rders
of Egypt. Here they were beyond the reach of Chaldean armies and within
the territory of the one nation which offered a friendly asylum to the
Jewish refugees. Most of this later group of exiles settled at the towns
of Tahpanhes and Migdol. The latter means tower and is probably to be
identified with an eastern outpost, the chief station on the great highway
which ran along the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean directly to
Palestine and Syria.

The excavations of the Egypt Exploration Fund at Tahpanhes, which was the
Daphnae of Herodotus, has thrown much light upon the home of this Jewish
community. The town was situated in a sandy desert to the south of a
marshy lake. It lay midway between the cultivated delta on the west and
what is now the Suez Canal on the east. Past it ran the main highway to
Palestine. Its founder, Psamtik I, the great-grandfather of Hophra, had
built here a fort to guard the highway. Herodotus states that he also
stationed guards here, and that until late in the Persian period it was
defended by garrisons whose duty was to repel Asiatic invasions (II, 30).
Here the Ionian and Carian mercenaries, who were at this time the chief
defence of the Egyptian king, were given permanent homes. By virtue of its
mixed population and its geographical position, Tahpanhes was a great
meeting place of Eastern and Western civilization. Here native Egyptians,
Greek mercenaries, Phoenician and Babylonian traders, and Jewish refugees
met on common ground and lived side by side. It corresponded in these
respects to the modern Port Said.

Probably in remembrance of the Jewish colony that once lived here, the
ruins of the fort still bear an Arab name which means The Palace of the
Jew's Daughter. The term palace is not altogether inappropriate, for
apparently the fort was occasionally used as a royal residence. Many
wine-jars, bearing the seals of Psamtik, Hophra, and Amasis, have been
found in the ruins. In the northwestern part of these ruins has been
uncovered a great open-air platform of brickwork, referred to in Jeremiah
43:8-10. It was the place of common meeting found in connection with every
Egyptian palace or private home. When Amasis, in 564 B.C., came to the
throne of Egypt he withdrew the privileges granted by his predecessors to
foreigners. The Greek colonists were transferred to Naukratis, and
Tahpanhes lost most of its former glory. About this time, if not before,
the great majority of the Je