Naville, Edouard: The store-city of Pithom and the route of the Exodus (London, 1888)

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

The first edition of this Memoir was, as I said in the Preface, the first-fruits
of the work of the Egypt Exploration Fund, which has since gone on from
year to year in several parts of the Delta. While my friend and colleague
Mr. Flinders Petrie discovered Naukratis and Daphnae, I attempted several
places in the Ouadi Tumilat. None of them except Bubastis, which I have
only just begun, has given such important results as Pithom. However, the
work at Saft el Henneh, Tell Rotab and Tell el Yahoodieh has brought some
additional light on several questions raised in this Memoir. When, therefore,
the Committee of the Fund desired a new edition of this Memoir to be
published, I thought it could not be done without a careful revision, completing
the evidence, correcting the translations, filling up some gaps, answering
objections put forward by high authorities, and stating where my views may
have been modified. The reader will see that a good deal more has been
translated of the great tablet of Pithom. The text itself has been revised from
a new set of paper casts. The Appendix I, which answered an article of
Lepsius written nearly two years before the publication of the Memoir, has
been replaced by another discussing objections raised by French and German
scholars on my interpretation of Herodotus. The changes in my views bear
only on questions of detail, in fact they consist chiefly in my admitting the
existence of two Clusma, and fixing the site of Serapiu Pikerehet a little
farther south. It has necessitated the drawing of a new Map. But the main
points of the paper are the same, and especially what I consider to be the route
of the Exodus. A more thorough knowledge of the country has not led me
to alter the direction which I proposed, and Avhich seems to me in accordance
with the circumstances, and the nature of the land.

EDOUARD NAVILLE.

Malagny, near Geneva.
November, 1887.