Legends of Babylon and Egypt in relation to Hebrew tradition

(1) See G. A. Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, pp. 5 ff., 45 ff., and Myres, Dawn of History, pp. 137 ff.; and cf. Hogarth, The Nearer East, pp. 65 ff., and Reclus, Nouvelle Géographie universelle, t. IX, pp. 685 ff.

The great trunk-roads of through communication run north and south, across the eastern plateaus of the Haurân and Moab, and along the coastal plains. The old highway from Egypt, which left the Delta at Pelusium, at first follows the coast, then trends eastward across the plain of Esdraelon, which breaks the coastal range, and passing under Hermon runs northward through Damascus and reaches the Euphrates at its most westerly point. Other through tracks in Palestine ran then as they do to-day, by Beesheba and Hebron, or along the 'Arabah and west of the Dead Sea, or through Edom and east of Jordan by the present Hajj route to Damascus. But the great highway from Egypt, the most westerly of the trunk-roads