareth, thence to vicinity of Megiddo and Shechem. 62. Yefu — Yafa, Joppa. 71. Magtal— Migdal, 13 N.N.E. of Gaza. 76. Hudita — Haditheh, 3 miles E. of Ludd. 80. Geruru — Gerar, modern Jerrar, 6 miles S. of Gaza. 88. Aqar — Ekron, 4 miles E. of Jamnia (Yehema). 96. Qareman — Carmel, modern Kurmul, 7 miles S. of Hebron. 104. Qaziru — Gezer, 16 miles S.E. of Joppa. 109. Baarutu — Beeroth, modern Bireh, a few miles N. of Jerusalem. 110. Bat-shar — Beth-sura, modern Beit Sur, 4 miles N. of Hebron. 111. Bat-anta — Beth-anoth, modern Beit-ainun, 3 miles N.N.E. of Hebron. 112. Khalqetu — Kilkis (modern), 2 miles S.S.W. of Hebron. 113. 'An-Qena — 'Ain el Qana, 1 mile N.W. of Hebron. Amenhotep 11. (1449-1423) made a tour of his father's conquests in Syria, chiefly to check any attempt at rebellion against the new sovereign. In his second year we find him at Arseth (Harosheth on the Kishon), and at My on the Euphrates. From Takhsi, near Aleppo, he carried away seven chiefs, struck down by his own mace, and these were hung by the feet over the prow of his vessel on the way home. Six of them were afterwards hung up in the same way before the walls of Thebes, a proceeding which suggests barbarity 40 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT inconsisteut with Egyptian culture and civilisation in other respects. Thothmes IV. (1423-1414 B.C.) paid a similar visit to Syria, but his reign adds no substantial information. Amenho- For the two succeeding reigns, Amenhotep III. ^^dVv.- (1414-1379 B.C.) and Amenhotep IV. (1383-1365 B.C.), d5Snarn great authority is the Tell el Amarna Letters. Letters. Though there is no extant record of any campaign in Syria, we have some information regarding the reign of the former from his temple at Soleb, in Ethiopia. Round its columns are depicted figures of captives from the various peoples that were subject to Amenhotep III. The following is the list, with Petrie's identifications of the names accompanying the figures : — Sengar — Singara, W. of Nineveh. Naharain — Upper Euphrates, both sides. Khita — Hittite country, north end of Syria. Kedesh — near Lake Homs (Damascus region) (?) Tanepu — Tunip, Teunib. Akarita — Ugarit, at the mouth of the Orontes. Kefa — North Phenicia. Karkamish — Carchemish. Assur — Assyria. Aphthena — Aphadena, E. of Chaboras. Makuuatsh — Maguda, E. of Euphrates. Kedina — Katanii, E. of Palmyra. Aaro or Atiro — Atera, S.W. of Palmyra. Punt — Punda, W. of Euphrates. Shasu — Bedawin. Thyta — probably the land of Queen Thyi. Arerpaka — Arrapakhitis^ N.E. of Nineveh. BAARUTU BAALBEK o (HclJopolis) SHEMANAU ^BESMAMUN AQIDI SIDON (IGAID) ^ AUBlLo (ABILA) TYRE TAMESQU <^ LIUSA (LAISH) MIGDADo (MAQATA) RAFAH o (amnu-refaa) ASTARTU 0(ASHTEROTH) YEFUi (yafa) rLUODo fASKALUNA MAGTAL oGAZA oGERURU (GERAR) ,AUANAU ©HUDITA QAZIRU O (GEZER) AN-qENA oBAT-ANTA/(beth-|anotm) ^OHEBROM 'KMALX3ETU oQAREMAN (CARMEL) PALESTINE undcrThothmesBI and succeeding Kin^5 p. 40 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 41 As will be seen from a study of the localities indicated, the above list practically implies that under Amenhotep III. the boundaries of Egypt embraced all the lands around the Tigris and Euphrates, the desert of Pal- myra, Northern Syria up to Aleppo, and the rest of Syria and Palestine. As this is the largest extent of Egyptian power ever known, Amenhotep III. must have added considerably to the conquests of his pre- decessors. The people of Kefa, Khita, Sengar, Atiro, Karkamish, Assur, Aphthena, and Makuuatsh are de- picted with a fillet and long hair. The others have close- cut hair and no fillet. Palestine and Syria were, therefore, at this time entirely under the dominion of Egypt, and apparently quite satisfied. The T.A. Letters show that there was constant interchange of good feeling between the princes of the countries. They also explain how this came about. The Egyptian princes had married Syrian princesses, and sons of the Syrian chiefs had been brought to Egypt to be educated and to serve as hos- tages, since the days of Thothmes III. Xo doubt many of the latter had taken Egyptian wives home with them, but all of them would be so thoroughly imbued with the Egyptian spirit as to be quite contented with their yoke. Dr Pinches says that if this were so, it is strange that they should afterwards have corresponded with the Egyptians in cuneiform, a language equally foreign to both. But two facts stand out clear. One is, that the Egyptians must have known cuneiform in order to read the T.A. Letters ; and the other, that the Syrians were at this period strongly Egyptian in their sym- 42 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT pathies, and vice versa, whatever may have brought it about. Amenhotep III. himself married two Syrian wives, and his successor one. The chief wife of Amenhotep, Queen Thyi, is also believed to have been a Semite of Syrian origin, and she played a powerful part in the history of her time, acting as Regent for Akhenaten in his minority, as we see from letters addressed to her after the death of Amenhotep. Her influence over both husband and son seems to have been decidedly Syrian, and there is evidence that in her husband's time the Syrian cult of Aten, the Sun's disc, was already known. This cult Akhenaten afterwards tried to establish as the national religion. The Tell The T. A. Letters are written in cuneiform on clay Letters, tablets, and addressed to Amenhotep III. and IV. by the various chiefs of Syrian towns and districts subject to Egypt. Many are simply the regular official reports expected of them, but the majority are special appeals for assistance in some emergency. One or two are letters addressed to Syrian chiefs by the Pharaoh, and three are messages sent by princesses to their kinsfolk in Egypt, along with the official despatches. These latter are simple words of kindly greeting and good wishes. The story of these tablets since their discovery is a record of pitiful, bungling incompetency. They had been deposited in " The place of the records of the palace of the King," as it was named on the bricks found by Dr Petrie in Tell el Amarna, and natives, while carrying away bricks of Akhenaten for their modern houses, came upon this record chamber contain- ing many hundreds of tablets. They were shown to THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 43 dealers, and to two leading experts, but no one recog- nised their value, and one of the latter declared them forgeries. Finally, many of them were carried to Luxor in sacks, being mostly ground to dust on the way, and through the dealers there they found their way to re- cognition. What has been saved is only a fraction of the original, consisting of about 267 letters, which are now for the most part in the British and Berlin Museums. In the Letters Amenhotep III. is addressed by his Egyptian name, Neb-maat-ra, which in cuneiform appears in the various forms, Nimmuria, Nammuria, Kimmutriya, Nipmuaria, Nibmuaria, Nimuwaria, or Nimmuria, while his successor, Nefer-kheperu-ra (Ak- henaten), is addressed as Naphkuriya, Naphkuriria, Niphkuriria, Naphkururiya, Naphkuraria. So many variations sufficiently show that not much reliance can be placed in cuneiform versions of foreign names. The Letters have been conveniently divided into three classes by Dr Petrie : L Letters of the Peace — 106. II. Those dealing with the North Syrian War — 119. III. Those dealing with the South Syrian War — 42. I. All the letters of this class belong to the last five years of Amenhotep III., c. 1383-1879 B.C., during which period his son, Akhenaten, was associated with him on the throne. (1) The Khatti or Hittites. — There are three letters in this group from Hittite Kings, of whom Tarkhunda- raush alone is named. He sends immense tribute of gold, ivory, lead, precious stones, and woods, and requests 44 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT a daughter of Nimutriya to wife. The letters show that at this time, c. 1380 B.C., the Hittites were con- fined to the mountainous region of Igaid, which is identified with Lebanon or Antilebanon, the name being perhaps still preserved in the modern 'Ain Yakut (Yagud) on the old pass between Damascus and Beyrout (Pet.); and they were evidently anxious to enjoy an alliance with Egypt. (2) Khanigalbat of Mitanni — Aram Naharaim. — Nine of this period are from Dushratta, King of Mitanni — five to Amenhotep III., one to Queen Thyi, and three to Akhenaten. Mitanni bordered on the land of the Hittites, and in one letter Dushratta announces that he has repelled an inroad made by them on his territory, so that they appear to be already on the aggressive. He sends a chariot and horses, a lad and a girl, of their booty as tribute to Nipmuaria, along with a pair of gold breast ornaments, gold earrings, and a jar of oil as gifts to Gilukbipa, his own sister, who was the wife of the Pharaoh (Nipmuaria). In another letter he agrees to send a daughter for the Pharaoh's son, but asks a present of gold in return. With the messenger he at the same time sends a gold goblet set with lazuli, a necklace of twenty lazuli beads and nineteen gold beads, the middle being lazuli beads cased in gold, a neck- lace of forty " khulalu " stones and forty gold beads, twenty horses, ten chariots, and thirty women. The daughter, Tadukhipa by name, was afterwards sent, and became the wife of Akhenaten, known in Egypt as Nefer-titi. The back of this letter is docketed the thirty-sixth year of Amenhotep III., which being THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 45 his last, fixes the date of the correspondence as c. 1379 B.C. In one of his letters to Naphkuriria (Akhenaten), Dushratta informs him that Thothmes IV. had obtained a daughter from his grandfather, Artatama, only after the seventh application, and his father, Amenhotep III., had received Gilukhipa from his father, Shutarna, only on the sixth applicatioD, while he had sent Tadukhipa to him at once ; but though Nimmuria had promised him gold it had never found its way to Khanigalbat. He sends a message of sympathy over the death of Nimmuria (Amenhotep III.). In these few letters Dushratta gives us an interesting glimpse of his own personal history and that of his country. That his grandfather, Artatama, and his father, Shutarna, could persistently refuse to send daughters to the Pharaoh, while he not only sent his at once but sent a present as well, shows that they possessed a spirit of independence and a power which evidently he could not afford to exhibit. With the ordinary craft of the Oriental, he never sends a present except with the expressed hope of as good a return, and he even drags in his unoffending spouse, Yuni, as a suitable object for the generosity of the Egyptian sovereign. From the ungenerous return of the Pharaoh we gather that he regarded the presents of Dushratta as the tribute of a dependent. Beyond doubt, the whole of i^orthern Syria, up to Aleppo and the Euphrates, was at this time completely under Egyptian control (1380 B.C.). (3) Ten letters are from Kallima-sin and Burnaburiash, kings of Karduniash (Babylonia), showing a similar 46 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT relation of dependence on Egypt. Eight from Alashia (Cyprus) show that active commercial intercourse existed between Egypt and Cyprus at this time, the chief exports from Cyprus being copper, horses, wood, and ivory, and the imports most in request, silver, ushu " wood, garments, and oil. The rest of these 106 letters are from governors of smaller towns or districts, and deal with unimportant details. Some of the places mentioned are interesting. The Prince of Taruna (Toran, near Tiberias) sends obeisance ; Artamanya of Ziri-bashani (plain of Bashan) offers military service ; Abtirshi of Khazura (Hazor) says he guards Hazor ; Puaddi of Wurza (Yerzeh, near Shechem) guards his land ; Abdmilki of Shaskimi (Abedmelech — servant of Moloch) offers service ; Yitia of Asqaluna (Askelon), Yabni-ilu of Lakisha (Lachish), and Zimrida of Lakisha write similarly ; Yabitiri of Azzati (Gaza) refers to his sojourn as a youth at Pharaoh's court and announces his fidelity. He guards Gaza and Yapu (Joppa). From these indications we gather that Palestine, from north of Tiberias down to Jaffa, was subject to Egypt, and the various governors had either been appointed by the King of Egypt or had sworn fealty to him. They were all expected to send in regular reports of their affairs. Particular value was set upon Askelon, as being on the high road from Egypt to the north, and so we find more frequent reports of its safety and loyalty — Yitia probably availing himself of passing soldiers as his messengers. In the early part of the fourteenth century B.C., it thus appears that Syria was wealthy and flourishing THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 47 and enjoyed peace, and the whole country, from the Euphrates to the Sinaitic boundary of Egypt, was under the dominion of the Pharaoh. Alongside of the ex- change of costly presents, the sending of tribute, and the continual coming and going of messengers with official despatches, there must have been a flourishing commerce carried on by caravan over the desert between the two countries, and from the rare reference to the plundering of caravans, we infer that it was prosecuted under peaceful and encouraging conditions. II. The North Syrian War. — Already in the last four years of Amenhotep III. there were indications of coming trouble. His growing enfeeblement and the fact that Akhenaten was but a youth may have hastened the rebellion. The trouble began in the year of his death, 1379 B.C., and with the Hittites of the North. Behind the mountains of Igaid these Khatti were at first content to seek alliance with Egypt, but they did not remain long inactive. From this date onwards, we read in these letters of the steady and complete dis- integration of the splendid suzeraignty founded in Syria by Amenhotep and his predecessors. Continual warnings unheeded, and cries for help disregarded, by Akhenaten are wafted to our ears from despairing governors, who hold out in their citadels to the bitter end, only to succumb at last to the southward swoop of the Hittite eagles from their mountain fastnesses, with their allies, the Amorites and the Khabiri (confederates). (1) The first point of attack was Amqi, identified with the modern Ammik, south-east of Beyrout, and from there their efforts were next directed against Ubi, 48 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT the plain of Damascus, Timashgi itself being in im- mediate danger. The prominent leaders are Aidagamma, King of Kinza ; Azira, King of the Amorites, the Khabiri, and the Hittites ; while Namyawaza of Kamid remains a staunch friend to Egypt. The district concerned is that around Beyrout, Baalbek, and Damascus. In one letter, which he writes to defend himself against the false aspersions of Aidagamma, Namyawaza offers loyal service to Egypt with his soldiers, his chariots, his Sagas, and his Suti. The The Sagas or Khabiri. — This letter is of great value. Khabiri ^^^^ authorities identify the Sagas with the Khabiri. Pinches however says that wherever the word Sagas occurs in the bilingual lists of Babylonia and Assyria, it is translated by " Khabatu," a word which means " robbers." He therefore regards the Sagas as a band of robbers, but considers them as belonging to the confederacy known as the Khabiri in the letters of Abdi-tabu or Ebed-tob. In spite of this, however, they are generally looked on as identical with the Khabiri, and this letter shows that we must regard the Khabiri as an alliance of Syrian tribes in the neighbourhood of Damascus. In view of this, it is impossible to identify the Khabiri with the Hebrews ; for though the letters of Ebed-tob show that they soon after this conquered the south of Palestine, and probably gave its name to Hebron, yet Namyawaza's letter clearly proves that they began their conquests in the region of Damascus and worked their way south from there. To identify them with the Hebrews would thus demand that we invert the order of Joshua's conquests as narrated in the Old Testament, for there we find that he first conquered the THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 49 south and south-east, and afterwards worked his way to the north of Palestine. Succeeding letters inform us that Namyawaza's cry for help from Egypt being disregarded, one after the other of the neighbouring chiefs throw in their lot with Aidagarama ; and finally the Khabiri themselves, who had at first remained loyal to Egypt, revolt. Yenuama (Yenoam, near Tyre) rebels, Ashtarti (Ash- teroth-Karnaim) falls into the hands of the Khabiri, and Namyawaza himself has to take refuge in some city, probably Damascus. (2) The rebellion now spreads to Galilee. The towns Galilee, Udumu (Adumah), Aduri (Tirjath of Josh, xiii.), Araru ^379 B.C. (Arara), Magdali (Magdala), and others, " cities in the land of Gar," revolt, and three, including Yabishi (Yabesh), are taken. The " land of Gar " is the Hebrew Gur, and from the towns here named appears to have included the southern half of Galilee, which shows that at this point the Egyptians have lost all Galilee and all Syria north of it. The defection of Galilee and the north naturally made the passage of caravans to Babylonia quite unsafe, and this is the occasion of a letter from Burnaburiyash, King of Karduniyash (Babylonia) to Akhenaten. In it he states that merchants of his had travelled with Akhithabu (Ahitub) as far as the district Kinakhi (east of Lake Merom), where the latter left them. They stayed in Khinatuni (Kanawat), a town of Kinakhi ; and there Shumadda, son of Balumi (Balaam), and Shutatna, son of Sharatu of Akkaiu (Abka) killed them and seized the caravan. As Kioakhi belongs to Egypt, he demands compensation and the return of two who had D 50 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT been retained as slaves, otherwise trade must cease. This is simply an incident in the Galilean rebellion. These two allied chiefs had taken the town and spoiled it while his caravan was there. The Biblical names Ahitub, Shemayah (Shamu-adda), and Balaam are inter- esting. (3) While the rebellion spread to the south, Aziru, " the most energetic son of Abdi-ashirta, Lord of Amurri, or the middle Orontes valley (land of the Amorites)," had time to prosecute his conquests in the far north, which he did so effectually as soon to be master of the whole district. All the time, he was writing to Egypt professing the utmost loyalty. The great bulwark Ribadda against Aziru was Ribadda, chief of Gubla. Gubla is of Gubla. the word Gebel or Jebel, meaning " hill," and the best identification is Jibleh, the classical Gabala, ten miles south of Laodicea, and sixty north of Tripoli {cf. Josh, xiii. 5, Gebalites). While Ribadda writes for troops to ward off Aziru and the Khabiri, Aziru writes professing that his life is now in danger on account of his loyalty to Egypt ! All his duplicity, however, fails to convince the Pharaoh of his fidelity, and he receives a letter of stern rebuke demanding his immediate presence in Egypt. Aziru parries this cleverly, writing now that the Hittites have attacked Tunip, and he must stay for its defence ; and, again, that he and Khatib will set out at once. The fact is, the Hittites were his allies, and he was with them in their attack upon Dunip (Tunip). Meanwhile Ribadda is attacked in earnest, and his letters show a strong combination against Egypt, viz. the Khatti ; the Amurri, under Aziru, Mitanni, and Kash. THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 51 Tsumur (Simyra), near by, is hard pressed, and Ziduna (Sidon), with its chief Zimrida, has revolted. Eibadda seems to have been overlord of all Northern Phenicia, and he moves about from town to town as need summons him. He next writes from Simyra, and mentions it and Irqata as alone remaining faithful besides Gubla. In their extremity the people of Irqata wrote to the Pharaoh appealing strongly for assistance, and their letter begins, " Irqata and its elders fall down at the king's feet," thus showing that the Government Repub- was a Republic with no nominal head. A similar letter 0^0"^^^. from Tunip, when hard pressed by Aziru and the ment. Hittites, belongs to the same period. It begins, " People of Dunip to the King," from which it appears that Tunip had at the time a Government similar to that of Irqata : a council of elders with no appointed president. The concluding appeal of this letter is strongly pathetic, and represents the hard fate of many another town that struggled to maintain its loyalty in the face of the Pharaoh's indifference : " And now Dunip, your city, weeps, and her tears are running, and there is no help for us. For twenty years we have been sending to our Lord, the King, the King of Egypt, but there has not come to us a word from our Lord, not one " — surely a sad commentary on the waning power of Egypt and the growing indifference or unfortunate incapacity of Akhenaten. The appeal was disregarded. We next find Eibadda back in Gubla. Irqata has fallen, and Tsumura (Simyra) is as a bird in a snare." He is now attacked by land and sea, Aziru being assisted by ships from Simyra, Biruta, and Ziduna. In the stress of famine he appeals to Egypt to help him 52 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT Yari- to get food from Yarimuta. Yarimuta must have been a sea-port close to Gubla, probably to the north. Yerimoth, Arimathea, Eamoth, and Eamah are all ^ names applied to towns or districts where there were high places, the words signifying " high place." The next port of importance north of Gubla is Laodicea, which was a Ramah, or " high place," and was known in Greek times as Ramitha, so that Yarimuta is almost certainly the port later known as Laodicea, now Latakia. Kash. At this time Aziru and his Amorites are assisted by the Khabiri and the kings of Mitanni and Kash. Kash, some have identified with Babylonia ; but from the letters it appears to have been close to Mitanni. It is possible that the name is retained in the district known in classical times as Casionitis, north of Antioch. Petrie identifies it with the Kurdite territory. Khiku- III despairing letter, Ribadda reminds the Pharaoh ^^ta. that Gubla belongs to him, and is his care as much as Khikubta. From the context, Khikubta must be some place, most likely the capital, in Egypt; and Petrie cleverly identifies it with Kha-ka-ptah, the Egyptian name of Memphis, the capital known in the Old Testament as Moph, or Noph. For five years Ribadda has persevered with untiring fidelity against the southward rush of the Hittites, Amorites, and Khabiri. Simyra now falls to the Khabiri, and Gubla is isolated. It is curious to observe how the Khabiri are always put forward at the finish as being the actual aggressors, although they have been ably assisted throughout by the other two. It appears to have been part of a preconcerted plan. THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 53 by which the Hittites and Amorites, who were allies of Egypt, were able to withhold from the Pharaoh any indisputable evidence of their actual faithlessness. Thus Aziru, though he has been assisting at the taking of Simyra, immediately after its fall sits down and writes an account of its capture by the Khabiri to Pharaoh, still playing the part of a faithful ally ; and in turn he receives a command to retake and rebuild it for Egypt, a commission which he evades with his customary duplicity and skilful manipulation of facts. These tactics of Aziru apparently had something to do with the inactivity of Akhenaten, and probably tended largely to discredit the importance of Ribadda's reports in his eyes. Ribadda himself seems to have felt this, for he writes reminding Akhenaten that his father, Amenhotep III., trusted him and sent him help whenever he needed it. He suggests, too, that if he, Ribadda, is distrusted, he should be supplanted ; only, let the king send and expel the Khabiri from Tsumura. Except on the supposition of preoccupation or indolent indifference, it is hard to explain how Akhenaten was so persistently blind to his own interests, and so absolutely unappreciative of the rare fidelity and amazing energy of his ally. If these letters had done no more, they have preserved for us in Ribadda a type of character worthy of our highest esteem, and only too seldom found in the political annals of the East, past and present. It is another instance of the strangely ironical fate which so often plays havoc with the destinies of nations, by placing the greater man in the second place. (4) We leave Ribadda now for a time to face his 54 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT Tyre and troubles within and without Gubla with that dauntless ?^i375 ^is, and turn to events at Tsurri (Tyre) and ^•C. Ziduna (Sidon), which have already joined the enemy. From Abi-milki (Abimelech), King of Tyre, we possess eight letters, the earlier of which speak of Aziru having just begun his attack upon Namyawaza, while Zimrida of Ziduna is already in league with Aziru and waiting an opportunity to attack Tyre. Zimrida, he tells us, is receiving regular information of affairs at the Court of Egypt through Aziru, which shows that Aziru had arranged an elaborate espionage upon all that passed to and from Egypt regarding his doings, and gives us one more indication of the astuteness of the Amorite leader. Tyre being on an island, the siege naturally made it difficult for him to secure provisions from the mainland, and so we find Abimelech asking troops to assist him in this matter. In several letters the request for twenty men to be sent as a garrison occurs, but the number twenty is to be regarded simply as politely indefinite, a suggestion that he will be glad to receive just as many as the king finds it convenient to send. Zimrida next attacks Tyre by sea with two ships, and Khazura (Hazor) joins the rebels, while Aziru himself appears on the scene with people of Arw^ada (Arvad ; Greek, Aradus), ships, chariots, and soldiers to besiege Tsurri. Zimrida has already taken Usu (Hosah ; Hebrew, 'Essiyeh, six miles north of Tyre), and Simyra has fallen. There is neither " water, wood, nor burial ground " in Tyre, Abimelech tells the king. No effective response to his appeal came from Egypt, and the distress which he pictures evidently overcame his loyalty soon after. THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 55 Thus we see from Abimelech's letters, that as soon as Simyra fell Aziru hastened south to assist Zimrida against Tyre, and conquered all the south of Phenicia, while the Hittites and the Khabiri were left to subdue Ribadda. Gubla is now the only important place in Phenicia which is not in their hands. (5) The letters now carry us back to Ribadda, who Ribadda stands a solitary champion for Egypt in the whole ^"tru district from the Orontes to Tyre. He aimounces to the Pharaoh the defection of Tyre and the loss of his private property, which he had stored there for security, as well as the murder of his sister with her sons and daughters, who had been sent thither for the same reason. This letter he writes from Biruna (Beirut), where he has been for three months (1372 B.C.) on a mission trying to secure the town for Pharaoh. He finds half the town in favour of Aziru, and the other half for the King of Egypt. He reminds the king that three months ago he had sent his son from Beirut to Egypt to interview him, but his son had never yet been admitted to his presence, and asks for troops to defend Biruna. It is quite possible that Aziru had officials at the Egyptian Court in his pay, who could prevent Ribadda's son from seeing the Pharaoh, so that Akhenaten pro- bably was never aware of his presence. It is just as likely that the substance of Ribadda's letters, if not the letters themselves, were by the same agency prevented from ever reaching Akhenaten, or that only a garbled version of them was reported to him. This quite falls in with Abimelech's (of Tyre) statement, that Aziru kept Zimrida well posted in the affairs of the Egyptian Court. 56 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT While Ribadda was absent in Beirut, his brother Rabi-mur had charge of Gubla ; and the people of Gubla wrote to the King, as Tunip and Irqata had done, asking that 240 men, 30 chariots, and 600 men of the Kashi be sent to defend Gubla. Evidently they did not know that the Kashi had joined the enemy. This shows, however, that Kash cannot have been Babylonia, but a district not far from Gubla, and confirms the identification with the Casionitis of classical times. The date of this letter is about 1371 B.C. When he returned, Ribadda found Gubla in such sti-aits that all the wood and children had been sold to Yarimuta for food. He appeals to two commissioners of Egypt, Amanappa and Khaiappa, in the vicinity, and even tries to turn to his own interest a division which has arisen among the Amorites themselves ; but all with no practical result. Gubla continues in a state of famine, and Ribadda thinks they cannot hold out longer than two months. Three years pass, however, and during this time Gubla must have been left in peace, for crops were grown ; but, again, in 1369 B.C. Ribadda writes of even greater destitution, and how Rabimur has become the leader of a faction determined on surrender- ing to Aziru, because of the king's neglect. He speaks pathetically of his own increasing age and weakness, and of his having no refuge to flee to, if his brother carries out this design. He asks permission to retire to Buruzilim, a place which has not been identified. Rabimur must have supplanted him in the confidence of his townsmen, for shortly after this he went to Beirut to secure a refuge with Amunira, the governor there, THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 57 who still held out for Egypt. Amunira agreed to receive him ; but when he returned to bring his family from Gubla, so strong had the anti-Egyptian feeling become that they refused him admission even to his own house. When his brother and his wife pleaded with him to abandon Egypt and join Aziru, he resolutely refused ; and now, stripped of friends, kindred, and position, he writes from Beirut : " Ribadda is still faithful, but if the king will not help, he is a dead man." Amunira, in a letter from Birutu (Ribadda spells it Biruna), says : " As to the man from Gubla (i.e. Ribadda), who is with me, I am indeed guarding him, until the king shall care for his servant." He adds also that Rabimur has given Ribadda's sons over to Aziru. Contrary to expectation, however, Birutu fell before Fall of Gubla, and Ribadda had to flee for refuge to his own ^nd^"^ city, where they evidently received him. We have four Gubla. more appeals from his pen, and finally Gubla falls, and with it the whole Syrian Empire to the very coast of Misri (Egypt) itself. Ribadda disappears from the scene. Whether he escaped to Egypt or to Buruzilim, or was treacherously betrayed and slain, we have no means of knowing. His remarkable history, so wonder- fully preserved to us through all these centuries, is another instance of the stout-hearted loyalist in a distant outpost of the empire sacrificed by a timid, vacillating, or indifferent monarch. In the correspon- dence we search in vain for the motive behind this man's marvellous fidelity to a foreign power and a losing cause. Perhaps it is best found in the essential genuineness and single-mindedness of his own character. 58 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT With him Egyptian prestige entirely disappeared from Northern Syria. Palestine. III. The last series consists of forty-two letters, which deal with the defection of Palestine. They are neither so full of detail nor so interesting as the pre- ceding, and there is no hero of constancy like Ribadda to give them that touch of human interest which makes even dry bones live. They reveal the same state of affairs, several chiefs in a sense leagued together, yet each one really fighting for his own hand, and each openly professing to be fighting for the interests of Egypt. It is impossible, in fact, to discover which, if any, was really loyal to Egypt. Nowhere in the south was such resistance shown as at Birutu, or Gubla in the north. They had learned from the fate of these places that they had nothing to hope for from Egypt ; and so we find that after one or two vain appeals to the Pharaoh for assistance, the various places make the best terms which they can for themselves, join the rebels, and throw off the Egyptian yoke. The chief centres of the fighting seem to have been Urusalim, Gazri (Gezer), Magidda (Megiddo), with the surrounding dis- tricts ; and, of these, Jerusalem, under Abdi-taba (Ebed- tob), offered the strongest resistance. The Of the three races prominent in the northern war, and°th?^ only the Khabiri are mentioned in the south. The Exodus. Hittites and the Amorites had not as yet pressed further south than Northern Galilee. On eighteenth dynasty monuments the Amorites are never mentioned as being found in the south of Palestine, and in the nineteenth Rameses II. locates them with the Hittites near Qedesh (Lake Homs), in the neighbourhood of Damascus. But THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 59 Joshua (chap, x.) found the Amorites in possession of all Southern Palestine, and Rameses III. of the twentieth dynasty (c. 1202-1170 B.C.) gives them a prominent place in his Syrian triumphs depicted on the walls of Medinet Habu, although he does not appear to have even touched Northern Syria. As the date of his last Syrian campaign has been fixed at 1187 B.C., we must therefore infer that by that date the Amorites had extended their dominion to the south. Since Joshua met and conquered them in the south, his entrance into Canaan must thus have taken place subsequent to Rameses II. of the nineteenth dynasty, and close to the period of the invasions of Syria by Rameses III. The trouble began with the revolt of several chiefs against Egypt, probably at the instigation of the Khabiri ; and as soon as the flame of rebellion was ignited, each of the rebels evidently sent a report of the defection of the others to Egypt. Abdi-taba ex- presses himself particularly aggrieved at being slandered, and denies the charge of disloyalty. Milk-ili, chief of some town in Judaea, and Shu ward ata, his ally, write similarly, and each warns the Pharaoh of the danger from the Khabiri, while each names Yankhamu, the Egyptian Commissioner, in somewhat doubtful terms. Milk-ili next attacks Jerusalem, and in two letters asking help Abdi-taba informs the king that Khazati (Gaza) and Ginti-kirmil (the hill country of Carmel between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean) are in the hands of the enemy ; while to the north Shiri (Heb., Shaaraim) and Zilu (Heb., Zelah) have fallen to the Khabiri, who " hold all the cities." At the same time Gazri (Gezer) is attacked, and Lapaya, its leader, Gezer. 60 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT formerly a friend of Egypt, now joins the assailants, though in a letter to Egypt at this period he protests that " if the king demanded Lapaya's wife, he would send her, or if he ordered Lapaya to run a sword of bronze through his own heart, he would do it." Megfiddo. Makidda (Megiddo) next becomes the scene of opera- tions, and Biridiya, its chief, is sore pressed by the Khabiri and Lapaya. He forms a conspiracy to seize Lapaya and send him to Egypt, but Shurata of Akka forestalls him, and under pretence of sending Lapaya to Egypt by sea from Akka, he frees him for a ransom in the town Khinatuni, east of the Jordan. It was Shurata's son, Shutatna, who plundered the caravan of Burnaburiash in this same town, so that the two events seem to belong to the same raid. Jeru- The attack is again transferred to Jerusalem, and salem. Abdi-taba is in sore straits. Gezer, Askelon, and Lakisi (Lachish) have joined the enemy. His caravans are plundered at Yaluna (Ajalon). Rubutu (Rabbah) falls, and men of Qilti take Bit-ninib, belonging to Jerusalem. Unless help is sent, Jerusalem must surrender to the Khabiri. This is the last appeal of Abdi-taba ; and we may presume that, having lost all hope of assistance from Egypt, he soon after followed the example of other towns and made terms with the Khabiri. Queen ISTinur. — Two letters are from Ninur, who addresses the king as his handmaid. This queen must have ruled over some portion of Judsea between Jerusalem and the Great Sea, probably in the neigh- bourhood of Ajalon, to whose fall she refers. This recalls a similar instance of female rule in Palestine THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 61 among the Israelites in the case of Deborah, the prophetess, who judged Israel (Jud. iv. 4.) From these letters we thus gather that in the course of the fifteen years between 1380 and 1365 B.C. the Egyptian sovereignty over Syria was completely swept away, and in the chaos which ensued the Khabiri or confederates appear to have been left masters of South Syria or Palestine, while the Hittites and the Amorites divided the north between them. One fact is plainly established by the letters of Ebed-tob. We can no longer regard Jerusalem as being at this date a mere village of the Jebusites. It was manifestly the capital of Southern Palestine, and a place of importance from very early times. The tradition of Manetho, that it was founded by the Hyksos when they were driven out of Egypt about 1580 B.C., or two hundred years before the events recorded in the T.A. Letters, would appear to be nearer the truth, so far at least as the date of its founding is concerned. Summary. — We may now summarise the information which these Letters give regarding Syria and Palestine in the fifteenth century B.C. 1. The Khatti or Hittites. — These were at first confined to the region described as Igaid, identified as the district of the Lebanon, north of Beirut. Later on, along with the Amorites they conquered the country as far south as Gubla (Gabala, ten miles south of Laodicea), c. 1375 B.C. In the monuments of Rameses 11. (1300- 1234 B.C.) we find them established with Qedesh, near Lake Homs, as their capital, and Rameses had to fight them for his frontier just beyond Beirut. 62 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 2. Amar, Amurri. — The Amorites also descended from North Syria. Originally they held the main part of the Orontes valley, and under Aziru they pressed south to the northern end of Galilee. In the time of Eameses II. they are side by side with the Hittites at Qedesh. Rameses III. (1200-1170 B.C.) found them in possession of Southern Syria or Palestine, and later still Joshua found them masters of all South Palestine. In Josh. x. the five Amorite kings of Jerusalem, Jarmuth, Hebron, Lachish, and Eglon com- bined against him to battle at Gibeon. About 1365 B.C. we saw from the Letters that the Khabiri were conquering these very places, so that between that date and 1175 B.C., when Joshua reached Canaan, the Amorites must have displaced the Khabiri. Not one of the letters of Ebed-tob mentions the Amorites as having come south at that time ; and as Eameses II. locates them at Qedesh, they must have come south between his time and 1187 B.C., the date of the last campaign of Rameses III. against Syria. Modes of Modes of Government. — Five different varieties of Govern- government are found in these letters, as existing in ment. % . ■, . Syria at that time. 1. We find chiefs appointed by the Pharaoh. 2. We find also hereditary chiefs retained and approved by him. 3. One instance of female rule occurs — Ninur in Judaea. 4. Elected chiefs. Abdi-taba of Jerusalem frequently uses the expression, " Neither my father nor my mother set me in this place — the arm of the mighty King caused me to enter into the house of my father.'* THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 63 When we compare with this the statement of Heb. vii. 3 regarding Melchizedek, King of Jerusalem, " without father, without mother, without genealogy," the two together compel us to regard this as a special formula applied to the King of Jerusalem, as being not a hereditary prince but an official elected by the people. This is the view of several, notably Dr Petrie, but the words quoted above seem to imply simply that he was the nominee of Pharaoh, as well as the heir by birth, for he regards his position as his inheritance, describing his accession as " entering into the house of my father." It is quite possible that he may be quoting a recognised formula, while he flatteringly attributes his position to the Pharaoh, and at the time he had strong reasons for impressing upon Pharaoh's mind the fact that he stood or fell by him, for he was sorely in need of assistance. The fact that Pharaoh left him to face his troubles alone perhaps also strengthens this idea, that he is merely indulging in flattery, and in the doing of it is altering a formula regularly applied to the King of Jerusalem. In the scarcity of evidence, however, it is perhaps best to regard the matter as simply a striking coincidence. 