treasure-cities, Pithom and Raamses.'[1] Their future deliverer, rescued from death by a princess of the royal house,[2] must have spent many years at Zoan, the favourite residence of Rameses, which was close to the district of Goshen, and there he would have the opportunity at any moment of 'going out to his brethren and looking upon their burdens.'
Moses did not return from his exile during the lifetime of Rameses, but 'in process of time' that sovereign died.[3] On the accession of Menephtah the hardships of the people were intensified, but their deliverance was close at hand. There is no need to relate the familiar story of their marvellous escape, and of the pursuit, in which so many of the chosen chariots and horses of Menephtah perished.
- ↑ Recent investigation has identified Tel-el-Maschuta, a spot not far from the modern Ismailia, as the site of both the Pithom and the Succoth of the Old Testament; the former was the sacred, the latter the civil name of the city, which is thus shown to have been one of the store-cities built by the Israelites (Ex. i. II), and also the first stage reached by them on their journey (Ex. xii. 37; xiii. 20). The word Ar, meaning storehouse, occurs in the inscription by which M. Naville first identified Pithom-Succoth.
- ↑ Generally supposed to have been a daughter of Rameses, but if Moses was eighty when he stood before the successor of that monarch, that would have been impossible.
- ↑ Ex. ii. 23. How well this incidental allusion coincides with the sixty-seven years' reign of Rameses II.!
