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Tell-el-Yahoudeh, the Mound of the Jew.—This place should be interesting to us, if only from the fact that a temple was built here, which some have fancied would be the counterpart of the Temple at Jerusalem. If any considerable remains of the temple can be found, they may assist materially the right understanding of the descriptions which have come down to us of the more important structure on Mount Moriah.

Tell-el-Yahoudeh is about twenty miles from Cairo, on the way to Ismailia, near the Moslem village of Shibeen-el-Kanater, and is supposed to be the city of Onias. Josephus tells us that at the time of the conquest of Judea by Antiochus Epiphanes, Onias, son of the high priest, fled from the persecution, and took refuge in Egypt (B. C. 182). Onias, feeling encouraged by a prophecy of Isaiah’s that a time should come when there would be “an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt” (Isaiah xix. 19), begged the Egyptian king, Ptolemy Philometor, to grant him permission to build a temple, on the site of a deserted shrine or fortress. The request was granted, and Onias built a small city, after the model of Jerusalem, and a temple, after the pattern of the temple of Solomon.