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Pithom, according to the Coptic version of the Scriptures, was the place where Joseph went up to meet Jacob—“near Pithom, the city in the land of Rameses” (Gen. xlvi. 28). It is true that the LXX., supported by Josephus, make Heroopolis to be the meeting-place; but it is not unlikely that Heroopolis was a later name for Pithom itself. The Greeks were succeeded by the Romans, traces of whose habitations are to be seen on all sides.

When the Romans levelled the ground for their camp, they destroyed without mercy an immense number of inscriptions, which would have been most precious to us now. Of those which remain, by far the most important is the great tablet of Philadelphus, measuring 4 feet 3 inches, by 3 feet 2 inches, which was found near the naos. It is stated in the inscription that the king ordered it to be erected before his father Tum, the great god of Succoth. It records what was done for Pithom by the king, and his queen and sister Arsinoe. We learn from it that Pithom and the neighbouring city of Arsinoe, which the king founded in honour of his sister, were the starting points of commercial expeditions to the Red Sea; and that from thence one of Ptolemy’s generals went to the land of the Troglodytes, and founded the city of Ptolemais Θηριῶν, for the special purpose of facilitating the chase of elephants. And it was to Heroopolis that the ships brought the animals (so that if Heroopolis was Pithom, and Pithom was Maskhuta, the navigable water must have extended farther northward than it does at present). We learn also that close to Pithom there was a city called Pikerehat, or Pikeheret, apparently the Pi-ha-hiroth mentioned in the narrative of the Exodus.