1016 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



THE ONLY MEANS OP TRANSPORT IN ALL THE. PENINSULA : THE SLOWEST IN THE 



WORLD 



to have changed since 5000 B. C, has an 

 all-important bearing upon the population 

 before the days of the Exodus, and a no 

 less important bearing upon the numbers 

 of the Children of Israel who went out 

 at that time. There are many separate 

 lines of argument and research converg- 

 ing upon the commonly accepted figures 

 which must reduce them to but a small 

 portion of the 3,000,000 often spoken of. 



THE ARMY OP 600,000 FIGHTING MEN 

 IMPOSSIBLE 



The climatic conditions being unaltered, 

 the ancient population must have been 

 about the same as that of today, 5,000 or 

 6,000 people. If the Children of Israel 

 were about equally matched with their 

 enemies at Rephidim, then there could 

 not have been 600,000 fighting men. The 

 land of Goshen, at the mouth of the 

 Wady Tumilat, included an area of not 

 more than 60 to 80 square miles, and 

 could not have supported more than 

 20,000 people at the utmost. 600,000 

 fighting men would imply at least 3,000,- 

 000 people, which would equal if not ex- 

 ceed the whole population of the delta, 

 and there is no trace of such a depopula- 

 tion of this section of Egypt at the date 

 required. 



The crux of the figures, however, 

 comes in the two census lists in Numbers 

 I and XXVI. Those who are interested 

 in the most modern solution of this diffi- 

 culty will find the full statement in 

 Petrie's Researches in Sinai, where the 

 word "thousand" is taken to mean 

 "group" or "family," and the results in 

 figures reveal some startling mathemati- 

 cal facts. 



While in Sinai we inquired carefully 

 of the monks concerning the rainfall, and 

 the head of the monastery, who has lived 

 there since 1866, a period of 43 years, 

 told us that not infrequently there were 

 periods of three and four years in which 

 no rain fell. The winter of 1907-08 was 

 one of "much snow," but the total fall 

 did not exceed 20 inches. Up to Febru- 

 ary 27, 1909, neither rain nor snow had 

 fallen during the winter of 1908-09. 



• 



MOSES 



The problem of the large numbers is 

 intimately connected with the problem of 

 the documents. Too much has been made 

 of the composite nature of the Penta- 

 teuch and wholly erroneous conclusions 

 drawn from fragmentary data. The best 

 Egyptologists now accept Moses as a 

 historical character, and his education in 



