"With the birth of Moses, and the finding of the child in the ark or basket by the daughter of Pharaoh, and her adoption of it, you are all familiar; and the story is quite as interesting as any you can find in other books than the Bible. Though of the house of Levi, he became an Egyptian for the time; but he claimed his lineage, and became the leader of the Israelites, and conducted them out of Egypt.
"A great deal of study has been given by learned men to the route by which this was accomplished. Most of them agreed that he started from Tanis, or Ramses. On that narrow strip of land between the lake and the Mediterranean, which you have seen from the promenade, was one of the usual roads from Egypt into Asia, and was the one which led into Palestine, the Holy Land. Where Moses and his followers crossed the Red Sea is still an open question, though hardly such to devout people who accept literally the Bible as their guide in matters of faith and fact both. These accept the belief that the crossing of the Red Sea, with the miracles attending it, was in the portion near Suez.
"Heinrich Karl Brugsch, a learned German and eminent Egyptologist, born in Berlin in 1827, has constructed a theory in relation to the exodus of the Israelites which is more ingenious than reasonable to the pious reader of the Scripture. It would be hardly profitable for us to go into the details of his reasoning, though he uses the Bible as the foundation of his statements. There were two roads from Egypt to Palestine, the one mentioned, and one farther south, not so well adapted to caravans on account of the marshy country it traverses.
"The German savant believed they departed by the northern road. In the British Museum is a letter written on papyrus over three thousand years ago, in which an Egyptian writer describes his journey from Ramses in pursuit of two runaway servants. The days of the month are given; and his stopping-places were the same as those of the Israelites. (Exodus xii. 37): 'The children of Israel journeyed from Ramses to Succoth;' and this is the region east of Goshen. (Exodus xiii. 20): 'And they journeyed from Succoth, and encamped in Etham, in the edge of the wilderness,' or the desert.
"This was also the route of the Egyptian letter writer. Then the pilgrims were commanded to turn, and encamp at a point between Migdol and the sea, (Exodus xiv. 2.) He found the fugitives had gone towards the wall, meaning the forts by which Egypt was defended from Asiatic enemies. Following the same route, the Israelites came to the Sarbonian Lake. This is a long sheet of water on the isthmus," said the commander, as he pointed it out on the map. "It was, for it no longer exists, separated from the Mediterranean by such a strip as that which you see here by Lake Menzaleh.
"Diodorus Siculus informs us that the Sarbonian Lake was filled with a rank growth of reeds and papyrus bushes, which made it very dangerous to travellers. Strong winds blew the sands of the desert over the surface, studded with leaves, so as to hide the water; and the traveller might walk upon it and sink to his death. The same ancient writer says that an army with which Artaxerxes, King of Persia, intended to invade Egypt, being unacquainted with this treacherous lake, got into it, and was lost.
"Brugsch believes this was the lake through which the Israelites passed, and that Pharaoh's army encountered a storm, were lost, and perished as did the Persian forces. But we must drop the subject here, though it may come up again when we arrive at Suez, where others believe the six hundred thousand Israelites went over dry shod, while Pharaoh and his hosts perished in the closing waters."
The company had certainly been deeply interested in the subject, and the commander retired from the rostrum with a volley of applause.