36   The site and its results   IN the middle of the length of the Wady Tumilat about twenty miles from Ismailiyeh on the east and rather farther from Zagazig (Bubastis) on the west stands a wide dusty mound of ruins knows as Tell er Retabeh. As in other ancient sites, so here, the natives remove large quantities of earth to lay upon the fields. But instead of this destructive custom exposing the earlier remains, as is the case on other sites, it makes the lower levels here even more inaccessible. Any pit in this region is quickly filled up with sand from the desert and the holes made in one year are levelled up again in the next. At first sight the mound looks untouched ; but a large part of it is now a honeycomb of old pits filled with sand. This makes work here unprofitable as it is needful to dig through so much depth of running sand in which nothing can be found. The soil itself also is poor in objects in the untouched parts. The mound is not an accumulation of house ruins as such mounds usually are ; but large parts of it only contain a few enclosing walls and the area seems to have been largely left open and then gradually filled up with ashes and blown dust. This filling indicates that the site was a fortified camping ground for the shelter of troops rather than an ordinary town.

Twenty years ago Édouard Naville had made some excavations here and found scarabs of the XVIIIth and XlXth dynasties and a bronze falchion of that age. But his conclusion was as follows : " The whole place indicates a camp probably of late Roman times. It must have been one of the military stations posted along the canal leading to the Red Sea and it may have been another of the garrisons mentioned in the Notitia Dignitatem " (Goshen, 25); and here the subject had rested without any further endeavour to settle the history of the site.

The work of the past winter has shown that, so far from being a Roman camp, this is the oldest site known east of Bubastis and that it has not had any Roman occupation. The stone vases of the Old Kingdom and the weight and scarabs of the IXth to the Xllth dynasties prove the early date of occupation. The human sacrifice under the oldest wall points to its being held by Syrians rather than Egyptians. The depth of about twelve to fifteen feet of ruins beneath the buildings of the XVIIIth and XlXth dynasties is solid evidence of the early importance of the town. Of later age we found here a temple of Ramessu II with sculptures in red granite and limestone; part of a tomb of an official who was over the store-houses of Syrian produce; and the great works of Ramessu III. All of these discoveries exactly accord with the requirements of the city of Raamses where both the second and third kings of that name are stated to have worked and where a store-city was built by the Israelites along with that of Pithom which is only eight miles distant. The absence of any other Egyptian site suitable to these conditions, which are all fulfilled here, makes it practically certain that this was the city of Raamses named in Exodus. Of later times the cemetery of the XXIIIrd dynasty has yielded us many interesting small objects.

37   The first city wall   THE site should be first described and after that the objects will be noticed in historical order. On the plan, Plate XXXV, it will be seen that there are walls of three ages.