placed near the well which supplies the fort, where it
serves as a drinking trough for the horses. Brugsch believed
he could identify its site with that of the Syrian town
Hurnikheri, which he erroneously reads Harinkola; the
ancient form of the name is unknown, the Greek form varies
between Rhinocorura and Rhinocolura. The story of the
mutilated convicts is to be found in Diodorus Siculus, as
well as in Strabo; it rests on a historical fact. Under the
XVIIIth dynasty Zalu was used as a place of confinement for
dishonest officials. For this purpose it was probably
replaced by Rhinocolura, when the Egyptian frontier was
removed from the neighbourhood of Selle to that of El-Arish.

At this point the coast turns in a north-easterly direction, and is
flanked with high sand-hills, behind which the caravans pursue their
way, obtaining merely occasional glimpses of the sea. Here and there,
under the shelter of a tower or a half-ruined fortress, the traveller
would have found wells of indifferent water, till on reaching the
confines of Syria he arrived at the fortified village of Raphia,
standing like a sentinel to guard the approach to Egypt. Beyond Raphia
vegetation becomes more abundant, groups of sycamores and mimosas and
clusters of date-palms appear on the horizon, villages surrounded with
fields and orchards are seen on all sides, while the bed of a river,
blocked with gravel and fallen rocks, winds its way between the last
fringes of the desert and the fruitful Shephelah;* on the further bank
of the river lay the suburbs of Gaza, and, but a few hundred yards
beyond, Gaza itself came into view among the trees standing on its
wall-crowned hill.**

* The term Shephelah signifies the plain; it is applied by
the Biblical writers to the plain bordering the coast, from
the heights of Gaza to those of Joppa, which were inhabited
at a later period by the Philistines (_Josh_. xi. 16; _Jer_.
xxxii. 44 and xxxiii. 13).

** Guerin describes at length the road from Gaza to Raphia.
The only town of importance between them in the Greek period
was Ienysos, the ruins of which are to be found near Khan
Yunes, but the Egyptian name for this locality is unknown:
Aunaugasa, the name of which Brugsch thought he could
identify with it, should be placed much farther away, in
Northern or in Coele-Syria.

The Egyptians, on