5. The letters of Irqata, Tunip, and Gubla (in the absence of Eibadda) supply instances of a republican government, consisting of a council of elders, and no official president. A parallel to this is found in Josh, ix. 12, where the deputation is described as coming from " the elders and all the inhabitants of Gideon." The Letters also throw some light on the religion of Religion. Syria at this period. One God frequently mentioned is Rimmon, the Eammanu or Thunderer of Assyria, the Addu or Hadad of the Semitic races of Syria, and the 64 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT Teshupa or Teshub of Mitanni (Aram-Naharaim) and ArmeDia (Pinches). The name is seen in Shamuaddu. Shalmayatu was worshipped in Tyre ; and Ashteroth, the town east of Tiberias, preserves the name of Astarte, t^ Assyrian Ishtar. In Abdi-ashirta, the name of tiic father of Aziru, chief of the Amorites, we see the word asherah preserved. " Asherah " was the grove associated with the worship of Astarte or Ishtar. Cyprus. — The King of Alashia (Cyprus) charges Nergal, the Assyrian god of disease and death, with the destruction of his people by pestilence ; and Dusbratta of Mitanni speaks of the Assyrian sun-god Sbamash as the god of his father, which was stolen by an enemy. Similarly, the Assyrian deity Ninip is preserved in Beth- Ninip, the house of Ninip, the name of a town near Jerusalem mentioned by Ebed-tob. We may assume from the name that it was a centre of the worship of Ninip. The name is also preserved in Abad-Ninip, *' the servant of Ninip," who apparently belonged to Gebal (Gubla). Ninip was the god of cultivation and fertility, and is sometimes identified with Merodach, the great benefactor of mankind, especially of the sick and afflicted. The Egyptian god Amana (Amon) is several times invoked ; and other deities incorporated in names of men are Dagan (Dagon), a west-semitic deity., in Dagan- takala of Beth-dagon, near Joppa ; Milku (Melech, Moloch — west-semitic) in Milki-ili (Moloch — my God), Abd-milki (servant of Moloch), etc. The Babylonian deities Urash, Bidina, and Merodach are also found in names. From the prevalence of these Assyrian and Babylonian THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 65 deities, it is clear that these countries still had a power- ful hold OD Syria, although it was under the government of Egypt. Pinches thinks that the worship of Tammuz, or Adonis, the husband of Ishtar, which afterwards proved a grievous stumbling-block to tha -' .Israelites, must have come in from Babylonia at the same time as these (see Ezek. viii. 14). Syria under the Nineteenth Dynasty. — Sub- joined are the names of the kings of the nineteenth dynasty prior to the supposed date of the exodus of Israel : — 1. Eameses 1. . . 1328-1326 B.C. 2. Sety I. . . . 1326-1300 „ 3. Rameses II. . . 1300-1234 „ 4. Merenptah . . 1234-1214 „ Dynasty Twenty. — Rameses III. 1202-1170 „ Of the eighteenth dynasty kings who succeeded Akhenaten, Horemheb appears to have to some extent re-established the Egyptian power over Syria, but Sety I. of the nineteenth dynasty seems to have been Sety I. the 6rst to take up the work in earnest. His exploits in various countries are depicted in a series of scenes covering over 200 feet on the north wall of the great hall of Karnak. Among these, the Khita or Hittite war and other expeditions against Syria are portrayed. He began with a raid upon the Shasu or Bedawin from Zalu on the Sinai tic boundary of Egypt, and he appears to have passed up through Judaea to the Jordan, and thence up the Jordan valley, the Syrians being £ 66 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT depicted as everywhere fleeing before him. He takes Ynuamu (Yanuh) near Tyre, his enemies as depicted being all north Syrian types and shown hiding in the forests. He halts at a fort called Kaduru by Lake Marma (Merom), where he receives the submission of the men of Lemanen (Lebanon), who bring great trees to be sent by ship to Egypt for the temple of Amen. Kaduru must be the Khazura (Hazor) of the Letters, the modern Hadireh. Owing to his renaming every halting-place after himself, it is impossible to trace his course accurately. From Kaduru he returned to Egypt with his captives, among them the chiefs of the Rutennu or the North Palestine hill country. The name for Palestine on his inscription is Khalu. Succeeding scenes depict him conquering the Amo- rites, storming their city Kedesh, and leading away Hittite captives. Two lines of Rutennu captives are described as having been won in the land of the Kheta, which shows that in his time the whole of North Palestine was known as the land of the Hittites. The dress of the Rutennu is carefully distinguished from that of the Hittites. One scene gives a list of places conquered by him, and among them are the following : — Kheta or land of the Hittites, Naharain or North Syria, Retennu, Sangart on the Orontes, Qedshu or Qedesh, Qedna or Qatana west of Damascus, Asy, perhaps Cyprus. An inscribed sphinx in the temple at Qurneh gives the following list : — Kheta, Naharain, Alosa (Alashia or Cyprus), Bat-shar or Beth-shur, four miles north of Hebron, Aka or Akka, Bamait or Bamoth (i.e. a high place), waters of Yanua, i.e. Yanoah near Tyre, Qamadu, THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 67 i,e. Kumidi near Beirut, Zar (Zur or Tyre), Bat-hant or Beth-anath near Tyre, upper and lower Eetennu. From these lists we infer that by 1300 B.C. the Egyptian King, Sety I., had established his dominion over Syria and Palestine from the Orontes to the Egyptian boundary. Rameses II., the Pharaoh of the Oppression (1300- Rameses 1234), in his second year made an expedition ^-gainst pji^'^^^^jj Syria and penetrated as far as the Nahr el kelb or Dog of the River, north of Beirut, where a rock stele depicts him ^on.^^^' smiting a captive as an offering to the god Amen. Another stele at the same place belonging to his fourth year shows him making a similar offering to Ra. Though both these expeditions appear to have been intended merely to impress the Syrians, or for collecting tribute, they were sufficient to rouse the ire of the Hittites, who, with a confederacy of allies, administered a severe check to him at Beirut. He celebrates this war with the Hittites in his poem of Pentaur, where he names eighteen peoples as being united against him. These are Kheta, Naharain, Aretu (Aradus), Masa (Mysia ?, or Gebel Musa), Keshkesh (Kasionitis), Pidasa (Pedasos in Caria), Arwena (Arwan), Luka (Lycians), Dardeny (Dardanians), Qarkish (Kirkesion), Karkamesh (Carchemish), Qaza-aana (Kataonia), Khilbu (Halab, Aleppo), Akarat (Ugarit of T. A. Letters, Okrad), Qedesh, the Hittite capital, Qedi (Phenicia), Anaugasa (one of the store-cities of Megiddo), Mushena (perhaps Masna, east of Qedesh). According to these identifications of Petrie's, all the places named are included in the space between Cappadocia and Tyre, and between the Euphrates and Phenicia. 68 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT Two accounts of this war have been preserved to us — one an official report, and the other the Poem of Pentaur, so called after the scribe who copied it. They describe the route followed by Rameses over one hundred miles of desert, made passable by his father Sety, who had had the wells rebuilt, up through Palestine to Beirut, then along the Dog River and down the Orontes to Qedesh, behind which the Kheta were concealed. Here, we are told, Rameses inflicted a decisive defeat upon them and took many prisoners ; but as the Kheta were not plundered and paid no tribute, we must infer that the contest was a very equal one. A few years after this, in 1292 B.C., he had to fight them in North Galilee, so that they were aggressively pressing south- wards ; and in his twenty-first year, 1279 B.C., they were so powerful that he was compelled to make an offensive and defensive alliance with them. The complete text of this interesting treaty still remains. It establishes relations of peace and brother- hood, and confirms two previous treaties which had been made by Hor-em-heb, last of the eighteenth, and Sety I., of the nineteenth, dynasties. Meren- Merenptah, the Pharaoh of the Exodus (1234-1214 Pharaoh ^ C.), made an expedition into Syria, which is recorded of the on the Israelite stele, elsewhere quoted. There Gezer, Askelon, and Yenuamu are mentioned as having been taken ; Canaan is seized with every evil, the people of Israel laid waste, Kharu (Palestine) is as a widow, and Kheta is quiet. Thus we see that in the time of Rameses II. and Merenptah the Hittites were the predominant race in Syria north of Galilee, and were powerful enough THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 69 to enjoy an alliance on equal terms with the Pharaoh. From other sources we saw that the Amorites dominated the southern portion of Syria about the same period, having descended from Qedesh, probably in the reign of Merenptah, for we find them figuring prominently in the records of the conquests of Rameses III. (1202- 1170 B.C.) in South Palestine, and by the end of this latter reign, 1170 B.C., Joshua had met and defeated them at Gibeon. Such is the picture *of Syria and Palestine which the monuments of Egypt, prior to the Exodus, put before us ; and it undoubtedly abolishes many of our preconceived notions of what these Syrians were like. We cannot longer regard them as a race of uncivilised savages who would fall an easy prey to an untrained horde of religious fanatics suddenly emerging from the desert. Syria and Palestine possessed a civilisation in nothing inferior to Egypt, and a wealth of resources which quite justifies the description " a land flowing with milk and honey " ; though, until we were able to read these monuments of the Pharaohs, we had no evidence to prove that the description of the Old Testament was correct. Ill FORMER DISCOVERIES IN EGYPT BEARING ON THE OLD TESTAMENT While Egyptian discoveries have supplied us with information regarding Palestine, which is nowhere found in Scripture, they have been the means also of con- firming in many ways the historical accuracy of the Old Testament, and done a valuable work of elucidation as well. There is a tendency to undervalue the testimony of these arch geological discoveries, because no indis- putable proof of the actual presence of Israel has yet been found, and it is a loss which must continually be felt. Professor Sayce, however, regards the fact as by no means strange for several reasons. The Israelites were insignificant in number, obscure in social standing, and were doubtless despised as one of the many Shasu or Bedawiu tribes, whose pastoral life and habits gained for them the sobriquet of " the abomination of the Egyptians," as recorded in the Bible itself. They lived apart and were virtually outcasts of society. Until they were confounded with the other Semitic foreigners resident in Egypt, they were not really a factor in the political life of the country, and they might consequently have been referred to simply under the class ''foreigners" 70 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 71 without their tribal name being mentioned. It is quite possible, therefore, that no definite mention of them by name may ever be found in any monument of the period of their sojourn. The stele of Merenptah, to be spoken of later, mentions Israel, but not the Israelites resident in Egypt. Though we cannot but feel the absence of this information, which would at once give the stamp of historical authenticity to the Old Testament narrative, we must not allow it to detract from the value of other evidences, whose cumulative effect goes a long way toward supplying this want, and establishes at least the fact that the colouring of the narrative is genuinely Egyptian. There are many points of contact, as well as facts of identification, in the record of former discovery, which are of the utmost value, and these we propose to set forth according to the sequence of events as described in the Bible. 1. At the very outset we are met with a curiously The Tale interesting illustration of the story of Joseph's tempta- tion in the house of Potiphar. One of the old Brothers. Egyptian tales bequeathed to us, the story of the two brothers, is almost an exact duplicate. The wife of the elder brother plays the same false part, first tempting and afterwards falsely accusing the younger. Her husband seeks to slay him, but the cattle sympa- thetically convey to him a sense of his danger and he escapes. When closely pursued by the elder brother, the god Horus saves him by interposing between them a lake full of crocodiles. This story was written for the amusement of Seti II., the son of the Pharaoh of the Exodus, and thus belongs to the period of the Israelite 72 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT sojourn in Egypt. It is quite possible that the tradi- tional story of Joseph's temptation was the background of the tale, although it may be only an illustration of a type of fictional literature common in Egypt at that time. In tone and colouring both tales are decidedly Oriental. Bethel 2. DrEAMS, DeEAM-PiLLARS OR BETHELS. The Pillars, frequent occurrence of dreams, as prophetic of coming events, in the narrative of Joseph is, according to Dr Sayce, a distinctly Egyptian feature. In Egypt dreams were " regarded as a means of personal inter- course Avith the deity." The dreams of the butler, the baker, and Pharaoh, may therefore be looked upon as evidence that the writer was closely intimate with Egyptian modes of thought, and has here given a true Egyptian colouring to his work. It was a common practice to visit a temple and to sleep in it for the very purpose of getting an oracular dream from the deity in answer to some question which agitated their minds. Several instances of this custom might be quoted from Egyptian monuments, but the evidence afforded by Dr Petrie's recent work in Sinai is more striking and of an earlier date. It appears that certain temple locali- ties had a wide reputation in this respect, and were resorted to coutinually by pilgrims. The reputation may have belonged originally to the locality itself, and the temple been the fruit of it. Such may have been the case with Bethel in Palestine. The Temple of Hat-hor at Serabit el Khadem in Sinai was a favourite resort of dream-seekers. In its immediate vicinity thirty Bethel-shelters and twelve dream-pillars were found still standing. These shelters BETHEL SHELTER— SERABIT THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 73 were built of stones piled together, so as to present a rough exterior, but usually had a carefully finished facing inside. They are all isolated, some four to six feet, and others from ten to twelve feet inside, and just allowing comfortable room to sleep. They are merely wind-shelters, such as might be thrown up for a visit of a night or two. Many have well-cut Egyptian steles erected beside them. All round the turquoise mines, however, isolated steles still stand, varying from a few inches to two feet in height, and propped up by a heap of stones at the bottom. It is noteworthy that none of them are found out of sight of the temple area. They are generally connected with a circle of stones piled on the ground, and the best example has an altar at the bottom. Dr Petrie has no hesitation in connecting these with the devotional use of stones in Palestine, and they cannot be sepulchral monuments, since no trace of graves was found near them. There is no doubt that they are relics of the custom of dreaming in sacred places, of setting up stones as memorials of these dreams, and anointing them with oil — just what we find recorded of Jacob on his way to Padan-aram in Gen. xxviii. 10-19 : "He took of the stones of that place, and set them at his head, and lay down in that place to sleep.'" The words seem to mean, that he erected a rough stone shelter at his head between him and the wind, a custom practised by any caravan at the present day, the muleteers using their baggage loads for the purpose. The Hebrew word, usually translated " under his head," is far more frequently used in the sense " at his head." The fact that the stone, which he erected and anointed, was small enough* for him to handle, 74 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT shows that we may quite expect comparatively small stones to be employed for this purpose. The steles themselves prove that here the Egyptians were adopting a custom of the country to which they had come for the working of the turquoise mines, for in Egypt steles are always sepulchral and rarely iD scribed on more than one face, while here they are usually in- scribed on all four sides, and are purely devotional (Petrie). The oldest of them belong to Usertesen I. (2748 B.C.) and Amenemhat TIL (2622 B.C.), both of the twelfth dynasty. It is clear, therefore, that this custom is not originally Egyptian, but Semitic, and was practised in Sinai and Palestine at a very early date, while the Egyptians adopted it when they were living among people who observed it. In later times the Greeks practised this custom in Egypt at the Serapeion of Memphis, at that of Kanobos, and at the Temple of Abydos, but in early times it was rarely, if at all, observed in Egypt. It had all along been a favourite custom in Syria and Greece. The sick went regularly to the shrine of Asclepios at Epidaurus to sleep there, so that the god might give them in dream some direction for the cure of their ailments (Petrie, " Sinai," p. 64 seq.). The story of Jacob at Bethel shows us, that wherever one had a striking religious dream, it was immediately inferred that the place was sacred, and the next step was to erect and anoint a pillar as a memorial of the dream. Thus gradually a place gained a reputation for sanctity, and became the continual resort of those who sought direct guidance from the deity by oracular dreams. In 2 Kings xvii. 26-41 Dr Petrie finds an interesting THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 75 parallel to the adoption of this Sinaitic custom by the Egyptians, while they were stationed at the mines. There the King of Assyria is informed that the people, whom he has placed in the cities of Samaria, are suffer- ing because they know not the manner of the god of the land." He therefore orders a priest to be brought back and placed among them to teach them the religion of their adopted country. " Then some of the priests, whom they had carried away from Samaria, came and dwelt in Bethel, and taught them how they should fear the Lord." The outcome was that, while they con- tinued to worship their own gods, they observed also the worship of Jehovah — ''so these nations feared the Lord and served their graven images." The Egpytians did exactly the same thing in Sinai. The goddess Hat-hor, the great mother, was worshipped at Serabit, by Egyptian miners, on a Semitic, not Egyptian, system. To this they conformed, but they brought in also their own gods, as seen on their monuments in the district. " They feared the goddess of the land, and served their own gods after their manner." While, therefore, it may be correct to say that the seeking of oracular dreams was an Egyptian custom in the days of Joseph, it is scarcely correct to say that it was an " Egyptian rather than Palestinian custom." The fact appears to be that the custom was long practised in Sinai and Syria before the Egyptians adopted it. 3. Pharaoh's Dreams. — Sevex Years' Famine. — The Famines appear to have occurred from time to time in Egypt, and records of several are preserved. Thus we Pharaoh, find Amenemha, who died about 2716 B.C., recording 76 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT on his tomb at Beni-hasan_, how carefully he had abstained from oppression of the people in his district, and how, " when a famine arose," " he gave nourishment and life to its inhabitants." This cannot be the famine referred to in Genesis, as it belongs to a much earlier date. A still more interesting example is the famine which occurred in the time of Beby, an official of the reign of Seqenen-Ra III. (1610-1597 B.C.), the last but one of the Hyksos kings. This Beby must have been almost, if not quite, a contemporary of Joseph, for according to the chronology generally accepted, the year 1645 B.C., or thereby, is the date of the arrival of his brethren in Egypt. In the translation of Brugsch, Beby begins with the enumeration of his own good qualities, mentioning particularly his respect for his parents, his general benevolence, and the goodwill of his fellow- citizens towards him. Then he adds : "I collected the harvest, a friend of the harvest-god. I w^as watchful at the time of sowing. And now, when a famine arose, lasting many years, I issued corn to the city to each hungry person." Though there is no evidence to justify our regarding this as the famine referred to in Genesis, yet it is of great value in the way of illustration. It shows sufficiently that a famine of several years' duration was nothing uncommon. In the Biblical narrative the word " seven " is uni- versally regarded as a round number, equivalent to our word many or several. Apophis, The Pharaoh under whom Joseph served is named Pharaoh ^P^P^is or Afofis by Josephus and Syncelles. This of Joseph. Apophis (Apepy) is said to have ruled at Hawar, identified with Avaris, and to have worshipped Sutekh, THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 77 who is the same as Ea, the Sun-god. The date assigned to him is about 1650 B.C. Arabic tradition gives the name of the Pharaoh of Joseph as Ra-ian ibn el Walid (son of Walid). Curiously enough, in his work at Bubastis, Dr Naville found a block of stone with the name Apophis, and near it the lower part of a black granite statue with the name Ra-ian, or lan-ra, inscribed. It is impossible to prove which tradition is correct, but there is no getting beyond the fact that if he was in Egypt at all, Joseph must have been a contemporary of one of the latest of the Hyksos kings. In Gen. xli. 14 we read that Joseph "shaved himself, and changed his raiment, and came in unto Pharaoh." In shaving himself Joseph was conforming to Egyptian custom in the face of Semitic prejudice, which was all along opposed to the practice. His marriage with the Egyptian Asenath, a name which means belonging to the goddess Neith," is a further indication of how he sought to accommodate himself to the natives of his adopted country. So also was his use of the Egyptian name Zaphnath-paaneah, or better, Zaphen-ath-pa'eneakh (Pinches), which means " God, the living one, hath spoken " (Steindorff). This name he probably received or assumed in commemoration of the service which he rendered to Pharaoh in interpreting his dreams. 4. ZoAN OR Tanis. — The place at which Joseph met The the Pharaoh on this occasion might have been Bubastis, ^a^taf the Egyptian Pi-Bast, the Pi-Beseth of Ezek. xxx. 17 ; or Memphis, the Egyptian Men-nofr, the Noph of Isa. xix. 13, etc.; or Tanis, the Biblical Zoan, c/. Isa. xix. 13, etc. Of the three Zoan is the most probable, though all three were Hyksos capitals. In 1884 Dr 78 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT Petrie found at Tanis part of an obelisk of the thirteenth dynasty, which proves the occupation of the place before Hyksos times. Here also he found fragments of a colossal statue of Rameses II., Pharaoh of the oppression, of which the toe alone is as large as a man's body, and this shows that the place was still of importance at that date. But though he sank pits in the town ruins to a depth of thirty feet, in order to reach the remains of the Ramesside or Hyksos kings, he never got beneath the deposits of Greek and Roman times. Zoan appears, therefore, to have been a place of great size and im- portance from the earliest to the latest period of Egyptian civilisation. It was in the burned houses of Zoan that Petrie found in a cellar the charred papyri, which he unrolled with such infinite painstaking. It is quite certain that Zoan or Tanis was the capital of the Hyksos for some time. The mounds still cover a very large area, and here also Dr Petrie found the Hyksos sphinxes, now in the British Museum, whose expression is regarded as representing the " coarse Hyksos type " of features. It is also pointed to as a striking fact, that at the modern village San (Tanis) the present inhabitants are quite distinct in type from the rest of the Egyptians. They call themselves Melakiyin, which means Melekites or Royalists, the name of a sect in the early Christian Church. Anciently they were known by the name Pi-shemer, corrupted to Bash- murites, and also by the name Pi-amu, corrupted to Biamites (Pinches). Amu was the name by which the Hyksos were known in Egypt. Oppres- 5. THE OPPRESSION OF ISRAEL. — During part of Israe^^ their sojourn at least, the Pharaohs, who knew not THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 79 Joseph, employed the Israelites in public works, particularly Rameses II., the great builder of the Delta. The store-cities, Pithom and Rameses, are specially mentioned in the Bible as scenes of their enforced labour, but they were probably employed in many other large undertakings in the Delta by Rameses II. The site of the store-city, Rameses, has Rameses. now been identified and is elsewhere described. Pithom was excavated and the granaries cleared several years ago by Dr Naville. It was then remarked, that in the bottom rows of bricks there were distinct evidences of straw having been used in the bricks ; in the middle rows, half way up the wall, reeds or sedge had been used, while the uppermost rows of all showed no trace of either. This was regarded as a remarkable confir- mation in detail of the Biblical narrative. Recently, however, a careful examination of many of the upper- most bricks by breaking them showed, that in all of them straw or reeds had been used, but had wasted away, leaving only the imprint of their presence. Pithom, or Pa-tum, " the house of Tum, the setting Pithom. sun," is now known as Tell el Maskhutah, the mound of the Image. The civil name in the eighteenth dynasty was Thuku, which has been assimilated to the Hebrew word Succoth," meaning " booths," just as Mesu, " child," was assimilated to Moses, " drawn out of the water." The granaries consisted of a large number of rect- angular chambers with very thick walls, and recesses at a certain depth as if for the reception of beams to support flooring. They are all absolutely disconnected, and the only means of access had been from the roofs. 80 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT There is little doubt as to the purpose which these fortified granaries served. They were used for the storage of supplies in view of journeys or campaigns across the desert into Syria. Kameses II. appears to have been the original builder, and it is a remarkable fact that not a single brick bears the stamp of a king's name (Naville). Pithom had obviously been a garrison-fort for the defence of the frontier, and perhaps for the collecting of taxes in kind, while it served the purposes mentioned by Naville as well. Though it had had a temple of considerable size, there does not appear to have been a town of any extent connected with the fort, the whole area covering a comparatively small space. We have already referred to the letter from the official commander of this fort to Merenptah. The text as given by Dr Sayce is as follows : — " Another matter for the satisfaction of my master s heart. We have allowed the tribes of the Shasu (Bedawin) from the land Aduma to pass the fortress of Merenptah in the land of Thuku, in order to feed themselves and to feed their herds on the great estate of Pharaoh, the beneficent sun of all countries. In the year 8 (1226 B.C.)." The 6. The PtOUTE of the Exodus. — The exodus of a Exodus, ^tioie i^ace with all its belongings is, one might say, nothing unusual in the history of Egypt. The Israelites themselves in the early days of their sojourn there must have witnessed the exodus of the Hyksos people from Avaris, very likely by the same route as they themselves followed, through the Wady Tumilat to the Sinaitic peninsula and thence into Canaan, where THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 81 tradition credits them (the Hyksos) with having founded the city of Jerusalem. The question has been raised why they did not join the Hyksos and leave Egypt at that time ; but the period of their oppression had not then begun, and favourable conditions were still granted them by the conquerors of the Hyksos. Dr Sayce relates an exodus of quite recent date from the Wady Tumilat itself. Mohammed Ali had it planted with mulberry trees, and induced many interested in the manufacture of silk to come from Syria and elsewhere and settle there. As long as he lived they enjoyed immunity from taxation and military service ; but when he died and his successor determined to impose these burdens upon them in spite of their protest, they packed up their belongings and departed suddenly in a night, leaving their houses open, the valley deserted, and returning to their former homes. The most recent contribution to our knowledge of the route of the Exodus has been made by Dr Petrie in his book on Sinai. The treasure-city, Rameses, was their rallying-centre prior to final departure. This has now been identified as the modern Tell er Retabeh, near Qassassine, and the finding of layers of ashes around its walls, such as might be left where a horde of tent- dwellers had encamped, is elsewhere referred to (Exod. xii. 37). From Rameses they marched to Succoth, which is Succoth. the district then known as Thuku, the region round about Pithom. Thence they marched to Etham, which Dr Petrie Etham. identifies with the Aduma of the letter written to Merenptah from Pithom, and quoted above. Aduma F 82 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT seems to be the district just outside the frontier of Egypt, and Etham is evidently a place just across the frontier at the east end of Wady Tumilat, so that the identification of the two seems highly probable. Prof. Sayce has identified Aduma with the land of Edom. It is quite likely that the name was used to describe the land of the Bedawin bordering on Egypt (Exod. xiii. 20). Pi-ha- The next stage of the journey is interesting, because hiroth. ^Yie children of Israel commanded to " turn and encamp before Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, over against Baal-zephon ; before it shall ye encamp by the sea " (Exod. xiv. 2). This implies that for some reason they had to change their route slightly, and they pitched on a spot close to the sea, behind which there was a migdol-tower on the hills, and Baal-zephon facing them across the gulf. Pi-hahiroth has been identified as the ancient Paqaheret, where the god Osiris was worshipped (Naville). The only Serapeion, or shrine of Osiris, known in this vicinity is that situated about ten miles south of Ismailiyeh, and mentioned in the Antonine Itinerary as being eighteen miles from Pithom. This would place Pi-hahiroth or Paqaheret a short distance above the northern end of the great Bitter Lake. We know that in early times the Gulf of Suez extended even further north than this lake, for even in Eoman times it was known as the Gulf of Heroopolis, which is the Greek name of Pithom. Pi-hahiroth, therefore, would then have been situated " by the sea," and would thus accord with the Biblical statement. Up to Etham they appear to have been travelling due east, and had they continued would have crossed THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 83 the line of the Suez Canal. But from Etham they turned south and marched down the west side of the Gulf of Pithom, instead of rounding the head of the Gulf as might have been expected. Thus " they were entangled in the land, and the wilderness had shut them in " (Exod. xiv. 3). It has recently been suggested that they changed their route here and turned south, because that was the only road which afforded a supply of fresh water, and to one who has travelled in the desert and knows that the selection of the road is entirely governed by tlie presence or absence of water this explanation must carry great weight. Pi-hahiroth we may therefore accept as being situated between Lake Timsah and the Bitter Lakes, about six miles north of the latter. The Gulf had extended up to and beyond them in these days, though the land between them and Lake Timsah is now dry. Opposite to Pi-hahiroth the Gulf would have been at its shallowest, and this would be the most likely place for the " strong east wind " to blow back the water and leave a dry crossing (Exod. xiv. 21). Pharaoh's expectation (Exod. xiv. 3) that the wilderness would shut them in implied that they could not go further on account of the sea, nor backward without meeting his pursuing army, nor could they continue southward with any hope of cross- ing the Gulf, and this gives heightened colour to the phenomenon of the water being driven back by the strong wind, inasmuch as, probably, neither he nor the Israelites counted on such an event taking place. When they crossed the gulf the Israelites found Shur. themselves in the wilderness of Shur, and " they went three days in the wilderness and found no water" 84 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT (Exod. XV. 22). The wilderness of Shur was thus the desert on the east side of the Gulf, between Lake Timsah and the Bitter Lakes. The other references to Shur seem to accord with this identification. In Gen. XXV. 18 it is described as Shur, "which is before Egypt," and in Gen. xvi. 7, 14 Hagar fled to Beer- lahai-roi, between Kedesh and Bered, in the way to Shur. Shur must have been somewhere close to the eastern frontier of Egypt to fit these references. The three days' journey finding no water, Dr. Petrie says, exactly suits the road from Suez to Wady Gharandel, Marah— and the bitter wells of Marah at the end of the three Ha^wara ^^^^ correspond with the bitter spring, Ain Hawara, in the Wady Hawara, on the same route and two hours short of Gharandel, where there is abundance of fresh water " with only a suspicion of salt in it " (Petrie). Elim. Gharandel is thus the Elim of Exod. xv. 27, and Ain Hawara represents the wells of Marah, so that after crossing the Gulf the Israelites appear to have marched south by the eastern side of the Gulf. Dr Petrie's journey on foot from Suez to Gharandel covered exactly three days, so that from Pi-hahiroth the Israelites' three days' journey would have brought them to Marah (Ain Hawara), and early on the fourth day they reached Elim (Gharandel), a two hours' stage, where there were sweet water and palm trees, still a feature of the valley. According to Num. xxxiii. 10 they left Elim and en- camped by the Red Sea, and they next halted in the Sin. wilderness of Sin, which in Exod. xvi. 1 is said to be between Elim and Sinai. The same passage also informs us that they reached Sin on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departure. Thus the NEAR GOSHEN C1..METKKY THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 85 journey from Rameses to the Red Sea, which we pre- sume they reached on the fourteenth day of the second month, occupied exactly one month. From this it appears that the writer of the Itinerary of the Israelites was well acquainted with the regular route from Egypt to Sinai, viz., the road by the eastern coast of the Gulf of Suez. His description ' exactly fits that road, and will not fit any other " (Petrie). There seems also no reason to doubt the traditionally accepted position of Sinai, though whether Jebel Musa or Mount Serbal was the mount of the Law is still an open question. The only other possible route is that which leads Alterna- straight across the peninsula from Pi-hahiroth to the ^^^^ Gulf of Akabah. Though it does not fit in with the details of the journey already mentioned, it has been accepted by some because it accords with the fact that the Midianites are supposed to have been on the eastern side of the Gulf of Akabah. There appears, however, to be no evidence to prove that the Midianites did not occupy the western side of that gulf as well, and Dr Petrie farther points out that, in Exod. iv. 20, Moses accomplished the journey to Midian on an ass, a feat which may be performed on the Gharandel road, but which " could scarcely be done on the longer, waterless route of the Derb el Hagg," straight across the peninsula, seeing the latter would involve the carrying of considerably more than three days' water for the journey. The land of Midian, where Jethro resided, would appear to have been so accessible to Egypt, that Moses could travel between the two, himself on foot and his wife and sons set upon an ass. This 86 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT seems to lead to the conclusion that Midian occupied land on this side of the Gulf. It has been suggested that the Israelites would have avoided the Gharandel road because of the Egyptians stationed at the turquoise mines of Serabit ; but there never was a permanent Egyptian garrison there. They merely sent mining expeditions, at the most in alternate years, while in the reign of Merenptah they were sent only once in many years (Petrie). Rephi- Rephidim has been identified with Pharan by Christian and Arabic writers, which Petrie regards as the Wady Feiran, close to Mount Serbal. The battle fought with Amalek here was probably for the pos- sessioQ of the water supply, and as Feiran has the best supply in the peninsula, this strengthens the identifi- cation (Exod. xvii. 1 ; Num. xxxiii. 14). The position also is just the one which the natives would have chosen to repel a body of invaders. The Yam- A further objection may be raised to the Gharandel Red^Sea ^^^^^ ground of the identification of the Yam- ofNum. Suph or Red Sea (Num. xxxiii. 10). If Rephidim be xxxiii. 10. YeirsLU, the Gulf of Suez must be the Yam-Suph referred to. Sayce, however, identifies it with the Gulf of Akabah, which implies that the route led straight across the peninsula. He points out that in the days of the LXX. translators and in classical times the Yam-Suph denoted the whole of the sea which washed the shores of Arabia, and thus included the Gulfs of Akabah and Suez, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf as well ; but thinks that in the Old Testament the term is used in a much narrower sense. The Ezion-geber and Elath of 1 Kings ix. 26, where THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 87 Solomon built his navy " on the shore of the Yana- Suph, in the land of Edom," were at the northern end of the Gulf of Akabah, and so he concludes that the Yam-Suph of the Old Testament was this gulf He draws the same conclusion from Num. xxi. 4, where the Israelites marched from Mount Hor by the way of the Yam-Suph, and skirted its east side to compass the land of Edom, because a passage was refused them through it. The only sea which will suit this passage is the Gulf of Akabah. The town Suph (Deut. i. 1), which gave the name to the sea, was in the land of Edom, not far from Kadesh-barnea. " It is plain therefore," he concludes, that the Yam-Suph crossed by the Israelites at the Egyptian frontier, and the Yam-Suph which they subsequently reached (Num. xxxiii. 