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https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14391#0052
conjectui^es, some of which are quite at variance
with the Egyptian and even the Greek texts.
It certainly sounds startling to hear that the
name Patumos is not the Greek form of Pithom
and does not mean the house of Turn, but that
it is the equivalent of Thou, which is derived
from Thuku. I am still more surprised to see
that my statements1 as to the double name of
the capital, the religious name Pithom and the
civil name Thuku or Thukut, are interpreted
as meaning that the eighth nome had two
capitals, one Pithom Hero on the east, and the
other Thuku, twenty-four miles distant on the
west. I need not revert at the end of this
memoir to the character of those two names
applying to the same place, Thuku being first
a border district containing Pithom, and after-
wards becoming the civil name of the city
dedicated to Turn. I do not think any Egypto-
logist will admit that this Thuku-Thou can be
the civitas Arabia, the metropolis of the Arabian
nome, which we know through Ptolemy to have
been Phacusa ; because in that case Thuku
would belong to another nome. It would
be shifted from the eighth to the twentieth,
while it is never mentioned as belonging to any
other nome than the eighth, the Heroopolitan.
The hypothesis that Thuku is Thou, twenty-
four miles distant from Ero, is absolutely con-
tradicted by the Egyptian geographical lists.
I believe, therefore, that we can safely go on
considering Patumos as the Greek form of
Pithom, the city discovered at Tell el Maskhutah.
Before leaving Herodotus, I should like to
examine an argument derived from the same
author and put forward by Prof. Dillmann.
The eminent Hebrew scholar says that the
extent of the Red Sea as far as Lake Timsah
at the time of the Exodus, as I have stated it,
is an opinion which has long appeared to him
1 " Nach Naville wird in den hieroglyphischen Namenlisten
dem achten Nomos von Niederaegypten als Haupstadt gege-
ben Laid Pi Turn, bald Thuku oder Thuket, also entweder
Pithom bei Hero oder Thou," 1.1. p. G.
most probable, but that one of the chief objec-
tions is the statement of Herodotus, followed
by Strabo, who gives the distance from the
mount Casius to the Arabian Gulf as being of
1000 stadia, which is nearly twice what it ought
to be if the sea went near Ero.2 This objection,
which seems very serious at first sight, is on
the contrary one of the most interesting con-
firmations of the fact that at the time of
Herodotus the sea extended at least as far as
the northern end of the Bitter Lakes. Prof.
Dillmann overlooks here a very important
fact, that nothing is more discussed and un-
certain than the unit of measure, the stadium of
Herodotus. The point on which all agree is
that the distances given by the Greek author,
not in Egypt only, but also in other parts of
the world, such as the length of the Caspian
Sea or the journey from Athens to Pisa, contain
a number of stadia twice as high as it ought
to be. Two different ways have been proposed
for solving the difficulty. D'Anville, Gosselin,3
and Jomard,4 in their elaborate researches on
the subject, admit the existence in Herodotus
of a so-called short stadium, which would
correspond nearly with the stadium of Aris-
totle of 111 1^ in the degree; while Letronne,
Hultsch and Lepsius believe that the distances
given to Herodotus were expressed in the
measure called o-^oti^o?, which he thought to
contain sixty stadia while it contains only thirty.
The result of this error of reduction is that his
stadium would have only 98^ metres instead of
185.5 Fortunately, we are not obliged to give
a verdict on this theoretical question between
such high authorities, and we have a much
2 Die Angabe ist wenn sie fur die Entfernung von Pelu-
sium und Hero gelten soil, falsch, urn die Halfte zu hoch.
Dillmann, 1.1., p. 7.
De 1'evaluation et de l'emploi des mesures itineraries
Grecques et Eomaines, p. 16.
4 Memoire sur le systeme metrique des anciens Egyptiens,
p. 117 et suiv.
5 Leps., Das Stadium unci die Gradmessung des Eratos-
thenes. Aeg. Zeitschr. 1877, p. 4.
with the Egyptian and even the Greek texts.
