In the midst of these stern yet touching narratives in which the Hebrews of the times of the Kings delighted to trace the history of their remote ancestors, one important fact arrests our attention: the Beni-Israel quitted Southern Syria and settled on the banks of the Nile. They had remained for a considerable time in what was known later as the mountains of Judah. Hebron had served as their rallying-point; the broad but scantily watered wadys separating the cultivated lands from the desert, were to them a patrimony, which they shared with the inhabitants of the neighbouring towns. Every year, in the spring, they led their flocks to browse on the thin herbage growing in the bottoms of the valleys, removing them to another district only when the supply of fodder was exhausted. The women span, wove, fashioned garments, baked bread, cooked the viands, and devoted themselves to the care of the younger children, whom they suckled beyond the usual period. The men lived like the Bedouin--periods of activity alternating regularly with times of idleness, and the daily routine, with its simple duties and casual work, often gave place to quarrels for the possession of some rich pasturage or some never-failing well. A comparatively ancient tradition relates that the Hebrews arrived in Egypt during the reign of Aphobis, a Hyksos king, doubtless one of the Apopi, and possibly the monarch who restored the monuments of the Theban Pharaohs, and engraved his name on the sphinxes of Amenemhait III. and on the colossi of Mirmashau.* The land which the Hebrews obtained is that which, down to the present day, is most frequently visited by nomads, who find there an uncertain hospitality. * The year XVII. of Apophis has been pointed out as the date of their arrival, and this combination, probably proposed by some learned Jew of Alexandria, was adopted by Christian chroniclers. It is unsupported by any fact of Egyptian history, but it rests on a series of calculations founded on the information contained in the Bible. Starting from the assumption that the Exodus must have taken place under Ahmosis, and that the children of Israel had been four hundred and thirty years on the banks of the Nile, it was found that the beginning of their sojourn fell under the reign of the Apophis mentioned by Josephus, and, to be still more correct, in the XVIIth year of that prince.