The district immediately around Saft el-Henneh is fertile, but the name of the Egyptian Arabia which it once bore shows unmistakably who its cultivators must have been. They were the Semitic nomads from the East who, like their descendants to-day, occasionally settled on the frontier-lands of Egypt, and became more or less unwilling agriculturists. But the larger part of them remained shepherds, leading a nomad life with their flocks and camels, and pitching their tents wherever the monotony of the desert was broken by water and vegetation. The Wadi Tumilât, into which the district of Saft el-Henneh opened, was thus eminently suited for the residence of the Hebrew Bedouin. Here they had food for their flocks, plenty of space for their camping-grounds, and freedom from interference on the part of the Egyptians, while in the background was a fertile district, in close connection with the capital, where those of them who cared to exchange a pastoral for an agricultural life could find rich soil to sow and cultivate. Hard by Zagazig are the mounds of the ancient Bubastis, and here the excavations carried on by the Egypt Exploration Fund have brought to light remains of the Hyksos Pharaohs, including one of Apopi. Bubastis, therefore, must have been a Hyksos residence, and its temple was adorned by the Hyksos kings. Between Bubastis and Heliopolis stood Pa-Bailos, and of this town Meneptah II. says at Thebes that “the country around was not cultivated, but left as pasture for cattle because of the strangers, having been abandoned since the times of old.” What better proof can we have that the Arabian nome was in truth what the land of Goshen is represented to be? By a curious coincidence, the Wadi Tumilât, the old land of Goshen, has, in the present century, again been handed over to Bedouin and Syrians, and again been the scene of an Exodus. Mohammed Ali was anxious to establish the culture of the silk-worm in Egypt, and accordingly planted mulberry-trees in the Wadi Tumilât, and settled there a large colony of Syrians and Bedouin. The Bedouin were induced to remain there, partly by the pasturage provided for their flocks, partly by a promise of exemption from taxes and military conscription. When Abbas Pasha became Khedive, however, the promise was forgotten; orders were issued that the free Bedouin of the Wadi Tumilât should be treated like the enslaved _fellahin_, compelled to pay the tax-gatherer, and to see their children driven in handcuffs and with the courbash to serve in the army. But the orders were never carried out. Suddenly, in a single night, without noise or warning, the whole Bedouin population deserted their huts, and with their flocks and other possessions disappeared into the eastern desert. The Pasha lost his slaves, the culture of the silk-worm ceased, and when the Freshwater Canal was cut not a single mulberry-tree remained.