10), cannot have been one and the same." The one was more than three days' journey from the other, and this " distance agrees with that of the Gulf of Akabah from the Gulf of Suez." It may be noted that the distance between Pi-hahiroth and Elim as identified above is about 75 miles, while between it and the nearest point of the Gulf of Akabah is 192 miles. So far as the data mentioned by Prof. Sayce are concerned, they certainly lead to the conclusion that the Gulf of Akabah was known as the Yam-Suph, but it does not follow that the term Yam-Suph did not include the Gulf of Suez as well, even in Old Testa- ment times. Besides, in Exod. xv. both the song of deliverance (v. 4) and the continuation of the narrative (v. 22) described the sea through which God led them at Pi-hahiroth as the Yam-Suph, and this seems hardly 88 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT sufficient reason for concluding that this chapter must on that account be a later interpolation (see Sayce ''H. C. M.," p. 257). There appears to be no reason why we should not assume that the term Yam-Suph or Eed Sea included both gulfs as well as the Sea itself in Old Testament times. Finally, if we assume that the mountain of the Law was the place of sacrifice three days distant from the frontier of Egypt, which was given out as the object of their journey, and particularly if we accept Mount Serbal and not Jebel Musa (the traditional Sinai) as the mount of the Law, the route due south by the eastern side of the Gulf of Suez receives yet another confirmation of its accuracy. The 7. The Number of the Israelites. — In view of the Israeh^ possible sustenance available both in Goshen and in Sinai the census of Israel given in Xum. i. and xxvi. have been submitted to searching criticism by Dr Petrie. He has propounded as a solution of the difficulty the theory, that instead of translating Alaf by " thousands," we ought to render it "tents" or "families." In this way he finds that Census I. (Num. i.) gives a total of 598 tents, 5 550 people, and Census II. (Num. xxvi.), taken at the end of their wanderings, a total of 596 tents, 5730 people. Whether this is the actual explanation in the case of these two census or not, there are various considerations which point to the fact that the numbers must have been much smaller than has hitherto been supposed. (1) The present population of Sinai is represented at about 5000, and there is no likelihood of its ever THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 89 having been larger, since the climate and the conditions of living appear to have undergone no material altera- tion. If we suppose that the Amalekite inhabitants then numbered about 5000, and bear in mind that the battle between them and Israel was nearly equal (Exod. xvii. 11), we cannot reasonably assume that the Israelites numbered much over 5000. (2) If, on the other hand, the census numbers are correct, it is difficult to understand how such a multi- tude could have found sustenance for themselves and their flocks. The scarcity of water and the necessarily consequent scarcity of fodder seem to have been char- acteristic of the peninsula then as now, and it has been computed that the rainfall has rather increased than diminished since these days. It is indeed equally impossible for 3,000,000 people to have subsisted with their flocks, either in Goshen or in Sinai. The agricultural conditions, as well as the limited area, alike render it impossible in each case. At the most Goshen could support only 20,000 of a settled population, and when that population consisted of nomad shepherds, cultivating none of the land, it could support still fewer. The number 3,000,000, which would represent a fighting force of 600,000 men, would probably exceed the population of the whole Delta, and the removal of such a horde could hardly have been passed over in silence in Egyptian annals. (3) Again, 5000 people might reasonably be stated to be under the judicial control of one man, but it seems a somewhat impossible undertaking for Moses to "judge the disputes" that might arise in so vast a company as three millions. Even the appointment of 90 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT seventy elders to assist him in the work was totally inadequate for the management of such a multitude. (4) Dr Petrie claims that the number of those who perished in the plague after the rebellion of Korah confirms his theory. There died 14 Alaf and 700, which "means 14 complete tents, about 180 people, while 570 died from other families" (Num. xvi. 49). Similarly in the next plague (Num. xxv. 9) 24 Alaf were swept away, i.e. 24 complete families. This occurred owing to the mixture with Midian, in which the tribe of Simeon was deeply concerned, and Dr Petrie points out that in the latter census (Num. xxvi.) the number of Alaf in the case of Simeon has fallen from 59 in the first census to 22. In the case of these two census this theory appears to work out satisfactorily, and when they are tabulated side by side it will be found that by taking the Alaf as families, or tents, we get an average of ten for each tent, which is quite a reasonable computation. It is notice- able also that in no case do we find an even number of thousands. But in the case of the census of the Levites it does not hold good. Num. iii. 22 seq. gives a total of 22,000 Levites and 22,273 first-born of all Israel, while the census of Num. iv. gives the total at 8580 Levites, this being probably thirty or forty years later. These numbers will not even conform to the former census of all Israel, for this total of first-born males is far too small a proportion for 603,500 men. Dr Petrie therefore concludes that these census of the Levites belong to a later date, say between the Exodus and the monarchy after their entrance into Canaan, and that the Levites did not exist as a tribe until then. This THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 91 is confirmed by the significant fact that Levi is not separately blessed by Jacob, but conjointly with Simeon, and very probably Levi has been inserted in the document of the blessing after it existed as a tribe. The census of the monarchy presents similar difficulties. David gives 800,000 for Israel and 500,000 for Judah. Rehoboam gives only 180,000 men for Judah and Benjamin together. If we take the latter as the number of fighting men and the former as the whole population, the total 1,300,000 would give 130 to the square mile, which would be quite reasonable for the whole of Palestine. The increase of 5000 to 1,300,000 in the 200 years between the Exodus and David gives a proportion of 1 : 200, and even admitting that on their arrival in Palestine they were joined by Israelites, who had never left Palestine or had returned from Egypt before as the stele of Merenptah suggests, this seems a very high rate of increase. It deals a somewhat heavy blow at Dr Petrie's theory, for in view of this it is difficult to see how in their 430 years' sojourn in Egypt 70 souls had not increased to more than 5000. At the same rate of iDcrease they ought to have numbered at least 20,000 at the date of the Exodus. Whether the solution offered here by Dr Petrie be accepted or not, there is no doubt of the fact that the numbers in the Exodus census are far in excess of the possibility ; while on the other hand the total at which he arrives is much more in accordance with the number which either Sinai or Goshen might reasonably be expected to maintain. The chief difficulty seems to 92 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT be to explain how only 5000 Israelites left Goshen after so long a stay. It is now, however, an established fact that there was a continual immigration of " foreigners " into Egypt from Sinai and Palestine and other parts, and there seems no reason to doubt the possibility of continual emigration from Egypt to Syria. It is quite likely that there was a constant return of the surplus population of Israelites to Palestine going on, and this would explain why so small a number remained there at the Exodus, as well as why Merenptah found and conquered Israelites in North Palestine a short time before the Exodus (see Israelite Stele). 8. Chronology of the Israelite Sojourn. — It is now a universally accepted fact that the visits of Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph to Egypt occurred in the period of the Hyksos kings. According to Manetho this dynasty reigned in all about 511 years, and from various data Dr Petrie has fixed them down to the period 2098-1587 B.C., the latter being the date of their expulsion by Aahmes. From the information that soon after Joseph's death a new king arose, who knew not Joseph, we infer that he must have flourished under one of the later Hyksos kings, and the other evidence at our command confirms this supposition. Date Egyptian history has supplied us with a fixed date, Exodus. ^^^^01"^ which the Exodas cannot have taken place. Rameses III. (1202-1170 B.C.) records the conquest in the early years of his reign of a horde of Syrian and Palestinian confederates on the temple walls of Medinet Habu. He mentions the Hittites and Philis- tines and others, but makes no reference to the Israelites. His last invasion of Syria took place in THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 93 the fifteenth year of his reign, 1187 B.C. ("Pet. Hist.," iii. 115). The Israelites therefore cannot have been in possession of Palestine at that date, but had probably left Egypt and were in the wilderness. Thus the date of the 'Exodus must fall between 1187 and 1227 B.C., or somewhere in the reign of Merenptah, who ruled from 1234-1214 B.C. As we shall see further on, the Exodus must have occurred within the last few years of Merenptah's reign, or about 1215 B.C. Even if we suppose that Rameses III. somehow omitted to mention the Israelites, we should have expected to find a refer- ence to his invasion in the account of Joshua's wars. Taking 1215 B.C. as the date of the Exodus, and adding the 430 years of their sojourn, we get 1645 B.C. as the year of the arrival of Joseph's brethren in Egypt, about seventy years before the final expulsion of the Hyksos, and just in the period when their troubles were beginning to press hard upon them. The fact that the Hyksos were themselves Semitic, or " wandering hordes of Bedawin Asiatics, called by the Egyptians ' the impure ' " (Pinches), sufficiently explains the friendly reception accorded to Joseph and his family and his speedy promotion. There is only one other period in Egyptian history when a similar cordial reception might have been given them. This was in the reign of Khu-n-aten of the eighteenth dynasty (1383-1365 B.C.), who was strongly Syrian in his sympathies, was under the influence of a Syrian wife (see T.A. Letters), and introduced the Aten worship of Syria. In his reign we actually find one Dudu by name, a Canaanite, holding practically the 94 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT same position as Joseph. To place Joseph in this reign would allow a period of only 170 years for their stay in Egypt instead of the 430 years of Scripture, if we retain 1215 as the Exodus date; while, on the other hand, if we place the Exodus later we are in still greater difficulties when we come to consider the Biblical chronology of the Judges. Since the discovery of the Tell el Amarna letters and the mention in them of the Khabiri, Lieblein has identified these with the Hebrews, and this would place the Exodus somewhere in the forty years preceding the date of these letters, or about 1460 B.C. But it is now agreed that the word Khabiri has no reference to the Hebrews, and means simply "confederates." The Israelite Stele. — All the evidence which we possess points to Merenptah as the Pharaoh of the Exodus, and yet a curious complication has arisen through the discovery by Dr Petrie in 1896 of the stele of Merenptah, generally known as the Israelite Stele. This is the only monument yet found with the name Israel inscribed on it, the only mention of Israel, in fact, that we have from Egypt. The concluding lines are translated by Dr Pinches as follows : — " Kheta (the land of the Hittites) is in peace, captive is Canaan and full of misery, Askelon is carried away, Gezer is taken, Yenuamma is non-existent, Israel is lost, his seed is not, Syria is like the widows of Egypt. The totality of all the lands is at peace, for whosoever rebelled was chastised by King Merenptah." Read thus this inscription implies that while one branch of the Israelites was in slavery in Egypt, a section of the race was at this time already in Canaan, THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 95 probably having never left it, and was there rebelling against the Egyptian yoke. Naville suggests that the words, " Israel is lost," refer to the Israelites as wandering in the desert, while the words, his seed is not," refer to the slaughter of the first-born. Dr Mahler translates it, " Yenoam has been brought to naught ; Israel, the horde, destroyed his crops," a fact which Pinches observes seems scarcely worthy of mention on the monument of an Egyptian king. Assuming from this inscription that Israel was already in Canaan during Merenptah's reign, Mahler places the Exodus in the reign of Rameses II., the last of the oppressors, and by astronomical calculations fixes it on Thursday, the 27th of March 1335 B.C. Since Moses was eighty years old at the Exodus, this means that he was born in 1415 B.C., and Pinches points out that at that time the chief wife of the Pharaoh was Queen Thyi, herself probably a Syrian, and of a different religion from the Egyptians. Naturally, therefore, she would not be a favourite with the Egyptian priesthood. The daughter of this queen would thus have found little or no opposition to her adopting a child of the Hebrews, an Asiatic like her mother. This would also explain how Moses, though educated at the Egyptian Court, never became Egyptian in his sympathies. Dr Pinches is therefore inclined to favour Mahler's theory. Apparently neither of them explains why no mention of the Israelites is made by Rameses III., when about 105 years after the accession of Rameses II. he subdued the rebellious confederates in Palestine and Northern 96 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT Syria. According to Mahler's chronology Rameses II. began to reign in 1365 B.C., the date assigned by him for the Exodus, 1335 B.C., being the thirtieth year of his reign. The invasion of Palestine by Rameses III. would therefore fall about 1260 B.C. Allowing forty years for the wandering in the wilderness, the Israelites should then have been in Canaan for thirty-five years. It is strange that no reference to this invasion of Rameses III. should be found in the Book of Joshua, nor any mention of them by Rameses. Further, since Rameses II. reigned in all sixty-six years, Merenptah succeeded him about 1300 B.C., and ruled twenty years, to 1280 B.C. Thus if the Exodus took place in 1335, the Israelites did not reach Palestine till 1295 B.C., and they could not have had much hold of Palestine at the time when by his inscription Merenptah conquered them, for the stele dates before the eighth year of his reign. Accepting the fact, however, that they were already in possession of even North Palestine during this invasion of Merenptah, we should again expect to find his attack mentioned in the annals of the early wars of Israel, more especially when Merenptah deems it worthy of mention. In view of these facts Dr Mahler's theory appears to raise as serious difficulties as that of finding one section of Israel in Palestine while another is still in slavery in Egypt, and the difficulties are increased when we come to discuss the chronology from Rehoboam backwards. Dr Naville's suggestion seems an easy solution of the difficulty, but it is hard to see why the voluntary exodus of Israel should be dragged in to swell the lists of Merenptah's conquests. THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 97 The suggestion that for Israel on the stele the word Jezreel should be read has never been seriously considered. 9. Chronology of the Judges. — In the later history of Israel we find another fixed date from which we can work back by the periods given in the Old Testament and reach almost precisely the same date for the Exodus. 1 Kings xiv. 25 contains an account of the campaign made against Judah and Jerusalem by Shishak of the twenty-first dynasty, in which he took the fenced cities of Judaea, and spoiled the house of Jahveh and the king's house. 2 Chron. xii. 2 seq. gives a fuller though practically the same account. Both passages give the fifth year of Rehoboam as the date of this campaign. On the southern outside wall of the Temple of Karnak at Luxor, Shishak's own account of this Syrian expedition is portrayed, and from it we gather that his sphere of operations was practically limited to Judaea and Samaria. The Biblical account and that of the monu- ment are in perfect accordance. From Jewish chronology, strengthened by Assyrian synchronisms, the year 937 B.C. has been fixed as the beginning of Rehoboam's reign, so that this inroad took place about 932 B.C., which is thus the twentieth year of Shishak. A curious attempt has been made to explain away Shishak in these passages as a corruption of the word Cushi, but the evidence of his monument cannot be thus discarded. David and Solomon each reigned forty years, so that the year of David's accession and the death of Saul is approximately 1017 B.C. We know that Saul was reproved by Samuel in the second year of his reign (1 Sam. xiii. 14), and David anointed as his successor G 98 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT the following year (1 Sam. xvi. 13). In 2 Sam. v. 4 we find that David was thirty years old when Saul died. Since David cannot have been much under or over twenty years of age when he was anointed, it follows, therefore, that Saul's reign cannot have covered a period of more than three years before David was chosen, and ten years after that, or thirteen years in all, though Acts xiii. 21 assigns to him a reign of forty years. This seems to be convincingly established by the passage 1 Sam. vii. 2, where we learn that the ark remained twenty years in the house of Abinadab at Kirjath-jearim, having been placed there shortly before Saul was appointed king. In 2 Sam. vi. 2 we find that in the early years of his reign David brought the ark from the house of Abinadab to Jerusalem, the city of David." We know from 2 Sam. v. 5-7 that David reigned seven years in Hebron before he took " the stronghold of Zion, the city of David," and immediately after taking Zion he resolved to bring back the ark. Thus the return of the ark must have taken place in the seventh or eighth year of David's reign, and as the ark was in the house of Abinadab before Saul was anointed king, Saul's reign cannot have exceeded twelve years. Thus 1030 B.C. represents the date of Saul's accession, and taking 1215 B.C. as the date of the Exodus, and 1175 B.C. the consequent date of the entrance of Joshua into Canaan, we are left with 145 years to represent the period of the Judges from Joshua to Saul, and 185 years as that between the Exodus and Saul's accession, or 197 years between the Exodus and David's accession. THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 99 The Priestly Genealogies. — Valuable corrobora- tive evidence is acquired from a study of the priestly genealogies of 1 Chron. vi. According to verses 4-8, there were eight generations of priests between the Exodus and the time of David, viz. Eleazar, Phinehas Abishua, Bukki, Uzzi, Zerahiah, Meraioth, Amariah, Ahitub. Ahitub we know was a contemporary of David, and Eleazar was the son of Aaron. In verses 33-35 we get the genealogy of Heman, the singer, from Elkanah, the son of Korah of the Exodus period (Exod. vi. 24), and Heman is here appointed by David as one that " waited." This again supplies us with eight generations for the period. Verses 36 and 37 give unnecessary repetitions, or contain names that belong to a later date (Petrie). The genealogy of Asaph, who " waited " with Heman, also gives eight generations for the same period, for in his list Adaiah falls to be the contemporary of Zuph of Heman's list, both being four generations removed from Levi. The following are the tabulated lists : — 1 Chron. vi. 4-8. V. 37. t;^. 33-35. 1 Sam. i. vv. 39-42. Eleazar Elkanah Ethan Phinehas Ebiasaph Zuph Zuph Adaiah Abishua Tahath Toah Tohu Zerah Bukki Eliel Elihu Ethni TJzzi J eroham Jeroham Malchiah Zerahiah Elkanah Elkanah Baaseiah Meraioth Shemuel Samuel Michael Amariah Joel Shimea Ahitub Heman Asaph 100 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT Now in the genealogies of the kings there are sixteen generations given between Rehoboam and Jehoiakim, representing a period of 340 years, 937-597 B.C. (Petrie), for Jehoiakim was placed on the throne by Pharaoh Necho IL, who ruled from 610-594 B.C. (see 2 Kings xxiii. 34). Presumably, therefore, twenty-five years would be a fair average to allow for a generation. The eight generations from the Exodus to David thus cover a period of about 200 years. Adding 200 years to 1017 B.C. we get 1217 B.C. as the date of the Exodus, and 1177 B.C. as the date of the entrance of Joshua into Canaan. This gives 147 years as the time between Joshua and Saul. We may here note that Eleazar was in the full exercise of his priesthood at the date of the Exodus, and had married a negro woman, the daughter of Putiel, for his son bears an Egyptian name, Phinehas, or Pa-nehsi, " the negro." The Book of Judges. — When we examine the list of judges given in the Book of Judges, we find that they fall into three divisions according to the districts which represented their several spheres of action. When trouble arose in the north, east, or west and south, a deliverer appears to have arisen, or been appointed, to cope with each emergency, in each district. The leader thus chosen, or self-made, continued in most cases throughout his life-time to be looked up to, and to act, as the defender of his people. A careful examina- tion of the book shows how well defined is the sphere of operation of each. It is doubtful if there is a single case where the deliverer of one of these three districts is found operating within the limits of another. The THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 101 O CO CO X o ft H O H o I 02 SO< l-H X r— 1 ?o s and ,aGilea- dges.... 1 00 o .-H 00 O DQ CO ^ ^ o ^ o § e8 6.S 1-5 o X 00 ^ i i 1 00 C3 O) O o CO CO o o > > a 102 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT country, which became united under Saul, appears to have been divided into three sections from the death of Joshua onwards, viz. the North and Galilee ; the East, with Moab and Ammon as the aggressors ; the West (Ephraim) and South, with the Philistines and Midian as oppressors. The forty years' oppression of the Philistines in the west extended, so far as we can judge from the narra- tive, over the period of Samson, Samuel, and the early years of Saul. These three lists agree very closely, and they give us a period of somewhere over 120 years as representing the interval between the death of Joshua and the acces- sion of Saul. If we take the largest number, 128 years, and allow 20 years for the time when Joshua acted as their leader in subduing Canaan, the Book of Judges will give us 148 years as the period between the entrance into Canaan and the accession of SauL Thus Egyptian history, the priestly genealogies, and the Book of Judges all agree on this point, the first giving 145, the second 147, and the third 148 years. A further point bearing on the date of the Exodus, which arises under the subject of the Tell el Amaroa Letters, may be mentioned here. There we find that the Amorites were steadily pressing south from Northern Syria, but in the eighteenth dynasty were still north of Galilee. Ptameses II. locates them at Qedesh, in the region of Damascus, and Rameses III. finds them in possession of all Southern Palestine. They must, there- fore, have come south between the death of Rameses II. and the invasion of Rameses III., or between 1234 B.C. THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 103 and 1187 B.C. As they are not mentioned by Mer- enptah on the Israelite stele, we may infer that they were not predominant in the south until, perhaps, the end of his reign, or about 1214 B.C., and probably even later. Since Joshua had to fight five confederate kings of the Amorites as soon as he arrived in the south of Canaan, it follows that his entrance into Canaan cannot have taken place until they were well in possession of the country as far south as Hebron, and must, therefore, have occurred at a date close to the period of the invasions of Syria by Rameses III. The chronology of the period from the Exodus onwards may, therefore, be tabulated as follows : — Exodus, c. 1215 b.c. Entry into Canaan, 1175 ,, Death OF Joshua, 1155 ,, First Oppressions, North. East. West and South. 1154-1147; 1154-1136; 1154-1147 (Cushanrishathaim) ; (Eglon) ; (Midian). Peace, . 1147-1107; 1136-1056; 1147-1066 (Othniel) ; (Ehud and Jair) ; (Gideon — Abdon). (40 years) (80 years). (81 years). Second Oppressions, 1107-1087; 1056-1038 ; 1066-1026 „ (Jabin) ; (Philistines (Philistines), and Ammon) ; Peace, . 1087-1037 ; 1038-1032 (Deborah and (Jephthah). Samson. Elon) ; Samuel. Saul. Samuel IN POWER 1046-1014 ,, Accession of Saul, 1030 ,, David anointed, 1027 ,, David REIGNS, 1017-977 Solomon, . . - , .... 977-937 „ Rehoboam, 937-916 „ 104 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 10. Daphne — Tahpanhes of Jeremiah. — Among former discoveries of some years back one is the unearthing of the border fort Daphna^, and its identi- fication with the Tahpanhes of Jerem. xliii. by Dr Flinders Petrie in 1886. The modern name of the mound Kasr Bint el Yahudi, "the palace of the Jew's daughter," is in itself suggestive. The Greek name was Daphnse, and there is abundant evidence of a Greek occupation. Herodotus describes it as the " camp of the lonians," founded by Psammetichos I., and under its foundations Petrie found the tablets with the name of that king, showing that he had rebuilt it (664-610 B.C.). Deeper ruins showed that it had been occupied under the Ramesside kings. It had been a border fort, and consisted of a square mass of brickw^ork about 40 feet high, with deep-domed cells in it, which opened from above. On the top of this platform stood the actual dwellings, thus commanding a wide view of the plain. The cells were used, no doubt, partly for storing purposes. There is no question that this is the Tahpanhes of Jerem. xliii., where we read that Johanan collecting all the remnant left with Gedaliah by Nebuchadnezzar, along with their women and children, and Jeremiah and Baruch, brought them down to Egypt, even to Tahpanhes. The entrance to the fort was in the side of a block built on to it, and in front of the entrance across the pathway, Dr Petrie found a large platform, or pavement, of brickwork, just such a convenience as would be intended for the unloading of baggage, or would be placed at the disposal of casual visitors for the pitching THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 105 of tents. He identifies this with the brickwork square, or pavement (RV.), " at the entry of Pharaoh's house in Tahpanhes " (Jer. xliii. 9), in which Jeremiah is commanded to hide great stones while he prophesied the coming of Nebuchadnezzar, saying that he would set his throne on them, and spread his pavilion over them, prior to his conquering Egypt. IV FORMER DISCOVERIES THE TOWN AND DISTRICT OF GOSHEN IN THE ISRAELITE PERIOD 1. The Name Goshen. — About eight miles to the east of Zagazig (ancient Bubastis), on the right bank of the Ismailiyeh canal are the ruins of a city of consider- able dimensions, on part of which stands the modern village of Saft el henneh. This has been proved by Naville to be the site of the ancient town of Goshen. Here Naville found the fragments of a colossal black granite statue of Rameses II., the Pharaoh of the oppression, which would point to his having been perhaps the founder of the fine temple, if not of the town itself. By far the most interesting discovery he made, however, was the fragments of the famous shrine of this temple dedicated to the god Sopt by Nekht-hor- heb (Nectanebo II.), of the thirtieth dynasty (c. 350 The B.C.). The inscription on one of the sides of this black Q^^gjj_ granite monolith says that the ''King ordered these QES of things to be done in honour of the Gods of Qes, after tions"^ his own coming to Qes." About 350 B.C., therefore, the name of this town was Qes. On the back other three names of the place are given, viz. " The house of Sopt," " Abode of the sycomore," and the " House of the sycomore " ; and the statement occurs : " the land 106 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 107 of Qes is green." Four miles from Saft el henneh the modem railway station is named " Abou el Akhdar," " the place of the green/' which shows that the tradi- tional name still clings to the district. And the name is still most appropriate. In the hieroglyphic lists of nomes on the walls of the temples of Edfu, Denderah, and Philse the nome known as Arabia in Greek times is named .Sopt Akhem, which is identical with the Greek 'Ecrraxw/^-, the name for Arabia found on coins of Hadrian. From its juxtaposition with Asia on the lists, Sopt Akhem was evidently identical with Arabia, extending to the Sinaitic peninsula. Its capital is named Pa-Sopt on Pa-Sopt the lists, and this name occurs in an inscription of ^i^^ Assurbanipal in the form Pi-Saptu ^ as the residence Pi-Saptu of a prince of Lower Egypt. The same names are used ^ggy^^^ for the god Sopt in the lists as on the shrine, and there the sanctuary itself is also spoken of as the " abode of the sycomore." It is certain, therefore, that Qes, and Pa-Sopt, the Modern modern Saft el henneh, are identical, and the capital ^^^S of the twentieth nome of Lower Egypt, later known as Arabia. This identification is confirmed by the testimony of Greek historians. Ptolemy, the geo- grapher, says that between the Bubastite nome and the Sethroite (modern Ben-ha) is the nome Arabia, with its capital Pha-cusa. In the geographer of Eavenna, Pha-cusa, Pha-cusa occurs as Pba-gusa. This name Pha-cusa is gusa!*of simply Pa-kusa, kusa being the Coptic Kwg, which istheGeo- the name Qes found on the shrine. Kug was the Coptic S^'aP^ers. name of the capital of the nome Arabia, and is seen k«s. ^ Pi or Pa = Hieroglyphic for "town." 108 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT still in the name Qus, frequently used for a modern village. Now, in Upper Egypt Qus is pronounced Gus, elsewhere as Kus, and the Greeks have curiously pre- served both pronunciations of Qes, in the forms Tetfe/x, Tsffiv, and Kafn^av, KsGffav^ showing that they were confused between the Qoph and the Kaf pronunciations. The name GosHEN, therefore, is derived straight from Qes, Cusa, i.e. Gosh, is identical with Qes, and its modern form Qus. The LXX. calls Goshen Tsffg/O. ApaSia;, implying thus that at the period when the Greek translation of the Old Testament was made, Goshen was only a part of the nome Arabia. The Qes of the shrine, the Pa-Sopt of these lists, the Gesem of Greek times, and the Biblical Goshen are, therefore, one and the same town. From other evidences Naville concludes that the Biblical district of Goshen was a triangle, with Saft el henneh, Tell el kebir, and Belbeys as its three corners, and the ruins at Saft el henneh are the ruins of the town Goshen itself. The narrative of a pilgrimage made by a lady named Sylvia in the fourth century A.D. (found at Arezzo, and translated by Gammurini) further confirms Naville's identification of Goshen as being the nome Arabia, or at least part of it, as the LXX. suggests. She says it was her desire to go " from Clusma (Suez) to the land of Goshen, that is to the city of Arabia ; this city is in the land of Goshen and the territory itself derives its name from it (i.e. from the city)." Goshen and Arabia were thus commonly regarded as synonymous as late as 350 A.D. In Gen. xlvi. 6, 11 the district in which the Israelites were settled is spoken of first as being " in THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 109 the land of Goshen," and then as being "in the land of Rameses," as if the two were identical ; and The this seems to have been the case, only the latter ^^jjj covered a much larger area, and included the former. Naville suggests that " the land of Rameses " was not an administrative name, but a name popularly given in honour of Rameses II., the Pharaoh of the oppression, to this whole region, which he had enriched with so many great works and buildings, or because it was one of his favourite resorts. The LXX. (Gen. xlvi., 28), therefore, rightly describes Heroopolis (Pithom) as being in the land of Rameses, since at that period Gesem, or Goshen, did not include Pithom, though probably at an earlier date Goshen and the " land of Rameses " were co-extensive. The LXX. says Jacob sent Judah before him to bring Joseph to meet him at Pithom, in the land of Rameses. The Hebrew text says, " to direct Joseph to Goshen," and Gen. xlvi. 29 says Joseph went up to meet his father, to Goshen. If the town be meant in verse 29, there is an inconsistency between the Hebrew, as we have it, and the LXX. translation. But if it mean simply the district of Goshen, then there need be no difi&culty in assuming that the LXX. is right, and that Pithom was the meeting-place. In the latter case, however, we must then assume that " the land of Goshen " included Pithom and Rameses in the days of Joseph, though in the LXX. times Goshen had ceased to embrace so large an area. 2. Goshen during the Israelite Sojourn. — The period of the Israelite sojourn is generally regarded as the years between 1650 and 1214 B.C., the latter being 110 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT the supposed date of the Exodus. Rameses II. and Merenptah are regarded as the last Pharaoh of the oppression and the Pharaoh of the Exodus respectively. If the usual supposition be true, that Israel came down to Egypt towards the end of the Hyksos dynasty, the period of their sojourn would extend over the whole of the eighteenth dynasty and down to Merenptah of the nineteenth, and this according to most recent calcula- tions amounts to between 440 and 430 years. The period of the oppression would, therefore, date from the expulsion of the Hyksos by the earliest king of the eighteenth dynasty, about 1587 B.C. (Petrie), "the new king which knew not Joseph " (Ex. i. 8) being Aahmes, the jSrst Pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty (1587- 1562 B.C.), who had the honour of not only throwing off their yoke but of driving them out of Egypt altogether in the first five years of his reign. Though Rameses II. is sometimes spoken of as if he were the only oppressor, he was really the last of the series ; but he was probably their severest taskmaster, as in his time they had multiplied so considerably as to be a source of possible danger to the State, a fact which the narrative of the Exodus itself suggests. It is to the records of this period, therefore, that we must turn for information about Goshen as Israel knew it. The second king of the nineteenth dynasty, Seti I. (1326-1300 B.C.), has left lists of the various districts into which Egypt was then divided for administrative purposes, but not one is mentioned north of Heliopolis (On). The nome later known as Arabia is not men- tioned, nor even the Bubastite nome, though Bubastis must have been a town of some size even then. During THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 111 the Israelite sojourn, therefore, we find that Goshen is not regarded as of importance from the commercial or tax-paying point of view. It has not yet been looked upon as a valuable asset of the empire, but is a kind of no-man's land, from which no revenue was contributed to the imperial exchequer. Along with these lists of cultivated and organised districts, however, he gives also lists of marsh-lands, wastes, and canals, and among these the " water of Ra " (the Sun) occurs as the name of a The marshy tract in such a position, that Naville identifies it as the district later known as Goshen, Arabia, the land of Rameses. The oldest name of Goshen appears, therefore, to have been the " water or well of the Sun/' and it seems to have been so named on account of its marshy nature. The great Harris papyrus of the twentieth dynasty (1202 B.C. onwards) confirms this identification. In enumerating the gifts of Rameses III. to different localities, it mentions so many cattle to his mother, Bast (at Bubastis), so many servants to the temple of Bast, the Lady of Bailos (Belbeys) in the " water of Ra," and so many cattle to his father, Horus of Athribis (modern, Ben-ha), thus indicating that the " water of Ra " lies adjacent to the districts of Bubastis and Athribis, which would exactly suit Goshen. This old name is also preserved to us by Benjamin of Tudela, who calls Goshen ''Ain es shemsh, the well of the sun, or the water of Ra," and this name used to be wrongly identified with Heliopolis (Ox), the " city of the sun." From the little we know it thus appears that Goshen was quite an unimportant district, not regularly settled and governed like the districts south of Heliopolis. It m THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT was evidently uncultivated, being mostly marsh and sand, though sufficiently fertile to throw up a crop of grass, that proved good pasturage for sheep and cattle. It is likely that portions of it consisted of sand too high above water-level to be productive all the year round, while the marshy portions were too full of salt to be of any value. Large parts around Saft el henneh are still unproductive salt marshes, though the heightening of the water-level by artificial means has now brought under cultivation most of the sandy tracts. The statement made by Merenptah about " Bailos (Belbeys) in the water of Ea " in an inscription, has an important bearing on this point. He says that " the country around was not cultivated, but left as pasture for cattle because of the strangers. It was abandoned since the time of the ancestors." From these words it would seem that the district was left uncultivated on account of strangers who had immi- grated, or were in the habit of coming there with their flocks. It may be that, like the Wady Tumilat and the land round about Pithom and Rameses, this region was kept open to Syrian sheep-owners, who brought down their flocks year by year to pasture them. In the eighth year of the reign of Merenptah himself we find a frontier ofiicial describing in his report the bringing in of a tribe of Shasu (Bedawin) from Aduma (Etham), through the fortress of Thuku (Succoth) to the lakes of Pa-tum (Pithom) in the land of Succoth, to feed them- selves and their herds (Petrie, ''Hist. Eg.," iii. 115) ; and other such official communications are common at that date. On the other hand, when we consider that the Israelites had in Merenptah's time been sojourning in GOSHKN TOWN -SAFT THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 113 Egypt for over four hundred years, it is quite possible that in his inscription regarding Belbeys the word " strangers " may refer directly to the Israelites them- selves, and the clause " since the time of the ancestors " may be a reference to the long-standing arrangement with them, although it may just as well be an indefinite statement like our phrase " for ages past." Assuming the historicity of the Old Testament narra- tive, for we have as yet found in Goshen no confirmation of the presence of the Israelites there, documentary or otherwise, we are perhaps justified in saying that Merenptah's inscription bears out the Old Testament statement, that the land round about the town of Goshen was handed over to the Israelites for their flocks, and remained uncultivated on account of their occupation. At all events there is no doubt that for some reason or other this district was not appropriated or cultivated by the Egyptians at this period, and in choosing it as a suitable settlement for his brethren, Joseph was really conferring a benefit upon the country, while he was robbing no man, by selecting for them land which had never been apportioned. 3. The Town of Goshen. — The town of Goshen is now no more than a collection of black mud heaps, formed of the mud bricks that have crumbled down by the action of the weather. The surface is strewn with potsherds of the period of the Roman occupatiou, and the walls of the ancient houses can easily be traced still. The town must have covered a large area at one time, but much of it is now built over by the modern village of Saft, while a considerable portion has been put under cultivation. Until quite recently the founda- H 114 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT tion walls of the large temple, originally built by Rameses II. and greatly beautified by Nectanebo (350 B.C.), in the building of which the Israelites may, there- fore, have borne their part, could be seen, as well as several of the huge granite blocks of the building ; but during our stay there, in the spring of 1906, a fine crop of wheat covered the site, and the blocks have been removed to various parts. Some of them lie about the ruins, some on the canal bank, some in the bottom of the canal, while most of them have been appropriated for building purposes. The town must have been strongly fortified at a very early date, probably during the period succeeding the expulsion of the Hyksos, or shepherd kings, and the foundation of the east wall still remains to a breadth of over 33 feet. On this wall we encamped for several days, and we did not fail to realise the likelihood that the Israelites had a hand in the making of the bricks which formed so solid a substratum for our domicile. We traced the walls of the ancient granaries of the town, which constitute a further link with the Hyksos wars, and are another instance of the warlike precautions then adopted in case of famine through devastation and siege. There is really little else to be seen of the ancient town. Succeeding civilisations have obliterated the traces of their predecessors, and a few inscribed blocks of stone lying about the village or built into modern houses are all that now remain (see Naville, " Goshen," Eg. Explor. Soc). Very soon the whole site will be under cultivation. THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 115 Already, by artificially forced irrigation, the water-level is raised so high that the ruins are under it, so that when the neighbouring fields are being irrigated the ruins are also practically submerged. We cannot regard Goshen as one of the fortified grain-cities built by the Hyksos in preparation for the attacks of the Southern dynasty, for, then, we should expect to have found traces of their occupation in the shape of pottery and burials, etc. ; but we may safely conclude that it was one of those built by early eighteenth-dynasty kings, to consolidate their conquest after the expulsion of the Hyksos, and to lessen the risk of reprisals. V THE CEMETERY OF GOSHEN EXAMINED IN 1905-1906 POTTERY, JEWELLERY, AND BURIAL CUSTOMS OF THE ISRAELITE PERIOD It may seem strange, but rubbish heaps and cemeteries are the two sources that have yielded most of the important information which we have gathered con- cerning the domestic life of the country in the past. In the rubbish heaps outside of a town ruin some of the finest discoveries of papyrus MSS. have been made, as for instance, by Dr B. P. Grenfell at Oxyrynchos; and in this way old papyrus rolls that had been thrown out as useless have been preserved to us, some of them containing disjointed sayings of Christ hitherto unknown. Similarly in the ruins of Tanis (Zoan), it was in a recess under the cellar stairs, used as a receptacle for rubbish, that Dr Flinders Petrie made his great find of car- bonised papyrus, much of which has been with the greatest care and patience unrolled and translated, yielding valuable results. It is only in the case of a volcanic eruption, as at Pompeii and Herculaneum, that we could expect to have a town buried in the course of a few hours, all life suspended in a moment, and the v^hole handed on to us buried as it stood. A con- flagration involving many dwellings was responsible for 116 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 117 the richest finds at Tanis, the inhabitants having fled and left everything. But these are exceptional cases. The usual case is that a town has gone to ruin because it has been abandoned by the people, or plundered by an enemy who removed everything worth taking. If there is no temple site, therefore, a town ruin is generally comparatively unproductive of results. In a cemetery, however, it is very different. Believing as they did, that every soul would need in the future world exactly what it was accustomed to need in this, they buried every body with as good an equipment of all life's necessaries and luxuries as they could afford ; and so from every cemetery that has not been rifled, the life and habits of the people can in a measure be reconstructed. It was from the cemetery near Nagada, in Upper Egypt, that Dr Petrie was able to build up the life of the prehistoric Egyptians, and to learn something of their origin and history. The custom of embalming the dead has naturally led to the preservation of much valuable historical knowledge ; but when in the age of the Ptolemies they took to discarding the use of linen wrappings on the ground of expense, and substituted for linen old papyrus manuscripts of Greek and other authors, one sees at once how important the burials of that period are. It is this that makes Egypt the hope of the future for our knowledge of the early Church, for at any moment there may be unearthed manuscripts of the Gospels, or of early treatises on the teaching of Christ. Near by the ruins of Goshen is a strip of sandy gezireh which still lies so high above water-level as to make it useless for cultivation. This had been used as 118 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT the cemetery of the town from the eighteenth dynasty down to Roman times. Knowing the comparative value of a cemetery as against a town site, we were not slow to transfer our operations there at once, on finding that the ruins had passed into private hands ; and the result justified our brightest expectations. The place was literally packed full of burials of various periods. Almost the first basketful of earth removed from the eastern edge revealed ornaments, pottery, and scarabs of the early eighteenth-dynasty period ; and for a time the outlook was bright indeed, for the gezireh covered an area of half a mile square, and half a square mile of eighteenth-dynasty cemetery, in the land of Goshen too, is a prize that any excavator might envy. Unfortunately two weeks steady work of fifty men exhausted the oldest portion, and we found ourselves plunged, almost without warning, into the atmosphere of the twenty-second and twenty-sixth dynasties, and of Roman times, some of it coming down to the fourth century A.D., and thus showing that the Romans had occupied Goshen and Rheyta contemporaneously. Twenty years ago this gezireh would have yielded far richer treasure, for the henneh fields have been slowly encroaching upon the oldest part for years, and we were in time to save only a small remnant. It was aggravating, indeed, to feel that under these bushes lay buried a perfect mine of eighteenth-dynasty materials, and yet to be unable to touch them. Of the part examined, the surface had sometimes been so denuded by Sebakhin that the articles were not more than three or four inches down, and on several occasions we found that the bottom rings of upturned pottery had THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 119 actually for some time formed part of the surface of the pathway, over which the traffic between the neighbour- ing villages passed from day to day. Whether it was from fear of desecration, which is not likely, or from lack of enterprise and observation, the natives passed these evidences of spoil day after day for years, and to this we owe the preservation of the cemetery intact. JSTot a grave had been opened. It was very different in the other portion of this cemetery at Suwa, for there the natives had for long made a regular trade of looting, and selling their finds. We cleared the greater part of the gezireh, and found as we progressed toward the centre that the burials became later in character, while the western edge had been used in Ptolemaic times. During our work it is unnecessary to say that I kept my eyes open for the slightest trace of burials which might be described as non-Egyptian, and which might have given a clue to the Israelite cemetery, but with no success. The Israelites must have buried their dead somewhere in this neighbourhood, but being slaves they had doubtless buried in a place apart, and their cemetery may have long been under cultivation. In all probability, also, their burials would have been devoid of the articles found in Egyptian graves, for there is no evidence that they ever shared the Egyptian idea about the future life ; so that had we found them there would have been nothing to indicate to whom they had belonged. A large number of interments were found where nothing had been buried with the dead, but mixed as they were with Egyptian burials it would be impossible to infer that these were Israelite. 