[FN#197] This is the nursery version of the Exodus, old as Josephus and St. Jerome, and completely changed by the light of modern learning.  The Children of Israel quitted their homes about Memphis (as if a large horde of half-nomadic shepherds would be suffered in the richest and most crowded home of Egypt).  They marched by the Wady Musa that debouches upon the Gulf of Suez a short way below the port now temporarily ruined by its own folly and the ill-will of M. de Lesseps; and they made the “Sea of Sedge” (Suez Gulf) through the valley bounded by what is still called Jabal ’Atakah, the Mountain of Deliverance, and its parallel range, Abu Durayj (of small steps).  Here the waters were opened and the host passed over to the “Wells of Moses,” erstwhile a popular picnic place on the Arabian side; but according to one local legend (for which see my Pilgrimage, i. 294-97) they crossed the sea north of Tur, the spot being still called “Birkat Far’aun"=Pharoah’s Pool.  Such also is the modern legend amongst the Arabs, who learned their lesson from the Christians (not the Jews) in the days when the Copts and the Greeks (ivth century) invented “Mount Sinai.”  And the reader will do well to remember that the native annalists of Ancient Egypt, which conscientiously relate all her defeats and subjugations by the Ethiopians, Persians, etc., utterly ignore the very name of Hebrew, Sons of Israel, etc.

I cannot conceal my astonishment at finding a specialist journal like the “Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund” (Oct., 1887) admitting such a paper as that entitled “The Exode,” by R. F. Hutchinson, M.D.  For this writer the labours of the last half-century are non-existing.  Job is still the “oldest book” in the world.  The Rev. Charles Forster’s absurdity, “Israel in the wilderness,” gives valuable assistance.  Goshen is Mr. Chester’s Tell Fakus (not, however, far wrong in this) instead of the long depression by the Copts still called “Gesem” or “Gesemeh,” the frontier-land through which the middle course of the Suez Canal runs.  “Succoth,” tabernacles, is confounded with the Arab.  “Sakf” = a roof.  Letopolis, the “key of the Exode,” and identified with the site where Babylon (Old Cairo) was afterwards built, is placed on the right instead of the left bank of the Nile.  “Bahr Kulzum” is the “Sea of the Swallowing-up,” in lieu of The Closing.  El-Tih, “the wandering,” is identified with Wady Musa to the west of the Suez Gulf.  And so forth.  What could the able Editor have been doing?

Students of this still disputed question will consult “The Shrine of Saft el-Henneh and the Land of Goschen,” by Edouard Naville, fifth Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund.  Published by order of the Committee.  London, Trubner, 1837.