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BURIED CITES AND BIBLE COUNTRIES.

south, and has the appearance of a fortress. It has been more or less ransacked at various times; but would probably still repay a thorough exploration. In the absence of a full investigation there remains a little doubt about the genuineness of the site; but Professor Sayce, on one occasion, found here a fragment of stone, bearing two ancient Hebrew letters; and the decisive proof that it was a Jewish settlement has been furnished by the discovery of a Jewish cemetery, about one mile further east in the desert. The ground there, for the length of more than half a mile, is quite honey-combed with tombs. Here and there a body was found in situ, and there were no traces of enbalming, nor any ornament of any kind, but invariably a brick under the head, which was a distinctive mark of Jewish burials. A few tablets had escaped the general destruction, and the names which they contained fully confirmed the conclusion suggested by the mode of burial: "Eleazar" was one name and is purely Jewish: some others were Jewish with a Greek ending, as Salamis, Nethaneus, Barchias; and others still were Greek names of frequent use among the Jews, as Aristobulos, Onesimas, Tryphania.

Tell-el-Maskhuta or Pithom-Succoth.—The Pharaoh who enslaved the Israelites appears to have been Rameses II., son of Seti I., of the nineteenth dynasty. This dynasty only began with Rameses I., the grandfather of Rameses II. The store cities built by the Israelites were called Raamses and Pithom; and when the Exodus took place the starting point was Rameses and the first resting-place Succoth (Ex. i. 11; xii. 37). None of these places were known, and it had hardly been suspected that Pithom and Succoth were so closely associated as they are now found to be. But the site of Pithom has lately been discovered. We all remember Kassassin, where Sir Garnet Wolseley halted the British troops, in the campaign of 1882, just before that silent midnight march to storm Arabi's en-