120 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT Since the Bible states that Joseph was buried in Egypt, and his bones removed to Canaan at the Exodus, somewhere in this neighbourhood there ought to be found an empty sarcophagus, or mummy coffin, in- scribed with the names, titles, and honours of Joseph. No such tomb has yet been discovered, but it is much more likely to be found in the cemetery of Heliopolis (On), where Joseph is understood to have resided, than in the district of Goshen. The Contents. — The contents of this cemetery are the only direct sources available to us for information regarding the Egyptian people with whom the Israelites came into daily contact. The part of it belonging the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties is what chiefly conceros us, and we shall speak of this period throughout as the Israelite period. Types of Of the various types of burial employed, the most Bnrial. common was the ordinary sand-pit, where the body had been laid earth to earth with no protection but wrapping. Every limb had been separately wrapped, and with several folds of the cloth, which crumbled away to a fine mauve dust at the least touch. Occasionally a narrow trough was built in the bottom of the pit, and after the insertion of the body bricks had been laid across it, so that the body did not come into contact with the filling. This is still the form of burial used by the inhabitants of modern Goshen who cannot aflford a mastaba. These two types embrace practically all the burials found of the Israelite period, and give a fair idea of the prosperity of the people in these days. There had been very few really well-to-do people in the town. These, however, had used the THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 121 more expensive slipper-shaped pottery coffin, of which several fine specimens were found, as well as a few of a rougher type. They usually bore a modelling of the face and hands of the occupant on the lid, the finer ones being beautifully painted. The body had been inserted, the coffin then filled with sand, and afterwards deposited in the sand-pit. Sometimes as a cheaper imitation of these, two large clay pots about three and a half feet in length, twenty inches in diameter at the mouth, and narrowing towards the bottom, were placed mouth to mouth with the body enclosed, and occasionally only one such pot was used to cover the upper part of the body. In the case of infants the bottom of a large water or oil jar was knocked off, the infant inserted, with the head to the mouth invariably, the jar filled with sand, and the ends closed with potsherds. Two limestone coffins were found, which bore no inscrip- tion, and traces of a floor of wood in late burials suggested that wooden coffins had been used. These were quite common in the Suwa cemetery, and belonged to the twenty-sixth dynasty, or Ptolemaic times. The body was placed on its back with the feet to the The east, and the hands by the sides or crossed on the ^2rt*t§^^ breast. Every body had been wrapped in cloth, and Objects, where we found it at all preserved it was clear that it had been enclosed in several folds, not merely dressed in a single garment. The practice of robing the dead in a single garment did not come in till Christian times. In graves of men little was found, except where he happened to have belonged to a particular profession, when the implements of his profession were buried with m THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT him. In one, which had belonged to a scribe or physician, were found a fine bronze writing-case and some excellent specimens of Roman glass bottles. Women, on the contrary, were evidently buried in full dress, wearing all their ornaments and jewellery, the whole being encased in the wrapping. Around the sides of the grave were arranged the various articles of household furniture and ornament, while for her more valuable treasures a space was reserved at the head. Children were also buried wearing all their ornaments and amulets, as in life, and with their toys beside them. Infant A particularly striking feature was the large number Burials, infant burials. This was quite noticeable in every part, and in one portion for several days nothing else was unearthed by the eight men at work there. Several hundreds must have been found there alone, and often five or six were packed into the same pit. They were mostly enclosed in peg-bottomed pots, like those of the third century A.D. which were found at Rheyta, though many had been simply laid in the sand, as if hurriedly interred. But for the late date of these pots, there might have been here a valuable testimony to the truth of the tenth plague. As it is, the discovery of so many contemporaneous interments of children suggests the commonness of the occurrence of some epidemic among infants. The proportion of infantile burials is much smaller in the earlier than in the later parts of the cemetery, so that we may infer that infantile mortality was not so high in the earlier as in the later periods, and this is a safe proof of the continual de- generation of the people. At the present day the infant p. 12-2 USHABTIS— ISRAELITE PERIOD THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 123 mortality is abnormally high, while in civilisation the people are at their lowest ebb. The objects found fall conveniently into the three The classes — domestic, general, and personal. Class? (1) The first embraces all the pottery found. The fied. larger pots, many of a later date being inscribed in Pottery. Greek and demotic, had served as water or wine jars. Of the smaller types some had been used as cooking- pots, as the blackened bottoms showed. But the finest eighteenth-dynasty pots, with pointed bottoms, showed no indication of their use. The cake of mud occasion- ally found inside them pointed to their having contained some liquid when buried, which was borne out by the cake of mud on the mouth by which they had been sealed. Basins and saucers were plentiful, particularly the small flat-bottomed saucer used so much to cover the mouth of wine-jars by housewives before sealing them with mud. The large pots were all used for burial of infants. The largest of all, which stands over three feet high, and was in its transit to Suez a subject of much wonder to the natives, had been found many years before by some natives, and had been an heirloom in that family for several generations. Both ears are in- scribed in what is supposed to be archaic Arabic, which sufi&ciently decides its date. (2) Under the class of general we include the scarabs Scarabs, found in considerable numbers. One is a gold-encased scarab of Thothmes III. (XVIIIth Dyn.), one bears the name of Queen Thyi (XlXth), and another re- presents Rameses II. (XlXth), being carried on the shoulders of the priests in the Sed festival. Originally m THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT scarabs were used for various purposes, and were variously inscribed. Their chief use, however, was to affix a signature to a document or to mark a man's possessions, having the owners' names incised, and the impress of a scarab had the same legal significance as a signature in handwriting would have among us. Women also had their own scarabs, which they used for the same purposes, or for stamping the seals of wine and oil jars, etc., when they stored them. At a later period scarabs were more frequently worn by women as ornaments in necklaces or bracelets, and thus we frequently find the scarabs of an early date in a comparatively late interment. Ushabti. In one grave eight inscribed ushabtis were found. The ushabti is a relic of the ancient custom of killing a wealthy man's servants and burying them with him, that they might serve him in the next world. When the Egyptians gave up the practice they substituted glazed pottery models of them instead, just as they substituted clay models for real food on the tables of offerings. The absence of ushabtis was quite marked, and is another indication that the inhabitants of Goshen had never been a wealthy class. The poorest class of tables of offerings, made of clay and like upturned glasses in shape, were very common here, but no trace of clay models of food was visible. Tables of a much more costly type were found at Suwa. Terra- Among household ornaments the terra-cotta figures Figures. niostly of Roman date, but one is of clay and deserves special notice. It is the figure of a woman kneeling and playing a mandoline. The headgear CORNELIAN NECKLACES— ISRAELITE PERIOD SCARABS — GOSHEN CEMETERY p. 124 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 125 looks like a large thick plait of hair tucked in so as to form two projecting rings behind. The figure has been dated as early as 1000 B.C., and is by far the earliest specimen of this stringed instrument known. The shortness of the neck of the mandoline is notice- able, and shows that the stamping had to be very close, as, also, that the range of the instrument was very limited. The small one-eared ornamental vases, with white Cypriote stripes, belong to the Israelite period, and are really imported from Cyprus, being variants of the Cypriote leather bottle type. A considerable export and import trade seems to have been carried on at this early date between Cyprus and the north of Egypt, just as we find that long trains of laden donkeys were continually passing between Syria and Egypt, bringing in their own merchandise and carrying away corn. (3) Ornamental. — The large variety of beads found Beads, were of the greatest service in dating. Dr Petrie has made such a complete classification of beads, according to their dates, that they now form an unmistakable basis of inference. Frequently beads of an early date unearthed have been re-used, but in such a case the other materials found beside them form a sufficient safeguard against a wrong inference. A great quantity of beads of the Israelite period were found here, con- sisting chiefly of fine small carnelian and jasper, and of glazed pottery in blue and other colours. Of these latter, the finest were so small as to be almost indis- tinguishable from grains of sand. Ivory bars, with five or eight holes, found with them showed that the carnelian and jasper beads had been worn in necklaces of five and m THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT eight strings. Similar bars of blue glazed pottery were picked up with the tiny glazed beads. Beads of the Roman period were chiefly of glass, amber, rough carnelian, and paste, and some of them very beautiful. Rings. A feature of the jewellery of the Israelite period is the number of uncompleted rings. They have been supposed to be hair-rings, the narrow slit having been left open for the insertion of a curl. It is far more likely that they were rings worn on the upper lobe of the ear, the lobe being forced into the narrow opening. The finest of these were made of silver covered with gold leaf. Others were of carnelian, jasper, granite, limestone, and blue glaze. From their surroundings, they obviously formed part of an Egyptian lady's outfit in the days of Israel's sojourn. Ear-rings of gold, silver, and bronze of the same date, as well as of later, were common. Finger rings of silver, bronze, carnelian, and glaze, some with scarab settings, were equally common and of the same period. The hair pins of the earliest date were usually of ivory, but bronze was of frequent occurrence, sometimes as Bracelets, many as thirty being picked up in one spot. Bracelets N«:klets, ^^j.^ evidently composed of amulets, large beads, or Anklets, scarabs, though probably many of the bronze ones belonged to the Israelite period. From other sources we possess magnificent bracelets of gold, and abundance of bronze ones of the eighteenth to nineteenth dynasties, but the people of Goshen in these days were apparently not wealthy enough to wear them. Bronze bracelets and necklets of bronze and ivory belonging to a later date were picked up in great variety. Bronze and iron p. 126 BLUE GLAZE BRACELETS — ISRAELITE PERIOD THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 127 anklets were also numerous, and one glass bracelet of Roman date has been particularly admired. A bracelet of early date (twenty-sixth dynasty ?) consisted of six beautiful blue glaze figures of deities, each about one inch long, with six crocodiles, a Uraeus, and a Horus eye to alternate with them. Bronze mirrors, one with Mirrors ivory handle complete, and two-fluted and three-fluted pofs!^°^ fine glaze kohl-pots for the mixing of eye paint were no less in evidence in the toilette equipment of women of the Israelite period. The finest necklace found consisted of twelve Neck- carnelian face-pendants of a peculiar type and of pro- portionate sizes. Others are composed of plain carnelian pendants, of various designs, the lotus flower being a favourite ; and these were common also in jasper. Next to these comes the blue glaze pendant necklace of the same age and designs. In these the figures of Bes and Bast played a prominent part, the former especially in children's pendants, since he was the protective deity of infants. Bast was the chief goddess worshipped in the district, representing Diana or Artemis, and Bubastis, near by, was the seat of her worship. She was specially invoked by mothers. Glaze face-pendants of coarse make and of much later date, mostly representing Bes, were abundant. The double-face pendants are a class by themselves. Pen- Usually the features were outlined in black and yellow. They were found only in children's graves, and unless they are crude representations of Bes, we have no clue to the superstition connected with them. They look hideous enough to be the impersonation of evil, and perhaps they were worn to avert the evil eye. m THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT Bronze cats and figures of the God-mother with child on her knee (Isis and Horns) had been favourite charms for children to wear. The bronze bells so common in children's graves had been toys, and apparently worn on a string round the neck. Ear- A curious custom of the Israelite period was the pluffs. ijabit of stopping the ears of the dead, perhaps as a pre- caution against sand or insects. Ear-plugs of ivory, limestone, and wood were of frequent occurrence, but others were more elaborately composed of some other brittle material with a thin covering of ivory pasted on the top, the paste used having been the white of an egg. Eemarks. — On a careful examination of these materials, it will be at once seen that those belonging to the Israelite period and the Roman far outnumber the relics of the intervening dynasties. A very few things of the twenty-second and twenty-sixth dynasties, and these not decisive, were found, while not a single burial can be assigned to the thirtieth, though we know that at that period Nekhthor-heb did so much to adorn the town. In the cemetery at Suwa we found the reverse. There these intervening dynasties are almost solely represented, and there is no doubt that the two are the cemeteries of the same town. One or two important facts are, therefore, established by these discoveries. The first and most important is that Goshen was a town of considerable size at the period of the Israelite sojourn. The fact that Rameses II. (1300-1234 B.C.) erected a statue of himself there, shows that he must have undertaken some work for the beautifying or improvement of the town. At least, it proves that the town was then in existence, though it GOLD EAR-HIXGS— ISRAELITE TEHIOD GOLD EAR-RINGS AND SILVER-GILT HAIR (OR EAR) RINGS —ISRAELITE PERIOD THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 129 may have been another of the granary cities which he compelled the Israelites to build for him. So much was previously known ; but now that we have found indis- putable remains of the eighteenth dynasty, there is no longer any doubt that the town dates as far back as the early kings of that dynasty at least, for we unearthed materials of the reign of Thothmes III. (1503-1449 B.C.), and the town existed probably before then. There is nothing impossible, therefore, in assuming that Gen. xlvi. 29 refers to the town, and not to the district, of Goshen as the meeting-place of Jacob and Joseph. The second fact is, that Goshen was continuously inhabited practically from the eighteenth dynasty down to Roman times, and during the twenty-sixth and thirtieth dynasties and the time of the Ptolemies, it was a much wealthier and more important place than dur- ing the Israelite period, as we find from the cemetery at Suwa. The thirtieth dynasty was, perhaps, the period of its greatest prosperity, but again in Roman times it had attained considerable prominence as one of their strongest garrison-forts in the Delta. A further infereuce has already been pointed out, viz. that the people of Goshen in the Israelite period were by no means a wealthy or powerful class, for there is very little that betokens luxury in their methods of burial, or in the things which they buried with their dead, so that the place was evidently in its infancy at that time. In the other portions of the cemetery at Suwa and Ali-marah there were indications of undoubted wealth and prosperity. I VI CEMETERY OF GOSHEN AT SUWA AND ALI MAKAH About a mile south of Saft is another large stretch of unreclaimed gebel, on the edge of which stand several villages, the largest and most beautiful being the village of Suwa. It is built close to what had been a much- used cemetery in the later dynasties and Ptolemaic times. No material of the Israelite period was found here. Only those dynasties are represented which were unrepresented at Saft, so that we may describe this as complementary of the former cemetery. Two miles to the east of Suwa, near the small village Ali Marah, the men found remains of an eighteenth- dynasty cemetery, and for some distance into the gebel traces of burials were found No trace of the ruins of a twenty-sixth dynasty or a Ptolemaic town, or, in fact, of any ancient town at all, was visible in the neighbourhood, except the ruins of Goshen at Saft ; and we are thus led to the conclusion that they were all the cemetery of the same town. Their distance of two or three miles from Saft presents no difficulty. The only point of difficulty is why, with a cemetery so near, they should have pre- ferred to bury at such distance ; and in the case of the twenty-sixth and Ptolemaic dynasties this is, perhaps, to be explained by the fact that the hard gebel at Suwa was the ouly ground in the vicinity suitable for the class 130 CHILD POT-BURIAL IN POSITION p. 131 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 131 of shaft-pit tomb fashionable at the time. It is not likely that the gezireh at Saft had been completely filled, as we should then have found the burials of the Roman period above burials of the earlier periods. It is cheaper to cut four-chambered or deep shaft-pit tombs in the hard black earth occasionally found in this region, than to excavate them in sand, and build a brick wall casing to prevent the sand falling in. In the Fayum the shaft was frequently cut in soft sand and built up with brick, while the chambers were cut in the lime- stone, which lies at a depth of ten to fifteen feet. At Suwa, however, the hard earth answered the purpose admirably. Types of Graves. — A few ordinary sand-pits, that had belonged to poorer people, were found on a strip of sand at the same level as the cultivated fields; but the majority of the graves here belong to one or other of two types. A room seven or eight feet square was Masta- cut to a depth of about five feet in the gebel, and then covered over with a flat or, more likely, a dome-shaped roof, which stood a few feet above the level of the ground around. Usually the same roof covered a series of four or two rooms, opening into each other, and with a door for entrance at one side, like the modern mastaba, leading in from a shaft sunk to the floor level, the door being built up with bricks after an interment. Frequently the walls had been covered with a thin white or pink plaster. The roofs had, of course, long succumbed, and most of the graves had been partially rifled. The most interesting type was the deep shaft-pit and Shaft-pit chamber tomb. There was a large number of these, but they proved so unproductive that we latterly ceased m THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT to excavate them. The shaft, about three feet square, usually went down to a depth of twelve to twenty feet, and, as a rule, a chamber was cut on one side, sometimes one on each side. The chambers were about eight feet square and five feet high. These all contained mummies of the Ptolemaic period. The mummies lay side by side, uncovered, the entrance to the chamber having been built, and the shaft filled in, after the interment. Some of these were very beautiful, and all of them valuable, if it had only been possible to bring them up the shaft unbroken ; but whether owing to the rough handling of the men, or to the delicate nature of the material, not one was found by us with the finely gilded and painted plaster complete, and whenever we tried to remove a head or a breast piece it fell to pieces in our hands. Mummies There is always a charming fascination in descending these tombs and finding the mummies in their ex- quisitely adorned habiliments, as they were placed there some 2000 or 3000 years ago; but in the Ptolemaic period this is further enhanced by their habit of using old papyrus manuscripts for the under- wrapping of the mummy below the surface plaster, instead of the expensive linen of earlier times. In 1895 I spent some weeks with Dr Grenfell in the Fayum, among similar tombs, and had the ex- perience of handling some of these papyrus-clad mummies, the value of which had already been dis- covered by the native poachers, and several interesting frasfments of known Greek aiithors were found in the breast pieces which I took off the mummies that had not previously been stripped. It was a somewhat DRIN KING-CUP— ISHAELITK PERIOD GREEK VASE p. 133 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 133 gruesome experience, and the presence of a live owl in the rock-cut chamber, while it showed that our man had only taken me to gather up the fragments left by himself in previous visits for his own profit, yet also added considerably to the eeriness of this first experience. The mummy tombs at Suwa were, therefore, of intense interest ; but it was a great disappointment to find that here the experience of all excavators was once more verified, viz. that as yet no papyrus-wrapped mummies have been found north of Cairo. Whether it was that the people of the Delta were not of a literary turn of mind, or that they had too great a reverence for books to apply them to such a purpose, it is impossible to tell, but this practice seems to have been observed only in Upper Egypt. Some of these tombs contained only two mummies side by side. Others contained as many as fifteen or eighteen piled above each other in one room, and all were laid simply on the bare soil with no coffin or other protection. Sometimes elaborate stairways led down to the door of the chamber ; in most, however, holes were left cut into the sides of the shaft, so that we found entrance and exit by the same means as the workmen themselves who had made these tombs some thousands of years before. Nothing of any kind was ever found in these tombs except the mummies themselves, probably because every one had been rifled long ago. The stone tables of offerings, thirteen of which were picked up, show that originally the usual concomitants of burial had been placed in them, and as all these tables were found at various heights in the filling of the shaft, it is obvious 134 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT that they had been thrown back by the spoilers as not worth carrying away. The Arrangement of the Burial. — In the treat- ment of the body, swathing and mummifyiDg were the two methods adopted. In the sand-pits swathing, in the shaft-pit tombs mummifying, was the invariable rule. In the square chamber tombs mummifying had apparently been universal, but the mummies had been so broken up by spoilers as to leave no clue to their original appearance. In all, the body lay with the feet to the east, and in the sand-pits it was " earth to earth burial, there being no traces of coffins. Clay In the filling of the square pits a large number of Masks, ^jg^y masks was found, so that the custom seems to have been to enclose the swathed or mummified body in a sun-dried clay coffin, on the lid of which, just over the face, a clay-modelling of the face of the dead was affixed with wooden pins. That these clay masks were not all made on a conventional model, but attempted to repro- duce a likeness of the dead, is manifest from the variety of types presented. Only one complete clay coffin was found. The masks were usually covered with a thin coating of some kind of plaster, which was painted to resemble the eyes, eyebrows, and complexion of the dead. Many of these masks clearly represent foreigners. Many fragments of wooden coffins, and one complete, were unearthed. The complete one contained a mummy of a very plain type. In the chamber of a shaft-pit tomb, which had been wasted by the sabakhin, a large limestone sarcophagus lay revealed. It contained a mummy, but had no inscription, and was otherwise uninteresting. p. 135 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 135 The Contents of the Cemetery. — The elaborate and expensive burials led us to expect things of greater value than we found, but the plundering, which has been going on continually, is sufficient explanation of absence of all valuables. This fact also detracts con- siderably from the value of any information that may be based upon our work here. The contents may be described under the same three heads. 1. Domestic. — A feature of the cemetery is the Pottery, enormous amount of pottery found in the graves, as many as forty and fifty pots being found in one burial. The bulk of it came from the square pits, and the remainder from the sand-pits. No pottery, nor any- thing else in fact, was found in the shaft-pit tombs. The twenty-second and twenty-sixth to thirtieth dynasties were chiefly represented. The most interesting of these were the Bes pots of the twenty-sixth dynasty. They bore faces of Bes rudely modelled upon them in relief. The beautiful small clay vases, which had evidently been children's toys, and a class of green glaze pottery jars, four to eight inches deep and two to three inches across, both of the Ptolemaic period, are also noteworthy. Otherwise the pottery was poor and rough. The large pots had been buried with some liquid or grain. No pot-burials of infants were found here, and the usual assortment of cooking-pots, basins, saucers, jugs, and water-jars was represented. 2. General. — All over the cemetery the ordinary Tables of clay tables of offerings, in shape like an upturned drink- Offerings, ing-glass, were found in abundance, but the stone tables found in the shaft-pit tombs were much more elaborate. A flat polished block of limestone, twelve to fifteen 136 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT inches long, ten broad, and five deep, was used. Round the edges was cut the dedicatory inscription in hiero- glyphics. On the smooth surface were carved two libation vases, a pool for the libation, usually with steps down into it, so that the " Ka " might get down as the water receded, and occasionally, also, flat round cakes representing bread. Originally they deposited real food and drink in the tomb for the Ka or disembodied spirit's maintenance, and this supply was from time to time renewed. But as in other phases of their religion the reality gradually gave place to the sem- blance, and only models of food in clay were buried latterly. It seems to have been of the nature of ancestor- worship. If suffering or misfortune befel, it was traced to the neglect of this duty of renewal of supplies in the case of some dead relative, whose spirit was accordingly enraged with them. The models possessed the further advantage that they did not need renewal. It is quite an interesting phase in the development of their religious life, that while they in many cases soon realised the absurdity of their super- stition in practice, they cheerfully parted with the literal practice on grounds of utility, but retained the superstition itself all through to a late period in their history. As we shall see later, some phases of it, indeed, have survived in their posterity of to-day. Another illustration of the same practice is the group of bronze Situlse, or libation tankards, all three of which were found in one square pit. The largest stood fifteen, and the smallest ten inches high. The gazelle-head drinking-cup is eighteenth-dynasty work, and had been re-used in the burial where we found it, since in the THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 137 next chamber of the group in which it was found we found three small Greek vases of the beautiful black and terra-cotta type, which bring the burial down to Ptolemaic times. 3. Ornamental. — Of this class little need be said. An enormous quantity of blue glaze beads of every type was found in what had been burials of women, but as they had been scattered and displaced by spoilers, no clue could be obtained for the reconstruction of the strings, necklaces, or bracelets, as they had been worn originally. A similar quantity of blue glaze amulets, figures of deities, was collected. The finer material had all disappeared, the beads having been left as worthless. Ali Marah. — Twenty-two sand-pit and brick-built graves were examined here, and all of them contained materials of the Israelite period. One was a slipper- shaped face coffin burial, with ten fine small pots arranged round the coffin, and a good collection of beads, blue glaze pendants, and two scarabs inside. Of the pottery, two were small Cypriote pilgrim-bottle types, and three were alabasters. In other graves five fine gold ear-rings were found. The strip examined was on the edge of a modern cemetery, so that very little was left, but there was evidence of the existence of an eighteenth and nineteenth-dynasty cemetery of some considerable size. It is situated about two miles and a half due east of the ruins of Goshen, and as the only trace of ruins in the vicinity was of Roman date, this must have been part of the ancient cemetery of Goshen. The Inhabitants of Goshen in the Israelite Period. — From the data afforded by these three por- 138 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT tions of the cemetery, we may draw some inferences as to the class of Egyptians who were the contemporaries of Israel in Goshen. All over, we have found indica- tions that they were on the whole a comfortable, fairly well-to-do, middle-class people, some of them perhaps very poor, and none of them very rich. The small number of ushabtis found is a safe indication of this. It is quite noteworthy, that in seven sites examined so few were found, and only eight in Goshen cemetery itself. Had there been any wealthy magnates resident here, or buried here, there must have been ushabtis buried with them in great numbers. At On (Helio- polis), we gather from the Bible, it was quite different, for Joseph himself was servant to Potiphar, an inferior officer of Pharaoh's Court there, but the cemetery of On is as yet a sealed treasure. The presence of gold and silver jewellery in such small quantity is another indication ; and of all the burials examined, there were really very few that could be described as the graves of ordinarily wealthy people. The slipper-shaped coffins were among the best : all of them burials of women, as the jewellery found among the sand inside showed. The complete absence of stone vases, so commonly found in ordinary burials in Upper Egypt, is perhaps to be explained by the fact that there is little or no stone to be found in the Delta, rather than to be regarded as further indication of their poverty. We have suffi- cient proof that the stone which they used in building was imported from Upper Egypt, as for example, the black granite of the shrine erected by Nekht-hor-heb, which came from the quarries at Beni Hasan. In their religion, as we should expect from their p. 138 ROMAN GLASS VASES AND DRINKING CUP THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 139 proximity to Bubastis, the seat of her worship, they Relig:ion showed a preference for the goddess Bast, and for Bes, the protector of infants. Blue glaze amulets, figures of Bast, were found in most of the women's tombs, and no child's burial seemed complete without a few glaze figures of Bes, which the child had worn as amulets in life. We have already referred to the constant re- currence in child burials of the double-faced pendants. The repulsiveness of their features is remarkable, and these are most likely a variety of the Bes worship. There is not the slightest indication that the presence of the Yahweh (Jehovah) worshippers in their midst had infected them with the Yahweh cult. It is, perhaps, more likely that their religion had a modifying influence upon that of the Israelites, if not a developing influence ; and some day the data necessary to show how far the Egyptian religion has influenced the religion of Moses may be found. At all events, the Goshenites held all the main tenets of the Egyptian creed. They shared the ordinary belief about the future life, burying every- thing which they thought they would need with their dead. Food, drink, furniture, jewellery, tables of offerings, etc., they consigned to the grave, in the con- ventionally pious belief that they were thereby doing them a real service, the last service, in fact, which they could render them. Six or eight hundred years afterwards the inhabi- tants were a much wealthier class, as the other portion of the cemetery at Suwa shows. The pottery of the earliest period is not of an expensive type. Of the jewellery found, however, much is exquisite and of real value, and bears out the tradition of the Egyptian 140 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT woman's partiality for jewellery in all ages, a feature which is quite as strong in the Egyptian woman of the present day. Their interchange of commerce with Cyprus and Syria at this early date has already been referred to. On the whole, one cannot fail to be struck with two facts in regard to the Israelite sojourn for 450 years in this region. It is surprising that not the slightest reference to them has been found in any shape what- ever ; and now that the town of Goshen itself has been examined, it is equally surprising to find no trace of their cemetery, nor even the slightest trace of any influence exerted by them upon their taskmasters. One cannot help feeling that it is next to impossible for two races of such diversity of character, sympathies, and religion to live alongside of each other so long, without exerting a mutually modifying influence upon each other, which would be bound to show itself in their habits and mental outlook. But if such influence has been exerted, it certainly has not been a case of the " victor vanquished," for the Egyptian of Goshen remained as much an Egyptian as the rest of his countrymen. He certainly did not part with his individuality, or even a fraction of it, whatever may have been the case with the Israelite. We fear the favour has been all on the side of the latter ; but as yet the evidence is not to hand, however strong the presumption of his indebtedness may be, to prove the extent of Egyptian influence upon the manners, life, and religion of the Israelite, as we find him portrayed in the Old Testament. And the whole difficulty is only more complicated by the fact, that there is THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 141 absolutely no inherent improbability in the Bible narrative itself. Indeed, from what we know by Egyptian documents and inscriptions, the story of a race of shepherds finding a haven in so suitable a place as the land of Goshen is the likeliest thing which we should have expected to happen. From Pithom right up the Wady Tumilat, the grazing of the comparatively uncultivated land appears to have been regularly let out to shepherds from Syria and Canaan from the earliest date, so that nothing is more likely than that a race of shepherds from that quarter should ultimately have obtained a settlement there. The attractiveness of the pasture was in itself sufficient motive, but the addition of a friend at court made the arrangement of terms a much easier and more advantageous matter for them. The Bible itself, on the other hand, supplies sufficient evidence of the insecurity of tenure in PalestiDe (see Gen. xiv., etc.) to justify us in presuming that such a migration, on such favourable terms, would have been heartily welcomed by the brethren of Joseph. VII MODERN INHABITANTS OF GOSHEN THE PEOPLE AND THEIR OCCUPATION Exclusive of large towns, the population of the district may be divided into the two classes, Bedawin, or nomad shepherds, and Fellahin, or peasant farmers. The The Bedawin, at one time the only inhabitants of Goshen, Bedawin. described by Joseph as "the abomination of the Egyptians" (Gen. xlvi. 34), are now fast disappearing from the district, driven further and further back into the gebel by the rapidly advaocing cultivation, and suppressed also to some extent by the more stringent administration of justice under the English rule. In some ways it will be a great loss to the country when these sturdy representatives of Laban and the ancient patriarchs finally disappear. It means the removal of another link between the present and the past, and one more picturesque feature will