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 of these documents are contemporaneous with the events alleged, and that they must have been kept in some sort of a portable bookcase. This implies, of course, the troth of some sort of an Exodus, as the logical end of the mere fact of kept written documents.

Returning to the conditions in Egypt at the time of the Exodus, and there are two or three things which tend to confirm the assertions of Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy as to the great number of scribes (writers) and the record keeping of the Exodus. Whatever the number of descendants of Jacob in Egypt at the time of the Exodus may have been, they had, all through the reign of Thutmose III, been recruited annually from their kindred and neighbors in Palestine and—Syria by captives and tribute slaves. In the first campaign there were 2,503 such recruits including at least forty-four nobles. In the second campaign, the chiefs