Lee Kennett writes in his book "Sherman, A Soldiers Life" the president of Columbia College writing General Sherman asking his military judgment "on the feasibility of the Israelites' miraculous flight across the Red Sea as described in Exodus. It was the commanding general who answered his query in precise, mathematical terms: assuming that each man, woman, or child in the act of walking took up a space of two feet by three, and each ox three feet by nine, then two million Israelites with a million head of cattle 'could be compressed into a space half a mile broad and six miles long.' If they could maintain a speed of one to two miles per hour they could easily pass through a half-mile wide defile in the space of six to nine hours. 'Of course the Israelites were not organized or compact as an army,' the general noted, 'but rather resembled a stampeded crowd'; even so, he felt that with Pharaoh's host at their heels they would have moved along at ample speed." (page 324).
Interesting analysis from a military perspective.
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