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| Title | Picturesque Palestine, Sinai, and Egypt, Vol. 2 |
| Creator (LCNAF) |
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| Publisher | D. Appleton and Company |
| Date | 1883 |
| Description | Index: Phoenicia and Lebanon / by the Rev. H. W. Jessup -- The Phoenician plain / by the Rev. Canon Tristram -- Acre, the key of Palestine, Mount Carmel and the river Kishon, Maritime cities and plains of Palestine / by Miss M. E. Rogers -- Lydda and Ramleh, Philistia / By Lt. Col. Warren -- The south country of Judaea / by the Rev. Canon Tristram -- The southern borderland and Dead Sea / by Professor Palmer -- Mount Hor and the cliffs of Edom, The convent of St. Catherine / by Miss M. E. Rogers -- Sinai / by the Rev. C. P. Clarke -- The land of Goshen, Cairo, Memphis, Thebes, Edfu and Philae / by S. Lane-Poole. |
| Subject.Geographic (TGN) |
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| Genre (AAT) |
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| Language | English |
| Type (DCMI) |
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| Original Item Location | DS107 .W73 v.2 |
| Original Item URL | http://library.uh.edu/record=b1703789~S11 |
| Digital Collection | Exotic Impressions: Views of Foreign Lands |
| Digital Collection URL | http://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/exotic |
| Repository | Kenneth Franzheim II Rare Books Room, William R. Jenkins Architecture and Art Library, University of Houston Libraries |
| Repository URL | http://info.lib.uh.edu/about/campus-libraries-collections/william-r-jenkins-architecture-art-library |
| Use and Reproduction | No Copyright - United States |
| Identifier | exotic_201304_015 |
| Title | Page 368 |
| Format (IMT) |
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| File Name | exotic_201304_015_395.jpg |
| Transcript | 6 68 PLCTURESQUE PALESTLNE. ;<the silver streak" which severs Africa from Asia? Where is Migdol, the frontier fort in Ezekiel's days, and Pelusium, the " City of Sweet Repose," near the Serbonian bog, and Avaris, " which commanded the border, at once the place of arms and the last possession of the mysterious shepherds " ? A few high mounds are all that break the desolate scene of Pompey's murder. Migdol is supposed by some to be represented by the hillock called Tell-es-Samut. Lofty mounds, again, and the scattered ruins of temples near Zakazik are what remain to us of that famous city of Bubastis, at which Herodotus marvelled, and whither, he tells us, seven hundred thousand pilgrims yearly came to celebrate the festival of Bast, the cat-headed goddess of burning love, with riotous rites, just as their descendants keep the Molid of the Muslim saint Ahmad El-Bedawy at Tanta hard by. The young men of Pi-beseth, as the Hebrew prophet called Bubastis, have fallen by the sword, and the cities went into captivity (Ezekiel xxx. 17). Nothing more impressive exists in all the wonderful sights of Egypt than this total overthrow of the great cities of the Delta. The " best of the land " is become a very Golgotha of a vanished and unreturning splendour. Turkish conquest and Roman neglect have verified the words, " I will make the canals dry, and sell the land into the hand of the wicked : and I will make the land waste, and all that is therein, by the hand of strangers : I the Lord have spoken" (Ezekiel xxx. 12). Goshen itself, the city which gave its name to half the " Arabian Nome," and which was the capital of the district assigned to Joseph's kinsfolk, has shared the fate of all the border- cities. The site can be shown at Fakus, in which we trace the Greek Phaccusa, the Egyptian Pa-Kesem, and the Hebrew Goshen. We can now go by railway to the place whither Jacob journeyed, full of years and troubles, to end his days near his son, the famous viceroy of Egypt. But of the Hebrew capital—as of all the cities of the Delta—there remains nothing but the inevitable mounds. Everywhere throughout this wonderful land, where the Shepherd Kings conquered, where the children of Israel toiled, where a Pharaoh oppressed and another Pharaoh pursued, the plain is varied only by this one monotonous feature : mounds in every direction show the traveller where the buried cities of Zoan and Goshen lie waiting the tardy labours of the explorer to render up their secrets and tell something of their eventful and mysterious history. No part of Egypt demands excavation more loudly than the eastern half of the Delta; nowhere are the problems to be resolved so novel or so important. The cultus ot the Shepherds, at present shrouded in obscurity, but offering already strange and remarkable features, bears, we know not how vitally, upon the religion of Israel ; the sojourn of the Hebrews in Egypt await illustration in wall-sculptures of tombs ; the mummies of the children of Israel themselves are beneath these mounds, if only the trouble were taken to uncover them. Mariette, ever in the van, did something for Zoan, but there remains a splendid field for a discoverer. The remarkable success attending the excavations at Pithom in 1883 is a good omen for the future; and Tanis and Daphnse only await a like exploration to reveal, perhaps, even more astonishing results. Near Cairo, forming the southern point of the triangle which included the land of Goshen, |