would have thought that the caravans proceeding to the interior of Africa through the Sahara Desert would have started from the left bank of the Nile; but we must remember that ancient Memphis, which stood on the left bank and faced Heluan, had been abandoned long before Benjamin’s time.  Edrisi and Abulfeda confirm Benjamin’s statement respecting Zawila or Zaouyla, which was the capital of Gana—­the modern Fezzan—­a large oasis in the Sahara Desert, south of Tripoli.]

     [Footnote 180:  This sentence is out of place, and should
     follow the sentence in the preceding paragraph which speaks
     of the Sultan Al-Habash.]

[Footnote 181:  Kutz, the present Kus, is halfway between Keneh and Luxor.  The old town, now entirely vanished, was second in size to Fostat, and was the chief centre of the Arabian trade.  The distance of Kus from Fayum is about 300 miles.  The letter [Hebrew:  ‘Sin’] denotes 300, not 3.]

[Footnote 182:  In the Middle Ages the Fayum was wrongly called Pithom.  E. Naville has identified the ruins of Tell-el-Maskhuta near Ismailieh with Pithom, the treasure city mentioned in Exodus i. 11.  Among the buildings, grain-stores have been discovered in the form of deep rectangular chambers without doors, into which the corn was poured from above.  These are supposed to date from the time of Rameses II.  See The Store City of Pithom and the Route of the Exodus:  A Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund.  E. Naville, 1885.  The Fayum, or Marsh-district, owes its extraordinary fertility to the Bahr Yussuf (Joseph’s Canal).

The Arab story is that when Joseph was getting old the courtiers tried to bring about his disgrace by inducing Pharaoh to set him what appeared to be an impossible task, viz. to double the revenues of the province within a few years.  Joseph accomplished the task by artificially adapting a natural branch of the Nile so as to give the district the benefit of the yearly overflow.  The canal thus formed, which is 207 miles in length, was called after Joseph.  The storehouses of Joseph are repeatedly mentioned by Arabic writers.  Cf.  Koran xii. 55, Jacut, IV, 933 and Makrizi, I, 241.]

[Footnote 183:’Mr. Israel Abrahams, in J.  Q.R., XVII, 427 sqq., and Mr. E.J.  Worman, vol.  XVIII, 1, give us very interesting information respecting Fostat and Cairo, as derived from Geniza documents, but to comprehend fully Benjamin’s account, we must remember that at the time of his visit the metropolis was passing through a crisis.  Since March, 1169, Saladin had virtually become the ruler of Egypt, although nominally he acted as Vizier to the Caliph El-Adid, who was the last of the Fatimite line, and who died Sept. 13, 1171, three days after his deposition.  The student is referred to the biography of Saladin by Mr. Stanley Lane Poole, 1878.  Chap, viii gives a full account of Cairo as at 1170 and is accompanied