traveller at the present day. It was in this new town, which was built quite near the ancient Zor, and which is so often mentioned in the papyri of the British Museum, that Ramses II. caused to be erected sanctuaries and temples in honour of a circle of divinities called the gods of Ramses. The King made himself to be distinguished by a religious worship, and the texts of a later period often mention the god Rameses, surnamed "the very powerful." I cannot omit to cite the name of the high priest who presided at the different religious services in the sanctuaries of Zor Rameses. According to the Egyptian texts, the priest bore the name of Khar-tot, that is to say, "the warrior." The origin of this name is very strange for persons so peaceable, and is sufficiently explained by Egyptian myths about the divinities and the town of Rameses. Except for these religious legends, the interest which attaches to this title is suggested at least by the fact that Holy Scripture gives the same name to the priests whom Pharaoh called to imitate the miracles done by Moses. The interpreters of Scripture agree that the name of Kartumim given in the Bible to the Egyptian magicians, in spite of its Hebrew colour, is visibly derived from an Egyptian word. Here this word Khartot, which not only furnishes us with the means of discovering the meaning of the word Khartumim, but also the new proof of the scene of the interview between Moses and Pharaoh, took place in the town of Zoan Ramses.

The Egyptian monuments, especially the papyri, are filled with dates which have reference to the building of the new city of the sanctuaries of Ramses, and the stone and brick work, with which the workmen were over-burdened to finish their task quickly. These Egyptian documents furnish details so precise and so special on this kind of work, that it is impossible not to recognize in them the most evident connexion with the Bible account of the hard servitude of the Hebrews on the occasion of the building of certain constructions at Pitom and Ramses. One must be blind not to allow oneself to see the light which commences to clear away the shadows of thirty centuries, and which allows us to transport to their proper places the events which the good fathers of the Church, excellent Christians otherwise, though bad connoisseurs of antiquity, who would have upset us almost for ever if the monuments of the Khedive and the treasures of the British Museum had not come in good time to our aid.

To displace the position of the town of Ramses, notwithstanding the evidence of the Egyptian documents, would introduce irreparable confusion into the geographical order of the nomes and the villages of Egypt.

war manœuvres.

It is in this town of Zoan Ramses, that towards the year 1600 B.C., the twenty-second year of his glorious reign, Thothmes III. departed, at the head of his army, to attack the land of Canaan; it is in this town where, in the fifth year of his reign, Ramses II. entered as a victor, after having gained his victories over the Khetien people, in which, six years later, the same Pharaoh concluded the treaty of peace and alliance with the chief of these people. It was this town, of which its great plains served as ground where the cavalry and troops of the king executed their It is this town, of which the port was filled with Egyptian and Phoenician vessels, which held the commerce between Egypt and Syria. It is this town that the Egyptian texts especially name as the boundary of the proper Egyptian territory, and as the commencement of the foreign soil. It is this town, of which an Egyptian poet has left us a beautiful description, contained in one of the papyri of the British Museum. In the same town Ramessids preferred to reside to receive the foreign ambassadors, and to issue his orders to the officers of his court. Here the Children of Israel experienced the sufferings of their long and cruel slavery; here Moses performed his miracles before the Pharaoh of his time; and, lastly, it is the same town from which the Hebrews departed when they left the fertile land of Egypt.

We will follow them now station by station.

Travellers by land, who would leave Ramses to put themselves en route for the eastern frontier, have two roads to follow. The one leads in a north-eastern direction from Ramses to Pelusium, half way they pass by the town of Pitom, situated at an equal distance from Ramses and Pelusium. It is unpleasant, on this route of Pliny, to cross the lagoons, marshes, and the whole network of canals in the country of Sukot. According to what the monuments tell us, this way was not very often frequented, it served for ordinary travellers without baggage; while the Pharaohs, accompanied by cavalry, chariots, and troops, preferred the second road, the great Pharaonic highway, the sikkeh-es-soultanich of the Eastern people.

This last is composed of four stations, a day's journey the one from the other. These are Ramses, "the bulwark," Sukot, Khetam, and Migdol. We already know the names and the positions of these stations, with exception of the third, Khetam. The word Khetam, which the Hebrews have rendered Etham, has the general sense of "fortress," as I have proved above in distinguishing it from the other Khetam which existed in Egypt, and especially from the Khetam in the province of Sukot, situated near Pelusium. The Egyptian texts add very often to this word the explanation "that it is situated in the province of Zor," that is to say, Tanis Ramses.

