Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
after a picture in
Rosellini.
They made themselves masters of a position almost opposite Memphis, and commanding the river, and held their ground there with such obstinacy that it was found necessary to give up to them the province which they occupied: they built here a town, which they afterwards called Babylon. A similar legend attributes the building of the neighbouring village of Troîû to captives from Troy.*
The scattered barbarian tribes of the Delta, whether Hebrews or the remnant of the ïïyksôs, had endured there a miserable lot ever since the accession of the Ramessides. The rebuilding of the cities which had been destroyed there during the wars with the Hyksôs had restricted the extent of territory on which they could pasture their herds. Ramses II. treated them as slaves of the treasury,** and the Hebrews were not long under his rule before they began to look back with regret on the time of the monarchs “who knew Joseph.” **
* The name Babylon comes probably from Banbonu, Barbonu,
Babonu—a term which, under the form Hât-Banbonu, served
to designate a quarter of Heliopolis, or rather a suburban
village of that city. Troja was, as we have seen, the
ancient city of Troîû, now Tûrah, celebrated for its
quarries of fine limestone. The narratives collected by the
historians whom Diodorus consulted were products of the
Saite period, and intended to explain to Greeks the
existence on Egyptian territory of names recalling those of
Babylon in Chaldæa and of Homeric Troy.
** A very ancient tradition identifies Ramses II. with the
Pharaoh “who knew not Joseph” (Exod. i. 8). Recent
excavations showing that the great works in the east of the
Delta began under this king, or under Seti II. at the
earliest, confirm in a general way the accuracy of the
traditional view: I have, therefore, accepted it in part,
and placed the Exodus after the death of Ramses II. Other
authorities place it further back, and Lieblein in 1863 was
inclined to put it under Amenôthes III.
The Egyptians set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were “grieved because of the children of Israel.” * A secondary version of the same narrative gives a more detailed account of their condition: “They made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field.” ** The unfortunate slaves awaited only an opportunity to escape from the cruelty of their persecutors.
* Exod. i. 11, 12. Excavations made by Naville have
brought to light near Tel el-Maskhutah the ruins of one of
the towns which the Hebrews of the Alexandrine period
identified with the cities constructed by their ancestors in
Egypt: the town excavated by Naville is Pitûmû, and
consequently the Pithom of the Biblical account, and at the
same time also the Succoth of Exod. xii. 37, xiii. 20, the
first station of the Bnê-Israel after leaving Ramses.
** Exod, i. 13, 14.
The national traditions of the Hebrews inform us that the king, in displeasure at seeing them increase so mightily notwithstanding his repression, commanded the midwives to strangle henceforward their male children at their birth. A woman of the house of Levi, after having concealed her infant for three months, put him in an ark of bulrushes and consigned him to the Nile, at a place where the daughter of Pharaoh was accustomed to bathe. The princess on perceiving the child had compassion on him, adopted him, called him Moses—saved from the waters—and had him instructed in all the knowledge of the Egyptians. Moses had already attained forty years of age, when he one day encountered an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew, and slew him in his anger, shortly afterwards fleeing into the land of Midian. Here he found an asylum, and Jethro the priest gave him one of his daughters in marriage. After forty years of exile, God, appearing to him in a burning bush, sent him to deliver His people. The old Pharaoh was dead, but Moses and his brother Aaron betook themselves to the court of the new Pharaoh, and demanded from him permission for the Hebrews to sacrifice in the desert of Arabia. They obtained it, as we know, only after the infliction of the ten plagues, and after the firstborn of the Egyptians had been stricken.* The emigrants started from Ramses; as they were pursued by a body of troops, the Sea parted its waters to give them passage over the dry ground, and closing up afterwards on the Egyptian hosts, overwhelmed them to a man. Thereupon Moses and the children of Israel sang this song unto Jahveh, saying: “Jahveh is my strength and song—and He has become my salvation.—This is my God, and I will praise Him,—my father’s God, and I will exalt Him.—The Lord is a man of war,—and Jahveh is His name.—Pharaoh’s chariots and his hosts hath He cast into the sea, —and his chosen captains are sunk in the sea of weeds.—The deeps cover them—they went down into the depths like a stone.... The enemy said: ‘I will pursue, I will overtake—I will divide the spoil—my lust shall be satiated upon them—I will draw my sword—my hand shall destroy them.’—Thou didst blow with Thy wind—the sea covered them—they sank as lead in the mighty waters.” **
* Exod. ii.-xiii. I have limited myself here to a summary
of the Biblical narrative, without entering into a criticism
of the text, which I leave to others.
** Exod. xv. 1-10 (R.V.)
From this narrative we see that the Hebrews, or at least those of them who dwelt in the Delta, made their escape from their oppressors, and took refuge in the solitudes of Arabia. According to the opinion of accredited historians, this Exodus took place in the reign of Mînephtah, and the evidence of the triumphal inscription, lately discovered by Prof. Petrie, seems to confirm this view, in relating that the people of Israîlû were destroyed, and had no longer a seed. The context indicates pretty clearly that these ill-treated Israîlû were then somewhere south of Syria, possibly in the neighbourhood of Ascalon and Glezer. If it is the Biblical Israelites who are here mentioned for the first time on an Egyptian monument, one might suppose that they had just quitted the land of slavery to begin their wanderings through the desert. Although the peoples of the sea and the Libyans did not succeed in reaching their settlements in the land of Goshen, the Israelites must have profited both by the disorder into which the Egyptians were thrown by the invaders, and by the consequent withdrawal to Memphis of the troops previously stationed on the east of the Delta, to break away from their servitude and cross the frontier. If, on the other hand, the Israîlû of Mînephtah are regarded as a tribe still dwelling among the mountains of Canaan, while the greater part of the race had emigrated to the banks of the Nile, there is no need to seek long after Mînephtah for a date suiting the circumstances of the Exodus. The years following the reign of Seti II. offer favourable conditions for such a dangerous enterprise: the break-up of the monarchy, the discords of the barons, the revolts among the captives, and the supremacy of a Semite over the other chiefs, must have minimised the risk. We can readily understand how, in the midst of national disorders, a tribe of foreigners weary of its lot might escape from its settlements and betake itself towards Asia without meeting with strenous opposition from the Pharaoh, who would naturally be too much preoccupied with his own pressing necessities to trouble himself much over the escape of a band of serfs.
Having crossed the Red Sea, the Israelites pursued their course to the north-east on the usual road leading into Syria, and then turning towards the south, at length arrived at Sinai. It was a moment when the nations of Asia were stirring. To proceed straight to Canaan by the beaten track would have been to run the risk of encountering their moving hordes, or of jostling against the Egyptian troops, who still garrisoned the strongholds of the She-phelah. The fugitives had, therefore, to shun the great military roads if they were to avoid coming into murderous conflict with the barbarians, or running into the teeth of Pharaoh’s pursuing army. The desert offered an appropriate asylum to people of nomadic inclinations like themselves; they betook themselves to it as if by instinct, and spent there a wandering life for several generations.*