THE ROUTE OP THE EXODUS. 15 



changes had taken place in the division of the land ; but as 

 far as the XVlIIth or the XlXth dynasty, when the Israelites 

 still occupied the land which they had received as allotment 

 from the Hyksos king. At that time Egypt of the North, 

 the Delta, was divided into 15 nomes or provinces, instead 

 of 23, which existed under the Ptolemies and the Romans. 

 One of the largest in extent had for its capital Heliopolis,* 

 called in Scripture Aven and On. It comprised the greatest 

 part of the land which is crossed by travellers going from 

 Cairo to Suez, and where are at present the cities and 

 villages of Kalioub, Shibeen el-Kanater, Belbeis, Zagazig, and 

 Tell el-Kebir. The great city of Bubastis, one of the chief 

 residences of the Hyksos kings, was also included in this 

 province, which was limited on the east by the nome of 

 Pithom, called under the Ptolemies, Heroopolitan. The 

 nome of Arabia and that of Bubastis, which later on were 

 separated from the nome of Heliopolis, did not yet exist as 

 distinct administrative divisions. About six miles east of 

 Bubastis was the region called Kesem or Kes, which seems to 

 have been also styled the water of Ha. A Dutch scholar, 

 Van der Hardt, had already suggested in the last century 

 that the root Kes of the name Kesem was to be found in the 

 second syllable of the name Phacusa where it is preceded by 

 the Coptic article pa or pha. Phacusa we know from Ptolemy 

 to have been the capital of the nome of Arabia. As late as 

 the 4th century of the Christian era, a woman coming from 

 France and going to the Holy Land and to Egypt, Silvia 

 Aquitana, mentions repeatedly in the narrative of her 

 pilgrimage, that the land of Goshen was in her time the 

 nome of Arabia, civitas Arabia.f 



In the hieroglyphical inscriptions there seems to be an 

 allusion to the presence of the Israelites in that region ; for 

 a text written at the time of Menephthah, the King of the 

 Exodus, speaking of the neighbourhood of Pi-Bailos, the 

 present Belbeis, says " that the country around was not culti- 

 vated, but left as pasture for cattle, because of the strangers. 

 It was abandoned since the time of the ancestors." This 

 proves that the land of Kes or Kesem was not inhabited ; 



* The fact that Goshen belonged to the nome of Heliopolis, explains 

 the passage of Josephns, who says that Pharaoh allowed Jacob to live at 

 Heliopolis, where his shepherds had their pastures : avvfx<^>P r } (Tev ovra 

 £rjv . . . . ei> HXtou 7J"dAet iv eKeivrj yap Kai ot Troipe'ves airoii ras vopas ei\ov. 

 Jos., "Ant. Jud.," ii., 188. 



t Silviae Aquitanae, " Peregrinatio ad loca. Sancta." Ed. Ganiurrini, 

 2 ed., p. 18—20. 