There is not the least doubt of the position of this important situation, of which we even possess a drawing, represented on a monument of Sethos I. of Karnak. According to this representation the place of Khetam was situated upon the banks of a river (the Pelusiac branch of the Nile), and the two opposite parts of the fortress are joined by a large bridge-by a qanthareh as it is called in Arabic. At a little distance from these two fortresses, and behind them, is found the town, inhabited, and called in Egyptian Tabenet. This name calls to mind at once the name of Daphnai, given by the Greek historian Herodotus to an Egyptian fortress, and the following observations are sufficient to furnish the greatest certainty to the proposed indications. First of all, Herodotus speaks of Daphnai conformably with the fortresses, according to the Egyptian representations. He gives them the surname of "Pelusiac," on account of the position of the Pelusiac branch. Herodotus especially mentions that there was in these Pelusiac Daphnai in his days, as in times past, an Egyptian garrison, which guarded the entrance into Egypt from the side of Arabia and Syria. The ruins of these two fortresses, situated opposite one another, are still in existence; and the name Tell-Defenneh, which they bear, at once recalls to mind the Egyptian name of Tabenet, and that of Daphnai, given by Herodotus. The remembrance of the bridge, the qanthareh, which joined the two fortresses, is also preserved to the present day, for the name of guisrel-qanthareh," the dyke of the bridge," is applied at the present time to a place situated towards the east, at a little distance from Khetam -must be regarded as the last reminiscence of the only passage which, in ancient times, allowed of an entrance into Egypt, without wetting the feet, from the western frontier.

Having thus found, by their ancient names, and by their modern positions, the four geographical points which Holy Scripture calls Ramses, Sukkoth, Etham and Migdol, situated a day's journey from one another, I hasten to answer the question, if the Egyptian texts prove to us the existence of a highway which, by these intermediate stations of Sukkoth and Etham, conducted from Ramses up to Migdol. Once more the response is the most affirmative in the world.

A lucky chance- let us rather say Divine Providence-has preserved to us in a papyrus of the British Museum, the most precious souvenir of the epoch contemporary with the sojourn of the Hebrews in Egypt. It is a simple letter, traced more than thirty centuries before our day, by the hand of an Egyptian scribe, to give his motives for his departure from the royal palace at Ramses, caused by the flight of two servants.

"Thus," he said, "I started from the room of the royal palace, the ninth day of the third month of summer, towards the evening, after the two servants. And I arrived at the bulwark of Sukot on the tenth day of the same month. They informed me that they (that is to say, the two fugitives) had deliberated to pass towards the south side. The twelfth day I arrived at Khetam. There they communicated to me that the grooms who came from the country [of the lagoons of Suf, as they called it], that the fugitives had crossed the country of the Wall, to the north of Migdol, to the King Seti Meneptah."

Replace in that precious letter the mention of the two servants by the name of Moses and the Hebrews; put into the place of the scribe who pursued the two fugitives the person of Pharaoh, who followed the traces of the children of Israel; and you have the exact description of the march of the Hebrews related in Egyptian terms. Also as the Hebrews, according to the account of the Bible, departed the fifteenth day of the first month from the town of Ramses, our scribe the ninth day of the eleventh month of the Egyptian year quitted the palace of Ramses to prepare himself for the pursuit of the two fugitives.

Also, as the Hebrews the day following their departure arrived at Sukkoth, the Egyptian entered Sukot the day after his departure from Ramses.

Also, as the Hebrews stopped at Etham the third day after their

going forth from Ramses, the Egyptian scribe the third day of his journey arrived at Khetam, where the desert commences.

Also, as the two fugitives pursued by the scribe, who dares not continue his way in the desert, had taken their course to the north towards Migdol, and towards the place called in Egyptian "the Wall," in Greek "Gerrhon," in taking Shour in the same sense the Hebrews "turned themselves," as Holy Scripture tells us, towards the north to continue their road, and to enter in the lower lakes of Sirbonis.

Add one single word to these topographical comparisons, and it would be diminishing their value. The truth is simple, it does not want further demonstration.

According to monumental indications, in accordance with what the classic traditions tell us of it, the Egyptian route led from Migdol to the Mediterranean, up to the Wall of Gerrhon (Shour of the Bible), situated at the extremity of the lake of Sirbonis. This last, well known to the ancients, has fallen a long time into oblivion, and yet a century ago a French traveller in Egypt naïvely owned, that to speak of the lake of Sirbonis would be as if you spoke German to the Arabs.

Separated by a tongue of land from the Mediterranean, which offered in ancient times the only Egyptian way into Palestine, this lake, or rather this lagoon, covered with a rich vegetation of rushes and papyri, but in our day almost dried up, hid the unforeseen danger, owing to the nature of its borders and by the presence of its fatal gulfs, of which an ancient classic author has left us the following description.

"On the side of the Levant, Egypt is protected partly by the Nile, partly by the desert, and by the swampy plains under the name of Barathra (gulfs). There is in Coele-Syria, and in Egypt, a lake, which is not very large, of a prodigious depth, and in length about 200 stadia. It is called Sirbonis.

"Its basin being like a ribbon, and its sides very wide, it happens that it covers itself with a mass of sand, which is brought there by the continual south winds. This sand hides from sight the sheet of water which intermingles itself with the soil. It is thus that whole armies have been swallowed up in ignorance of the place, and having mistaken their way. The sand slightly trodden on, leaves at first the