THE RIVER OF EGYPT.

            The promise made to Abraham at Mamre, was in the following terms: “Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates.” The question turns on the meaning of the words, “the river of Egypt.”

            If that river be the same as Sihor, referred to by the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, which appears to me almost certain, we are necessarily left to the conclusion that it was a perennial stream passing through a rich agricultural country, and probably navigable.

            Isaiah speaks of the “seed of Sihor,” and the “harvest of the river,” as forming an important part of the revenue of Tyre; and Jeremiah places Sihor, precisely in the same position in reference to Egypt, as the Euphrates in reference to Assyria: treating them both apparently as border streams.

            There are three suppositions respecting this river. The first is, that it is the same with the rivulet which runs into the sea near Dair, a few miles to the south of Gaza; the second, that it is the “Torrens Egypti,” or torrent of Egypt, which passes about a mile to the north-east of El Arish, and separates the desert from incipient vegetation; the third, that it was the Pelusiac branch of the Nile. The language of Isaiah certainly seems too magnificent for so small a stream as that of Gaza, though that stream traverses an agricultural region. It is clearly inapplicable to the El Arish torrent; while the descriptions of both the prophets correspond most accurately with the Pelusiac branch of the Nile.

            In confirmation of this being the intended boundary of Palestine, there is reason to believe that from the earliest times, down to the subversion of the native Egyptian dynasties, Pelusium was the frontier town of Egypt. A few centuries later, it appears that Ptolemy I., carried the Egyptian frontier across the desert, and built Rhinocolura in the vicinity of El Arish. Very soon, however, we find the frontier again receding to its own locality, with the addition only of Mons Cassius, a little to the eastward, which was occupied by a garrison of Egyptian Jews. And thus the matter seems to have rested in Roman times.

            Again, we find from Josephus, that so far back as the time of Nebuchadnezzar, the frontier of Syria, that is of Palestine, was held to extend across the desert to Pelusium. Though, as Pliny fixes the Arabian or Idumean frontier at Ostracina in his time, it may be presumed that Palestine had then receded to Rhinocolura. Now, whatever title belonged to Palestine in the age of Abraham, was certainly transferred to that Patriarch; and as history leads to the probability that the Pelusiac branch of the Nile was the boundary between Palestine and Egypt in his day, this certainly aids the conclusion in favour of that river.

            Again, so far as the promise itself can be gathered from the actual extension of the Hebrew Territory, Solomon’s conquest of the territory of the Idumeans and Amalekites, tends further to show that the Nile was the boundary line.

            On the other hand, the Gaza stream is so nearly parallel with Beersheba, that, taken in connexion with the common scripture expression, from “Dan to Beersheba,” we might almost be tempted, except for the flowing language of Isaiah, to fix the Sihor here; though an important objection would still remain, in the fact that a considerable tract of fertile country lies to the south of that rivulet.

            It would appear, however, that in different ages the intervening desert was regarded by both parties as disputed and border ground: each nation claiming or abandoning it in turn. And whether the title of Abraham extended to the Nile, which seems to me most probable, or fell somewhere short of it, Palestine must always have been partially held to begin where the desert ended, and consequently in the neighbourhood of El Arish.

            The “Torrens Egypti,” we may further conclude, came to be considered the boundary of Palestine in Roman times, when the several provinces of the empire were adjusted, and the district beyond that torrent was definitively assigned to the Idumean or Arabian tribes. —Beldam’s Recollections of Italy and the East, vol. 1. pp. 342-345.

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