THE EXODUS

By Len A.Hynds

We had a small contingent of the Army Education Corps in Egypt, who ran an army college, all the teachers being Sergeants, As a Military Policeman I investigated a theft at the college and became friends with one of those sergeants. He asked what I intended to do on leaving the army, and I told him the London police, but I feared the entrance exam, as I had left school at the age of 12. He said that he would tutor me in the year I had left out there, without any of my colleagues knowing. On visiting the college about once a week, on the excuse of having a tea break from patrol, he would slip me more homework to do, and I would pass what work I had done. It was mostly mathematics which was my worst subject.

Whilst there, however, I would borrow books on the dynasties and history of Egypt which I found fascinating. It was then that I could recognise strange objects in the desert and know their origin, like Pharaoh Setties canal a depression lined with flat rocks, that had not filled with sand, because of the hot wind constantly blowing off the Gebel Ataqua Range of mountains, and that had been built two thousand years before Christ. I tried to make sense of many of those biblical stories. The Jewish exodus from Egypt, where they fled across the Sinai being led by Moses, stated that the Red Sea opened up for them, but had closed upon the pursuing Egyptians.

It could not have been the Red Sea as we know it today, because it is too wide and too deep just below Suez Town. Also they had fled from the old capital of Thebes, much further to the South, and if they had struck East, they could never have crossed a range of mountains.

They must have gone north and then East towards the wide valley that now contains the Suez Canal. Before the canal was built, at the time of the exodus, I am convinced that the Red Sea flowed along this valley and met the seas coming in from the north from the Med. There are now two salt water lakes in that valley, left behind when the valley silted up, but connected to the sea again by the canal. I can imagine the two seas racing forward into an increasing confined space until they both became like the Severn Bore, crashing together with enormous force when they met.

I am convinced that the leader of the pursuing Egyptians took a chance in trying to get across in time, but his army was crushed in that terrifying wall of water coming at them from both sides. I believe that the bible story tells the truth.