A comparatively ancient tradition relates that the Hebrews arrived in Egypt during the reign of Aphobis, a Hyksos king, doubtless one of the Apopi, and possibly the monarch who restored the monuments of the Theban Pharaohs, and engraved his name on the sphinxes of Amenemhait III. and on the colossi of Mirmashau.* The land which the Hebrews obtained is that which, down to the present day, is most frequently visited by nomads, who find there an uncertain hospitality.

* The year XVII. of Apophis has been pointed out as the date of their arrival, and this combination, probably proposed by some learned Jew of Alexandria, was adopted by Christian chroniclers.  It is unsupported by any fact of Egyptian history, but it rests on a series of calculations founded on the information contained in the Bible.  Starting from the assumption that the Exodus must have taken place under Ahmosis, and that the children of Israel had been four hundred and thirty years on the banks of the Nile, it was found that the beginning of their sojourn fell under the reign of the Apophis mentioned by Josephus, and, to be still more correct, in the XVIIth year of that prince.

The tribes of the isthmus of Suez are now, in fact, constantly shifting from one continent to another, and their encampments in any place are merely temporary.  The lord of the soil must, if he desire to keep them within his borders, treat them with the greatest prudence and tact.  Should the government displease them in any way, or appear to curtail their liberty, they pack up their tents and take flight into the desert.  The district occupied by them one day is on the next vacated and left to desolation.  Probably the same state of things existed in ancient times, and the border nomes on the east of the Delta were in turn inhabited or deserted by the Bedouin of the period.  The towns were few in number, but a series of forts protected the frontier.  These were mere village-strongholds perched on the summit of some eminence, and surrounded by a strip of cornland.  Beyond the frontier extended a region of bare rock, or a wide plain saturated with the ill-regulated surplus water of the inundation.  The land of Goshen was bounded by the cities of Heliopolis on the south, Bubastis on the west, and Tanis and Mendes on the north:  the garrison at Avaris could easily keep watch over it and maintain order within it, while they could at the same time defend it from the incursions of the Monatiu and the Hiru-Shaitu.*

* Goshen comprised the provinces situated on the borders of the cultivable cornland, and watered by the infiltration of the Nile, which caused the growth of a vegetation sufficient to support the flocks during a few weeks; and it may also have included the imperfectly irrigated provinces which were covered with pools and reedy swamps after each inundation.

The Beni-Israel throve in these surroundings so well adapted to their traditional tastes.  Even if