Egyptian belief and modern thought / by James Bonwick.

  • James Bonwick
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Egyptian belief and modern thought / by James Bonwick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    He then tracks them in a returning south-westerly direction, toward the Bitter Lakes, and thence southerly and south-easterlj'^, leaving Suez on the right. The crossing he places very much nearer the IMediter- ranean than the Red Sea proper, even north of the Bitter Lakes, and on a highway out of Egypt, along a route marked by the presence of ruined cities. What width of water there was there, or what con- stituted the miracle of the passage, are questions beside the mark. The poet may have taken a poet’s license in exaggerated description, but the people ever afterwards dwelt upon some great deliverance. Naturally, this German savant objects to the introduction of the phrase Red S'm, which ought not, says he, to have been used, as the crossing was not over a sea, but on a line of swamps and inland lakes, remnants of a communication once existing between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, and utilized by a canal in the time of the Pharaohs. Cities have disappeared in swamp or sands. Brugsch identifies Pithom, Pithan, or Succoth Pithon with Heracleopolis of the inscrip- tions. Pithan lay between Tanis, once capital of the Hycsos, and Pelusium by the border. There is historical proof of a strange people living once in the district of Pithan, though an Egyptian garrison was there. The country around was known as Sukot, when,ce the name of Succoth, the first station after leaving Ramses, the point of Is- raelitish departure. We read of Sokhot-Zoan, and plain of Zoan, on a monument of Ramses II, of the nineteenth dynasty. Thothmes III. started on his expedition into Canaan, B.C. 1600, from Zoan-Ramses ; and Ramses II. there concluded a peace with the foreign Khetians. Brugsch supposes four stations, separated by as many days’ Journey ; Ramses, the coast of Sakot, Khetan, and Migdol. Khetan he recog- nizes as Etham, a fortified post. Now, Ramses, Succoth, Etham, and Migdol are said to have been a day’s journey apart. A papyrus at our Museum, dated about the Exodus era, mentions an arrival of some parties at Sukot on the tenth day of the month, and at Khetan on the twelfth. One left the palace at Ramses, reaching Sukot the day after, and Khetan on the third day. The Schour desert of the Bible is the country of the Wall, north of Migdol, at the end of Lake Sirbonis. This was once a lagune covered with the papyrus, but is now dry desert. North of that again was a narrow tongue of land close along the Mediterranean. As that toiT^ue was the high-road at that ancient time to Palestine, Brugsch concludes the Israelites passed along it from Migdol, which is a little south of it. The entrance to the gulf between Migdol and the sea was at Pihahiroth. Baal-zephon, or “master of the north,” was the Semitic god Ammon of the lagunes.
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