THE ROUTE OP THE EXODUS. 21 



comprising also the present Lake Timsah. This view, the 

 possibility of which is admitted by Sir William Dawson, has 

 been expounded admirably by the French engineer Linant,* 

 who travelled in the country repeatedly between 1820 and 

 1830. According to his researches, the sea included Lake 

 Timsah, covered the valleys now called Aboo Balah and 

 Saba Biar, and reached as far as the village of Magfar. 



Whether the sea extended only as far as the northern end 

 of the Bitter Lakes, or whether, according to Linant, it went 

 still further, the well established fact of the vicinity of the 

 sea to the district of Succoth, and to its capital Pithom 

 Heroopolis, of which we know the site, is a very important 

 element in determining the route of the Exodus. The 

 identity of Pithom and Ero, which came out of the excava- 

 tions in such a striking way, could already be concluded 

 from the comparison of the translations of Gen. xlvi., 29, 

 which reads thus : "And Joseph made ready his chariot, and. 

 went up to meet Israel his father, to Goshen." Here the 

 Septuagint, instead of "Goshen," reads "near Heroopolis," and 

 the Coptic translator, who generally follows the Septuagint, 

 has a variant, and reads " near the city of Pithom." Hero- 

 opolis being a Greek name, it is natural that the Egyptian 

 writer should replace it by the old native name. Many 

 commentators have made use of this passage to disparage 

 the value of the two versions, which now turn out to be 

 quite correct. 



A great Ptolemaic tablet, which was discovered in the 

 excavations at Pithom, mentions another locality of the same 

 nome, Pi Kerehet, the house of the serpent. The inscription 

 shows that it was a temple of Osiris, or what the Greeks 

 called a Serapeum. The god was worshipped, there under 

 the form of a serpent. Considering as before in the case of 

 Succoth, not the sense of the word, but its sound, it is cer- 

 tainly very like the Pi Hahiroth of Scripture, which is one of 

 the places mentioned on the occasion of the Passage. Pi 

 Hahiroth would thus be a locality in the district of Succoth. 

 As it was a Serapeum, it is important to notice that the 

 Itinerary of Antoninus mentions Serapiu as being eighteen 

 miles from Ero. Standing on the pier of Ismailia, and 

 looking over the Lake Timsah, the horizon is limited on the 

 south by a flat ridge, a kind of table mountain, now called 

 Gebel Mariam. Just at the foot of the mountain, on the 



* " Memoires sur les principaux Travaux d'utilite publique executes 

 en Egypte," p. 195 et suiv. 



