The
Bible tells us that the leaving Hebrews did not take the, "Way of the Philistines",
called the "Way of Horus". This is a a route that traces the coast of the
Mediterrian Sea for the length of the Sinai. Being the main entrance way
into Egypt for the outside world, the Pharohs staffed the route with
a chain of fortresses well garrisoned to defend against invasion.
Moses, knowing this being raised in the Egyptian Court, decided to march
along the southerly route striaght through the desert of Sinai and Mitannai.
The Hebrews moved straight from Pi-Ramesses in the eastern Nile Delta to
Succoth on the Wadi Tumilat (a Nile canal). From here, the Bible mentions
that the Hebrew went, "....between Migdol and the sea, over against Baal-Zephon".
This place is not known very well since the word "Migdol" or "Miktol" is
a fairly generic term used by the Egyptians meaning, "tower" or "fort".....hence
the qualifier "....over against Baal-Zephon". To our shagrin, Baal-Zephon
is not known to us clearly. It has been suggested that is lay 15 miles
north of Suez at a site called Abu Hasan. Abu Hasan is the fort which guarded
the southern entrance of Egypt. This is as good as place as any and
would be logical in Moses' eyes.
The Bible calls the place that the Moses does the Miricle of the Sea, "Yam
Suph" or translated as, "the Reed Sea". The writers of the Bible, not just
in Exodus, seem to use this word phrase to mean the Red Sea, however there
are no reeds anywhere along its coast. The solution comes when we look
at the area around the Red Sea. The northern edge of the sea is a hodge-podge
of small shallow lakes and marshes. These lakes and marshes in ancient
times were connected by a shallow arm of the Red Sea reaching up from the
gulf, and there is a lake in this area that even to the Egyptians of this
time was known as, "The Reed Sea" because of the abundance of reeds.
An instresting point here is that the Bible explicitly says that "....a
East wind blew..." all night, drying out the land and spreading the waters.
In Egypt and this part of the world, the dominate wind is a westerly wind.
However up in Palistine and Canaan, the dominte wind is a Easterly wind.
The significance of which I am not sure but it is an intresting fact.
