Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/516

 418 NORTH-EAST AFRICA. Arabi were partly stormed, partly outflanked, after a midnight march planned with a skill and executed with a precision seldom surpassed in the annals of European warfare. A palace standing in the neighbourhood of Tell-el-Kebir forms the central point of the so-called " Farm of the Wady," a domain about 25,000 acres in extent, which was cultivated for several years by the Suez Canal Company. Near the eastern extremity of the Wady-Tumil&t other mounds collectively known as the Tell-el-Maiskhata, and in appearance resembling Tell-el-Kebir, were hitherto supposed to indicate the site of the ancient Pithom, the " City of Treasure," here erected by the captive Israelites for Ramses II. Recently, however, M. Naville has thoroughly explored these ruins, which now appear not to be those of the city of Ramses, but of another which has been identified as the Pi- Turn or Pithom of Exodus, and which seems to have been built about the same period and by the same hands. During the Greek and Roman epochs Pithom was known by the name of Hero, or HcroonpoUs. This identification of the ruins explored by M. Na^^lle at Tell-el-Maskhata, has given rise to much controversy amongst Egyptologists, one of whom gocK so far as to say that " the Pithom of the Exodus is apparently as far to seek as ever."* Dr. Ebers, however, who is one of the chief authorities on archceological questions of this sort, after carefully sifting all the evidence, finally decides in favour of M. Navillc's view. In a long communication to the Academy he writes, "Now I have attentively and impartially studied the inscriptions excavated by M. Naville, and fully discussed them in the AUgemeine Zeitung, after having gained the firm convic- tion that Tell-el-Maskhata is the site on which, in the time of Ramses and subse- quently, there was a city called by the sacred name of Pi-Tum, i.e. Pithom, and by the profane one of Thuku-t, being doubtless the same as Succoth. It is true that Sir Gardner Wilkinson, Dr. Lepsius, M. Maspero, and myself as well, had regarded Tell-el-Maskhata as the site of the biblical Ramses. After the appearance of M. Naville's book, however, there will scarcely be found a single Egj'ptologist who will still adhere to this view, and refuse to look upon Tell-el-Maskhata as the site of an Egyptian town which bore the sacred name of Pithom and the profane one of Thuku-t. The first object confirming this view was the inscription on the statue of the prophet of Tum of Theka, which begins, * When under his majesty it was proclaimed how the sanctuary of his father Tum of the good god of Thekut was completed on the third of the month of Athyr, the king himself came to the district of Heroonpolis, into the house of his father Tum,* &c. " These inscriptions render it so certain that Pithom and Thuku-t were one and the same town, and that both were built on the site of the modern Tell-el-Maskhata, that we may dispense with the further evidence afforded by the Anastasi papyrus. Here King Merneptah, very probably the Pharaoh of the Exodus, states in writing his having permitted the Shasu (Bedouins) of Atuma (Edom ?) to cross the fortress bearing his name, which was also called Theku, in the direction of the^ ponds of Pithom of the king Merneptah, which is called Theku." t • Athenenim, April, 1886, No. 2994. t Academy, May 23rd, 1885, p. 373.