Position 32 - The Brick Store-chambers Of Pithom, The City Built By Hebrew Bondsmen—looking North

Standing on the South Side of the Wadi Tamilat, we looked Northward across the desert, and yonder in the middle distance the line of palms marks for us the depression of the wadi. The ancient canal, which once followed the wadi, and of which extensive remains are still to be traced, has been succeeded by a modern canal, which supplies the towns along the Suez Canal with fresh water from the Nile.

Here for ages the traffic and commerce of Egypt and Asia passed along. Here were the Pharaoh's frontier stations, controlling all ingress and egress. We have the hasty memoranda of an officer stationed on this frontier in the days of the Hebrews, noted on a piece of papyrus now in the British Museum, in which he records the passage of messengers and officials for several days, as they went up to Syria on various official business of the Pharaoh, a document showing how active was the communication between the Egypt and the Syria of that day.

Ramses II did much for this region, in which the Pharaohs of earlier times had not been interested. They had merely passed through it on their way to their Syrian wars, but had given it little attention. Ramses II, however, as we have already stated, possibly cut the canal through the wadi. Fifty miles north (directly in our front) he built the magnificent city of Tanis (see Map 3), and in the wadi itself, according to the Biblical narrative, he also built the city of Pithom, where we now stand.

Large portions of such a city are necessarily built of sun-dried brick, and in making and laying such brick, the kings of the time employed thousands of foreign captives. There is in Thebes in one of the finer tombs there, a scene representing such captives engaged in brick-making. When we go up the river, we shall find the same industry still in daily operation (Position 39). It was quite in accord with the custom of the Pharaoh, therefore, thus to employ the Hebrews.

The city is called in the Biblical story, a “store-city,” and it is interesting to know that Naville found extensive magazines and store-houses among these ruins. Here before us are the walls of such buildings, and it is possible that the very bricks before us were made by captive Hebrews.

Little is known of the history of this city in later times, but it evidently early fell into ruin, for in its exposed position at the door of Egypt, it could not have escaped speedy destruction. The sands of the desert then blew in upon the wreck, and only these low walls scattered over a few hundred feet, have survived to show us where the city lay. As we have already remarked at our visit to the site of Memphis, it is the same with all the cities of Lower Egypt . The ruin of war, the pick of the Moslem quarryman, and the rising waters of the Nile have annihilated the cities of the Delta, and with them have perished forever some of the noblest works ever wrought by man.