Another puzzle to me of a different kind has 

 always been, not how an apple is got into a dump- 

 ling, but how it is we are still taught that 

 Pharaoh's host was drowned in the Red Sea in- 

 stead of Lake Serbonis. We know, of course, 

 that the Pharaoh of the Exodus, Menephtah II, 

 did not perish himself with his host, as his body 

 was found a few years ago at Dayr el Bahri, and 

 may still be seen in Egypt in an excellent state of 

 preservation. Milton, when he wrote Paradise 

 Lost, about 1665, evidently knew where the 

 Egyptian army must have been engulfed, for he 

 refers to 



A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog 

 Betwixt Damiata and Mount Cassius old, 

 Where armies whole have sunk. . . . 



Of course he may have had in mind the de- 

 struction of the invading Persian army of Artax- 

 erxes ; but why is it that the mistranslation of the 

 name Yam Souf into the Red Sea, instead of into 

 its real meaning the Sea of Weeds, or Reeds, 

 by which name Lake Serbonis was known was 

 not set right in the revised translation of the 

 Bible in 1884, ten years after Brugsch had pub- 



163 