have vanished when the Bedawin encampments on the lower reaches of the gebel are no longer to be seen. Nor will the landscape be the only sufferer, for the wild freedom of their outdoor roaming life has im- parted to their character and deportment a picturesque dignity, a firmness and decision, which make the average Fellah appear an uncultured dolt in com- 142 A PRISCESS OF THE DESERT— RHEYTA BEDAWJN CHILDREN p. 142 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 143 parisoD. Twelve years ago (1895), when we were excavating at Nagada, in Upper Egypt, the peasants seemed to be in great dread of an encounter with these unscrupulous marauders, and regarded them simply as parasites, who flourished on the labours of the Fellahin by theft of their crops. While crossing the Syrian desert, between Baghdad and Damascus, the following year, I found them regarded with the same fear for the same reason, their favourite occupation being the plundering of defenceless travellers or caravans which they are able to overpower. A Biblical parallel to this is found in the aversion with which the Israelites regarded the Edomites and other tribes around them, after they themselves had settled down to the quieter life of cultivation in Palestine, because of the incessant attacks and plundering expeditions which these made upon their territory. Their hand has ever been against all who live settled lives. They are naturally of a restless, roving disposition, fond of excitement, and born thieves, though, by their own code of morals, they do not rank as such. The freedom of the desert seems to impart to their character something of the Celtic disregard of legal restrictions, and of reckless inde- pendence, which the hills seem also to bestow upon their children. Their idea of the law of property is that property belongs only to him who is able to seize and retain it, and there is no restriction as regards the methods adopted in acquiring it. The Bedawi of the Egyptian Delta, however, is a very different type from these. He is tame in comparison. There is something exhilarating in the very presence of the wild eastern freebooter of the Euphrates valley. You may ride 144 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT alongside of him a whole day, and deem him the most agreeable and courteous companion you have ever met, but there is always that in his eye which reminds you that it is only because you are too strong for him, or too well protected, that he does not play his other role and rob you. In Egypt now, you may pass safely through encampments of Bedawin day after day un- protected and without molestation, and one never hears of marauding expeditions. They seem quite a peaceful, law-abiding class, contentedly rearing their flocks, taking them to the market like ordinary Fellahin, and paying the peasants honestly for the fodder and grain which their ancestors used to take without ceremony. This is one of the many marked improvements in Egypt which are to be traced directly to the English influence. The Ishmaelitish hate, if it is not entirely removed, is now so completely kept in check that the people enjoy a security in every sense, which has been unknown for man}^ centuries in their country's history. There are two strongly marked features in the character of the Bedawi, his innate hospitality and his curiosity ; and these two combined prompted them often to invite us to drink coftee with them in their tents as we returned from our work at sunset. They are of a proud and independent spirit. Their every movement, their dignified, erect bearing, betray it. It needs not the artificial medium of dress to mark out the Bedawi from the Fellah. The clownish manner and the loutish gait of the latter is just as strongly marked. Some of the Bedawin are comparatively wealthy, and all despise the Fellah. It was the proud boast of Ali, our cook, though his family were now settled peasants, that he p. 145 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 145 was the son of Bedawin, and in comparing our men the worst he could say of any was, that he was the child of peasants, in a tone of undisguised contempt. It was quite noticeable in those of our workmen, who were sons of the Bedawi, that they were not only more full of animal spirits and vivacity, but worth four or five of the others at their work. This superiority was most apparent in work where brains were needed, and where something liad to be left entirely to the man's own judgment or discretion. They have the fiery tempera- ment and impulsiveness of the Celt, and are quick and strong to resent an injury. It is a pity to think that, as they settle and become chained to the soil, many of their finer and more admirable characteristics will desert them. The Fellahin farm the land, and accept employment The as labourers for Government or other employers ; but we seldom see farm steadings or crofter holdings built conveniently for the land they farm. What we find is a series of small villages a few miles apart, the inhabi- tants of which farm the adjacent land in small portions allotted to each. Sometimes a man buys a number of acres and builds a large house for himself on the ground, and he at the same time builds a number of huts in the vicinity for the natives whom he employs, which form quite a little village. This is called a birket. Of old they were compelled to herd together in villages on account of the ravages of the Bedawin. Isolated farm steadings, however, are also found. Their farm implements are crude, just what were used Farm many centuries ago by their ancestors, and such as were, and are still, used in Palestine. In ploughing they K 146 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT usually employ a couple of buffaloes, though I have seen a mule and a buffalo, a camel and a buffalo, and even a camel and a donkey yoked together. The modern plough is the plough of antiquity. It consists of an iron sock like the tine of a grubber affixed to an upright pole. To this pole, just above the sock, is lashed one end of the beam, while at the other end is afi&xed a cross- bar, which passes over the necks of the buffaloes. The driver uses no reins, but guides his animals with a long pole in one hand, while with the other he holds on to the upper end of the upright, and keeps the sock into the ground. The result is a mere scratch of three inches deep on the surface, and, as the soil is mostly alluvial and very pliable when not too dry, the work is not hard on either man or beast. Another implement in use is a heavy wooden flat-bottomed box with handles and open at the front. By tilting it up while the buffaloes are pulling, the driver fills it with soil, which he deposits in drills or as he wishes. This also serves the purpose of a harrow. The most interesting part of the farmer's Irriga- work is the irrigation. For this purpose the shadoof is still the most primitive implement in use. A long pole is balanced over two uprights driven into the river bank. To one end is affixed by a rope of the necessary length a clay jar or bucket and to the other a mass of clay of sufficient weight to balance the vessel when full. It is a slow and expensive process, and it must be tedious work for a man to stand all day dipping, raising and emptying the bucket into the irrigation channel, all the more that there is little to show for his day's work at the end of it. This is being replaced by a long wooden drum, with a screw suction arrangement inside, worked FIELD LAID OUT p. 147 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 147 by a crank at one end. The cylinder is dipped in the water and two men sit revolving the crank hour after hour, while the water pours out of it into the channel. The principle of the syphon has never been adopted, but it is certain that as the price of labour advances with increasing prosperity, these expensive methods will have to be replaced by methods that will need less labour in proportion to the work accomplished. The most rapid means of irrigation employed is the sagyah or water- wheel. With its arrangement of cogged wheels of wood, by which the vertical wheel carrying its string of jars is revolved, the water is much more expeditiously raised, and though it needs the labour of a buffalo or camel with a driver, it is perhaps by far the cheapest method in use. Wheels with iron chains and steel or zinc buckets im- ported from Europe are now replacing the old wooden wheels, but the creaking music of the sagyah, one of the first features that strikes the visitor, will probably long be heard in the land. Under crop the fields are usually laid out in a series of small squares with sides banked up, and channels are so cut as to communicate with them till all are sub- merged. The principal crop is maize or wheat (durra). When it is harvested it is collected, and men and women sit for days picking off the corn ears, making a heap in the centre, which they gradually enclose by a palisade made of the straw stuck in the soil. The straw is too strong and rank to be used for animals' food, and is either burned or employed in hut-building. During these operations the men keep watch over the corn against thieves all night in turn. 148 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT To this custom of picking off the corn ears there is probably a reference in 1 Sam. viii. 12 : " will set them to ear his ground " (A.V.), which the R. V. translates " to plow his ground " ; and in the light of this custom the A.V. gives excellent sense. Sugar-cane is also largely and successfully grown in Goshen, but the natives have not as yet taken to growing turnips or potatoes, though the latter can be purchased in all the towns of any size. Bread made from durra, ground iu hand-mills by the women, and garlic are still the staple food of the peasant, though on special occa- sions the poorer classes also use flesh. YOUNG GIRLS p. 149 VIII MODERN INHABITANTS OF GOSHEN THE POSITION OF WOMAN The greatest blot on Mohammedan civilisation is the position assigned to woman. Among the lower classes she ranks scarcely higher than a beast of burden. In the ordinary work of the fields the woman does the work of labourer, carrying all the heavy burdens where donkeys are not employed. When they set out to market in full dress, the fellah walks unimpeded in front, the woman trudges behind, often almost borne to the ground with the burden of produce which she carries on her head, and this duty she has to perform irrespective of her state of health, under the sweltering sun and with- out the least assistance from her husband, who would deem himself degraded were he to stoop to such a menial duty. If they possess a donkey the man rides and the woman pants breathlessly behind carrying the load all the same. If he do the journey on camel, he will give the woman a seat behind the hump, but only because she could not keep pace with the animal. There is perhaps no real degradation, where no degradation is felt. Mohammedan women have been so long accus- tomed to quietly accept the place assigned to them, that 149 150 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT they would probably feel it an insult, if this menial position were withheld from them, and the spectacle of a gentleman carrying a lady's parcel in the street of a western city would move them to uncontrollable deri- sion. Such is the power of custom. But an onlooker can see the case as it really is, with all its deteriorating influences upon the character of woman, and through her upon the character of the race. Her domestic duties are light. She cleans the house, if that can be described as cleaning, which consists merely in removing in the morning all evidences of the presence of the cattle from the outer court, for cattle and people herd within the same enclosure over night. There is practically no cooking to be done, since flesh is seldom used among the ordinary fellahin ; but she has to grind the corn and prepare bread from the flour, which, with milk, garlic and dates, forms their staple food. She attends to the children, too, though the attention she bestows can only be described as neglect. As a rule they are excessively dirty, looking as if their bodies had never made the acquaintance of water. Their stomachs are unnaturally distended by careless feeding, and they are seldom free from the ophthalmia so prevalent, and so effectively spread by the flies. The wonder is that blindness is not more common than it is. It is painful to think that a nation practically under the government of the most highly civilised of nations is still so ignorant of the most ordinary sanitary pre- cautions against disease. If there is an open sore about the child, the mother's idea of healing it is to keep continually picking olf the scars, and she seems to have no idea of keeping the sore clean. The Koran is said THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 151 to be responsible for the immunity which vermin enjoy among them. The woman also performs a weekly mockery of wash- ing, and yet the wonder is that they take the trouble at all, for it is impossible, living as they do, that the clothes which were washed to-day could be clean to- morrow. The average fellah, however, makes a point of coming out in a clean outfit when he goes to market or on the occasion of any holiday or feast-day. In addition she has charge of the finances, and at the sale of cattle or antiques her consent is generally obtained before a bargain is struck. Education in the outlying parts is practically a minus quantity. In Sharhanba with its population of a few hundreds there was a school, and facilities are to some extent afforded, but only a small proportion seem to avail themselves of the opportunity of educating their children. A generation back, however, there were no such facilities, and among the adult men not one in a hundred can write his own name. It is even worse in the case of women. They are not only stupidly ignorant, but their ignorance amounts to a total unconsciousness of the fact that there is anything in the world to learn which they have not already acquired. They are ignorant even of the elementary principles of house- keeping, and have had no training to fit them for the duties of motherhood. The result is that among infants the death-rate is abnormally high. Both men and women are, however, fond of their children, and one may now see even infant girls getting their fair share of regard, though it was not always so. Formerly a girl counted as nothing in the family, and even yet she 152 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT does not get the welcome of a boy, and when a woman goes to pray for a child, it is always a son that she petitions for. It is not want of affection, but sheer ignorance that is to blame for the fact that only a proportion of the infants born survive the reception which they meet with. A medical mission with a good staff of nurses could do an enormous service to humanity among the fellahin women of Egypt, if they were able first to inspire them with confidence. That something on these lines should be done is, in fact, a crying need of the country. Unquestionably the real root of the evil lies in early marriage. Most girls are rushed into the cares and responsibilities of married life at the age of twelve or fourteen, and at the age of forty or less a woman looks old and haggard, while few live to see fifty or sixty. The marriage contract is a purely commercial transaction. The girl has no choice in the matter. She regards herself simply as so much merchandise to be disposed of by her parents, whenever a suitable candidate comes forward with the required price. The man who wants a wife informs his relatives, names the sum which he is prepared to give, and may suggest the direction in which they are to seek her. Having selected a likely match, these enter into negotiations with her parents, and if they are inclined to entertain the proposal, arrangements are made for the suitor's female relatives to inspect the proposed bride. On their joint report he decides for or against. These preliminaries having been settled, pre- parations are made for the wedding. The bridegroom never sees the face of the bride until the evening of the day on which the ceremony is performed. At a certain THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 153 stage in the feast he leaves his male friends, and in the presence of women relatives the bride is unveiled before him. When he returns loudly praising her and pro- claiming his own good fortune, the male relatives and guests join the chorus of praise, and their shouts are generally the signal for the orchestra placed outside the window to add to the paean with the ud harmonious screeching of Egyptian bagpipes and the dismal din of little drums. Into such an arrangement the element of choice on the basis of mutual affection cannot enter, and whether any affection springs up between them after- wards it is impossible to say. No one, however, will hesitate to condemn the principle as being hurtful to the highest interests of the race, and as depriving the home life of one of the most purifying and ennobling influences at its command. It degrades the woman. It robs her of the highest incentive to the noble self- sacrifice which motherhood demands, and it leaves her to face her bitterest trials unsustained by the sympathy or affection of him who should be her mainstay through- out. She cannot regard herself as anything more than a domestic utensil, a necessary part of a man's outfit. She is never allowed to think of herself as anything else. The price which a fellah pays for a wife ranges from ten to twenty pounds, but the less favoured can be had at as little as seven, though our cook assured me that a good wife cannot be had at that figure, and Dr Petrie's foreman, Ali, proved it by sad experience. Having made up his mind to marry, he obtained the promise of the necessary advance up to twenty pounds. Ali, how- ever, knew of some girls in the Fayum who were not 154 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT sufficiently endowed to command a large price in the matrimonial market, and one of whom he could purchase at seven pounds. To the Fayum, therefore, he went, and brought home his blushing bride at the price he said. But she has proved an expensive investment. His married life has not been happy. He divorced her very soon and married another. The second left on a visit to her people, and they refused to give her up unless he paid a further sum for her. Thereupon he married a third, and now the parents of the second are claiming aliment for their daughter, for they probably think his English employer has unlimited wealth to place at Ali's disposal. The insecurity of the woman's position is further aggravated by the facility of divorce. A man has but to say " I divorce thee " in presence of witnesses, and the marriage tie is dissolved. Mohammed, however, added a wise qualifying clause, which sometimes leads to amusing situations, though it was intended to safe- guard against rash and impulsive dissolution of the tie. If a man divorce his wife, he cannot marry her again until she has first been the wife of another. At Shibin a sheikh had a quarrel with his wife, of whom he was very fond, and in the heat of passion divorced her, repenting almost immediately. As, however, she could not return till she had first been married to another, he arranged privately with a servant of his own to marry her and immediately after the ceremony to divorce her. To this the servant agreed, and everything went well until the ceremony was over, when an awkwark hitch occurred on account of the servant's refusing to divorce her. THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 155 What fills one with a sense of ineffable disgust, among the lower class of orientals at least, is the fact that there is nothing of the interchange of soul between man and woman, which goes so far to sweeten and strengthen the married relationship among more highly civilised peoples. The whole relationship is shadowed by the thought of the physical. They seem incapable of thinking of each other except from this point of view, and all their habits and customs are naturally coloured by it. Even interchange of conversation is forbidden between the sexes where unrelated. It is an infringe- ment of modesty to even look in the direction of a w^oman as she passes, and to visit a house except in the presence of the master is equivalent to a breach of one of the sternest laws of morality. Among the lowest ranks, however, these restrictions are more or less dis- regarded in practice, though honoured in theory. And with it all, they cannot be described as of a high moral order. As we should expect, the women are coarse in their language and coarse-minded. The very children are coarse with a coarseness that would probably be unin- telligible to the vilest waif from some of the lowest dens in the worst slum of our country. And it cannot be otherwise for them, living as they do, whole families packed into one small room by day and night, and hearing the vilest of conversation more frequently than anything that is even passably decent, not to say edifying. This any one can gather from hearing them address their children in the street, and from hearing the children among themselves. It will be no surprise to learn that the average Arab hears of the decease of a 156 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT wife with no great discomposure, and indeed the work- man with us, who would show manifest signs of grief over the death of a brother or male cousin, and would immediately set out to see him buried, would never dream of losing a day's pay to attend the funeral of a wife or female relative. When his wife displeases him, the husband beats her at his own sweet will, and in the presence of her own children or any of his neighbours for that matter. It is a mild accusation to say that Mohammedanism has not succeeded in imparting a high tone to the domestic life of its votaries. That, perhaps, is more the fault of its followers than of the creed itself. It would, however, be demanding too much of human nature to expect that all Arab women submit with patience in the atmosphere of abuse and disregard in which they are condemned to live. Any one, who lives for a time in one of their villages, may have reason to come to the conclusion that occasionally at least his pity may have to be extended to the members of the other sex. Polygamy, perhaps, plays its part also in the degrada- tion of woman, but though any Mohammedan may marry four wives, monogamy is much more common. The Arab frankly admits that he finds the latter prefer- able, both on the ground of expense and in the interests of peace and quietness in the home. IX MODERN INHABITANTS OF GOSHEN (continued) SOME MARKED CHARACTERISTICS Though nominally followers of Mohammed, their re- Religion, ligion still retains distinct traces of ancestor-worship and moon- worship, as well as what might be classed as a species of Fetich ism. They endow any monument of antiquity with some sort of miraculous power, either the power of healing sickness or of giving offspring to the childless. This is perhaps to be regarded really as a phase of ancestor- worship. We mention elsewhere an instance of this at Belbeys, where visitors came regularly to the tomb of the Sheikh Sadun to invoke the aid of the spirit of this benefactor of his race in the removal of their troubles. Not only did the poor come but even people of wealth and good standing bringing their servants with them. At Shibin a similar instance was observed. The people there endowed the large alabaster paving-blocks, which once formed the floor of the hall of the summer palace of Rameses III., with the same gift of healing, or they regarded them as the abode of some beneficent spirit of bygone days. They came there with their troubles, walked round them many times, and before leaving 157 158 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT Sympa- deposited pieces of their clothing or of their plaited Magic ^^^^ blocks, weighting them with a small stone to prevent the wind from removing them. On one occasion an old Arab brought a sickly buffalo which he drove round and round the stones a number of times, evidently with the same hope of a cure being effected. It is difficult to see in this anything but an example of sympathetic magic. The piece of garment or hair is obviously intended as a medium through which each one's cure may be effected. It serves also to keep them in constant touch with the Afreet, or spirit inhabiting the stone, while at the same time it acts as a means by which the spirit may distinguish and recognise each owner. Charms. Like their ancestors the people generally wear amulets or charms, only the beautiful blue glaze figures of deities are now replaced by the much more prosaic charm written on paper and sewn into a small leather case. These are worn sometimes round the neck, sometimes attached to parts of their dress or belongings. Tt is quite a common sight to see buffaloes or other animals wearing similar charms against evil suspended from their necks. Saints. Any person of position, who lived or died in an odour of sanctity or with whose name benevolence had been associated, like those in the line of direct descent from the prophet, seems to become a saint and his tomb is constantly visited by people in trouble, while in any emergency his name will be invoked. In lifting a heavy weight or doing any work where several must work in unison, the men frequently invoke in a sort of rythmic chorus the assistance of some such saint, begin- CHILDREN AT SCHOOL — BELBEVS CHILDREN SABAKHIN ON SAND WALL OF BURRU YUSEF THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 159 ning each fresh etFort with an emphatic invocation of the name. Most people are familiar with the dances of the Moon- dervishes, but few perhaps have seen the milder form ^^^^^^1 which these orgies take in the small villages. When the moon was full our men from Upper Egypt often came out of their huts and arranged themselves in a double row facing each other. One was told off to lead in the centre, and he chanted short passages, while the rest kept up a constant accompaniment repeating the word " Ullah " or " ya UUah " in the deep guttural tone peculiar to the Arab. All the time they swayed and twisted their bodies from side to side in unison, while their feet remained rigid. They begin slowly, but as the excitement grows upon them the speed of both swaying and singing goes on increasing, and they keep this up sometimes till they fall down in sheer exhaustion, while it is no uncommon thing for one or several to rush off to the desert in a mad frenzy, their friends having to pursue and bring them back. This per- formance never took place except during full moon, and it is very probable that it is a moon-worship festival pressed into the service of Mohammedanism. On one occasion at Nagada, in Upper Egypt, we were suddenly aroused between two and three in the morning by a clashing din mingled with excited shouting of men. On coming out we found all our workmen marching in procession into the desert, each one having appropriated an empty petroleum can or biscuit box, or anything that would give forth sound, which he kept beating with all his might, at the same time chanting some appropriate form of words. It was a weird experience, 160 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT and the spasm of excitement which had so visibly laid hold of the men communicated a thrill that added piquancy to the scene. As he rushed past in excited haste, one of them found breath to tell me that a monster had come to steal away the moon, and they were going out to frighten him off. The fact was an eclipse of the moon had occurred, but whether they had known of its coming, or had discovered it by accident, I never found out. They remained in the desert beating their extemporised drums and chanting their weird incantation until a corner of the returning moon became visible, when they returned in a flutter of suppressed excitement and joy in the fact that the moon had once more gained the victory over her malign enemy. Fanati- A prolonged residence among them will probably lead cism. ^Yie conviction that the old fanatical hatred of the Christian, though it appears to slumber, is still keenly alive within their breasts. Continual association with Europeans has partly toned it down, but what most effectively prevents its expression is the knowledge that they cannot indulge it without suffering severely. One therefore never sees in Egypt the bitter and aggressive fanaticism which is everywhere met with in the valley of the Euphrates. While sailing up that river from Niffer to Hillah, in an adverse wind, we were compelled on one occasion to throw ourselves upon the hospitality of an Arab Sheikh for the night. We were received with considerable ceremony, and ushered into his large reception-room built of strong reeds bent into circular arches and covered over with reed matting. The Sheikh was a young man of powerful make, and otherwise impressed us as by far the strongest character THE HEALING-BLOCK (SAND WALL OF AVARIS IN DISTANCE) p. 160 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 161 we had ever met among them. He could not have been more than twenty-five years of age, but his cast of countenance, his ease of manner and dignity of de- portment, marked him out pre-eminently as one born to rule. It was easy to see that he commanded both the respect and obedience of even the grey-haired counsellors who ranged themselves around him. In his sympathies he was intensely Mohammedan, and, therefore, strongly anti-Christian to the point of fanaticism. He first found fault with us for treading on his floor- matting without putting off our boots at the door, and further complained that one of our number had not respectfully salaamed him on his entrance. The first omission having been rectified, when we retired to a corner along with our Jewish agent and the Sheikh to rectify the second, he showed himself completely mollified at once, and then proceeded to discuss with us the respective merits of the three religions which we represented. He held out to us every possible induce- ment to settle with him and become Mohammedan, the climax being that he offered to provide us with wives on the spot ; and when we still refused, he turned away with ill-concealed disgust, and from that moment his attitude lost its tone of hopeful cordiality. When coffee was about to be served, his servant asked if he should provide each of us with a cup, and he replied with great scorn, " Let them all driuk from one cup, and let us smash it afterwards — Christian dogs !" He did not drink with us, thereby omitting the mark of respect usually paid to guests on equal footing. However distasteful it may be to him, the Egyptian of any standing never L 162 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT omits this courtesy. When the Omdeh, or provost, of the village entertained us at Sharhanba he drank from the same cup after us, and passed it round to the other Arab gentlemen who were present ; and only one refused to touch it, and I observed that he neither ate nor drank with us, though he indicated no feeling of antipathy. Fatalism. They are pronounced fatalists — fatalists, in fact, to the exclusion of all individual effort. They look upon themselves as simply parts of a great mechanism con- trolled by a mighty power, whose will they cannot alter or control. Whatever comes to them is kismet — the fate ordained for them, and unavoidable. This deprives them naturally of all power of initiative as individuals, and entirely checks their progress as a nation, if carried to its logical issue. But the more enlightened are not quite slaves to this tenet, nor indeed can they now be regarded as sincere devotees of Mohammed. They make no secret of their scepticism in frank conversation with an educated European. In the case of the average Arab, however, if evil be ahead of him, he deems it useless to try to avert it, even if he see it coming ; and if good, he considers it equally futile to try to hasten its coming. The typical illustration of this is the story of the Arab reclining in the shadow of a crazy old wall, which might fall on him at any moment. A Christian remonstrated, with the object of inducing him to avoid the danger, but he replied : " If it is kismet that I be overwhelmed by this wall, I cannot escape it ; and if it is not, then I am quite safe." This creed serves him well in another way. He will never accept the THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 163 blame of his own mistakes, and thus penitence is a thing entirely foreign to his nature. There is, in fact, no word for regret or penitence in the language of everyday use. The nearest to it, and the word con- stantly used, is the equivalent of our word " sick " or angry." So if he offend another and apologise for it, what he says is mcCalesh^ " it does not matter," " it is nothing," as if he meant to indicate that his mistake was simply part of the great unavoidable, and the other accepts it as such. If you dismiss a lazy, careless workman, telling him why you do so, your admonition will fall on heedless ears. He consoles himself with the reflection, that it is kismet that he should not work. In the same way they acquiesce with the utmost cheerfulness and indifference in the misfortunes of others, much after the manner of Job's friends, recog- nising their suffering as part of the inevitable ordained for them. If their neighbour's house take fire, or is being robbed by a predatory gang, they will even stand by inactive, afraid lest by their interference with what is destined to happen they should divert the dreaded fate to themselves. From this want of combination, a determined band of robbers could at their leisure loot a whole village with impunity. Their lack of initiative is only too apparent. The average Arab has not a spark of enterprise in him. He seldom brings any intelligence to bear upon his work, and he must be subjected to unremitting scrutiny. If you leave it to himself to arrange how a piece of work is to be done, he will either hopelessly muddle it, or do nothing. Express orders he understands, and 164 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT if they are not too complex, he will carry them out to the letter in some cases, but he is never in a worse quandary than when his choice of action is left to himself Among the trained men we found one or two out of fifty who, after several years' experience and drilling, could plan their work and detect the places which would likely prove most profitable. The others, if set to a piece of work and told how to do it, could be relied on to carry out their instructions faithfully ; but the recruit needed constant watching and guidance. It is a feature of all Orientals, that so long as they are kept in a position of dependence or subjection, they will do well, and on the whole prove fairly reliable, but the moment they are exalted to a place of re- sponsibility they become absolutely untrustworthy. The ordinary Arab or Turk may be a very good, reliable servant, but put the robes of office upon him and the rod of power in his hand, and at once he becomes a rapacious, grasping cheat, using his power as a means to enrich his private exchequer. In our work, had we encouraged one to act as foreman, or appeared to be guided by him, we should have found in a few days that he was using this influence to levy blackmail on the other men, under the threat that he would have them dismissed if they refused. We could not even employ a new workman on the recommendation of one already employed for the same reason. The law of moral overstrain holds good of them in a special degree. The Oriental cannot successfully resist any long-continued temptation, even where he is continually overlooked ; much less where there is no one immediately at hand to survey his actions. THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 165 In the Turkish official classes there are explanatory reasons for this, such as the insecurity of their position and the smallness and uncertainty of their pay, but even these are not sufficient to explain away this radical defect in their character. The meanest Oriental, however, possesses one virtue Hospi- to a degree perhaps never equalled, but certainly never excelled, by any European, and that is his hereditary virtue of hospitality. The poorest stranger is not allowed to pass his door without an invitation to enter for rest and refreshment. This is a virtue common to rich and poor alike, and it is performed without hope of any reward, beyond perhaps the gratification of his curiosity in learning something of his guest's affairs ; and even in conversation, if the guest show a disposition to be reticent on his own matters, his host will not show any resentment, nor unduly press the subject. On every occasion when we entered a village, the Sheikh was sure to hear of our presence at once, and immediately he sought us out and entertained us in his reception room with the leading men of the village. The reception room in a small village is very plain as a rule and scantily furnished, but in larger towns it is often comfortably supplied with European furniture. It is always quite distinct from the rooms occupied by the family, and such a visit gives no insight into the family life. The usual furnishing is a cushioned divan at the upper end of the room, on which the honoured guests are seated beside the host, while the rest of the guests seat themselves on the straw matting which covers the floor. 