“You did not hear from me earlier because my too close occupation prevented my studying your book as thoroughly as I wished, and contributing, as I hoped to, something on the threshold question. Even now I have to write hastily.
“I have found your book most interesting and suggestive, so that I heartily recommend its publication. I hope to be able to read it more carefully, and to give a more detailed criticism, after a while.
“A few remarks:
“Page 103.–Per-ao [Pharaoh]–gate, door. Not to be proved. Strangely, the root pire means ‘to go out.’ Originally pr may have been ‘door,’ but not in historic times.
“Page 161.–[Calling the region of Sinai, the ‘land of God’.] A mistake! The ‘land of God’ is only the land on the Red Sea. No such records known of Mt. Sinai.
“Page 180, line 5.–[A memorial stone spoken of as marking the boundary line.] How do you know it was a boundary stone?
“There is rich material of better and earlier passages on boundary stones than that given on page 180.
“El gisr means ‘bridge.’ The dictionaries do not give ‘threshold.’
“Page 184.–Sinai, an ‘Egyptian boundary line’? Still less did the ‘holy mountain’ (p. 185) ever mark the southern frontier. The threshold sacrifices are evidently a mistake. But I do not have at hand Brugsch’s book–a very fanciful and unreliable book.
“I hope that as soon as a very pressing work has been finished, I shall be able to revise all your passages bearing on Egypt. But even if I should find some more of these minor faults, they would not change the good general impression of the book.”