The runaway slaves must have taken the same road as that which had been taken by the Israelites before them. The Israelites had avoided the nearest and more usual road to Palestine, which ran along the edge of the Mediterranean and passed through Gaza. The Philistines were already threatening the southern coast of Canaan, and Gaza was garrisoned by Egyptian troops. The undisciplined and unwarlike multitude which followed Moses would have been cut to pieces had they ventured to force their way through them, or else would have returned to Egypt. They turned therefore southward towards the desert and ‘the way of the wilderness of the Yâm Sûph.’ From Succoth, we are told, they marched to Etham ‘in the edge of the wilderness.’ Brugsch was the first to see that in Etham we have a Hebrew transcription of the Egyptian Khetem. The only question is, which of the many Khetemu or ‘Fortresses’ which protected the Asiatic frontier of Egypt this particular Etham may have been. We hear of ‘the Khetem of Ramses II., which is in the district of Zaru,’ at the very point where one of the roads to Asia passed through the great line of fortification, and the report quoted above tells us of another Khetem, that of Thukut. It was, however, the second Khetem mentioned in the report which is referred to in the Old Testament narrative. This second Khetem lay between Succoth and the lines of fortification, and might therefore be described as ‘in the edge of the wilderness,’ which began on the eastern side of the Shur or fortified wall. It was, in fact, the fortress which guarded one of the roads out of Egypt at the point where it intersected the lines. To the south of it came the Migdol or Tower of King Meneptah. It is possible that this may be the Migdol which is stated in the book of Exodus to have been near the next camping-place of the Israelites. From the fortress of Etham they had turned to the ‘sea,’ and had there pitched their tents ‘before Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, over against Baal-zephon.’ In Baal-zephon, ‘Baal of the North,’ we have the name of a Phœnician temple, which is alluded to in an Egyptian papyrus;[182] and in place of Pi-hahiroth, the Septuagint and Coptic versions read ‘the farmstead,’ reminding us of the _ahu_ or ‘estate’ of Pharaoh in the district of Thukut, on which the Edomite herdsmen were afterwards allowed to settle.