Note 3622 — BOOK V. AN ACCOUNT OF COUNTRIES, NATIONS, SEAS, TOWNS, HAVENS, MOUNTAINS, RIVERS, DISTANCES, AND PEOPLES WHO NOW EXIST OR FORMERLY EXISTED.

The present Kulat-el-Arich or El Arish, situate at the mouth of the brook El-Arish, called by the Scriptures the “river of Egypt.” Its name signifies in Greek, “cutting off of noses,” and is probably derived from the fact of its having been the place of exile for criminals who had been so mutilated, under the Æthiopian kings of Egypt. Poinsinet suggests however that the name means the “town of the circumcised.”