The Land of Goshen maj' be concluded, from the Biblical narrative, to have been part of Egypt, but not of what was then held to be Egypt proper. It must therefore have been an outer eastern province of Low- er Egypt. It is enough here to say that it was on the eastern side of the Nile, probaldy in the province of Esh-Shurkiyeh. Rameses was the place of rendez- vous. But it is evident, from the frequent communi- cations of ^Nloses with the Egyptian court on the one hand, and with the Israelites on the other, that the latter must have been, at the time of starting, congre- gated at a point not far from the capital. They could onl}', therefore, have gone bj' the valley now called the wady et-Tumeylilt, for every other cultivated or
cultivable tract is too far from th& Red Sea. In the Roman time, the route to Gaza from Memphis and Heli- opolis passed the western end of the wady et-Tumeylilt, as maj' be seen by the liinerari/ of Antoninus (Parthej', Zur Krdk. d. Alt. yEff/jptens, map vi), and the chief mod- ern route from Cairo to Syria passes along the wady et-Tumeylit and leads to Gaza (Wilkinson, Hand- book, new ed. p. 209). Rameses, as we shall see, must have lain in this valley, which thus corresponded in part at least to Goshen. That it wholly corresponded to that region is evident from its being markedly' a single vallej', and from the insufficiency of any small- er territory to support the Israelites. See Goshen. It is not diflicult to fix very nearly the length of each day's march of the Israelites. As they had with them women, children, and cattle, it cannot be supposed that they averaged more than fifteen miles daily ; at the same time, it is unlikely that they fell far short of this. The three journeys would therefore give a dis- tance of about forty-five miles. There seems, howev- er, as we shall see, to have been a deflexion from a di- rect course, so that we cannot consider the whole dis- tance from the starting-point, Rameses, to the shore of the Red Sea, as much more than about forty miles in a direct line. Measuring from the western shore of the Arabian Gulf south-east of the wadj^ et-Tumeylat, a distance of forty miles in a direct line places the site of Rameses near the ruins called in the present day Abii Kesheib, not far from the middle of the valley. This is in accordance with the location of Robinson and Lepsius. That the Israelites started from a place in tliis position is farther evident from the account of the two routes that lay before them : " And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not [by] the waj' of the land of the Philistines, although that [was] near ; for God said, Lest perad- venture the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt ; but God let the people turn to the way of the wilderness of tiie Red Sea" (Exod. xiii, 17, 18). The expression used, -5^1, does not necessarily imply a change in the direction of the journey, but may mean that God did not lead the Israelites into Palestine by the nearest route, but took them about bj' the way of the wilderness. Were the meaning that the people turned, we should have to suppose Rameses to have been beyond the vallej' to the west, and this would probably make the distance to tlie Red Sea too great for the time occupied in traversing it, besides overthrowing the reasonable identification of the land of Goshen. Rameses is evidently the Ra- meses of Exod. i, 11. It seems to have been the chief town of the land of Goshen, for that region, or possibl}' a part of it, is called the land of 'Rameses in Gen. xlvii, 11 ; comp. 4, G. See Rameses.
1. The direct route thence to the Red Sea was along the vallej' of the ancient canal. If, however, thej' rendezvoused near the metropolis, their route would be dilFerent. From the vicinity of Cairo there runs a range of hills eastward to the Red Sea, the western ex- tremity of which, not far from Cairo, is named Jebel- Mokattem ; the eastern extremity is termed Jebel- Ataka, which, with its promontory' Ras Ataka, runs into the Red Sea. Between the two extremes, some- where about the middle of the range, is an oi)cning which affords a road for caravans. Two routes offer- ed themselves here. Supposing that the actual start- ing-point la}' nearer Cairo, the Israelites might strike in from the north of the range of hills at the opening just mentioned, and pursue the ordinary caravan road whicli leads from Cairo to Suez ; or they might gc> southv.ard from ISIokattem, through the wady et-Tih, that is, the Valley of Wandering, through which also a road, though less used, runs to Suez. According to Niebuhr, they took the first; according to ancient tra- dition. Father Sicard (Ueher der Wr/j der Tsrculifen), Paulus (Samml. v, 211 sq.), and others, they took tha
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fest. Sicard found traces of the Israelites in the val- le}'. He held Kameses to be the sturtiiig-point, and Barneses he jilaced about six miles from ancient Cairo, where Bezatin is now found. Here is a capacious Bandy plain, on which Sicard thinks tlie Israelites as- sembled on the morning when they began tlieir jour. (ley. In this vicinity a plain is still found, which the Arabs call the Jews' Cemetery, and where, from an in- definite period, the Jews have buried their dead. In the Mokattem chain is a hill, a part of which is called Mejanat ]\Iusa, " Moses's Station." On another hill in the vicinity ruins are found, which the Arabs name Meravad Musa, " Moses's Delight." Thus several things seem to carry the mind back to the time of the Hebrew legislator. Through the valley which leads from Bezatin (the Valley of Wandering) to the Red Sea, Sicard travelled in three days. He reckons the length to be twentj'-six hours, which, if we give two miles to each hour (Robinson), would make the dis- tance fifty-two miles. This length is also assigned by Girard {Descriji. Topogrup. de la Vallee clc V Egaremenf). The vallej', running pretty much in a plain surface, would aft'ord a convenient passage to the mixed bands of Israelites. About eighteen miles from Bezatin you meet with Gendelhy, a plain with a fountain. The name signifies a militaiy station, and in this Sicard finds the Succoth (tents) of Exodus, the first station of Moses. The haste with which they left (were driven out) would enable them to reach this place at night- fall of their first day's march. Sicard places their second station, Etham, in the plain Ramliyeh, eighteen miles from Gendelhy, and sixteen from the sea. From this plain is a pass four miles in length, so narrow that not more than twenty men can go abreast. To avoid this, which would have caused dangerous delay, the order was given them to turn (Exod. xiv, 2). Etham is said (Exod. xiii, 20) to be on the edge of the wilder- ness. Jablonski says the word means " terminus ma- ris," the tem;ination or boundary of the sea. Now, in the plain where Sicard fixes Etham (not to be confound- ed with the Eastern Etham, through which afterwards the Israelites travelled three days, Numb, xxxiii, f^), is the spot where the waters divide which run to the Nile and to the Gulf of Suez, and Etham is therefore truly terminus maris.