22 EDOUAKD NAVILLB. 



Pithom and Raamses" (Exodus i. 9-11). It was the 

 result of my first campaign of excavation to discover the 

 site of Pithom, not very far from the present city of Ismai- 

 liah ; Eaamses is not yet known ; it is very likely between 

 Pithom and Bubastis in the Wadi Tumilat. I cannot dwell 

 at great length here on the events of the Exodus; yet I should 

 like to mention that the successive discoveries made in the 

 Delta have had the result of making the sacred narrative 

 more comprehensible in many points, and especially in 

 showing that the distances were much shorter than was 

 generally thought. For instance, I consider it important to 

 have established that Bubastis was a very large city and a 

 favourite resort of the king and his family. It ia quite pos- 

 sible that at the time when the events preceding the exodus 

 took place, the king was at Bubastis, not at Tanis, as we 

 generally believed. 



Menephtah, the king of the Exodus, who is represented as 

 general of infantry, also executed statues in the temple after 

 he became king, but they are very much broken. 



The Twentieth dynasty, the dynasty of the Ramessides, 

 whose kings all bear the name of Rameses, is also represented 

 at Bubastis. It is natural that the most powerful of them, 

 Rameses III., should not be absent; but what is more 

 interesting, we met with one of the later ones, who was 

 thought to be an idle prince reigning only nominally, and en- 

 tirely in the hands of his vizier, the high priest of Amon. For 

 the first time monuments of Rameses VI. have been discovered 

 in the Delta, showing that the power of the king still extended 

 over the two parts of the country. I found three statues of 

 this king : one of red granite of heroic size, standing, has been 

 removed to the Boulak Museum ; another, in black granite, is 

 headless and is still on the spot. The kings of the Twentieth 

 dynasty seem to have erected a construction of their own in 

 the western part of the temple, a kind of entrance to the hypo- 

 style hall. 



After them, in the obscure period of the Twenty-first 

 dynasty, the temple must have gone through great vicissitudes; 

 I believe that for some reason which we do not know, perhaps 

 in some war or rebellion of which no record has been left, it 

 was destroyed and partly ruined. I said before that in my 

 opinion the beautiful Hathor capitals of the hypostyle hall 

 must be attributed to a period much more ancient than the 

 Twenty-second dynasty. Several of these capitals have under- 

 neath, on the part which rested on the square pillow, a dedication 

 to Bast, written by Osorkon I., a king of the Twenty-second 

 dynasty. This dedication was not visible, and could not be 



