into the land of Midian.  Here he found an asylum, and Jethro the priest gave him one of his daughters in marriage.  After forty years of exile, God, appearing to him in a burning bush, sent him to deliver His people.  The old Pharaoh was dead, but Moses and his brother Aaron betook themselves to the court of the new Pharaoh, and demanded from him permission for the Hebrews to sacrifice in the desert of Arabia.  They obtained it, as we know, only after the infliction of the ten plagues, and after the firstborn of the Egyptians had been stricken.* The emigrants started from Ramses; as they were pursued by a body of troops, the Sea parted its waters to give them passage over the dry ground, and closing up afterwards on the Egyptian hosts, overwhelmed them to a man.  Thereupon Moses and the children of Israel sang this song unto Jahveh, saying:  “Jahveh is my strength and song—­and He has become my salvation.—­This is my God, and I will praise Him,—­my father’s God, and I will exalt Him.—­The Lord is a man of war,—­and Jahveh is His name.—­Pharaoh’s chariots and his hosts hath He cast into the sea, —­and his chosen captains are sunk in the sea of weeds.—­The deeps cover them—­they went down into the depths like a stone....  The enemy said:  ’I will pursue, I will overtake—­I will divide the spoil—­my lust shall be satiated upon them—­I will draw my sword—­my hand shall destroy them.’—­Thou didst blow with Thy wind—­the sea covered them—­they sank as lead in the mighty waters."**

     * Exod. ii.-xiii.  I have limited myself here to a summary
     of the Biblical narrative, without entering into a criticism
     of the text, which I leave to others.

     ** Exod. xv. 1-10 (R.V.)

From this narrative we see that the Hebrews, or at least those of them who dwelt in the Delta, made their escape from their oppressors, and took refuge in the solitudes of Arabia.  According to the opinion of accredited historians, this Exodus took place in the reign of Minephtah, and the evidence of the triumphal inscription, lately discovered by Prof.  Petrie, seems to confirm this view, in relating that the people of Israilu were destroyed, and had no longer a seed.  The context indicates pretty clearly that these ill-treated Israilu were then somewhere south of Syria, possibly in the neighbourhood of Ascalon and Glezer.  If it is the Biblical Israelites who are here mentioned for the first time on an Egyptian monument, one might suppose that they had just quitted the land of slavery to begin their wanderings through the desert.  Although the peoples of the sea and the Libyans did not succeed in reaching their settlements in the land of Goshen, the Israelites must have profited both by the disorder into which the Egyptians were thrown by the invaders, and by the consequent withdrawal to Memphis of the troops previously stationed on the east of the Delta, to break away from their servitude and cross the frontier.  If, on the other hand,