166 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT An Oriental travelling in our country for the first time must feel somewhat bewildered on discovering that there is no such place as a public reception room in our large houses, where all and sundry may expect to find refreshment, or that he may pass door after door and never be invited to enter. He would pro- bably express himself in no measured terms on our apparent churlishness and mercenary spirit. The future must decide how far education is likely to develop the character of these people. The children are now attending school in considerable numbers, and the younger generation can for the most part read and write, but among grown-up men and women very few possess these accomplishments. So far as our observa- tion goes, we always found that the Khatim, or " scribes," who did the letter-writing for the camp, were the dirtiest and laziest, as well as the most worthless work- men in the camp. X TELL Ell RETABEH THE TREASURE-CITY R AMESES DISCOVERED IN 1906 About eight miles from Pithom, and two miles along the desert from the modern station Qassassine, lie the ruins of a very ancient fortress deeply embedded in drifted sand. The series of mounds is known as Tell er Eetabeh. Over twenty years ago Dr Naville cursorily examined the place, and concluded that it must have been a " camp, probably of late-Roman times, one of the military stations posted along the canal leading to the Red Sea " ; and since that time the site has been left unexplored. That it was a fortified camp may be inferred with certainty from the absence of house ruins, and such objects as are usually found in them, as well as the fact that much of it consists of a few enclosing walls filled up with blown sand and ashes. But the work of Dr Petrie here, in the spring of 1906, has proved it to be one of the oldest known sites in this region, and never to have been occupied by the Romans at all. The history of the fort appears to date from the earliest dynasties. A jasper weight of Khety of the ninth dynasty (c. 3106 B.C.), stone vases of the old kingdom, 167 168 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT and scarabs of the ninth to the twelfth dynasties (3100-2500 B.C.) were found on the site; and this evidence is confirmed by the depth of over twelve feet of ruins beneath the buildings of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, and the discovery of a human sacrifice under the oldest wall. While searching for a foundation deposit under this oldest wall, the men came upon a small brick-built grave containing the bones of a very young infant, and beside it a neatly arranged stack of bricks, which had probably been left over after building the grave. A deep pit had been made in the clean gravel, the grave had then been built, the cere- monial burial performed, and the whole pit refilled with dirty gravel, both stack and grave being covered. On the top of the filling lay five inches depth of clean sand, and on the top of this the lowest tier of this oldest brick wall. This is regarded as an instance of Child the Syrian custom of child sacrifice, which was later Sacrifice, j-gpia^^^gj \yy ^j^^ burial of a burning lamp, the extinction of the flame symbolising the extinction of the spark of life. Instances of this custom have been found of frequent occurrence in recent excavations in Palestine. It is a probable inference, therefore, that this fort had been originally built by Syrians, perhaps about the time of the Syrian invasions of Eg3^pt after the sixth dynasty (c. 3330 B.C.), since the custom of child sacrifice has never been traced among the Egyptians. The first fortification of this place would seem to date as early as 3330 B.C., and the occupation to have continued for a considerable period afterwards, for there is an accumulation of fifteen feet of town ruins above this wall before we reach eighteenth-dynasty times. Of THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 169 the Israelite period the most important discovery was the temple of Eameses II. From the first it was Dr Petrie's main quest, and for some time he searched for it to no purpose, making extensive and deep clearances. His only reward was the finding of half the front of the temple, a piece of statuary representing Rameses smiting a Syrian before the god Atmu, which had been dragged away for building purposes and then abandoned. At last, however, just at the end of the season's work, the site of the temple itself was found, and the walls traced. Rameses had built it on the top of fifteen feet of eighteenth- dynasty town rubbish, thus confirming the early occupation of the site. The walls had been of black bricks, the doorway of limestone. The front of the temple had been all of stone. On the left of the door as one entered was the large scene of Rameses smiting the Syrian, the god presenting a falchion to the king ; and on the right was a similar scene of the king before the god Set, of which fragments were found. The stones which had completed the front were picked up at various parts. Over the doorway cartouches were cut, surmounted by two pairs of large feathers. The stone front was " not free-standing, for the brick walls of the fore-court joined on to its ends." It was about fourteen feet long and twelve feet high to the foot of the cornice. The scenes at each side of the door had a stone dado uncarved below them to a height of fifty-six inches, and the door was only twenty-two inches wide. The whole front was painted in bright colours. Atmu wore a blue dress, the kilt having a yellow border, with yellow shoulder-straps and belt. The king's dress was more defaced, but the same colours prevailed. The 170 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT captive wore a tunic with red and blue stripes, with red belt and blue kilt. The body of each, as usual, was red, and the background of the scene was yellow. There was the usual laudatory inscription carved on the stone. Inside the temenos lay a red granite dyad of Rameses and the god Atmu standing side by side, the upper por- tion being defaced and the lower cut away. This must be the double figure statue seen by the lady Sylvia on her pilgrimage in 380 A.D., which her monk guides told her represented Moses and Aaron. Another interesting find of this period is the large house near to the temple site. Inside it were found several jars containing silver. Unfortunately, it had all been melted, and was of no value except for its intrinsic worth. Scarabs of the eighteenth dynasty, and pottery down to the twenty-second, found here show that this occupation of the place probably extended from 1400-800 B.C. A door-jamb from a tomb, which had been re-used in the town, bears an inscription, which Petrie translates as follows : — " Chief archer, keeper of the granaries, keeper of the palace, user-maat-ra-nekhtu-ne-thuku ; chief archer, keeper of the granaries of Ta-nuter," the name being repeated. T^-nuter here means Syria, so that there seems to have been granaries for storing the Syrian produce, as we should expect. The word THUKU is the Semitic Succoth, booths, the name of the first place at which the Israelites halted after leaving Eameses (Exod. xii. 37), and the name of this official is in honour of the king " mighty in Succoth." Mr Griffith, however, reads the inscription, keeper THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 171 of the foreigners of Ta-nuter," or Syria, and he identifies The the " foreigners of Syria " as being the Israelites in q^q\^ Rameses, thus : " Chief archer, keeper of the foreigners Syria, of Syria in Succoth, keeper of the residency in Succoth, USER-MAAT-RA-NEKHTU," taking NE-THUKU from the official's name and reading it with the first part of the inscription. A cemetery yielded a considerable quantity of pottery, beads, scarabs, etc., dating down to the twenty-second dynasty. Only one ushabti was found, and that in the large house, a feature of the district already commented on. Between the first occupation and the eighteenth dynasty the site had been deserted for some time, as is proved by the fact that the later accumulation of town rubbish joins immediately on to the denudation of the earliest walls. This period would probably be the Hyksos period, when there was not the same need for frontier defence. It would appear then, that Eamesis II. built a temple and granaries here, and otherwise embellished the town ; but he does not appear to have rebuilt the fortifications, perhaps because in his time the country was safe from the danger of invasion from Syria. The next fortification of the place is by Rameses III. (1202-1170 B.C.), and under one corner of a gateway his foundation deposit was found. Pans and cups were irregularly laid in the sand, with bones of a sacrifice between them, and glazed offerings of oxen, heads, haunches, ducks, with scarabs, beads, and plaques bear- ing his name, were roughly thrown in above them. This wall had also been denuded, and at a later date still the place had once more been fortified. m THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT The period of occupation which chiefly interests us is, of course, the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, and there is now little doubt that this is the site of the treasure-city of Rameses, at which the Israelites are said to have la])oured. The following are the main grounds of identification : — Grounds ^' Harris papyrus shows that there was a "city of identi- called the house of Ra-messu. Mery. Amen (Eameses II.) containing a temple of Sutekh, where Ramessu. Heq. On (Rameses III.) built a temple to his own name,'* somewhere between the nome Athribis and Bailos. We expect, therefore, to find in Rameses a temple built by Rameses II., and further enlarged or embellished by Rameses III. This temple has been unearthed, and the fact that a fine head of Rameses III. was found in the site shows that he also added to its equipment, and left his statue to commemorate his work. 2. In the temple ruins an inscribed stele was found describing the great achievements of Rameses II. It speaks of him as conquering the hill fortresses of the Bedawin, and " building in cities upon which his name is to eternity." This reference to building in the various cities named after him suggests that this is one of them. 3. On the temple scene already described one line reads, "Atmu, Lord of Succoth, gives him all valour and strength," and thus indicates Succoth as an alternative name for the town, or for the district around (cf. Exod. xii. 37 ; xiii. 20). 4. In an account of a pilgrimage made about 380 A.D. by a lady named Sylvia from North Italy, and published by Gammurini, the lady says that on leaving THE GREAT Hr)USE— RaMESES THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 173 Heroopolis (Pithom) she went to the land of Goshen, sixteen miles distant, and passed through Eameses, which " was only four miles from Goshen." Tell Eetabeh comes nearest to these distances of any site yet suggested. It is eight miles from Pithom, and only a few miles outside the district of Goshen, then known as Arabia. She says, also, that Eameses was then in ruins, and " amid them lay a large stone on which were sculptured two colossal figures." The people told her these represented Moses and Aaron. This undoubtedly refers to the dyad of Eameses and Atmu already described. She saw, also, a " small sycomore tree, which they called the tree of truth," and which the Bishop of Arabia told her was "planted by the patriarchs." It seems to have been largely on account of this reference to the sacred sycomore of Pa-sopt (Goshen), that Naville was inclined to regard the ruins of Goshen town at Saft el henneh as the treasure-city Eameses ; but that site does not accord with the other facts known. It is interesting, however, to see, that by 380 A.D. the Christian religion had got such a hold as to be already adopting the symbols of the ancient religion, and reclothing them with Christian garb. The passage also shows at how early a date heathen monuments had a Christian pedigree given them, in order to satisfy the pilgrim's craving for such information. 5. The inscription on the door-jamb, if we accept Petrie's translation, informs us that there were grain storehouses here, with an official in high favour with the king to look after them. If we take Mr Griffith's translation, " keeper of the foreigners of Ta-nuter, or 174 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT Syria," we should then have a still stronger confirma- tion of the Bible narrative, and practically a reference to the presence of the Israelites at this place, the name of their overseer, or chief taskmaster, being User-maat- ra-nekhtu. The first three syllables of that name are part of the name of Eameses II. himself, the Pharaoh of the oppression, so that this official must have been held in high honour by his sovereign. The cumulative evidence of these facts is very strongly in favour of this having been the store-city of Rameses referred to in Exodus. That it had existed as a border fort for over a thousand years before, or that it was already a considerable city with many inhabitants when he began his work there, or that he added nothing to its fortifications, is no argument against the identification. There is scarcely a town in this region which he did not apply himself to improving and beautifying, so much so that the district was known as the land of Eameses. His work was far more frequently the improving of towns already existing than the foundation of new towns. If more fully examined than time allowed, the site would perhaps yield yet more convincing proofs, but the great and speedy accu- mulation of drift sand renders it a most expensive and unprofitable site to work. One interesting feature of the place was the deep deposit of ashes found all around it ; as if a large encampment of Bedawin had encamped there for some considerable time, leaving no other evidence of their presence but these ashes of extinguished fires, as is always the case with Bedawin. These were found at the level of the nineteenth-dynasty material. It may THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 175 be somewhat fanciful, but we cannot help recalling that the Israelites were Bedawin, tent-dwellers, and that they spent the last of their time in Egypt at Eameses ; and, of course, their tents would have been pitched outside the walls of the town. Another fanciful reminiscence of the Bible story is the blue-glaze frog bowl found in a tomb. Round the brim are nineteen frogs, others are jumping up the sides, and a crowd are going towards the mouth, while one large frog sits on a pedestal in the middle, as if all meant to rush into one's mouth the moment one raises the cup to drink. The spout is a lion's head, and a passage leads from the bottom up the thickness of the side to this head, so that one is able to drink without danger from the frogs. The bowl has probably been a magic cup, drinking from which would ensure fertility, the frog being the sign for multitude, the emblem of the human embryo, and the animal of the goddess Heqt, who gives life to the infant (Petrie). XI BELBEYS BAILOS IN THE "WATER OF RA " Close to the modern Shibin, with its mound of the J ewish Lady, where Dr Petrie discovered the remains of the Hyksos fort Avaris and the Temple of Onaias, is the modern village of Belbeys, whose buildings stand upon the ruins of a very old Egyptian city. There being too little to do at Shibin for the number of our volunteers, Dr Petrie kindly gave me the option of carrying on work of excavation independently at some of the other sites which he wished to explore in the region of Goshen. One of the most important of these is this ancient town at Belbeys, whose story has never yet been read. It is one of the many sites in Egypt whose secret may perhaps never be wrested from it, because of the impossibility of excavating a place where a modern village has been erected on the ruins. But it occupies the southern corner of Goshen, and is, there- fore, likely to contribute material of importance in the history of this region. Nothing was known of it hitherto, beyond the results of a cursory examination of the place by Naville some years before. Naville identified it as the " Pi-Bailos in the water of Ha " of hieroglyphic inscriptions, the water of Ea, as discussed elsewhere, being regarded as the ancient name of the 176 BURIED HOUSES— BELBEYS p. 177 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 177 then somewhat marshy district afterwards known as Goshen. There appears to have been an important town here during the period of the Israelite sojourn, and the cartouche of Rameses II. was found ; but most of the inscriptions recorded by ]N"aville belonged to Nekht-hor-heb of the thirtieth dynasty (c. 350 B.C.). It is well known that this dynasty attempted to bring about a revival of Egypt's ancient glory ; and its monarchs chose the twelfth dynasty as their model, endeavouring to reproduce the work of that dynasty, especially in the sculptured monuments which they erected. Nekht-hor-heb was one of the most active in this revival, and he has left traces of his influence all over this part of the Delta. He must have been a man of considerable force of character, of excellent taste, and of great energy. The partly recovered shrine at Saft (Goshen town) is a lasting monument to his ability and skill, and he appears to have built a temple at Belbeys, also with a sculptured shrine. The monuments found show that the town belonged to the nome Bubastis, and worshipped the deities of that district. It is very likely that Rameses II. built a temple here, but that must still remain in the region of surmise. Naville, how- ever, found nothing of the period between Rameses and Nekht-hor-heb, so that the nineteenth and the thirtieth dynasties would seem to have been the periods when the place was at its best. The most interesting fact, however, about Bailos, or Belbeys, is the statement made about it by Merenptah, the Pharaoh of the Exodus, in his inscription elsewhere discussed, that " the country round Bailos is not culti- vated, but left as pasture for cattle, because of the M 178 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT strangers." This is the only point of living interest to us that is yet known regarding the place. The modern town has almost entirely covered the site. The bazaar occupies the highest part, and pro- bably conceals what would be the excavator's best prize, the ancient temple, which had presumably been built by Rameses II., and which we know received gifts from Rameses III. I have frequently wondered that the modern inhabitants do no excavation themselves, but perhaps it is as well that it should be left entirely to foreigners to rescue for them the past greatness of their country. The one gem in their inheritance, of which they ought to feel most proud, is the one thing of which the modern Egyptian is most ignorant ; and, while the excavator does his work, the native stands by for the most part in pitying contempt. Excavation has only one meaning for the average native. He cannot realise how foreigners should come and expend time, energy, and money for anything but the finding of supposed buried treasure. When what he calls treasure happens to be unearthed, he is lost in admiration for the Feringhi's magical power of divining its existence from so great a distance. "When no " treasure " appears, he will, if he is friendly, feel it necessary to express his deepest sorrow that the excavator's hopes have not been realised, and no amount of explanation will convince him that what does not appear so to him is really treasure of the highest value. When the chief men of their villages came to our work, I found it always im- possible to make them understand that our real object was the building up of the framework of the history of their country. Their invariable question was, " Have .SU FFE H U .\ K A I ; T H K D— B U R K T Y U.>K F p. 179 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 179 you found gold or treasure ? " and their parting good wish, " May Allah give you much treasure." We came to Belbeys having, of course, no hope of being able to explore the town ruins, or of finding the temple. What we sought was perhaps an even more important quest, the ancient cemetery of the place. But in this, too, we were disappointed. A most careful search of the sandy gebel on every side of the town revealed no trace of burials, and I now feel convinced that the modern cemetery between the village and the canal occupies the place of the ancient cemetery. The only spot which offered a faint possibility was the mound known as Tell Sadun, about one mile across the canal into the desert. The mound, crowned with its Sheykhs' tombs and with trees, is quite a striking feature of the landscape. The situation is beautiful. Within a stone-throw of the tomb of the Sheykh et Tayr we pitched our tents and ran up our iron hut, and here we were destined to have pleasant experiences, which will probably never fade from our memory — experiences, interesting not so much in the way of valuable discoveries as in the close intimacy which we enjoyed with the natives and Bedawin around us, and the spell which life in the desert casts upon all who have made a prolonged stay in it. We were on the edge of the vast trackless waste which stretches between the Delta and the upper reaches of the Red Sea, somewhere in close vicinity to the region where the Israelites sojourned. Pithom and Rameses, and the town of Goshen itself, were only a few miles to the east, and everything around seemed to 180 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT speak of a past as if it were still present with us. Our very workmen might have stepped out from the pages of the Book of Exodus. The charm of the desert itself is untranslatable. By day the most beautiful mirage was constantly visible from the door of our hut, and by night the moon sailed majestically in a sea of azure, which the cleverest painter could not transfer to canvas, and such as no Western can ever imagine. We were in the desert, yet in no sense alone. Human companion- ship we were never without. Night after night caravans with their trains of donkeys or camels encamped on the other side of the mound ; and rarely a day passed that did not bring a few votaries to the tomb of the Sheykh Sadun to be healed of their ailments. Life was an ever varying panorama, without one single unpleasant experience to record in our intercourse with the strange people around us. Close by was a farm from which we got milk and water. The farmer w^as not sociable, but he was enterprising and energetic. He is pressing steadily into the gebel, and by persistent irrigation and careful top-dressing is quickly reclaiming to cultivation large tracts of what is now w^aste land, merely waiting for water to make it reasonably productive. On the top of the mound, a few yards from Sheykh Sadun, is an enclosure containing the tombs of the Sheykh Abdul, Sheykh el Bawab and his daughter Fatima, one of them surmounted by a muezzin tower, whose chief peculiarity is that it is never used, for there are none now to hear the call to prayer sounded from its top. That it was not always so, our work on the mound sufficiently showed, for here had been an Arab village, the fires of whose hearths had not been cold for many centuries. THE SOOKH — DRAPERS p. 181 THE EXPLORATION OF_„EGYPT 181 The last habitation of the mound dates not more than 500 or 700 years back, if, indeed, it is not even still more modern. Tell Sadun yielded little of interest. Instead of being part of the cemetery which we sought, it con- tained only the ruins of a series of comparatively late settlements above each other. We cleared out several houses of a late-Roman date, and though we went down a depth of eighteen or twenty feet we found nothing earlier ; nor was there any trace of burials at that depth, as we might have expected, if the earliest settlement had been built upon the site of the cemetery of Bailos. Pottery of a late period was found in these houses. The most interesting house cleared had evidently been a baker's shop and oven of the early- Christian centuries. The oven was built of bricks, waist high, in a corner of the room. The floor of the oven was of mud an inch and a half thick and baked hard. Underneath it was the small furnace, and in the corner opposite lay a pile of firewood. The roof was dome-shaped, and of the same material and thickness as the floor. No trace of a chimney was visible, so that the oven was evidently fired by inserting the glowing ashes of burning wood or charcoal. In the next room a heap of pottery basins, saucers, and many coins of early-Arabic date were found. The Arabs still use ovens made on the same principle. As showing how little change or advance has been made in the matter of house furniture, we found in another house a " suffeh " standing upright in a corner. The suffeh in a modern house is just a cupboard made of mud dried in the sun. It is circular, and resembles an elongated bee-hive, with a hole at the m THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT top for insertion, and one at the bottom for extraction, of the contents. It is in fact a grain storechamber in miniature, and is as often used for storing the wheat to be ground for bread by the women as for anything else. Where the house is small they are built upon the roof, so that often there are several in the common room and a few on the roof as well. It has often struck me in visiting these houses that the " bushel " of the New Testament may have been some similar contrivance for the storing of grain in the house, rather than merely a measure. But in these matters it is obvious that the peasants of Egypt have not improved in the slightest upon the usages of their predecessors of many centuries back. Nile mud still remains the staple material in the manu- facture of both houses and furniture. The formation of this mound is interesting, and reminds us of Retabeh. At the bottom we found Roman remains ; next a layer of clean sand five feet deep ; then a second settlement, again covered with a similar depth of blown sand ; and on the top a third settlement, of comparatively recent date. Five or six feet of clean sand is a large accumulation for the short intervening periods, and can be explained only by the rapidity with which drifted sand accumulates on an unsheltered spot. Our day of rest, which was perforce the " Sookh," or native market day, was regularly heralded by what seemed to us the beating of very large unmusical drums in the neighbourhood of the public slaughter-house, at some distance off. This began at sunrise, and continued for some hours, and proved to be simply the native THE SOOKH— GRAIN MERCHANTS p. 183 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 183 method of skinning a camel, by first blowing him up bard with a large bellows and then beating his hide with heavy sticks. The Sookh in a country village is one of the most interesting sights of modern Egypt, and one which the tourist rarely or never has the opportunity of enjoying. Formerly the cattle and dry goods market was held in an open space in the centre of each village. Of late, however, Government has compelled them to go to a fenced enclosure, built and run by a private company, somewhere outside of the town. This is perhaps wise on sanitary and other grounds, but the natives regard it as a great grievance to have to pay not only a tax for every animal, but also a rent for the stance which they occupy with their goods, when formerly it was free. At Belbeys the ordinary market is still held in the centre of the town, but the cattle market is in an enclosure quite a mile across the canal. As in an ordinary bazaar, like that at Cairo, the merchants of the various trades dispose themselves in lanes, all easily accessible from the main street, which is left clear. On the left as we entered from the town were the dealers in copper utensils busily plying their trade ; next to them the makers of sieves and riddles ; then a large space filled with pottery ware, and, close by, the vegetable vendors. Jammed in between the pottery and the coppersmiths was a lane of gold and silversmiths. These are the greatest sharks in the market, and their prey are the women, who love tawdry jewellery now as much as their ancient predecessors rejoiced in genuine ornaments. On the other side of the main street were the shoemakers' lane, the drapers' lane, the grocers, seedsmen, sweetmeat- 184 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT sellers, fruit merchants, dealers in glass and carnelian jewellery, and the butchers' stalls, all arranged in lanes, and all equally ready to enjoy a joke at each other's expense. There is little of the eagerness to do business that would characterise such a crowd in our country, except when a few tourists appear. The impression one gathers from their attitude is rather that they are all alike indifferent as to whether they make sales or not. Here and there in the moving crowd one stumbles against that picturesque feature of Oriental life, the water seller, with his large skin tankard slung on his back, and the inevitable two or three brass cups rattled against each other in his left hand as an accom- paniment to his ceaseless cry of " moyeh, moyeh " (water, water). To one who is ignorant of the value of his wares, the Arab dealer has no fixed price. The price is regulated by the supposed ignorance of the purchaser. If you choose, you may give him what he asks, and be laughed at all round the Sookh. If you are wise, you will offer as near to the real value as you can, and never vary. The day of rest had another interest for us, because of the many visitors to the Sheykh's tomb beside us. People of every rank and age, mostly women, came there to solicit the aid of the dead Sheykh for the cure of sickness or removal of misfortune, such as childless- ness or want of male issue. It was impossible to find out what orgies or incantations were performed inside the tomb, but the suppliant invariably left a rag of her clothing attached to the wood-work of the tomb proper, to form a sympathetic link between the revered dead and the suffering living, through which, as medium, he THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 185 might effect a cure. The prescription invariably given was, it appears, that the sick person should roll down the stony slope of the mound several times — or rather, perhaps we should say, that the votary further demon- strated her faith in his power by rolling down the slope a greater or less number of times, according to the intensity of the desire within her to be healed. Con- sidering the thinness and scarcity of their apparel this was no mean test of the suppliant's devotion. Before leaving, the women used to break one or two of the cheap glass bracelets commonly worn, and throw them on the ground, either to serve as further sympathetic media, or as devotional offerings ; and Tell Sadun is thus strewn over with the fragments. XII TELL YAHUD — THE MOUND OF THE JEW I. A CHAPTER IX THE HISTORY OF THE EARLY- CHRISTIAN CENTURIES Tell Yahud, the modern Rheyta, is the ruins of a sand-walled fort or camp of Roman times, and in it a Roman garrison of mercenaries had been stationed for a considerable period. For many years it has been a regularly worked quarry for potsherds belonging to that date, which the natives use in the foundations of their better-class houses in the surrounding villages. The supply seems abundant, and that nothing earlier than the peg-bottomed pots of the late-Roman period has been found is evidence sufficient of at least the latest occupation of the site. The ruins lie about four miles south-east of Belbeys, and cover a much larger area than the contemporary Roman camp at Sharhanba. Naville has identified it as the Vicus Judoeorum mentioned in the Antonine Itinerary. The place being far too extensive for a thorough examination in the time at our disposal, we turned our attention at once to the cemetery, which we found in the desert about a mile away. It was very extensive, and must have served a much larger community than we should expect to find in a mere garrison camp. There must have 186 J LK " IK 11 p. 186 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 187 been a large town as well ; and as all the materials unearthed belong to the same period, 200-350 A.D., or thereby, town and camp must have existed con- temporaneously. The modern village being merely a few mud huts huddled together, and offering no facilities for the purchase of necessaries, we decided to let our camp remain at Belbeys and walk the eight miles to and fro each day. The people of the district speak of this as the cemetery of the Jews, using the word practically as we apply the word Roman to the same period of Egyptian history; and occasional visitors enquired whether our excavations confirmed the tradition. There were several colonies of Jews in this district, with Tell el Yahudiyeh as their centre, as we know ; but in the graves examined we found nothing which we could describe as distinctly Jewish, such as Naville found at Tell el Yahudiyeh. It is very likely that there is a Jewish cemetery in the neighbourhood however, though it may now be under cultivation. "We examined in all five diflferent portions of the gebel, wherever we saw traces of burials, and in each we found different peoples or different burial customs represented. The old Egyptian custom of burying with the dead everything necessary for daily use, that they may pass into the next world fully prepared for its needs, seems to have persisted even far down into Christian times. We found burials here which must have been later than Constantine, and, therefore, after 350 A.D., as is proved by coins of his reign found in them ; and in every case the people still buried with their dead the domestic utensils, clothing, ornaments, jewellery and 188 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT toilette perquisites which they had used in life. Though the influence of the first Christian emperor seems to have been strong all over this region, it does not appear that the Christian religion, with its con- ception of the future life, had as yet taken any hold upon the minds of the people, otherwise we should have expected to find that they had abaudoned this custom. In some graves that were evidently the graves of Christians, we found the same practice adhered to. We may divide the contents of these burials into three classes — domestic, ornamental, and general. 1. To the first class belongs all the pottery found. None of it was of any great value, and indeed scarcely an unbroken pot or vase was left, for the graves had all been pillaged many years before, and the fragments of pottery were usually found in the filling near the top. The large peg-bottomed pots of the second to the fourth centuries, and the buff-coloured wine amphorae, often with Greek inscriptions upon the shoulder, were among the commonest. 2. The second class embraces the greater portion of the things found. The most common materials used were iron, bronze, silver, gold, ivory, stucco, and glass. Beads. Of beads we found a large variety in onyx, agate, amethyst, ivory, limestone, glaze, amber, paste, and, commonest of all, glass. The varieties of glass beads w^ere interesting, particularly the large and rare " gold in glass " beads. These were made of blown glass with a thin film of gold leaf somehow affixed to the inside. The ivory beads were well turned, and often three quarters of an inch in diameter. They lay usually near p. 18.S THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 189 the wrist, and may have been used as the modern Arab uses the string of amber beads which goes with full dress, carrying them in his hand and fingering them pensively in his moments of abstracted meditation. By the action of the soil the amber beads had become brown in colour, and so brittle that they needed most careful handling to preserve them. These were never well turned, but of most irregular shape and of many sizes. The larger were shapeless lumps of amber of unequal size, with a hole drilled carelessly and not even through the centre, so that they could never have looked well on a string. They look more like the work of foreigners who handled their tools crudely, than the work of the expert Egyptian. The limestone beads suggest the same thing. They were exceedingly rough and clumsy. The other stone beads were evidently of native production, and some of them of great beauty and value. The greatest variety was found in the glass beads, where the blending of colours was often very pretty. The beads alone bring the date of the cemetery down to the second or third century A.D., for though we found Egyptian beads of an earlier date, the other things around them showed plainly that these had been re- used. Gold and silver had been commonly worn, for the community was manifestly a wealthy one, but the spoilers left nothing of this class except what had escaped their observation. Several gold ear-rings, how- ever, were picked up, and these were of a distinctly foreign, apparently Syrian, design. Finger-rings and ear-rings in silver were quite common, and one Sasanian silver coin was found. 190 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT By far the most of the ornaments found were of bronze, the material commonl}^ used then in the manufacture of cheaper jewellery. Finger-rings, ear-rings, anklets, bracelets, hairpins, buckles, crosses, castanets, discs (perhaps for face veils), necklets, studs, spoons, and pendants were found in large quantities. No fewer than nine different designs Bracelets, of bracelets were represented, all of which were commonly used in both gold and bronze bracelets of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, many centuries before. The commonest were the com- plete ring ; the uncompleted ring, with ends finished but not welded together ; the ring with the two ends bent to form hooks, which fastened into each other ; the ring with the hooks fastened, the ends of the hooks being bent back and strapped down by copper wire, and bronze discs sometimes affixed to cover the fastenings. The twisted wire bracelets were made either of a double copper wire twisted together, or a bronze ring round which was closely wound a thinner copper wire. Occasionally, small bronze bell pendants were found attached to these. Buckles. The buckles were all found in the graves of the garrison soldiers, and had belonged to their sword belts. They were of various sizes, and of designs simi- lar to those still in use. The most valuable was a heavy bronze buckle, with two side pieces to match, which had been affixed to the belt. The three were inlaid with garnet, in one sidepiece forming a cross. It is distinctly non-Egyptian, and has been identified as resembling such work in the region of the Danube, and in this respect has an important bearing upon THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 191 the identification of the soldiers who had been buried here. Among the toilette perquisites, perhaps the most Alabaster interesting were the alabaster ointment-boxes. They were all found in the space left at the head of the boxes, grave for valuables, and beside them the lids and small bronze spoons. The latter had been used for extracting the ointment, and the edges of the boxes were some- times worn by them. They are distinctly of Syrian make, and are probably the nearest yet found to the alabaster ointment-box in common use in the time of Christ. In Mark xiv. 3 it is said that Mary broke the alabaster box before applying the ointment to Jesus' feet. If the word " break " is to be taken literally, that would be almost impossible ; and it seems unnecessary, as well as absurd, that she should have broken it and allowed the pieces to get mixed with the ointment, as would be unavoidable. If you ask an Arab at the present day to open a sealed bottle or vessel, the word which you would use would be a part of the Arabic verb " to break " ; and so probably the original Aramaic word in the Gospel was a part of the verb to break, used also in the sense of " to open," meaning " to break the seal " of wax or resin. The mirrors found are also of a distinctly foreign Glass type. They are made of stucco, some rosette-shaped, and others square, with a triangular piece added to one side, pierced at the top for suspension. In the centre of each was embedded a circular piece of thin glass about two inches in diameter, while the rest of the mirror was usually decorated with crescent-shaped 192 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT pieces similarly embedded. In one mirror these pieces formed a Coptic cross at the top. Their interest lies in the fact that these are the earliest specimens of glass mirrors which we possess. The back of the glass had been covered simply with a coat of black colouring, silverising being as yet unknown. The Coptic cross sufficiently marks them as belonging to Christians, and the other things found with them prove them to belong to the second or third century A.D. In addition to the beads mentioned, some beautiful little ivory cups were found in the same burials with the alabaster boxes. Ivory seems to have been ex- tensively used among the wealthier classes in the form of hairpins and other essentials of a lady's toilette table. These small cups, chastely carved and finished, with neatly fitting lids, had probably served as kohl- pots, or vases, for holding the eye-paint in common use. Some were found with distinct traces of the colouring inside. They had been most carefully placed, with the alabasters at the head, in a layer of fine sand, put there intentionally to preserve them, for the soil of the grave was the ordinary hard black mud. Owing to the admixture of salt in the sand, however, they had become so soft and brittle that not one could be secured complete. Had we had a supply of parafiin wax to melt into the sand around them, they could have been removed complete in a solid lump, and they would have well repaid the trouble. Unfortunately, we were not supplied with this essential, and we could not leave them overnight. 3. The cemetery belongs to the period when bronze was being more and more relegated to the purposes ALABASTER 0I^"TME^•T-BOXES— EARLY CHRLSTIAN, C. 250 A.D. p. 192 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 193 of ornament, and iron was taking its place for the more useful and practical ends of life. In the series of burials on the eastern edge of the Iron gebel, which are afterwards described as the double- ledge graves, and which were almost entirely the burials of men, there was found by the right side of each man an iron sword, complete or in part, wrapped in some sort of cloth, which had long since crumbled to dust, leaving only its pattern upon the rusted iron, or enclosed in a wooden scabbard, the fragments of which still clung to the iron. They were mostly the heavy Eoman sword, about two and a half feet long, though several of the shorter type were also found. They had been fitted into wooden or ivory handles, but only one specimen, and that of ivory, remained. Usually fragments of the leather belt were picked up, with the buckle attached. Of these iron buckles the most interesting consisted "Ring simply of a ring and a pin of iron. They are of large Buckles, size, and closely resemble the style of brooch which used to be worn with the plaid in the Scottish High- lands. One end of the pin was sharpened, while the other end was generally flattened and bent so as to lie close to the ring. The cloth of the garment was drawn through the ring, the pin then pushed through the cloth, and the cloth again drawn back flat. This type of buckle is obviously more primitive than that which was common among Egyptians at this date, and very likely belonged to those mercenaries who, as we shall see, were probably the Rhoetoi, a highland tribe from the region of the Danube. In almost every burial of this class iron nails were Nails. N 194 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT found in large quantities, and of many shapes. In thickness they equal the strong nails used in boat- building now, but they were all exceedingly short, seldom more than two inches long. Some had cross-cut incisions on the head, but no screw nail was found among them. All had wood adhering to them. No cofi&ns had been used in these graves, so that these nails must have belonged to a box or chest placed at the feet of the dead, for the nails were all found in that position ; and these chests must have contained the treasure which was most sought after by the spoilers centuries before, since it was quite noticeable that, even where valuable material was left at the head, only fragments of wood were found at the feet or in the filling. In a few cases locks and keys were picked up. The locks are made of bronze and iron. They appear to have frequently used bronze studs for bolting iron. A considerable collection of daggers, spear-heads, hooks, and pins of iron was obtained here. The knives, or daggers, had been fitted with handles of wood or ivory, but very little trace of the latter remained. Inscribed In the double-ledge graves, stones of every kind were Stones, pi-essed into service, to be laid across the ledges as cover- ing between the body and the filling. Door sockets, finely cut limestone bricks, rough flat slabs, evidently sometimes from another cemetery or a town ruin, were thus employed. Amoag these, two were interesting as bearing inscriptions, which some have thought were in archaic Greek, but which Sir W. M. Ramsay regards as specimens of the rough abbreviated tomb inscriptions of the Byzantine period. One of them reads : " Jesus THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 195 Christ, KiDg of Kings," but the other is so worn as to be unreadable. Originally a large quantity of glass vases had been Roman buried with the dead, but, though we occasionally found fragments sufficient to show the designs, scarcely one complete vase was found. XIII TELL YAHUD THE MOUND OF THE JEW II. BURIAL CUSTOMS OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CENTURIES The care of the dead is a strongly marked feature in every period of Egyptian history. Even the poorest of the poor seem to have made an effort to decently observe the last rites of burial, and to deposit something with the dead, were it but a single vase. The rich, on the other hand, were extravagant in the outfit with which they provided their dead for use in the next world. Not only did they supply them with food and drink, clothing and jewellery of the richest and most expensive nature, but with servants as well, and, in the case of the very richest, with furniture such as few could afford to possess. The tomb itself in these cases was an item of tremendous cost, comparatively speaking, frequently cut in the solid rock, or, as iu the case of the pyramids, built at great expense. In the matter of furnishing, perhaps the tomb of the princess discovered two or three years ago by Mr Quibell of the Cairo Museum marks the climax. There the furniture was on a luxurious scale, stands unique among discoveries of this nature, and is now to be seen in a room of the museum in Cairo, arranged as it was found in the tomb. 196 PREHISTORIC BURIAL — NAOADA p. 197 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 197 The use of soul-houses is another phase of the elabo- rate burial arrangements practised. A fine collection of these was found in some well-preserved burials of the twelfth dynasty last winter at Abydos. In the middle classes we find the same pious observance of all the rites of burial ; and in fact we may give it as a general rule, that every class went to the utmost limit of its means in showing respect for its dead, and in providing them with everything deemed necessary for their future use, according to their rank and station in the world before death. The cemetery of Tell Yahud had belonged to the middle and poorer classes, and a portion of it had been set apart for the foreigners, who occupied the camp as garrison. 