II. THE RED SEA.—This gulf of the Indian Ocean is called in Hebrew rIlD Sup/z (Exod. x. 19 ; xiii. i8 ; Ps. cvi. 7, 9, 22), which is also its Egyptian name, and is supposed to mean weedy sea' (Michaelis, sup's/. p. 1726 ; Jablonsky, Optscu/. i. 266). This designation has been by some supposed to refer to the quantity of seaweed found in it. But Bruce, who traversed its whole extent, declares that he never saw any sort of weed in it, and gives it as his opinion that it is from the large trees or plants of white coral, spread every where over the bottom of the sea, and greatly re sembling plants on land, that it derived its name. [Gesenius renders by rush, reed, seaweed. There can be no doubt that fuel of various kinds abound in the Red Sea (Diod. Sic. iii. 19 ; Strabo, p. 770 ; Pliny, N. H. xiii. 23 ; Winer, Realw. s. v.); and it does not seem improbable that the sea may have derived its name from this.] It is also called the Egyptian Sea' (Is. xi. 15). In other places, where the context plainly indicates what sea is intended, it is called simply the sea.' In the N. T. it bears its usual Greek name, epueph, OciNctao-a (Acts vii. 36 ; Heb. xi. 29 ; also Maccab. iv. 9 ; Herodot. ; Diod. Sic. iii. 28), whence our Red Sea.' How it came by the name of Red Sea is not agreed. Prideaux assumes (Connection, i. 14, 15) that the ancient 'inhabitants of the bordering countries called it YeEm Edon, or the sea of Edom' (it is never so called in Scrip ture), as its north-eastern part washed the country possessed by the Edomites. Now Edom means red (Gen. xxv. 30), and the Greeks, who borrowed the name from the Phcenicians, mistook it for an appellative instead of a proper name, and rendered it by ginepa Ocaacrcra, that is, the Red Sea.' Some information in correction of this notion seems, however, to have been afterwards acquired : for Strabo (xvi. p. 766), Pliny (Hist. Nat. vi. 23), Mela (iii. 8), Agatharcides (p. 2, ed. Oxon.), Q. Curtius (viii. 9 ; x. 1), Philostratus (iii. 15), and others, distinctly admit that the sea obtained this name, not from any redness in its waters, but from a great king called Erythrus, who reigned in the adjacent country. The word Erythrus means the same in the Greek that Edom does in the Phcenician and Hebrew languages ; which seems to prove that this king Erythrus was no other than Edom, whose name was given to the country over which his descendants reigned. This explanation seems satisfactory ; but Prideaux, from whom we take it, by a very strange confusion of ideas, in an immedi .ately preceding page (i. to) ascribes the name Red Sea, as applied to another part of the Erythrcean Sea, to the waters appearing of a reddish colour by reason of the fierceness of the sunbeams con stantly beating upon it in that hot climate.' Such a fancy needs no answer, as neither water nor the rays of the sun are the more red for being more hot. Others have conjectured that the Arabian Guff derived its name from the coral rocks and reefs in which it abounds ; but the coral of the Red Sea is white, not red. In so large a tract of shore and water it would be strange if some red objects clid not appear, and minds on the watch for some physical cause for the name would naturally refer to circumstances which would not otherwise have engaged attention. Some of the mountains that
stretch along the western coast have a singularly red appearance, looking, as Bruce expresses it, as if they were sprinkled with Havannah or Brazil snuff, or brick-dust ; and from this a notion is de rived that these mountains, presenting their con spicuous sides to the early navigators of the sea, induced them to give it a name from that predo minant colour. Salt indicates a fact which affords a basis for another conjecture as to the origin of the name. He says—` At one o'clock on the 7th of February, the sea for a considerable distance around the ship became so extremely red. . As we were anxious to ascertain the cause of this very singular appearance, a bucket was let down into the water, by which we obtained a considerable quantity of the substance floating on the surface. It proved to be of a jelly-like consistence, composed of a numberless multitude of very small mollusca, each of which having a small red spot in the centre, formed, when in a mass, a bright body of colour nearly allied to that produced by a mixture of red lead with water.' This account has been more re cently confirmed by Ehrenberg.
The ancients applied the name of Erythrxan Sea not only to the Arabian Gulf, but to that part of the Indian Ocean which is enclosed between the peninsulas of India and Arabia ; but in modern usage the name of Red Sea is restricted to the Arabian Gulf, which enters into the land from the Indian Ocean in a westerly direction, and then, at the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, turns N.N.W., maintaining that direction till it makes a near approach to the Mediterranean, from which its western arm is only separated by the isthmus of Suez. It thus separates the western coast of Arabia from the eastern coast of the north-eastern part of Africa. It is about 14.00 miles in length from Suez to the straits, and on an average 150 miles in breadth. On approaching its northern termination the gulf divides into two branches, which enclose between them the peninsula of Sinai. The western arm, which terminates a little above Suez, is far more extensive than the other, and is that which vvas crossed by the Israelites in their escape from Egypt. An account of this important transaction has been given under another head [Exonus]. This arm, anciently called Heroopoli ticus Sinus, and now the Gulf of Suez, is rgo miles long by an. average breadth of 21 miles ; but at one part (Birket el-Faroun) it is as wide as 32 miles. The eastern arm, which terminates at Akabah, and bears the name of the Gulf of Akabah, was anciently called 2Elaniticus Sinus, from the port of 2Elana, the Scriptural Elath, and is about 112 miles long by an average breadth of 15 miles. Towards its extremity were the ports of Elath and Eziongeber, celebrated in the history of the attempts made by the Hebrew kings to es tablish a maritime traffic with the East [see the several words].—J. K.