conveyed them for safety to Egypt. Their flight may be described as a later Exodus–an Exodus from Syria to Egypt, instead of from Egypt to Syria; for with them went "all the remnant of Judah, and all the captains of the forces;" a mixed multitude, in fact, consisting mainly of old men, women, and children, and such of the citizens as the sword and chains of the conqueror had spared. Convinced of the impolicy of rousing the wrath of Nebuchadnezzar, Jeremiah vehemently opposed the project of Johanan, and prophesied against it, saying:
"And now therefore hear the word of the Lord, ye remnant of Judah; thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; If ye wholly set your faces to enter into Egypt, and go to sojourn there;Johanan refused, however, to listen to Jeremiah, who, sorely against his will, threw in his lot with that of his brethren, and went across the frontier. Meanwhile Apries, with royal hospitality, placed his palace of Daphnæ at the disposal of the fugitive princesses, and granted a large tract of land to their followers. But Jeremiah continued to prophesy the pursuit of the Babylonian host, and lifted up his warning voice upon the very threshold of the palace of Pharaoh. The whole scene is thus related in the forty-third chapter of the Book of Jeremiah, the seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh verses:
"Then shall it come to pass, that the sword, which ye feared, shall overtake you there in the land of Egypt; and the famine, whereof ye were afraid, shall follow close after you there in Egypt; and there ye shall die.
"So shall it be with all the men that set their faces to go into Egypt to sojourn there; they shall die by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence: and none of them shall remain or escape from the evil that I will bring upon them." *
"So they came into the land of Egypt; for they obeyed [Page 63] not the voice of the Lord. Thus came they, even unto Tahpanhes. "Then came the word of the Lord unto Jeremiah in Tahpanhes, saying,I quote from the Revised Version; and it must be particularly noted that there is an alternative reading given in the margin, where the "brick-work" which is at the entry of Pharaoh's House is rendered as the "pavement" or "square."
"Take great stones in thine hand, and hide them in mortar, in the brickwork which is at the entry of Pharaoh's house in Tahpanhes, in the sight of the men of Judah;
"And say unto them, thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will send and take Nebuchadrezzar the King of Babylon, my servant, and will set his throne upon these stones that I have hid; and he shall spread his royal pavilion over them.
"And he shall come, and shall smite the land of Egypt; such as are for death shall be given to death, and such as are for captivity to captivity, and such as are for the sword to the sword."
Upon what happened after this, the Bible is silent; and beyond the scant record of this brief chronicle, we only know that Tahpanhes and Daphnæ were one and the same, and that Tell Defenneh marks this interesting meeting-point of Egyptian, Greek, Assyrian, and Hebrew history. Mr. Petrie went therefore to Tell Defenneh to prove or disprove an accepted identification. There, in the midst of an arid waste, half marsh, half desert–far from roads, villages, or cultivated soil–in view of an horizon bounded by the heron-haunted lagoons of Lake Menzaleh and the mud-swamps of the plain of Pelusium–he found three groups of mounds. These groups lay from half a mile to a mile apart, the intermediate flat being covered with stone chips, potsherds, and the remains of brick foundations. These chips, potsherds, and foundations marked the site of an important city, in which the lines of the streets and the boundaries of two or three large enclosures were yet visible. Two of the mounds were apparently mere [Page 64] rubbish-heaps of the ordinary type; the third being entirely composed of the burned and blackened ruins of a huge pile of brick buildings, visible, like a lesser Birs Nimroud, for a great distance across the plain. Arriving at his destination towards evening, foot-sore and weary, Mr. Petrie beheld this singular object standing high against a lurid sky, and reddened by a fiery sunset. His Arabs hastened to tell him its local name; and he may be envied the delightful surprise with which he learned that it was known far and near as "El Kasr el Bint el Yahudi''–the "Castle of the Jew's Daughter."
Setting to work with some forty or fifty laborers, he soon discovered that he had to do with the calcined ruins of a structure which was both a fort and a palace. It consisted of one enormous square tower containing sixteen rooms on each floor; while, built up against its outer walls, were a variety of later structures, such as might have been added for guard-rooms, offices, and the accommodation of a court. There was every evidence that the place had been taken by assault, plundered, and burned, the upper stories of the tower having fallen in and buried the basements. Layer by layer, Mr. Petrie cleared away these masses of burned rubbish–each layer a chapter in the history of the place. The royal apartments had once been lined with fine limestone slabs exquisitely sculptured and painted; but these had been literally mashed to pieces before the place was fired, and lay in splintered heaps among the débris of charred beams and blackened bricks. That this stronghold was actually built, as Herodotus states, by Psammetichus I. was proved by the discovery of that king's foundation deposits under the four corners of the building. These deposits consisted of libation vessels, corn-rubbers, specimens of ores, model bricks, the bones of a sacrificial ox and of a small bird, and a series of little tablets in gold, silver, lapis lazuli, porcelain, carnelian, and jasper, engraved with the names and titles of the royal founder. Under this mountain of rubbish, the basement chambers, [Page 65]
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