no means improbable, seeing that the direction depended upon the wind which opened the way), then even at present the breadth and the depth would be quite sufficient to hold and to drown an entire army.

The only point in which Du Bois Aymé and Stickel differ from the views we have expressed, is with reference to the last place of encampment, and the spot at which the sea was crossed. They both of them fix upon the supposed ford at Ajrud (§ 39. 1), instead of Suez, as the place where the passage occurred. But there are many objections to this. First of all, the ground about Ajrud does not answer in the least to the description of the last place of encampment, which is given in the text. There is no plain sufficiently large to hold two millions of men, nor is there the steep impassable mountain wall which reached the sea, and caused the Israelites to be hemmed in on three sides. It is true that Du Bois Aymé says (vid. Rosenmüller iii. 265): "The biblical account is in perfect harmony with the position which I have assigned to the Israelitish army; for the chain of mountains, which is visible towards the south, appears to stretch as far as the shore." But in reading these words, we cannot escape the feeling that, in spite of the confidence with which the author speaks, he was conscious of a certain incongruity between the locality referred to, and the description contained in the Bible. Again, the order in which the boundary-points are named in Ex. xiv. 2 does not square with this view, for, according to Ex. xiv. 2, Ajrud must have been situated to the north of the place of encampment, whereas, if Du Bois Ayme's opinion were correct, it would have been to the south-east. He also adds (Rosenmüller iii. 268): "Moreover, there is so little difference between the two opinions (that which fixes upon Ajrud, and that which selects Suez, as the spot at which the Israelites crossed), that it does not matter much which of the two we choose. My opinion rests upon the situation of the castle of Ajrud, before which the Israelites encamped, and the great probability that the sea at Suez was much deeper then, than it is now." This we can fully comprehend, for in the opinion of the learned Frenchman, the sea must have been crossed in a perfectly natural way, without any miraculous intervention on the part of God. But the greater depth of the sea at Suez is, to our mind, one of the very reasons why we should prefer that

spot, not from any love of miracles, but because we are anxious to do justice to the text. Stickel gives the preference to Ajrud for another reason. This keen-sighted scholar would no doubt have fixed upon Suez, -as the description contained in the text, when compared with the shape of the ground, unconditionally requires, were it not that his foregone conclusion, that only three days can have elapsed between the departure of the Israelites from Raemses and their arrival at the opposite shore of the sea (§ 36. 7), compelled him to relinquish such on opinion. For the distance from Etham to the plain at Suez is certainly too great, for any one to bring himself easily to believe, that the Israelitish procession could traverse it in a single day. But we have already pointed out, that the journey from Etham to the point at which the sea was crossed, must have occupied a longer time, seeing that the message was sent from Etham to the palace, and the royal army marched from the palace to the sea, whilst the Israelites were travelling from Etham to the same spot. This must have required at least two days (§ 36. 7).

(3). We shall conclude by giving a short sketch, and, where necessary, our own criticism of the different views which have been entertained, with regard to the crossing of the sea. Among the earliest is one which has lately been defended with great firmness and confidence by K. v. Raumer, and of which v. Lengerke has most remarkably expressed his approval (Kenaan i. 432 sqq.). In all that is essential J. V. Kutscheit also adopts it. It originated with Sicard (cf. Paulus Sammll. v. 211 sqq.), who had travelled by the road in question. Sicard, however, places the city of Raemses, the starting-point of the procession, in the neighbourhood of the village of Besatin (§ 37), whereas Raumer does not regard Raemses as the name of a city, but of the land of Goshen, and supposes the procession to have been first formed in the vicinity of Heliopolis or On, from which point it went southwards to Latopolis or Babylon, and then turned towards the east into the Valley of Error, in the first instance with the intention of following the ordinary caravan road, which leads through this valley to Suez, and then going round the northern extremity of the gulf. Succoth would in this case be in the neighbourhood of the village of Besatin; and Etham, near the fountain of Gandelhi, at which point the caravan road turns

towards the north-east, between the two northern ranges of mountains (§ 37). But, instead of carrying out the first intention, the procession turned away from the ordinary caravan road at the express command of God, and had to take the road through the Wady er-Ramliyeh and the Wady et-Tawarik to the plain of Baideah by the sea-shore. It was here that they were overtaken by Pharaoh and his army. With the deep sea, which is here about fifteen miles broad, before them; with Mount Atâkah on the north, and, opposite to this, Mount Kuaibe on the south; and with Pharaoh's chariots behind, they were to all human appearance utterly lost. But God caused an east wind to blow during the night, and thus opened a way through the heart of the sea. They followed this road; and the next morning, they found themselves safe on the other side, at a place which is still called by the Arabs the wells of Moses (Ayun Musa).—At first sight there is something very plausible in this view. But on closer investigation we find it beset with insuperable difficulties. Its main features are not derived from scriptural data, but from the statements of Josephus (Ant. ii. 15, 1), who says that the Israelites started from Raemses above the place where Babylon was afterwards built (Latopolis, Old Cairo). But no particular evidence is required to prove, that the authority of Josephus is of little value in questions of this kind. Moreover, his account is founded upon the tradition, which has given to the valley the name of Wady et-Tih (Valley of Error), and which fixed upon Ayun Musa as the spot near to which the passage took place. But with regard to the first, the name Wady et-Tih originated with Sicard, and for the second we must bear in mind the warning given by Niebuhr (Beschreib. v. Arabien p. 404), who says that the Arabs always declare the spot, at which the question is proposed to them, to be the very spot where the children of Israel went through the Sea. As decisive objections, however, the following are of especial importance: (1), Raemses is always the name of a city, never of a province (cf. § 41). (2), Justice is not done to the word, which always means to turn. (3), The same remark applies to the expression" Etham, at the end of the desert," for, according to Raumer's hypothesis, Etham was not at the end, but in the middle of the desert. (4), Without the least ground for so doing, it gives us two Ethams, one in the Egyptian desert and the other in the desert of Arabia Petræa.

