ABSTRACT
In attempting to trace the route of the children of Israel from Egypt to Sinai, we are beset by difficulties which almost preclude the possibility of a definite or satisfactory conclusion.
We have already seen that the boundary-line between Egypt and the desert is uncertain and fluctuating, dependent not on fixed and natural, but on varying and artificial, conditions. It is determined by the energy with which irrigation is carried out. The conflict between the fertilising river and the encroaching sand-between Osiris and Typhon, as the old mythology symbolised it
-is conducted with ever-varying alternations of victory and defeat. Under the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies, canals had pushed the frontier of Egypt forward into districts which are now utterly desolate and barren. Recent discoveries enable us to fix, with tolerable certainty, the site of Raamses, which formed the startingpoint of the Exodus. But at the present day Raamses lies outside the limits of cultivation, and is buried beneath the sands of the desert. Where was Succoth-the shepherds' hooths-which formed the first halting-place? And where was " Etham, which is in the edge of the wilderness" ? 1 In the changed condition of the country we can discover no premisses to warrant a positive conclusion as to these important sites. The question is still further complicated by geological changes in the isthmus. The Red Sea formerly extended much farther to the north than at present. An upheaval of the soil has cut off the district now known as the Bitter Lakes from the head of the Gulf of Suez. And there is some evidence to prove that this upheaval has taken place at a period subsequent to the Exodus. It is then possible, perhaps even probable, that Pi-hahiroth, Migdol, and Baal-zephon must be soughtfor,not where the present coast-line of the Red Sea would indicate, but many miles to the north of where the town of Suez now stands. After a careful balancing of the arguments adduced by Eyptologists and Biblical expositors, I come to the conclusion that this is the case. Without presuming to dogmatise upon so difficult and complicated a problem, the theory which places the line of transit through the sea somewhere near Shaloof, a station on the canal about fifteen miles north of Suez, seems to me to have the greatest weight
of evidence in its favour.l We thus adopt the cogent arguments of Brugsch and others as to the line of route, and escape the difficulty of supposing, with them, that the passage was through the Serbonian Bog, or the Bitter Lakes, instead of through the sea, as the narrative evidently requires.
