Page:Mount Seir, Sinai and Western Palestine.djvu/223

Rh

Advances in the identification of most of the places connected with the Exodus, and with early Christian history, are being daily made, and I propose here to deal with a few cases which have come under my own immediate notice (with one exception), and to offer some observations upon them. They are as follows:—

1. The Passage of the Red Sea by the Israelites under Moses.

2. The Giving of the Law from Mount Sinai.

3. Kadesh Barnea and Mount Hor.

4. The Site of Calvary.

Making three illustrations from the Old Testament, and one from the New.

1. The Passage of the Red Sea by the Israelites.—From the earliest period of history Egypt was connected with Asia by a narrow neck of land occupying a position to the north of the present Great Bitter Lake. Over this neck lay the road connecting the capital of the Pharaohs at Tanis, or Zoan, with the East by way of Philistia on the one hand, or, again, by the way of Shur, or finally by the way of Elath, at the head of the Ælanitic Gulf.

By the first of these roads, leading into Philistia, the Israelites could have reached the Promised Land within the shortest time; but, enfeebled and dispirited by long captivity, they were forbidden to face the warlike inhabitants of Philistia, and on reaching the neck they were ordered by the Lord to turn southwards, and in this direction they continued their march till they found themselves confronted by the sterile mountain range of Jebel Attâkah, flanked by the waters of the Red Sea on the east, and pursued by the army of Pharoah on the north and west. That the place of the passage called "Pi-hahiroth before Baal-Zephon" was in the neighbourhood of the present town of Suez, at the head of the Gulf,