This would point to its being on the road to the oasis of the
Natron Lakes, which would be the natural course for a body of men
needing water supply. His throwing himself between two bushes to hide
from the army shows that the message came early in the day, otherwise he
would have fled in the dark. He then fled a day's journey to the south,
turning his back on the sycamore, and slept in the open field at
Shi-Seneferu somewhere below the Barrage. The second day he reached the
Nile opposite Old Cairo in the afternoon, and ferried himself over,
passed the quarries at Gebel Mokattam, and the red hill of Gebel Ahmar,
and came to a frontier wall before dark. This cannot have been far from
Old Cairo, by the time; and as Heliopolis was in course of building by
Usertesen, it would be probably on the desert near there, for the
protection of the town. Passing the desert guards by night he pushed
on and reached Peten, near Belbeis, by dawn, and turned east toward
the valley of Kemur, or Wady Tumilat. Here in his extremity he was
found by the Sati or Asiatics, and rescued. This shows that the
eastern desert was left to the wandering tribes, and was without any
regular government at this period; though all the eastern Delta was
already well in Egyptian hands, as we know by the monuments at
Bubastis, Dedamun, and Tanis.
The land of Adim to which Sanehat fled appears to be the same as Edom or
the southeast corner of Syria.
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