1. In all, seven different classes of graves were found. Types of and of these the most interesting were the double-ledge graves. These were cut in the hard black " teen," or jedge mud, of the gebel, which is almost as hard as soft lime- Graves, stone. The grave proper was a narrow space in the bottom, just wide enough to admit the body. On each side of it a ledge of a foot in width was left. The body had been placed in the centre space, and stones then laid across the ledges before the filling was thrown in. Where the earth was soft, the ledges were built of brick. The average measurements were eight feet long, seven deep, and four wide. A whole series of these was found on one part, and, as the swords and other contents show, they belonged to the foreign garrison employed by the Romans. Only two or three burials of women were met with, and at first it looked like a case of separation of sexes in burial. But this is probably 198 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT rather a confirmation of our identification of them as belonging to mercenaries, who would not be likely to have brought wives with them. No trace of a coffin was found in any, the only wood having belonged to the chest deposited at the feet. In No. 31 of this class two persons had been buried, the upper resting upon the stone covering of the lower burial. The stones and the upper body had manifestly been disturbed. They lay on their backs, with their hands by their side, and the feet to the east. By the right side of the lower body half of an iron sword, and near by nine bronze coins, were found. Seven of these coius bore the face of Constantino, five the youthful face and two the face at least of middle age. The burials must, therefore, date after 350 A.D. The upper may have been a later burial, a re-using of an old grave, but that is not likely ; and the pottery of the filling, together with the evidence of similar burials, points to quite as late a date. From beads found in the upper burial, it may appear that this had been of a woman. The pottery was the peg-bottomed pots of the third or fourth century A.D. This class of pottery originally had long pegs for standing in the sand. Later, the peg became a sort of rudimentary appendage, the relic of a custom they were loth to abandon. Finally, the peg was dwarfed, and ended in a raised ring for keeping the water-carrier's strap in place. Those found here were of the latest type. In No. 71 the body had been similarly arranged, and if previously rifled the stones had been carefully replaced. In a space left at the head, and thickly bedded with clean sand, were found the alabaster boxes, THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 199 five in all, two small bronze spoons, several ivory cups, a string of large ivory beads, and a large shell. By the right wrist lay twelve scarabs, and a number of clumsy, ill-shaped beads of limestone. Some of the scarabs bore the cartouche of Thothmes III. of the eighteenth dynasty (c. 1503-1449 B.C.), but were pro- bably late imitations or scarabs re-used. The shell had been used most likely for mixing eye-paint. Evidently this was a burial of a woman of some position, the wife of an officer of the garrison perhaps, a supposition which is confirmed by the absence of sword, knife, or belt. The broken pottery found in the filling half way down was of the class of Greek buff-coloured amphorse, with Greek inscriptions on the shoulder. No. 76 was a similar burial, and had been partially rifled. The ivory cups and hairpins at the head were badly broken. One bronze spoon, several bronze rings and bracelets, and beads of many varieties were found, but the beads were so mixed up that it was impossible to get any clue as to their original arrangement. The pottery was completely smashed, but had been of a superior quality, and many painted sherds were picked out of the filling. There had also been a profusion of Roman glass vases, and the head of a terra-cotta female figure was found, all having been broken before our men opened the grave. In every burial of this class the body had been elaborately swathed in cloth, every limb being sepa- rately wrapped. The articles buried had also been carefully wrapped to preserve them from the damp, and the knives, swords, and even the ivories and ala- basters, showed traces of the cloth. 200 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT Brick- 2. In the brick-arched graves the ledges were built Graves brick, and instead of the stone covering a brick- arched vault was built over the body, and the grave then filled up. In some the interior was entirely plastered, in many only a space of twenty inches deep, where the body lay, was covered with white, blue, or pink plaster. No. 5 of this type was built over one of the previous class, so that this is probably the later mode of burial of the two. No. 198 contained two stucco glass mirrors at the head, with pieces of glass that had belonged to another, showing the black colouring on the back ; bronze hair- pins under the head ; and silver ear-rings, with gold pendants, at the ears. At the neck a quantity of beads, and at the wrists bronze bracelets and a scarab, were picked up. Fragments of a Roman glass bottle of a very pretty design were found in the filling. The body lay in the usual position. No. 200 contained a rosette-shaped mirror, a quantity of beads, including many of the large lozenge-shaped crystal beads, and bronze hairpins at the head and neck ; bronze rings at the fingers, a small black glass bottle, and a small rough clay jug. No. 475 had been covered with a thin layer of pink plaster up to a height of eighteen inches. It was evi- dently the burial of a young girl of a well-to-do family. Gold ear-rings at the ears ; carnelian, onyx, and amber beads at the neck ; bronze bracelets at the wrists ; and fragments of a stucco glass mirror were found. In the space at the head lay an ivory cup, two inches high with lid, and one in diameter ; ivory hairpins ; an ivory kohl- THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 201 tube, decorated with concentric circles and showing traces of the eye-paint ; and a small alabaster box, with lid. Two small scarabs found among the beads were evidently late imitations, and bore meaningless inscriptions. The pottery found in these was the large double- eared buff amphorae, in common use in the third and fourth centuries A.D. No trace of any coffin was found, and though the limbs had been swathed, they were not so elaborately wrapped. It appeared rather as if the body had worn a long loose robe, and this would confirm the opinion usually held that robing was not practised till Christian times. The contents of this class, with the exception of the glass mirrors, which are unique, resemble exactly the things found in Egyptian burials of this late-Roman period, but they are quite distinct in character from those of the previous class. At Saft cemetery the contents of the late portion were exactly similar. In the double-ledge burials the contents show at once that they had belonged to foreigners sojourning in the land. In both these classes also, it should be noted that there was a distinct desire to keep the body from coming in contact with the filling. 3. A very common type of grave was what may be Side- termed the side-scoop, found also at Goshen. An Q°^^g ordinary pit of the usual depth and size served as a shaft, but the grave proper was simply a hole scooped into one side, usually the west, at the bottom of the pit. The opening was walled up with bricks after the burial, and the pit then filled. Occasionally there were holes scooped on each side, and bodies buried in both. m THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT These were invariably poor graves. Nothing was found in them. They were cut where the soil was soft sand, and may have been used on the score of cheapness. The probability is that they are degenerate forms of the shaft and pit tombs. We found several of this class on the western edge of Goshen cemetery, and there the pit led down to a side chamber of considerable size, which contained several bodies, but in no case was anything found buried with them. No trace of cotfin or wrapping was found, and there was no attempt to Dust to keep the body separate from the soil. This is the only class in this cemetery where the principle of dust to dust in the literal sense prevailed. The bodies lay with feet to the east. It is quite possible, on the other hand, that these are early-Christian burials, which would explain the absence of the usual concomitants of Egyptian burials. Double- ^' double-ziyeh burials two large pots, three to ziyeh four feet in length, eighteen or twenty inches diameter at Burials. mouth, and fourteen inches at the bottom, were placed mouth to mouth with the body enclosed, and the earth piled over them. These had distinctly not been filled with sand after the insertion of the body. They formed a cheap imitation of the fine eighteenth- dynasty slipper-shaped coffins (see Goshen cemetery), but they were of an exceedingly rough make, and showed no attempt at decoration. Burials of this class were very numerous, and were entirely confined to one portion of the cemetery. Two such burials in one square pit were frequent. Five adjacent pits contained ten of these coffins, but beyond the cloth wrappings nothing was found, though the usual paraphernalia THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT m were probably buried with them, as at Goshen cemetery. In every case the pot was smashed open just over the face of the dead, and from the opening thus made the coffin had been rifled without further disturbance of the grave, which thus shows that they had deposited any valuables at the head. In other respects the same arrangements were observed as in the former classes. 5. Another modification of the slipper-shaped was Slab- the pottery slab coffin. In this case the body had 3°^^ been placed in a complete coffin of red fire-baked pottery slabs, nearly two inches thick. Where found complete, the sides of these consisted of four separate slabs, meeting at the waist, the end pieces being attached to two of them, while the bottom, a complete piece, was quite separate from the sides. The lid was also a separate slab, and usually bore the face of the enclosed dead modelled at the top, with the hands in relief down by the sides. The various pieces had been cemented with mud plaster after the body was inserted, and the black earth was then packed hard between the sides of the coffin and of the pit. Sometimes the lid and sides and ends were made in one piece, so that at the burial the body was simply laid on the bottom, which was in position in the grave, and then the upper part of the coffin was placed over it. Inside space had always been left at the head for the things buried, and we found that every lid had been smashed open with a pick just over the face as before. Everything had been carried off. These coffins mostly contained mummies, some of them very good specimens, and evidently imitations of those of the Ptolemaic period, if they 204 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT did uot actually belong to that date, which is not likely, but others were of very poor style. Often two and three such cofifins were found side by side in the same pit. No. 433 contained three, all mummies, and all of different types. The coffin on the west side contained a mummy, the plaster of which was beautifully decorated in blue, white, and pink, with black outlines, the face being done in gilt. In the centre coffin was a mummy finished in plain white plaster, and of a less expensive kind ; while in the third it was impossible to say whether the body had been partly mummified, or not mummified at all. Each consisted of six parts, and every lid was broken over the face. It is not likely that the three, differing so much in character, were contemporaneous interments. The pit had probably had a shaft entrance, like the chamber tombs at Suwa, at one side, so that interments could be made at any time. The best mummy, which bore the face of a man, had been the first, and the middle one the second interment ; and perhaps in the degenerating treatment accorded to each we may trace a corresponding falling away of the family's fortunes. They were carefully examined, in the hope that papyrus manuscripts might have been used in the mummy wrappings, but a coarse kind of linen had been em- ployed, which crumbled away into black dust at the least touch. Nothing of the nature of jewellery or toilette requisites, or pottery, was found in any of this class. 6. A few pot-burials of children were found. These are of the same nature and date as those described under Goshen cemetery. DKGENERATE SIJ I'PK H-SHA I'K D ( OKFIXS, C. 300 A.D. — HHEYTA I liEHISTOlilC Bri'JAI.. NAi.ADA -HoWlNi, >\VATH1NG p. 20-1 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 205 The body invariably lay on its back, with the feet to The east or south-east, and the arms down by the sides. In tionof the the prehistoric burials at Nagada the body was almost Body, invariably on its right side, with the knees bent up towards the chin, and when the body was placed in a sun-dried clay cist the head was often cut off and placed between the knees and the chin. Other evidences of mutilation were also found. Here, however, as at Saft and Suwa, no trace of such arrangement or mutilation was found. It was common to find in a woman's grave that her infant baby had been laid on her breast, or deposited in a small hole scooped in the side of her grave a little higher up. Except in the double-ledge graves, double and even treble interments were quite usual, but in these cases the grave had been a vault with a roof built above the ground level and a shaft down to a side door. As regards the dressing of the dead, in every type Swath- but one swathing was used, and every limb appeared to Rfbing. have been separately sw^athed. It was only in some of the later burials, which we regard as belonging to Christians, that we found swathing replaced by robing. And this coincides with what Dr Petrie found at Hawara, viz. that the practice of robing the dead in a single garment did not come in till Christian times. Tell Yahud has been identified as the Vicus Judaeorum The of the Antonine Itinerary, and there is no reason to cation^of dispute it. The town belongs to the class of which the Site, the sand-girt Hyksos fort at Tell el Yahudiyeh is perhaps the prototype, and the fort or camp at Burru Yusef (The Pits of Joseph) another imitation. It must have been a very large and important place at one time, 206 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT for the ruins still cover a considerable area, in spite of continual denudation by Sabakhin. That it was a large and flourishing town in Roman times is testified by the great quantities of potsherds of that date strewn on the surface, as well as buried in the sand. The contents of the cemetery bear evidence to the same fact. It is very likely, however, that the Eoman occupation of the site was not the first. There is no reason why this may not, like Burru Yusef, have been a fortified store city as early as the eighteenth or nine- teenth dynasty, if not earlier. Of that there is, of course, no positive proof. It is with the Eoman period that we are concerned, and in this connection the name of the modern village " Eheyta," built partly on the site, is significant. It is not a common village name in Egypt, and we know how much they are given to using the same names for villages in different districts. In describing the burials of soldiers we have already indicated several facts which point to their having been foreigners, and from a region north of Italy. The swords and buckles, the ring and pin brooches, the buckle with inlaid garnet, the absence of burials of women in that part, all point to a band of mercenaries stationed at Tell Yahud in the service of the Eomans. Now in the " Notitia Dignitatum," we learn that at the place Scense Veteranorum (The Tents of the Veterans), close by, the Eomans had a garrison stationed, which consisted of an Arab tribe called Thamudeni and of a wing of Rhcetians." Naville identified Scense Veteranorum with Tell el Yahudiyeh, but neither he nor Petrie found any soldier burials at that place. There is nothing unlikely, therefore, in assuming that the THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 207 Khoetians had been later transferred to Yicus Judse- orum (Tell Yahud), and had remained there for a long time, or had, many of them, lost their lives in some insurrection, which would account for the large number of burials. The name " Eheyta " is almost certainly a reminiscence of the sojourn of the Ehoetians here — the " rho " asperate of Greek being represented by the Arabic guttural " rhain." It is true that the word rheyta " means " fields " in Arabic, but nothing is more common in the adoption of a name from another language than to make it conform in spelling to the word most like it in the language adopting it, thus giving an entirely new signification. The word Moses in Hebrew means " drawn out of the water," but it is really the hieroglyphic word " mesu," which means a child, adopted into Hebrew. This seems to be a clear case of tradition preserving for us a historical fact connected with the place by the name of the place itself. XIV TELL EL YAHUDIYEH THE MOUND OF THE JEWISH LADY I. THE MOUND OF ONAIAS AND THE JEWISH TEMPLE In Isaiah xix. 18-19 we read as follows : — " In that day- shall five cities in the land of Egypt speak the language of Canaan, and swear to the Lord of hosts : one shall be called, The city of destruction (or * the city of the sun/ margin). In that day shall there be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to the Lord." There is in this passage a reference either to a pro- spective, or to an actually existing, centre of the worship of Yahweh in Egypt, and hitherto it has been held to refer to the temple built by the high priest Onaias at Leontopolis, in the nome of Heliopolis, the walled mound on the top of which he built it being the " pillar " mentioned by Isaiah. The account given by Josephus is that, when Antiochus entered Jerusalem a conqueror about 154 B.C. and deposed the then high priest, Onaias, on the ground of disaffection, a nephew of tha.t high priest, also named Onaias, seeing all chance of his inheritance gone, determined to migrate to Egypt, in the hope of greater security, and with the express intention it would seem, of founding a Jewish settle- 208 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 209 ment there. Gathering together as many Jews as cared to join him, he came to the ruins of Leontopolis, the city of the lion-headed goddess Bast, and on the border between Syria and Goshen, and chose it as the place of settlement. In the letter which he addressed to the reigning Ptolemy, and which is probably the composition of Josephus, he asks this site that he might build on it a temple to Almighty God, like to the temple of Solomon, to be a centre of worship for all the Jews in Egypt, and promises to raise a corps of mercenaries to serve Ptolemy when he should call upon them if his request be granted. The site was granted, and accord- ing to Josephus he built a " fortress and a temple," not like to that at Jerusalem, but such as resembled a tower of stone sixty cubits high. In the temple, the altar, he says, was an accurate copy of that at Jerusalem, but instead of the seven-branched golden candlestick Onaias placed a hanging gold lamp. He says further, that the entire temple was encompassed with a wall of burnt brick, though it had gates of stone. Such is briefly the only information that we have hitherto possessed of this temple, which played a famous part in the religious life of the East, rivalling the temple of Jerusalem in the splendour of its riches ; and which played no less im- portant a part in the wars of that period, having stood siege probably more than once, as we can; judge by the great quantity of limestone balista balls lying around the base of the mound — a fact which also confirms Josephus' statement, that Onaias built a temple which served as a fortress as well. For 225 years this temple retained its position, but was finally closed by order of the Emperor Vespasian in 71 A.D. o 210 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT About two miles from the railway station of Shibin el kanatir is the mound known as Tell el Yahudiyeh, the mound of the Jewish lady. Even the most cursory examination of the layers discloses the fact that it is artificial, not the gradual accumulation of town deposit for successive centuries, but thrown up for some special purpose and within a very limited time, for the pot- sherds on the top and through all its layers from top to bottom belong to the same period, viz. the second or third century B.C. The discoveries of Dr Flinders Petrie here, in the winter of 1905, leave no doubt that this was the mound on which stood the fortress- temple of Onaias, and the town ruins close by the remains of the ancient Leontopolis ; and, indeed, Dr Petrie's working-out of this site is not only convincing, but is a marvel of successful archaeological induction. The construction of the mound itself suggests the presence of foreigners. When the Egyptians raised such earthworks as we find at Daphnae (Tahpanhes), another border fort where Jewish princesses also sought refuge (Jerem. xliii.), or at Pithom, they first made a cellular network of intersecting brick walls for a foundation, but here the materials are thrown down on the town ruins without any such preparation. At Passover a certain level in the mound were found a number ders^ of large earthenware cylinders, open at both ends, blackened inside by fire, and containing white ashes of wood mixed with earth and bones of lambs in the bottom. They were usually in groups, but occasionally separate cylinders were walled round with bricks plastered with mud. The presence of these suggests a great dedication I'ASSOVEH CYLINDER- -BL ILT VP PASSOVKR CYLINDER THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 211 ceremony in the form of a passover feast, the various tribes having sacrificed together, as the groups of urns show, and each family using one urn and " one lamb for a house" (Exod. xii.). After the feast they had burned the bones, or " whatever was left of it," with ■fire, and finally they extinguished the flame in the urn by throwing in handfuls of earth, which may be a trace of the Syrian custom of burying a lamp and bowl under the foundation of a building, referred to under Rameses. Each urn measured twenty-five inches of an average diameter, and twenty-nine inches in height. The fire had been lit within the urn, and the lamb then suspended over the fire from a crossbar at the top, and so cooked. In 1887 Griffith saw a double row of these urns together, and these had a base " formed of two or three slabs of limestone or bricks." It would seem, therefore, that in the course of the work the date for the celebration of the passover came round, and Jews of the whole diaspora in Egypt gathered together on this mound and held the passover in honour of the founding of the new Jerusalem. On the mound was picked up an ostrakon inscribed in demotic, with the name Abram on it, preceded by the foreign determinative ; and, finally, that Jews did live here is proved beyond dispute by the number of Jewish tombstones found by Naville in the cemetery close by. The cemetery alone indicates the presence of quite a wealthy Jewish community. In other respects the site accords with our data. Josephus calls the place Leontopolis, which means the city of Bast the lion-headed. While the Egyptians occupied the place. Bast had been the chief deity worshipped. On the site of the temple, in the ruins 212 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT of the old town, was discovered a statue of Hor, admiral of the Mediterranean fleet, of the twenty-sixth dynasty, and he held the shrine of Bast in his hands, so that this town was evidently a city of Bast. Taking the stadium at 500 cubits (Petrie), the distance of 180 stadia of Josephus between Memphis and Leontopolis would suit this site, and Dr Petrie also calculates that the height of the mound, with the buildings upon it, would have made one great wall-face of at least 59 cubits, sufficient to justify Josephus in describing it as like to a tower of stone 60 cubits high. Walls. On the north side the lower tiers of a massive brick wall run along the whole length of 716 feet, and to this wall Josephus probably referred when he said the mound was surrounded by a wall of burnt brick, for the wall has been burned in some great conflagration, perhaps during a siege. Burnt brick has never been known to be used in building in Egypt until Roman times. Josephus had, therefore, seen the parts that remained after the destruction, and concluded that the wall must have been originally of burnt brick. Along the eastern face an immense stone wall had been built, and for this an excellent supply of stone lay to hand in the wall of the old Hyksos fort across the ravine. Before being used each stone received a deep bevel round the edges, which has made this wall very closely resemble the walls excavated around the temple at Jerusalem. No such deep bevel has ever been known to be the work of Egyptian builders. At an early date the stones began to disappear for building purposes, and by the time Josephus saw the place there may have been very little trace of the stone wall left THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 213 above gi'ound. Of the walls on the other two sides little remained, but there could be no difficulty in reconstructiDg the original plan. There had been two approaches to the temple on the Ap- top of the mound. One, a sloping pathway on the P^*'^*^^^^. north-east corner, led through the small village, which appeared to have been the Levites' place of abode, for outside of it was found a considerable quantity of the burnt bones of the animals that had been sacrificed in the temple. The other approach was a staircase, plastered white, on the eastern slope ; and this corre- sponds with the staircase which formerly led up to Zion hill from the valley of the Kedron, before that valley was filled up, and the remains of which Dr Petrie excavated in 1891 during his work at Jerusalem. This staircase of Onaias' temple ran straight in line with the main street of the old Jewish town to the east. The street is clearly outlined by the remains of the houses on each side, and it is used as a thorough- fare at the present day. The stairway was composed of two parallel brick walls, each 46 inches thick and 79 inches apart. The intervening space had been filled up with sand. The steps had been of wood, as also the platform at the top between the stair and the gateway of the temple, for no trace of a brick platform was left. The whole had passed through the same conflagration, as the bricks sufficiently showed. There must have been a parapet for the safety of ascent, so that it is calculated that the staircase stood up clear from the slope of the mound to a height of seventeen feet. To one looking from the far end of the town along the street the view of the great stone tower. 214 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT with the staircase glittering white in the sun, running up the slope of the mound to the gate of the temple, which fittingly crowned the summit, must have been very imposing indeed. As for the temple itself nothing remained to give any idea of the appearance of the completed buildings. In fact, all that could be done was to trace the foundation walls, and perhaps by now even that would be im- possible. As reconstructed by Dr Petrie, from these walls it would appear to have had an outer and an inner court of about equal size, and the holy of holies innermost and of smaller dimensions. His general conclusion may best be given in his own words : " The plan of the whole hill is strikingly modelled on that of Jerusalem ; the temple had inner and outer courts like that of Zion, but it was smaller and poorer in size ; and while the hill of Jerusalem was natural, and the temple was built on the top of the rock, here the artificial hill had to be revetted with a great stone wall, which made the temple like a tower sixty cubits high." At the head of the stairway, by the side of the entrance of the temple, the foundation walls of a small square fort or castle were traced, a further reproduction of the temple plan of Jerusalem. It is obvious that a small garrison placed here would quite command the whole place. The stairway, the western wall, and the courts and entrance of the temple would all be at their mercy. The stone wall had been finished with a sloping cornice of stone, intended evidently to throw off the rain. This is interesting, for in Egypt such a pre- caution would scarcely be deemed necessary by builders HYKSOS BUIUAL— AVAHIS p. 215 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 215 familiar with the climate, so that it is a safe inference that " it has been copied from some original in the rainy climate of Palestine." Very few objects were found on the top of the mound apart from the architectural remains. A clay jar-seal, an ear-ring of glass beads on bronze wire, a ram's horn found on the temple platform, and the inscribed ostrakon complete the list. The latter was an account for bricks supplied by two men, one an Egyptian named Harkheb, son of Zeho, and the other named Abram, evidently a Jew. Some bronze coins were also found, all of them belonging to the Ptolemies after Philometor. There is little doubt that here we have got the justi- fication of the reference, or the fulfilment of the prophecy, of Isaiah xix., as well as a wonderful confirmation of the statements of Josephus in detail. It has not been the rule to place much reliance on his statements, and there is a general tendency to distrust the accuracy of details given in such early writings ; but again and again archaeological discoveries have warned us of the rash- ness of discrediting our authorities without possessing indisputable evidence of their erratic tendencies. In this case, we may say that the accuracy of Josephus has been established in the minutest detail, and where there is any divergence the probability is that the right is with him. The mound has yielded to us positive information of what we may describe as an early Jewish mission, the Jewish Church following after its emigrants and seeking to provide them with the opportunity of worshipping after the manner of their fathers — that they might not lapse into heathenism. If this is what Isaiah referred 216 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT to, he appears to have hopefully regarded it also in the light of a foreign mission enterprise ; or at least the hope, that some day, by some such enterprise, the worship of Yahweh would subdue the heathenism in Egypt, was strong in him, for he says : " He shall send them a saviour, and a great one, and he shall deliver them. And the Lord shall be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians shall know the Lord in that day, and shall do sacrifice and oblation ; yea, they shall vow a vow unto the Lord, and perform it " (Isa. xix. 20-21).! ^ As a priest, familiar with the prophet's writings, Onaias may have (as it were) felt himself divinely commissioned to fulfil the saying of Isaiah. XV TELL EL YAHUDIYEH — THE MOUND OF THE JEWISH LADY II. THE HYKSOS FORT AVARIS The interest of the Bible student in the Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings of Egypt, consists in their supposed connection with the early history of the Israelites through Joseph. Very little is as yet known of them, perhaps in part because throughout their occupation of Egypt their main energies were devoted to the con- solidation and defence of their conquest, so that they had no leisure to build monuments, and partly also because after their expulsion the Egyptians made haste to obliterate all traces of their presence. They are supposed to have been a Semitic people from Arabia or the south of Palestine. Petrie has dated their occupation of Egypt from 2098 B.C. to 1587 B.C., a period of 511 years. The last 151 years of this time was practically a continuous struggle between them and the Theban dynasty, and ended in their total expulsion from the country about the year 1587 B.C.; but they appear to have originally conquered and held the whole country, north and south, though they were latterly confined to the northern portion. It was only during this last century and a half that the Theban dynasty 217 m THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT had gradually asserted itself, and gained strength suffi- cient not only to confine them to the Delta, but in turn to become the aggressors. We have very little informa- tion regarding the long-continued struggle. As we shall see, there is probably a reflection of it in the narrative of Joseph. Manetho (cf. Josephus) says that a long and mighty war was carried on between them, until the Hyksos, or Shepherds, were overcome by a king of the southern dynasty named Alisphragmouthosis, which is really the Greek form of a title of Aahmes, the first king of the eighteenth dynasty. He drove them out of the rest of Egypt, and hemmed them up in a place which was called Avaris, a fort of their own. A son of this king besieged them, and they voluntarily surrendered, on condition that they should be allowed to depart from the country unmolested, whithersoever they pleased. They left Egypt with all their families and effects, numbering 240,000 people, and went through the desert toward Syria. In fear of the Assyrians they built and fortified a city in that part now known as Judaea, and named it Jerusalem. Such is the account of Manetho. The only other source of information regarding the struggle is the tomb of the admiral Aahmes at El Kab. He tells of the siege and capture of Avaris, of the pursuit of the Hyksos into Southern Syria, of the siege of Sharhana (Sharuhen), a few miles south of Lachish, in the fifth year (i.e. c. 1582 B.c), and how, after their return, the king quelled two rebellions of the Hyksos remnant in Egypt, and utterly subdued them. In substance the hieroglyphic account of Aahmes agrees with that of Manetho. p. 218 PLASTERED SLOPING FACE OF HTKSOS WALL THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 219 The shepherd kings are charged with having wrought considerable havoc among the monuments and temples during their rule, so much so, that Queen Hat-shep-sut (1516-1481 B.C.), in an inscription on the rock-cut temple at Beni-hasan, describes at some length their injuries to the country. Despite this, however, there is no doubt that this invasion had great effects in changing the character of the Egyptian people, and to it we must trace the beginning of the Semitising of Egypt. When Manetho numbers this great exodus at a quarter of a million, he is not likely to be guilty of any exaggeration. No smaller number of people could have held the country as they did, and such an exodus of a whole race from the land — which they had con- quered and governed so long — is probably unparalleled in the annals of the world. The Semitising of the race may safely be dated from this period, for there must have been considerable intermixture, and what their pre- sence began was further extended soon after, when the conquests of Thothmes III. in Asia (1503-1449 B.C.) implanted in his kingdom the customs, ideas, and manners of the Syrians. Thus we may say that by the time of the Israelite sojourn Egypt had been practically Semitised, and there already existed a strong racial and mental affinity between the inhabitants of Syria and those of Egypt ; and that this affinity deepened as years rolled on is amply borne out by the Old Testa- ment records themselves. Any discovery, therefore, which tends to throw light on so interesting a page of history, must be of the utmost value, and when the whole history of the Hyksos can be authentically written, it will materially assist us 220 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT in estimating the true value of the early records of the Old Testament. Some additional light was thrown on the history of this people by Dr Petrie's discovery of this very fort Avaris in 1905. It was, in fact, the walls and ruins of this fort that Onaias laid under contribution for the building of his fortress and temple ; and the fort once known as Avaris, was in later times known by the name Leontopolis. It had originally been a square enclosure, each side measuring roughly 500 yards, and the walls were not of the usual Egyptian solid brickwork, but of sand, with an outside sloping face sixty feet in length. The only means of entrance had been a sloping ascent 200 feet long, and at a later date this had been flanked on both sides with a strong wall, from which the defenders could harass a storming party. The sloping face of the wall had been covered all over with a layer of white plaster about one quarter of an inch thick. The whole formation points to a people who were dependent on projectiles in warfare, and Petrie con- cludes that archery was the type of fighting employed by the earliest settlers here, the sloping face being intended to make projectiles glance harmlessly off with an upward flight. Experience, however, evidently soon showed them that their barbarian methods of warfare were of little avail against the people among whom they had come to settle, and in a few generations a massive stone wall had been thrown up all round from the bottom of the plastered slope, while the space between this slope and the finished stone wall had been filled in with sand, which accounts for the preservation of so much of the plaster intact. The remains of this stone THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 221 wall Onaias appropriated for the eastern side of the mound. Petrie regards this as a camp built in one of the earliest invasions of the Hyksos, and identifies it with the ancient Hat-uart, which was later known as Avaris. The most serious difficulty in its identification is the statement of Josephus, that it was garrisoned by 240,000 men, and covered 10,000 arouras, which would mean a camp "nearly 3 J miles square." Regarding the later history of the place only a few slight indications were found. A dyad of Rameses II. and a god seated side by side, and a column with the names of Merenptah inscribed on it, point to a temple founded probably by the former, and added to by the latter monarch of the eighteenth dynasty. Rameses III. of the twentieth dynasty cut away one Jbalf of the original fortification, and built on the site his beautiful summer palace, part of which was still standing twenty years ago, though all that now remains of it are a few of the alabaster blocks, with which the entrance hall was paved. In the twenty-sixth dynasty there must still have been a temple here to Bast, the lion-headed goddess, as is proved by the statue of Hor found on the temple site. The inscription on this statue describes Hor as " Chief of the royal fighting ships in the great green sea, Hor, whose good name is Psamtek, commander of the lands of the Hanebu (Greeks)." This sufficiently shows that he was admiral of the Mediterranean fleet under Psamtek of the twenty-six dynasty. The statue is a kneeling figure, of which the head has been lost, and in the hands is placed the shrine of the goddess Bast, m THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT which is thus evidence indisputable that the lion-headed goddess was worshipped here, and confirms the identifi- cation of the site as the Leontopolis of Onaias' da^^ Five graves were found in the interior of the camp, all of them containing scarabs of the Hyksos period, " with pottery copied from the earlier Egyptian types, and imported pottery of the black incised ware." Others within the camp had been already explored by natives. All the graves found within the camp, and the