The discovery of Pithom, the ancient biblical “treasure-city” of the first chapter of Exodus, has probably attracted more public attention and been more widely discussed by European savants than any archæological event since the discovery of Nineveh. It was in February, 1883, that M. Naville opened the well-known mound of Tel-el-Maskhutah, on the south bank of the new sweet-water canal in the Wady Tûmilât, and there discovered the foundations and other remains of a fortified city of the kind known in Egyptian as a _bekhen_, or store-fort. This _bekhen_, which was surrounded by a wall thirty feet in thickness, proved to be about twelve acres in extent. In one corner of the inclosure were found the ruins of a temple built by Rameses II. The rest of the area consisted of a labyrinth of subterraneous rectangular cellars, or store-chambers, constructed of sun-dried bricks of large size and divided by walls varying from eight to ten feet in thickness. In the ruins of the temple were discovered several statues more or less broken, a colossal hawk inscribed with the royal ovals of Rameses II, and other works of art dating from the reigns of Osorkon II, Nectanebo and Ptolemy Philadelphus. The hieroglyphic legends engraved upon the statues established the true value of the discovery by giving both the name of the city and the name of the district in which the city was situated; the first being Pa-Tum (Pithom), the “Abode of Tum,” and the second being Thuku-t (Succoth); so identifying “Pa-Tum, in the district of Thuku-t,” with Pithom, the treasure-city built by the forced labor of the Hebrews and Succoth, the region in which they made their first halt on going forth from the land of bondage. Even the bricks with which the great wall and the walls of the store-chambers are built bear eloquent testimony to the toil of the suffering colonists and confirm in its minutest details the record of their oppression; some being duly kneaded with straw; others, when the straw was no longer forthcoming, being mixed with the leafage of a reed common to the marsh lands of the delta; and the remainder, when even this substitute ran short, being literally “bricks without straw,” molded of mere clay crudely dried in the sun. The researches of M. Naville further showed that the temple to Tum, founded by Rameses II, was restored, or rebuilt, by Osorkon II, of the twenty-second dynasty; while at a still higher level were discovered the remains of a Roman fortress. That Pithom was still an important place in the time of the Ptolemies is proved by a large and historically important tablet found by M. Naville in one of the store-chambers, where it had been thrown in with other sculptures and rubbish of various kinds. This tablet records repairs done to the canal, an expedition to Ethiopia and the foundation of the city of Arsinoë. Not less important from a geographical point of view was the finding of a Roman milestone