Between Raphia And
The Easternmost Inundations Of The Nile, The Only Two Places At Which
There Is Moisture Sufficient To Produce A Degree Of Vegetation Useful To
Man, Are El Arish And Katieh.
The whole tract between these places,
except where it has been encroached upon by moving sands, is a plain
strongly impregnated with salt, terminatig towards the sea in a lagoon
or irruption of the sea anciently called Sirbonis.
As the name of
Katieh, and its distance from Tineh or Pelusium, leave no doubt of its
being the ancient Casium, the only remaining question is, whether El
Arish is Rhinocolura, or Ostracine? A commentary of St. Jerom, on the
nineteenth chapter of Isaiah, v.18, suggests the possibility that the
modern name El Arish may be a corruption of the Hebrew Ares, which, as
Jerom observes, means [Greek text], and alludes to Ostracine. Jerom was
well acquainted with this country; but as the translators of Isaiah have
supposed the word not to have been Ares, and as Jerom does not state
that Ares was a name used in his time, the conjecture is not of much
weight. It is impossible to reconcile the want of water so severely felt
at Ostracine (Joseph. de Bel. Jud. l.4, ad fin. Plutarch, in M. Anton.
Gregor. Naz. ep. 46.), with El Arish, where there are occasional
torrents, and seldom any scarcity of well water, either there or at
Messudieh, two hours westward. Ostracine, therefore, was probably near
the [Greek text] of the lagoon Sirbonis, about mid-way between El Arish
and Katieh, on the bank described by Strabo (p. 760), which separates
the Sirbonis from the sea.
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