(5), It places the passage through the sea at a point where the sea is too broad, not indeed for it to be miraculously divided, but for the natural part of the event, namely their crossing over in the time stated. The breadth of the gulf at this point is fifteen miles. Now a few hours of the night had certainly gone, before the sea was sufficiently dried up by the east wind, to allow the passage to commence; and yet at the morning watch (two o'clock), they were on the opposite shore.

A second class of commentators fix upon Suez as the point at which the passage took place. This class includes Niebuhr, Robinson, Hengstenberg, Laborde, Ewald, Tischendorf, and many others. But whilst they agree upon this point, they differ in many respects as to the road by which Suez was reached. Hengstenberg's opinion is that the Israelites started from Raemses, which he supposes to have been the same as Heroopolis; that Etham was at the point, which now forms the northern extremity of the gulf; and that when the procession had reached that point it turned round, that is went back into the Egyptian territory, and proceeded along the western shore of the gulf, till it reached Suez, where it passed through the sea upon dry ground. Robinson gives upon the whole the same route, but leaves it an open question, whether Heroopolis was identical with Raemses; though he has not the least doubt that Raemses was situated in the Wady Tumilat, not far from the northern extremity of the Bitter Lakes. From our previous enquiry, however, it necessarily follows that this opinion is erroneous. Ewald's view is closely related to that of Hengstenberg, only much more confused (cf. Stickel's critique, p. 358 sqq.). Laborde looks upon Raemses as a name applied to the whole of the land of Goshen, and supposes the Israelites to have assembled at Succoth, whence they proceeded in a straight line to Etham, which was somewhere in the neighbourhood of Ajrud. There they received a command from God, not to travel any farther in a easterly direction, and went towards the south-east to Suez. From this point they crossed the gulf, still in a south-easterly direction, and emerged at Ayun Musa. After what we have already said, we regard it as unnecessary to criticize, that is, to refute this opinion. Tischendorf supposes the procession to have started from Heliopolis, whence it proceeded to a spot somewhere near the northern end of the Bitter Lakes (which in his opinion was at that time

the northern boundary of the gulf). At this point it turned towards the south-east and proceeded to Suez. In several essential points his view agrees with our own.

Lastly we may mention Thierbach's romantic conjecture (Erfurter Osterprogramm, 1830); though we do so, merely to make the list complete. According to his view, the Israelites set out from Heliopolis (i.e., Raemses). They then journeyed to Pithom, (or Etham) on the Mediterranean (the sea of reeds). From this point they proceeded through Lake Menzaleh. Here the phosphorescence of the water supplied them with light; and at the same time a cloud, which hung suspended like a pillar over the surface of the water and was strongly charged with electricity, was driven behind them by a change in the wind, and discharged its electric fluid upon the foe. Thus death and destruction fell upon the Egyptians, whilst light and safety were afforded to the Israelites. Compare Stickel p. 331, 332.

THE HYKSOS AND THE ISRAELITES.

SOURCES: vid. Bunsen's Urkundenbuch, an appendix to the third part of his work on Egypt; C. Meier, Judaica, Jena 1832; and Stroth, Aegyptiaca, Gotha 1782.

LITERATURE: Jac. Perizonii Aegyptiarum originum investigatio. 1711. c. 19 p. 327 ss.-Fr. Buddei, Historia ecclesiastica V. T. I. iii. § 24, Ed. iv. p. 560 ss.-Thorlacius de Hycsosorum Abari. Copenh. 1794.—J. Chr. C. Hofmann, unter welcher Dynastie haben die Israeliten Aegypten verlassen? (in the Studien und Kritiken 1839. ii. p. 393 sqq.), and also, Aegyptische und israelitische Zeitrechnung, ein Sendschreiben an Dr Böckh. Nördl. 1847.-E. Hengstenberg, Manetho and the Hyksos, in his Egypt and the Books of Moses, p. 227 sqq. transl.-E. Bertheau, zur Gesch. d. Israel. p. 227 sqq.—H. Ewald, Gesch. d. Israel. i. 445 sqq.-C. v. Lengerke, Kenaan i. 360 sqq.—A. Böckh, Manetho und die Hundssternperiode, Berl. 1845.-Chr. C. J. Bunsen, Aegyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte, 3 vols. Hamburg 1843.