The Princess Thermutis, says Josephus, named Moshe (Moses) from mo (má = water) and uses, those who are saved out of it (ses = to reach land). Possibly it is Mu-su = water-son. Josephus was sorely offended by the ‘calumnies’ of Manetho; this Egyptian priest, who wrote under Ptolemy Philadelphus about the time of the LXX, declared that the Hebrews were a familia of leprous slaves who, when expelled from Egypt, were led by a renegade priest called Osarsiph (Osiris-Sapi, god of underworld); and that the number was swollen by Palestinian strangers driven out by Amenophis. He gives the number of lepers and unclean at 250,000 (= 50,000 × 5), and the Hyksos, another impure race, number also 250,000. The learned classics accepted this view, duly abusing the ‘gens sceleratissima’ (Seneca), and the ‘odium generis humani’ (Tacitus).
[545] The site of Kadesh and the Buhayrat Hums (Tarn of Emessa) or B. Kutaynah, a ‘broad’ or widening of the Orontes, was first visited by Dr. Thomson of Bayrut in 1846. I rode about the ‘lake of the land of the Amorites’ in 1870; but found no ruins, or rather ruins of no importance everywhere. It was not then known to me that in a.d. 1200 the geographer Yakut (Geogr. Dict. edit. Wüstenfeld) had noticed the water in his day as the ‘Bahriyat Kuds’ (Tarn of Kadesh). Since that time the Palestine Exploration Fund (July 1881) identified the seat of Atesh or Kadesh with the Tell Nabi Mendeh, a Santon’s tomb on the highest part of the hill where the ruins lie. The site is on the left bank of the Orontes, four English miles south of the ‘broad.’ The city disappears from history after the thirteenth century b.c., but local legend has preserved its memory.
[546] Prof. Ebers, who is familiar with the many portraits of Ramses-Sesostris, declares that he was a handsome man with fine aquiline features, like Napoleon Buonaparte.
[547] This original and instinctive way to revive the drowned endures to the present day, despite the wrath of the Faculty.
[548] Brugsch (ii. 68) gives the terms of the treaty as translated by Mr. Goodwin (Records of the Past, iv. 25); and adds instances to prove that it was acted upon. Thus he explains the hitherto mysterious countermarch, the turning back of the Hebrew exodus, at the time when the emigrants were advancing straight upon their objective. His strong point is the identification of ‘Baal-Zephon,’ about which all the commentators have made such hopeless guesses. He explains it by ‘Baal of the North’ (Typhon, Sutekh or Khepsh), the ‘Mount Kasion’ of Jupiter Kasios, a name derived from the Egyptian Hazian or Hazina.
[549] So called from an old Coptic town, long ruined.
[550] Rawlinson’s Herodotus, vol. i., Essay VII., and reference to Black Obelisk in British Museum. Synchronous History of Assyria and Judæa, pp. 1–82, vol. iii. pt. i.; Soc. Bibl. Archæology, 1874.
[551] A Keltic word, bot = foot.
[552] In popular Hebrew use, ‘Canaanite’ meant a trader.
[553] Possibly the ‘pure’ (Hebr. Tohar), in which case the word is ‘Semitic.’