76 



in praise of learnings of sucli date^ was " made by a person of 

 Zaru." (Rec. viii., 147.) Zar was called by tlie Egyptians 

 " the Sentinel at the Gate of Egypt/^ Brugsch has so posi- 

 tively asserted the identity of Zar with Zoan (Tanis), that it 

 has been widely taken as granted. But De Rouge identified 

 Zar with Selle near lake Timsah, and this seems much nearer 

 the true mark. For Dr. Diimichen, in his history of Egypt 

 (in Oncken^s Allgemeine GescJiichto), has avowed his belief 

 "that the identification of it with Tanis-Zoan^ so strongly 

 maintained by Brugsch, absolutely cannot be brought into 

 accordance with the data found in the Egyptian tests as to its 

 situation. '^ And I think he has proved his point, as, indeed, 

 had Dr. Haigh in 1876 {Zeitschrift f. dg. 8pr., p. 54). Now 

 this brings us to a very interestiug Biblical interpretation. 

 In Gen. xiii. 10, we read that '^Lot lifted up his eyes and 

 beheld all the plain [kikkar'] of Jordan, that it was well 

 watered everywhere (befoi'e Jehovah destroyed Sodom and 

 Gomorrah), like the garden of Jehovah, like the land of 

 Mizraim when thou enterest Zar.''' The name "ir^ may very, 

 properly be so read, as proposed by the learned Dr. Haigh in 

 1869 {ZeiL, p. 5), and in 1876 (p. 54). 



The sandy wastes of the Shasu-land came up to the walls 

 of Zar, but within the traveller saw openiog before him the 

 goodly green levels, irrigated by numberless canals and water- 

 courses, the watered field of Zar [Sekltet en Zar), so flowery 

 and beautiful that such a region was called in Egypt " the 

 divine watered land" {SekJiet Nuter. Brugsch, Did. Geog., i. 

 13), as by the Hebrews " the Garden of Jehovah." This, then, 

 was the view of " the land of Mizraim when thou enterest 

 Zar,'' which represented the former glories of the warm, 

 palmy Jordan plain " before Jehovah destroyed Sodom and 

 Gomorrah." 



Well did Moses know that familiar sight of " the land of 

 Rameses," as it had greeted his eyes on his return from his 

 long exile in wild Arabia. Dr. Diimichen takes for granted 

 the Egyptian Zar as intended in Gen. xiii. 



And now we leave the eighteenth dynasty, and come 

 upon the celebrated kings of the nineteenth. At Deir-el- 

 Bahri was found a broken coffin which had held the mummy 

 of Rameses I., the founder of the new line, who reigned only 

 six or seven years. 



For Bible students the nineteenth dynasty is supremely 

 interesting. 



If Dr. Ebers is right, it was in the reign of Seti I,, the 

 son and successor of Rameses I., that Moses was born, and 

 the " Pharaoh's daughter " was the celebrated and beloved 