oldest of those in the cemetery to the east of the site, Dr Petrie has set down as belonging to the period of the H3'^ksos, " a few centuries before and after 2000 B.C." p. 222 THE LARGE MOUND — BUKRL' YUSEF XVI BURRU YUSEF THE PITS OF JOSEPH A STOREHOUSE FORT OF THE ISRAELITE PERIOD FOUNTAIN OF HORUS Tell Sharhanba — or, as the natives call the place, Burrn Yusef, the pits of Joseph — is situated one hour's walk north-west of Belbeys, surrounded on every side by cultivated fields, and can be reached only by a narrow footpath striking off the railway a little above Belbeys station. The sole means of conveyance to it is by donkey or camel. A situation like this is most un- comfortable for the excavator. The modern village has no bazaar, and is otherwise entirely devoid of interest. Hemmed in on every side by cultivation, we here missed the freedom and exhilarating atmosphere of the desert sadly, all the more so that the work was slow, owing to the excessive hardness of the ground. Though only four miles from Belbeys, the place is quite a generation behind it in every way. The people are just out of the run of the tourists, and having never brushed against Europeans, are inclined to look upon them with some- thing of the old fanatical suspicion which we find so strong still in the interior of Babylonia. They main- tained the attitude of suspicious reserve throughout our stay, except on the occasion of some great religious 223 224 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT festival, when both old and young manifested a desire to be on friendly terms, shaking hands effusively when they met us, and inviting us to their music and feasting in the evening. Like Tell Yahud, this is the remains of a sand-walled fort, built probably after the model of the Hyksos fort at Shibin, but at a much later date. The highest point of the sand still standing is thirty to forty feet above the level of the fields, and on the top of this workmen are continually grubbing and carrying away the sand for building purposes or for sabakh. From the villages around, a constant stream of donkeys and camels with panniers keeps going to and fro on the same errand. This has been going on for many centuries, so that it is not surprising that in many places the sand has entirely disappeared, and soon there will be no evidence left to show that this was a strongly fortified place in Roman times. Where the sand came from originally it is difiS- cult to say, but as it must have been got close by, it is plain that when the place was fortified with sand walls the land around was not cultivated as it is now. This would be another confirmation of Merenptah's descrip- tion of the country round Belbeys, that it was marshy, uncultivated, and left for pasture to flocks. It is quite likely that the desert came close up to it then, though it has since receded so far through the inroads made upon it by cultivation and irrigation. The first few days' work sufficiently proved that the place had been previously fortified with massive brick walls, and the sand walls traversed these without the slightest attempt being made to use them as retaining walls. The sloping sand had been faced with a heavy THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT m coating of the ordinary black " tin " (teen), or mud, re- markable for its adhesiveness and hardness when dry, and a retaining wall had been built inside to keep it in place. In this respect it resembled the fort of the Hyksos, that it had a sloping face outside and a per- pendicular wall inside, though it can hardly have been designed for a bow and arrow warfare. Below the sand, at various points, we found not only the old brick wall embedded, but also the walls of many ruined houses and accumulated layers of town rubbish, so that we were left in no doubt as to the relative dates of the two walls. The sand wall is undoubtedly the later, and belongs to the same period as Rheyta, a late-Eoman period. The massive brick wall is much earlier. At the western corner the whole mass remains almost intact to a height of fifty feet or more. It must have been in- corporated with the sand fortification, and it is now a Moslem cemetery, covered on the top with the tombs of a great Sheykh and some other benefactors of the race. The sanctity thus conferred upon it has been largely the means of its preservation. The excitement was great when our men set to work to examine the western facing of this corner. Deputation after deputation of men and women interviewed us on the matter, thinking we intended to undermine the venerated Sheykh. The language of the women especially, who came to abuse our men, will scarcely bear repetition, but they submitted to it all with stolid indifference, knowing that their real motive was the desire for bakshish, and that we had already arranged the matter with the Omdeh of the village, p 226 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT The wall here was thirty-three feet thick, and strengthened on the outside by a powerful sloping face of heavy black mud, resting on a base of fifteen to twenty feet in breadth, and reaching almost to the top. Between the Avest and the south corners of the fort the brick wall had entirely disappeared, but we picked it up again at the south corner, and so right on to the east, where it still stood to a considerable height, embedded in the sand. From the east, half way to the northern corner, it was easily traced under the sand. Here it ended in a gate, and from this point not the slightest trace of it could be found again. From the northern to the western corner nothing could be seen of it except a strong foundation of the heavy black mud. About four-fifths of the wall was, therefore, traced for certain. The complete disappearance of it between the west and south, and between the west and north, indicates that during a siege it had been attacked mainly on these sides, and completely razed to the ground. The probable reconstruction of the history of the place is as follows. The older town was a fortress built, or an older place fortified, during the period of unrest succeeding the expulsion of the Shepherd kings. It was only during the first five years of the first king of the eighteenth dynasty (Aahmes, 1587-1562 B.C.) that they were successfully driven out, though the struggle had been going on practically for 151 years. The scene of the final conflict was mainly the district from On to Bubastis, including Goshen, the region which commanded the way of retreat to Syria or Arabia. Our interest in the conflict consists in the fact that it must have THE ANCIENT BRICK WALL — BURRU YUSEF p. 227 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 227 been under one of the last of the Shepherd kings, that Joseph served first as slave, and latterly as chancellor of the exchequer. Their expulsion is regarded as the explanation of Exod. i. 8 : " Now there arose a new king which knew not Joseph," and the coming of the eighteenth -dynasty conquerors, as explanatory of the change in the condition of the Israelites from privileged liberty to down-trodden slavery. It is probable, also, that we find a reflection of this protracted conflict in the narrative of Pharaoh's dream interpreted by Joseph. The dream he interpreted as foreshadowing seven years of abundance followed by seven years of famine, against which he advised Pharaoh to prepare by the storing up of grain in store- house forts. The number seven is probably used here with the usual signification of an indefinite period, like our term " several." Now, the important question here is, what would be likely to cause a famine for several successive years ? Only two explanations are possible. The first possibility is that for several years in succession the Nile inundation failed, but though several instances of this are recorded, there is not one known which can be with certainty assigned to this period, or which satisfies the conditions. The other possible explanation is, that here we have a foreshadowing of the policy of the Hyksos kings to meet the attacks of the Southern dynasty, which was now pressing them more and more severely every year. The dream would thus be an allegorical way of expressing the political situation at the time, and the famine, which actually came, was the dearth caused m THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT by the devastation and plunder of the hostile army. So that Joseph was really outlining a policy, and a wise one, for the storm and stress which, as a skilful steersman he foresaw, the ship of the State would soon have to weather. He advised the immediate erection of fortified storehouses, and the appointment of a man, " discreet and wise," to take charge of them. These would not only ensure a supply of food, but would be secure bases for them to fall back on in emergency. The same policy was continued in the Delta, after their expulsion by their conquerors, to prevent the recurrence of a similar successful inroad from the east. Pithom, Rameses, and Tahpanhes (Daphnae) are examples in the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties. Had we been able to assign the earlier date to the sand wall at Burru-Yusef, we should have felt that this was a Hyksos fort like that at Shibin. As it stands, it had originally been a fort built after the expulsion of the Hyksos, and at what period it had stood siege and been destroyed it is impossible to say. An objection may be raised that this famine spread also to Canaan, but Jacob was not the first to send to Egypt for corn. Abraham had a similar experience (Gen. xii. 10), and scarcity of grain was the rule rather than the exception in Palestine, for it has never been a grain-producing country, least of all at this early period, when there appears to have been no security of tenure, and little or nothing done in the way of cultivation, but every sheep owner allowed his sheep to wander all over the land wherever pasture w^as to be found. While Jacob remained at Shechem his sons were as far north as Doth an, seeking pasture in the highlands. Further- THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT m more, the narrative of Genesis itself supplies us with a sufficient explanation of the possibility of famine there at any time. The country seems to have been pretty much at the mercy of every marauding tribe in the neighbourhood. One of the first things which Abraham did after returning from Egypt, was to rout one of these robber bands, who had scoured the land from north to south, and carried away prisoner Lot with all his be- longings ; and the ringleader of these confederate Sheykhs was Chedor-laomer (Kudur-lagumar), King of Elam (Gen. xiv.). Apart from this, however, the narrative of Jacob's sons' journey to Egypt is the picture of an in- cident of most ordinary occurrence. From the earliest times Egypt has been a great corn-exporting country, and the road between Syria and Egypt was rarely with- out its train of corn-laden donkeys. Palestine, Syria, Cyprus, and probably Asia Minor, if not Greece, were all in the habit of buying corn in Egypt at a very early date, and in later years Egypt became a regular Roman granary. There is little doubt, therefore, that these storehouses (Gen. xli. 56), which Joseph caused to be built in the cities (Gen. xli. 35), were at the same time forts, or in- cluded in forts, and this has invariably proved the case wherever granaries have been unearthed. The granary itself is generally built on to the wall, so as to form a buttress on the inside. The original brick- walled fort, now known as Tell Sharhanba, was for certain occupied from the nineteenth down to the twenty-sixth dynasty, the materials found pointing to this conclusion, but there is every likelihood that it dates from a still earlier period. The inscription 230 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT on the nineteenth -dynasty alabaster vase found here reads : " The singer of Amen-ra, King of the Gods, the praiser of (the temple in) the Fountain of Horus, Taitha," so that the original name of this fortress in hieroglyphics seems to have been the " Fountain of Horus," akin to the ancient name of Goshen, Water of Ra." It was a five-sided enclosure, having its corners south, south-east, east, north, and west. Each corner was specially fortified, and the strongest defence was on the south to east side, just where the attack was most likely to come from. Judging by the present height of the western corner, the walls must have been forty to fifty feet high. One gate was midway between the east and north, another close to the west, and there may have been another between the west and south corners, but there was none on the south side. After its de- ■ struction by siege the place may have been long un- occupied. It was next fortified by the Romans, it seems, and the sand walls are the remains of their work, which is of the same type as their fortification of Tell Yahud (Rheyta). In the interior, the walls of houses and the lines of streets are easily traceable still, but excavations yielded little of any importance. No trace of a temple could be found. The For some time every effort to discover the store- ries^^ houses, which have given the name " Burru Yusef" to the place, failed. When, however, the surface rubbish had been cleared away, I was struck with the configu- ration of some circular mounds near the western gate, and putting a safe man on them, found him soon after- wards going down into a circular chamber of consider- THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 231 able size. The men suggested that it had been a brick kiln, but as there was no trace of burning on the sides, nor any burnt bricks in the filling, that was clearly impossible. The mound next to this contained a similar chamber, and later on other four were cleared to some depth. The six of them were arranged in two rows, and imbedded in a massive brick platform seventy-five feet square. Each measured thirteen feet in diameter, and the same in height from the point where the slope of the roof began. The roofs had been dome-shaped, and as they stood originally these six roofs would have appeared like six overgrown bee-hives, arranged at equal intervals on the top of a level platform fifteen to twenty feet high. In each roof was an opening by which alone it could be filled and emptied, and the chambers were not connected with each other by doors. On the western side a sloping pathway led up to the top of the platform, by which the grain carriers ascended. Nothing was found in them which would give a satis- factory clue to their date, and so far as we could re- construct the original line of the brick wall, the granaries would have formed a sort of bastion on the inner side of it. The pottery found was mainly of one class. A big Pottery, bulging body with pointed bottom, shoulder broad, and neck short, and wide enough just to admit a woman's hand. They were found of all sizes, from three inches up to two feet in height. The smaller had been ornaments or children's toys. We found many of the same shape later on at Suwa, belonging to the twenty-sixth dynasty, but here they had a much finer surface and better finish, and date about the twenty-second dynasty 2S2 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT (950-750 B.C.). Another class of very thick and heavy small vases, with long necks out of all proportion to the body, a ring just where the neck joins the shoulder, large enough to admit the thumb, with ring bottoms, and coloured a warm terra-cotta, were evidently drinking pots, and are likely of Cypriote origin. The fine piece of sculpture, with a head on one side and a full length figure on the other, was found in the ruins of a house, and had been a trial-piece, or design, by some skilful sculptor. It is exceedingly fine work, and probably dates back to the nineteenth-dynasty times. The Oradeh invited us one day to his house to see some archaeological treasure, which he had had brought in from a neighbouring village. It was a block of red granite about two feet square, inscribed with the name of Nekht-hor-heb of the thirtieth dynasty. It may have come from Belbeys, but it is much more likely to have been brought in from Bubastis (modern Zagazig), near by. It was of no intrinsic value, and the impossibility of locating its origin robbed it of any relative value which it might have possessed. XVII THE DATE OF WRITING FRESH LIGHT FROM RECENT DISCOVERIES The importance of this problem as bearing on all criticism of the literature of antiquity is self-evident. The question is not when was writing first used for the preservation of State records or religious annals. What we wish rather to have established on a firm basis of evidence, is the earliest date at which we feel assured that handwriting was commonly known and practised for ordinary purposes, even among the artizan and poorer classes of people. When we find a date at which letter-writing was an accomplishment in common practice, or at which ordinary people were able to write down a record of their personal experiences, it will be a fair inference that handwriting was pretty widely practised at that period. There has hitherto been a decided tendency to assume a late date, and on this assumption part at least of the recent destructive criticism is apparently based. To be told that a writer cannot have written the book which bears his name, because handwriting was not practised in his day, is an objection which compels us either to abandon our author as legendary, or to cast ourselves upon the mercies of oral tradition, 238 234 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT if we are to preserve even the shadow of a real existence for him. But to approach a book purporting to belong to antiquity, with the knowledge that the reputed author ma}^ have written it with his own hand at the supposed date, is to approach it a.t least with an un- biased mind, if not with a predisposition to a belief in its authenticity, until internal evidence disprove it. The following is a brief statement of some of the evidence on this subject, gathered from a portion of the field of antiquity which is under expert archaeological survey : — TheT.A. 1. In Egypt, we find that as early as 1385 B.C. Letters 1 • * • letter-writing was in common practice among govern- ment officials, and there is a presumption that it was practised even earlier still. The now well-known Tell el Amarna Letters are the correspondence of Egyptian allies in various places in Syria, embodying reports on the conditions of the various dependencies in their several districts. They belong to the reigns of Amenhotep III. and Amenhotep IV. (Akhenaten)^ and cover a period from about 1385 to 1865 B.C. They are written in cuneiform, and in the regular epistolary style. Two facts may be inferred from these. Cuneiform must have been well known in Syria at that date, and in Egypt, if it was not generally known, there were officials at the Court of Pharaoh who were able to read these Letters when they arrived. The other inference is, that letter-writing in cuneiform on clay tablets was a common accomplishment among the various rulers of Syrian towns, if not also in Egypt, at the same time. When we remember the Syrian origin and predilections of Akhenaten, there is na THE EXPLORATION OF, EGYPT 235 difficulty in supposing that cuneiform, the official language of Syria at that date, as it appears, would be well known at his Court. The important fact, however, is that in Syria, 170 years before the Israelites had left Egypt, handwriting in cuneiform was commonly prac- tised for the purposes of epistolary communication, and the tablet found by Bliss at Lachish would point to its being known pretty much over Palestine as well. 2. In the reign of Merenptah of the nineteenth Official dynasty (1234-1214 B.C.), who is regarded as the^g^J^^f Pharaoh of the Exodus, the country was exceptionally the Nine- well organised. The frontiers were guarded by strong Dynasty, forts, such as we are familiar with at Daphnse (Tah- panhes) and Pithom, and at each fort a responsible official was stationed, whose duty it was to report in writing the fullest details of everything that happened, and of every person that passed to and from the country. Thus we have one official on the Sinai frontier reporting in the third year of Merenptah, that in ten days eight important people and seven official despatches had crossed the frontier ; while another reports, in the eighth year of the same reign, that he had admitted "'a tribe of Shasu (Bedawin) from Aduma (Etham) through the fortress of Thuku (Succoth), to the lakes of Pa-tum (Pithom), in the land of Succoth, to feed themselves and their herds." It is clear, therefore, that while the Israelites were still in Egypt, handwriting was practised by even minor officials of the Court, and letters and despatches were passing and repassing between Syria and Egypt, as well as between the Pharaoh and his representatives at the various forts. 236 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT The 3. The papyrus of Unuamen is the record of a Q^^nu- joui'^^y niade by that officer, about 1100 B.C., to amen, Palestine, to fetch cedar logs for the buildiug of a boat B. the god Amen-ra. It is a long document, and is a valuable mirror of the life of the time. Though some suggest it may be a novel, it professes to be a diary of events that happened to him on this voyage. He came to the town of Dir, in the region of Zakar, where Badir, the chief, detained him for five months, neither supplying the logs nor allowing him an interview. When at last he is admitted to his presence, Badir demands his papers to prove his genuineness, but these he had unfortunately left with the Prince of Tanis in the Delta, who supplied him with ships. Badir there- upon suggests a somewhat novel test of his authenticity. He offers to supply the logs, but to rig his ships so heavily, that if a storm arise they will unavoidably founder. Then if Unuamen is really in the employ of Amen, and if Amen keeps his word, he will chain Sutekh (storm) in his hour, and thereby Badir will know that he has had a genuine commission to come on this " cadging voyage." This test is declined, and a messenger is despatched to Tanis, who returns with the necessary proofs, in the shape of " four vases and a basin of gold, seven vases of silver, and much leather and stuffs, and dried fish." Thereafter the work pro- ceeds merrily until the ships are laden ready to start, when suddenly a band of Zakru (Cretan) pirates, who describe themselves somewhat ironically as the "guardians of the helpless," appear on the scene, and renew the troubles of Unuamen. Badir plays the double part, sends a present to Unuamen to comfort THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 237 him, aud arranges with the pirates to pursue him after he sends him away. Unuamen escapes, and is cast upon the shores of Alasya (North Syria or Cyprus), where he is roughly dragged into the presence of Queen Hataba who, however, treats him kindly on hearing his story. There he rests for a time, and proceeds to Tyre, whence he next goes to Zakar-baal, King of Capuna (Byblos), but is in turn chased from there. The whole story is told with a dash of picturesqueness, which gives it an interest quite apart from its historic value. Its value to us, however, in this connection, is the proof it affords of the fact, that by 1100 B.C. handwriting was so commonly practised as to be used not only in the writing of letters, such as Unuamen wrote for the messenger to the Prince of Tanis, but also in the recording of each day's ex- periences in the form of a diary. If we assume that the papyrus is a novel and not a diary, its evidence is still more enhanced in value, for we may infer that a fictional narrative of this kind would not be prepared if there were not also a public skilful enough to read it. A further point of value in the story is the fact, that at the first interview, when Unuamen appealed to Badir to supply the wood, as his ancestors had done to former Pharaohs, Badir caused the ''journals of his ancestors " to be brought in and read to Unuamen, where it was found recorded that a former prince of Egypt had paid 1000 deben of silver (£400) on a similar occasion. Thus, even at Dir, in the district of Zakar, the identification of which places does not seem to be fixed, though they must be somewhere on the coast of Syria, handwriting was also in common use. m THE EXPLORATION OFpGYPT and regular journals kept, recording the dealings of the chiefs with their neighbours. At the period of Unuamen's visit to Dir, the Israelites were under the government of the Judges (1097 B.C.). Hand- 4. In the winter of 1904-5 Dr Petrie, in his work Snait^^^^^ the Sinaitic peninsula, found still more valuable Miners, evidence of the early use of handwriting, even among B.c.^°° the poorer classes, for ordinary purposes. The turquoise mines at Serabit were worked by the Egyptiaos from the eighteenth -dynasty times, and every year an official was sent from Egypt with a squad of Egyptian mining engineers, who worked the mines only during part of the year, and returned home after burying their heavier tools and furnishings under the floors of their huts. But the natives of the peninsula were also largely employed, and these common workmen erected their own statuettes and tablets on the rocks, engraving them with a writing of their own, and recording facts which they wished to be commemorated. They appear to have possessed a handwriting which is neither Egyptian nor Phenician, and at a date three centuries before the recognised date of the Exodus, i.e. c. 1500 B.C. The rudeness and irregularity of these inscriptions, says Petrie (Sinai), shows they were not the work of trained Egyptian craftsmen. Nor can this writing be regarded as the exclusive property of the official or educated classes, for the same reason. They were put there by men who could not command the abilities of an ordinary Egyptian craftsman ; and they give us positive evidence, that in the peninsula of Sinai, three hundred years before the Exodus, there were THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT m ordinary working miners who possessed the accom- plishment of handwriting in an alphabet hitherto unknown. 5. Evidence of the use of handwriting at a date Cretan prior even to the preceding has been discovered by Mr tSns"^" Arthur J. Evans in his work of exploration in Crete. 1800-2000 B C At Cnossos " ink-written inscriptions on vases " were found, dating as early as 1800-2000 B.C. ; and Mr Evans infers from this, that writings on papyrus or other perishable materials were in existence at that period too, since ink would scarcely be made and employed merely for writing on terra-cotta vases, with- out the possibility of using it on other material being also known. The practice of writing on ostraka has persisted throughout the whole period of ancient civilisa- tion. Their cheapness, and the fact that broken pieces of pottery would always be lying to hand, are in them- selves sufficient explanation of the persistency of the custom. We find them constantly used at dates long after papyrus was employed. The fact of their being used very extensively at any period of a nation's history is, therefore, no guarantee that they were being em- ployed because they possessed no other writing material. But even if we think Mr Evans' inference of the existence of papyrus, and its employment in writing at that date, hardly justifiable, he has none the less given us definite corroborative proof of the use of handwriting in the east of the Mediterranean at a period 600 or 800 years prior to the accepted date of the Exodus (1215 B.C.). There is a tendency to assume that the use of writing for the commemoration of important events on 240 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT monuments, or steles, is in the natural order of the development of civilisation likely to precede its em- ployment for literary and more personal purposes, such as the writing of letters or diaries. This is probably due to the fact that we possess inscriptions on monu- ments of a much earlier date than any writing on more perishable material. It is quite possible, however, that the natural assumption is in the opposite direction, viz. that handwriting was likely to be in common use for ordinary purposes before ever it was thought of employ- ing it on stone or other imperishable material. But, whichever preceded the other, it is not likely that any long interval existed between the practice of writing for the recording of events of public importance, and its employment for personal purposes, and the very difficulty of writing upon stone would speedily lead to the dis- covery of some softer and more practicable material. It is incredible, that with civilisation at such a height as we find it on the shores of the Levant as early as 1500 B.C., the people would go on using the accom- plishment of handwriting merely for purely public or political purposes, or for records on temple walls and monuments, and never dream of applying it to the pur- poses of everyday life. In the order of development of materials used, the clay tablet seems to take pre- cedence. The potsherd and papyrus seem to have existed simultaneously throughout, though the use of the former dates prior to the discovery of the latter. Assyrian 6. To all these points of evidence we may add the frora^^^ fact, that whole libraries of clay tablets, with and with- 3800 B.C. out baked clay envelopes, have been found in temple THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT Ul sites in Babylonia, written in the cuneiform language, and dealing with almost every branch of learning. These tablets date from as early as the time of Naram- Sin, who is understood to have ruled in Babylonia about 3800 B.C. At what period the cuneiform language and literature began to be known on the coasts of the Levant, we do not know for certain ; but the Tell el Amarna Letters prove that by 1500 or 1600 B.C. both were "known and studied in Egypt" (Pinches), and in Syria and Palestine as well. The probability is, that they were known and used there at a still earlier date, especially in the case of the latter-mentioned places, which were continually coming into contact, if not con- flict, with the Assyrians. We are thus in possession of definite proofs that handwriting was in common use in the east of the Mediterranean as early as 1800 B.C., and the several documents adduced show that it was quite generally practised for all the ordinary purposes of life in Egypt, Sinai, Syria, and Palestine before the Israelites had left Egypt, as well as during their occupation of Palestine under the Judges. In the face of these facts, therefore, the criticism of writings belonging to, or dealing with, this period cannot be too guarded. (a) While Merenptah, their last oppressor, was having Israelites' regular communication with Syria and Palestine through ^ith his officials, the Israelites, we presume, were still Q^j'fg^^" sojourning in Egypt in the condition of slaves, as it is tion. generally stated. The Bible itself, however, proves that they were an organised people under the control of another race, and still enjoying certain privileges. In Exodus V. 15 we learn that the " officers " of the Q 242 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT children of Israel came and cried unto Pharaoh, saying, " Wherefore dealest thou thus with thy servants?" From this passage and elsewhere we infer, that among the Israelites themselves there were at least two classes, the ordinary workman, or working slave, and the superin- tending officer, or overseer. (b) When we consider how well organised in every way the Government of Egypt was at this period, we may safely infer also that these officers of the children of Israel had to send in periodical reports of the work done under their charge, and that, where oral reports were impossible owing to distance from the Court, these reports would have to be in writing. That such daily reports were made to the taskmasters set over them by these Israelite officers seems proved by Exodus v. 14, where the officers are beaten because the men under them had not made the necessary tale of bricks for the day. When the work was at a distance from the Court, as in the case of Pithom and Rameses, we should pro- bably assume that written reports of the progress of the work would be sent in by the Egyptian taskmasters, who would undoubtedly accompany them. But even if we cannot credit the Israelite officers with the ability to write such reports, we are still left with the fact that even such minor officials as these taskmasters would be skilled enough in the art of writing to do so. Nothing could be more in accordance with the energetic and prac- tical character of Rameses IT., or Merenptah, his successor, than that they should demand constant information as to how the work, in which they were so deeply interested, was progressing ; and if the governors of border forts of the same time were able to keep their royal masters so THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT US well informed of current events in their various posi- tions by written reports, there is nothing improbable in assuming that other minor officials were able to do the same. In the face of this, we cannot but assume that the most ordinary Israelite was at least familiar with the practice of handwriting, even if he did not himself possess it, while a well-educated Israelite may be presumed to have himself possessed the accoinplishmeDt. (c) Yet another inference must be drawn here. These Israelites were evidently admitted to very close contact with that wonderful organism of bygone days, the Egyptian Government of the eighteenth to nine- teenth dynasties, and their officers had been allowed considerable freedom of access to the presence of the Pharaoh himself They had apparently been in the habit of approaching him directly in any difficulty that arose with his people, which is quite intelligible in the days before the Pharaoh arose who knew not Joseph ; but even in these later and less fortunate times they seem to have done the same, though with a vastly different result. All this goes to jDrove that the Hebrews, though in the position of slaves, were, at least the better class of them, in direct communication with the Court of Pharaoh ; and all of them must have been familiar with the many accomplishments, whether writing, sculpture, or painting, practised by the Egyptians of that time. If, therefore, we accept Moses as a historical character, and if we believe the account of Exodus that he was brought up as a prince of the house of Pharaoh, it would be absurd to suppose that he was unfamiliar 244 THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT with such accomplishments. He would be trained in every accomplishment known at the Court, and certainly in those which the Pharaoh expected even his minor officials to possess. So far then as handwriting is con- cerned, there is not the slightest difficulty in accepting him as the author of at least the kernel of the Penta- teuch. We may even go further with safety, and assume that in the host which accompanied him out of Egypt there were bound to be many skilled artisans, and many who could engrave skilfully upon stone. Accept- ing also the forty years' sojourn in the wilderness as Bedawin as historical, it is quite easy to see how these accomplishments may have been entirely lost to the race, where there was neither opportunity to practise them nor to teach them to the rising generation. A nation can lose a good deal of its acquired endowment, if plunged for forty years into surroundings where there is no occasion to make use of it, or where other faculties are rendered more essential by force of circumstances, though it may not lose any of its inherited char- acteristics. By the narrative itself, there were at least men among them who were capable of working in brass and gold, of moulding and forming a calf of gold from the women's orna- ments, and a serpent of brass (Exod. xxxii. and Num. xxi.). Indeed, in view of all that we know of that period, we may accept it as nothing extraordinary or unlikely that such a man as Moses did actually exist, that he was well versed in all Egyptian learning and religious lore, that (accepting the Biblical account of his position and education as fact) he may very well have been the THE EXPLORATION OF EGYPT 245 originator of the Old Testament code of morality, that he may with equal probability have written down the kernel of it with his own hand, and that it was to some extent the outcome of his Egyptian education — to what extent remains yet to be demonstrated. THE END INDEX Aahmes, King, 30, 110, 218 Aahmes, Admiral, 30, 31, 218 Abdi-taba, Ebed-tob, 58 seq. Abd-milki, 46 Abi-railki, 54, 55 Adonis, 65 Aduma, Etham, SO, 81, 112 Akabah, Gulf, 85 Akhenaten, 42 et alia Akhithabu, Ahitub, 49 Akka, 60, 66 Alabaster, 191, etc. Alashia, Cyprus, 46, 64. 66, 237 Ali Marah, 137 Amarna, Tell el, Letters, 40 seq., 234 Amenhotep II., 39; Amenhotep ill., 40, 43, 234; Amenhotep IV., 40, 42, 43, 234 iZrrr'}^^' ^^'^^"^ Ancestor-worship, 157, 158, 184 Apophis, Pharaoh of Joseph, 76 seq. Arabia, nome, 107 Aram-Naharaim, 44 Asenath, 77 Ashtarti, 49, 64 Asqaluna, 46 Assyrian, ti.blets, 240 AvaVis, 30, 76. 217, 220 Aziru, King of Amurri, 50, etc. Azzati, Gaza, 46 Baal-zephon, 82 Bailos, 112, 176 seq, Balumi, Balaam, 49 Bast, 212 et alia, 221 Bat-shar, Beth-Shur, 66 Beads, 125, 188 Bedawin, 142 Belbeys, 176 aeq. Benjamin of Tudela, 111 Bethel-shelters, 72 seq. Biruna, \ Birutu, >55, 57 Beirut, j Bit-ninib, 60 Bracelets, 126. 190 Bronze, 126, 188, 192, 194 Bubastis, 226, 232 Buckles, 190, 193 Burial customs— iM-aelite period, 120, 131, 137 ; Early Christian, 188, 197 Burials —Israelite, 119 ; Infants, 122 Burru-Yusef-Pits of Joseph, 223 Buruzilim, 5G Bushel, 182 Carchemish, 34, 67 Cemeteries, 23, 116, 187 Census, Israel, 88 seg. Chariots, 32, 34 Charms, 158 246 Chedor-laomer, 229 Children, Egyptian, 151, 155 Chronology of O.T. from Exodus, 103 Climate, 13 Coarseness, women and children, 155, 225 Constantlne, 187, 198 Cretan— early writing, 239 ; pirates, 236 Cuneiform, in Syria and Egypt, 41, 234 Cyprus, «e€ Alashia; Vases, 125: Pottery, 232 Dagox, 64 Damascus, 48 Daphnae, 104 Diary of Unuamen, 237 Divorce, 154 Dream -pillars, 72 Dreams, 72 ; Phai'aoh's, 75, 227 Dudu, 93 Dushratta, 44, 45 Dust to dust, 202 E ah- PLUGS, 128 Ear-rings, 126, 137, 189 Education, 151, 166 Elatli, 86 Elim, Ain Hawara, 84 Empire, Eeyptian, 41 Etham, 81, 112 Evans, Arthur J., 239 Excavation, work, methods, 9, 178 Exodus— route, SO seq.; date, 92 seq.. 102 Ezion-geber, 86 Famine, in Egypt, 75 seq., 227; in Pales- tine, 228 Fanaticism, 160 Farm-implements, 145 Fatalism, 162 Fellahin, 145 Fetichism, 157 Fiction, early Egyptian, 71. 236 Flints, 20 Fountain of Honis, 230 Fragiles, handling of, 24 Frog-bowl, 175 Gabala, Gebalites, 60 Galilee in 1379 B.C., 49; cities of, 49 Glass— mirrors. 191 ; Roman, 195 Gold, 126, 1&9 Goshen— population, 88, 106; of Israelite times, 109 seq. ; Water of Ra, 111 ; town, 113 seq.; cemetery, 116; date of, 129; inhabitants of Israelite period, 137 ; religion, 139 ; modem inhabitants, 142 seq. INDEX 247 Government in Syria, 62 seq. Graia — scarcity in Palestine, 223 ; scarcity in Egypt, 36 Granaries, 230 Grenfell, Dr B. P., 116,132 Griffith, Mr, 211 Gubla-Gabala (Gebalites), 50 Handwriting, earliest, 233 seq. Hanebu— Greeks, 221 Hataba, Queen of Cyprus, 237 Hat-uart. 221 Heliopolis, On, 110, 111, 120, 226 Heroopolis — Pithom, 82 Hittitfs, see Khita, Khatti, 33, 43, 47, 61, 65, 66, 67, 92 Hor, Admiral of Mediterranean Fleet, 212. 221 Hospitality, Arab, 165 Huts, 12 Ryksos, Kings, 30, 93, 212, 217, 218 : de- struction of monuments by, 219, 222 Infant burials, 122 Inscriptions, 25; tombston-s, 194; statue of Hor, 221; aUbaster vase, 230; Sinaitic miners, 238 Iron, 193, etc. - ' L Irrigation, 146 Israel— Stele i)f Merenptah, 68, 94 Israelites, 70; Census, 88, 113; Burials, 119; Foreigners of Syria, 171, 174; Strangers, 177; Handwriting, 241; Egyptian influence on, 241; overseers and men, 242; Taskmaster of, 171 Ivory, 188; cups, 192 Jerusalem, 58, 60, 61, cf. Uru-^alira Jewelleiy of Israelite period, 125; later, 188 Josepb,71, 113; tomb, 120. 227, 228 Josenhus. 209 ; accuracy, 215, 221 Joshua, 48, 59, 62, 63 Journals of Ancestors, 237 Judges— ciironology, 97, 100 seq. Kaduro (Hazor), 66 Kash, 50, 52, 56, 67 Kedesh, 66, etc. Khabiri, 48, 50 = Hebrews, 94 Kbalu = (Palestine), 63 Khazati (Gaza), 59 Khazui-a (flazor), 68 Khatti ) Hittices. 33, 43, 47, 61, 66-68, 65, Khita i 66 Khikhubta, 52 Kohl-pots, 127 Lakisha, Lachish, 46 Language, 15 Lemanen— Lebanon, G6 Leontopolis, 209, 210, 212, 222 Locks, 194 Magic, sympathetic, 158, 184 Mahler, i)r, 95 Mandoline, 1000 B.C., 124 Manetho, 218 et alia Marah, 84 Marma, L. Merom, 66 Maniage, 152 seq. Mask^, clay, 134 Mastabas, 131 Megiddo, 31, 58, 60 Melkhizedek, 63 -Memphis, 74. 77 Merenptah, 68, 80, 235 Midianites, So Migdol, 82 Mirrors, 127, 191 Mitanni, 44 Moloch, 64 Moon-worship, 157, 159 Moph or Xoph= Memphis Moral overstrain, 164 Moses— historical, 243 seq. Mounds, 21 Mummies, 132, 203 Nagada, 12. 20, 117, 159 Naharaina, 31, 33, 66, 67 Nails, 193 Xaptikuriria (Ameahotep IV.), 43, 234 Nuram-Sin, 13, 241 Navil'e, D.- E., 95, 167, 173, 186, 206 Ntcho 11., IOj Necklaces, 126, etc. Nectanebo, Nekht-hor-heb, 114, 177, 232 Nimmuria, Ameiihotep III., 43, 234, etc. Ninepins, 20 Ninm-, Queen, 60 Xiy, 31, 34. 39 Noph. cf. Memphis Nuffar, 13, 160 Officials, native, 16 Official reports, early, 235 Ointment-boxes, alabaster, 191 On, cf. Heliopnlis Onaias— Mound, 208, 210; Temple, 212 seq. Ostrakun inscribed, 211, 215, 239 Oveas, 181. Papyrus, 132, 236 Pa-Sopt, Pi-saptu = Goshen, 107 Passover cylinders, 210 Pendants, 127 Pentam-, poem of, 67, 68 Petrie, Dr W. M. F., 11, 22, 24, 29, 34, 42, 63, 67, 72, 78, 84, 88 i«<7,. 100, 112, 167, 175, 2v5, 210, 238 Phucusa, Phagusa,/^"' Pharan, 86 (Feir