On the Arabian Frontier of Egypt. 21 



by the coincidence of the Red Sea's former extent, prior to the 

 time of Herodotus. But it was still open to the old and fatal 

 objection that, in the time of Moses, there was no visible sup- 

 ply of roater for those cities along wliich the Hebrews' route 

 was supposed to pass ; and that cities could not exist without 

 water. The corresponding Egypto-Roman cities were on the 

 banks of a canal, but the date of the construction of this 

 work, the famous Red-Sea canal, is well fixed by history : 

 it was only begun by Pharaoh-Necho, who lived 870 years 

 after Moses. Some traditional accounts refer the commence- 

 ment of the undertaking to " Sesostris ;" but Sesostris is a 

 fabulous personage. And though Sir Gardner Wilkinson* 

 very judiciously argues, from a monument of Remeses II. 

 being found at " Hero " on the canal, that this monarch may 

 be the " Sesostris" referred to in this legendary account — 

 and it is historically admitted that he cut numerous canals 

 to drain and irrigate Lower Egypt — we are not helped out 

 of the difficulty ; since the most accredited chronological ar- 

 rangements tend to place his reign about 200 years after 

 Moses. 



But when we consider that the principal Egyptian canals 

 are only restorations of natural channels that have either 

 moved off or died away, we are tempted to suspect that such 

 may have been the case with this particular canal ; and that 

 if it was commenced only by Necho, or by Sesostris, it was 

 because the natui'al stream did not fail till then. M, Le- 

 pcre distinctly recognises tokens of the Nile having flowed 

 in the valley of the canal, at some period unassignably re- 

 mote. And as the inundations of the Nile are reported even 

 now to penetrate occasionally far into the valley, such an 

 hypothesis miglit appear very plausibly sustained. But the 

 possibility of an hypothesis being true, is no proof that it is 

 so. And to verify a geographical theory ; to establish it as 

 a fact that may in its turn be used in confirmation and illus- 

 tration of liistory in general — and of sacred history in parti- 

 cular — we require positive evidences — physical proofs. 



I therefore propose, in the succeeding dissertation, to de- 



* Modern Egypt and Thebes, vol. i., p. 312. 



