When I was exploring in the marshy desert about Tanis, I saw from the top of a mound--Tell Ginn--a shimmering grey swell on the horizon through the haze; and that I was told was Tell Defenneh, or rather Def’neh, as it is called. It was generally supposed to be the Pelusiac Daphnae of Herodotos, and the Tahpanhes of the Old Testament; but nothing definite was known about it, and as it lies in the midst of the desert, between the Delta and the Suez Canal, twelve miles from either, it was not very accessible. After working at Tell Nebesheh for some time, I left it in Mr. Griffith’s hands, and told my men that I wanted to work at Defneh; immediately I had more volunteers than I could employ, and I went into the desert to the work with a party of forty,--men, boys and girls,--and formed a settlement which enlarged up to seventy. We pitched on the old Pelusiac branch, which is now rather brackish, and it was sometimes difficult to drink the water: the people, however, made the best of it, and I never had a pleasanter time with my men than the two months I lived there, independent of all the local authorities which are generally met with. No one was allowed about the camp except the workers, and I never had the least trouble with them, nor heard a single squabble. On reaching the place I found a wide flat plain bordering on the river, strewn all over with pottery, and with a mound of mud-brick building in the midst of it. I asked the name of the mound, and was told _Kasr Bint el Yehudi_, ‘the palace of the Jew’s daughter.’ This at once brought Tahpanhes to my mind. Can there be any tradition here? I thought. I turned to Jeremiah, and there read how he came, with Johanan, the son of Kareah, and all the officers, and the king’s daughters, down to Tahpanhes and dwelt there. We can hardly believe that the only place in Egypt where a celebrated daughter of a Jewish king lived, was called in later times ‘the palace of the Jew’s daughter’ by accident, especially as such a name is only known here. Rather has this unique name clung to the place, as so many names have lasted, as long or longer, in Egypt and Syria. The next question was, if any reason could be found for its possessing a Greek name, Daphnae. Soon this was settled by finding an abundance of Greek pottery of the archaic period; and so many Greek remains, and so little Egyptian, that it was evident a Greek camp had been here. This then was the camp of the Ionians described by Herodotos as having been founded by Psametichos I on the Pelusiac branch; and on reaching down to the foundation of the fort, I there took out the tablets with the name of Psamtik I as the founder. But Herodotos relates a tale about Sesostris having been attacked here by treachery, suggesting that buildings had existed here in Ramesside times; and beneath some work of Psamtik I found part of a wall of baked bricks, such as were used in tombs at Tell Nebesheh, not far from this, and only in Ramesside times.