It certainly sounds startling to hear that the
name Patumos is not the Greek form of Pithom
and does not mean the house of Turn, but that
it is the equivalent of Thou, which is derived
from Thuku. I am still more surprised to see
that my statements1 as to the double name of
the capital, the religious name Pithom and the
civil name Thuku or Thukut, are interpreted
as meaning that the eighth nome had two
capitals, one Pithom Hero on the east, and the
other Thuku, twenty-four miles distant on the
west. I need not revert at the end of this
memoir to the character of those two names
applying to the same place, Thuku being first
a border district containing Pithom, and after-
wards becoming the civil name of the city
dedicated to Turn. I do not think any Egypto-
logist will admit that this Thuku-Thou can be
the civitas Arabia, the metropolis of the Arabian
nome, which we know through Ptolemy to have
been Phacusa ; because in that case Thuku
would belong to another nome. It would
be shifted from the eighth to the twentieth,
while it is never mentioned as belonging to any
other nome than the eighth, the Heroopolitan.
The hypothesis that Thuku is Thou, twenty-
four miles distant from Ero, is absolutely con-
tradicted by the Egyptian geographical lists.
I believe, therefore, that we can safely go on
considering Patumos as the Greek form of
Pithom, the city discovered at Tell el Maskhutah.
Before leaving Herodotus, I should like to
examine an argument derived from the same
author and put forward by Prof. Dillmann.
The eminent Hebrew scholar says that the
extent of the Red Sea as far as Lake Timsah
at the time of the Exodus, as I have stated it,
is an opinion which has long appeared to him
1 " Nach Naville wird in den hieroglyphischen Namenlisten
dem achten Nomos von Niederaegypten als Haupstadt gege-
ben Laid Pi Turn, bald Thuku oder Thuket, also entweder
Pithom bei Hero oder Thou," 1.1. p. G.
most probable, but that one of the chief objec-
tions is the statement of Herodotus, followed
by Strabo, who gives the distance from the
mount Casius to the Arabian Gulf as being of
1000 stadia, which is nearly twice what it ought
to be if the sea went near Ero.2 This objection,
which seems very serious at first sight, is on
the contrary one of the most interesting con-
firmations of the fact that at the time of
Herodotus the sea extended at least as far as
the northern end of the Bitter Lakes. Prof.
Dillmann overlooks here a very important
fact, that nothing is more discussed and un-
certain than the unit of measure, the stadium of
Herodotus. The point on which all agree is
that the distances given by the Greek author,
not in Egypt only, but also in other parts of
the world, such as the length of the Caspian
Sea or the journey from Athens to Pisa, contain
a number of stadia twice as high as it ought
to be. Two different ways have been proposed
for solving the difficulty. D'Anville, Gosselin,3
and Jomard,4 in their elaborate researches on
the subject, admit the existence in Herodotus
of a so-called short stadium, which would
correspond nearly with the stadium of Aris-
totle of 111 1^ in the degree; while Letronne,
Hultsch and Lepsius believe that the distances
given to Herodotus were expressed in the
measure called o-^oti^o?, which he thought to
contain sixty stadia while it contains only thirty.
The result of this error of reduction is that his
stadium would have only 98^ metres instead of
185.5 Fortunately, we are not obliged to give
a verdict on this theoretical question between
such high authorities, and we have a much
2 Die Angabe ist wenn sie fur die Entfernung von Pelu-
sium und Hero gelten soil, falsch, urn die Halfte zu hoch.
Dillmann, 1.1., p. 7.
De 1'evaluation et de l'emploi des mesures itineraries
Grecques et Eomaines, p. 16.
4 Memoire sur le systeme metrique des anciens Egyptiens,
p. 117 et suiv.
5 Leps., Das Stadium unci die Gradmessung des Eratos-
thenes. Aeg. Zeitschr. 1877, p. 4.