DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14391#0017
STORE-CITY OF PITHOM AND
THE EOUTE OF THE EXODUS.
3
and travellers. But most of the sites have not
yet been identified ; and except a few famous
places like Heliopolis, Tanis, Meudes, and Bu-
bastis, the reconstruction of the geography is
still a guess-work, in which conjecture occupies
a large place. The only means of bringing some
light to bear on these obscure questions is to
make excavations. At this present time fresh
and decisive information is to be expected not so
nruch from the study of written texts, as from
the pick and spade.
Owing to the uncertainty in the determination
of localities, two very different theories have
been started as to the route of the Exodus and
the sea which the Israelites had to cross. The
old theory makes them start from Wadi Tumilat
and cross the sea somewhere in the neighbour-
hood of Suez. The new theory originated by Dr.
Schleiden and M. Brugsch supposes them to
have departed from the country round Tanis,
and maintains that the crossing of the sea must
be understood as meaning that the Israelites
followed a narrow causeway between the
Mediterranean and the Serbonian bog. That
dangerous track still exists at present, and is
subject to be wholly washed over when there is
a heavy sea.
This last theory, which has been advocated
with a great deal of learning and supported by
very ingenious arguments, has occasioned much
discussion, not only among Egyptologists, but
also among those who take interest in biblical
geography. On which side lay the truth? Would
it ever be possible to arrive at any certain con-
clusion, or at least to find one or two definite
points of that famous route? This very im-
portant and obscure question has been brought
before the English public in the most complete
and scientific way, in a series of papers1 by the
distinguished secretary of our society, Miss
1 "Was Eamses II. the Pharaoh of the Oppression ?" by
Amelia B. Edwards. A series of Papers in " Knowledge/'
years 1882 and 1883.
Amelia B. Edwards, who, after having gathered
and sifted the evidence on both sides, discarded
M. Brugsch's opinion, and adhered to M. Lep-
sius's view, so placing Raamses at Maskhutah,
and Pithom at Abu Suleyman, near the railway
station of Abu Hammed.
The question re-opened by those papers, and
the desire to come nearer if possible to the
solution of the Exodus problem, induced the
society to choose Maskhutah from among the
various localities where the kindness and the
liberality of M. Maspero allowed excavations to
be made. And thus the great task of the explo-
ration of the Eastern Delta was begun.
Before attempting to excavate, it was neces-
sary to study the monuments formerly discovered
near M. Paponot's villa by the French engineer
M. Jaillon, and now deposited in one of the
squares of Ismailiah. They consist, as has been
said before, of a monolith of red granite; a great
tablet of the same stone ; two sphinxes in black
granite ; and a broken naos of red sandstone of
the same style and material as those which may
be seen at San. The naos is also a monolith,
but the inner part is not empty. It contains a
recumbent sphinx with a human head, not
detached, rising from the floor.
One sees at first sight that all these monu-
ments have been dedicated to the god Turn, of
whom the other form is Horemkhu, Harmachis,
the same who was worshipped at Heliopolis.
It is he who is represented on both sides of the
tablet, once as Turn, with a human head bearing
the double diadem, and once as Harmachis,with
a hawk's head surmounted by a solar disk.
Another emblem of Harmachis is the sphinx
with a human head, of which a gigantic example
is seen in the sphinx near the Great Pyramid.
Each time Barneses II. is mentioned he is spoken
of as the friend of Turn or Harmachis. It is
clear therefore that Turn was the god of the city.
It is true that the name of Pi Turn, the abode of
Turn, is not to be found on the monuments of
Ismailiah; but it may have been carved on the
b 2
THE EOUTE OF THE EXODUS.
3
and travellers. But most of the sites have not
yet been identified ; and except a few famous
places like Heliopolis, Tanis, Meudes, and Bu-
bastis, the reconstruction of the geography is
still a guess-work, in which conjecture occupies
a large place. The only means of bringing some
light to bear on these obscure questions is to
make excavations. At this present time fresh
and decisive information is to be expected not so
nruch from the study of written texts, as from
the pick and spade.
Owing to the uncertainty in the determination
of localities, two very different theories have
been started as to the route of the Exodus and
the sea which the Israelites had to cross. The
old theory makes them start from Wadi Tumilat
and cross the sea somewhere in the neighbour-
hood of Suez. The new theory originated by Dr.
Schleiden and M. Brugsch supposes them to
have departed from the country round Tanis,
and maintains that the crossing of the sea must
be understood as meaning that the Israelites
followed a narrow causeway between the
Mediterranean and the Serbonian bog. That
dangerous track still exists at present, and is
subject to be wholly washed over when there is
a heavy sea.
This last theory, which has been advocated
with a great deal of learning and supported by
very ingenious arguments, has occasioned much
discussion, not only among Egyptologists, but
also among those who take interest in biblical
geography. On which side lay the truth? Would
it ever be possible to arrive at any certain con-
clusion, or at least to find one or two definite
points of that famous route? This very im-
portant and obscure question has been brought
before the English public in the most complete
and scientific way, in a series of papers1 by the
distinguished secretary of our society, Miss
1 "Was Eamses II. the Pharaoh of the Oppression ?" by
Amelia B. Edwards. A series of Papers in " Knowledge/'
years 1882 and 1883.
Amelia B. Edwards, who, after having gathered
and sifted the evidence on both sides, discarded
M. Brugsch's opinion, and adhered to M. Lep-
sius's view, so placing Raamses at Maskhutah,
and Pithom at Abu Suleyman, near the railway
station of Abu Hammed.
The question re-opened by those papers, and
the desire to come nearer if possible to the
solution of the Exodus problem, induced the
society to choose Maskhutah from among the
various localities where the kindness and the
liberality of M. Maspero allowed excavations to
be made. And thus the great task of the explo-
ration of the Eastern Delta was begun.
Before attempting to excavate, it was neces-
sary to study the monuments formerly discovered
near M. Paponot's villa by the French engineer
M. Jaillon, and now deposited in one of the
squares of Ismailiah. They consist, as has been
said before, of a monolith of red granite; a great
tablet of the same stone ; two sphinxes in black
granite ; and a broken naos of red sandstone of
the same style and material as those which may
be seen at San. The naos is also a monolith,
but the inner part is not empty. It contains a
recumbent sphinx with a human head, not
detached, rising from the floor.
One sees at first sight that all these monu-
ments have been dedicated to the god Turn, of
whom the other form is Horemkhu, Harmachis,
the same who was worshipped at Heliopolis.
It is he who is represented on both sides of the
tablet, once as Turn, with a human head bearing
the double diadem, and once as Harmachis,with
a hawk's head surmounted by a solar disk.
Another emblem of Harmachis is the sphinx
with a human head, of which a gigantic example
is seen in the sphinx near the Great Pyramid.
Each time Barneses II. is mentioned he is spoken
of as the friend of Turn or Harmachis. It is
clear therefore that Turn was the god of the city.
It is true that the name of Pi Turn, the abode of
Turn, is not to be found on the monuments of
Ismailiah; but it may have been carved on the
b 2