Buried Cities and Bible Countries

by George St. Clair

The Book of Genesis tells us that Goshen was a pasture land. We may thence infer that it was not thickly inhabited, and not yet organized into a province with its capital, its temples, its priests, and its governor. Since then the name is absent from the earliest Egyptian lists of provinces—namely, those of Seti I. and Rameses II. (the Pharaoh that oppressed Israel)—Mr Naville maintains that the hieroglyphic records which simply omit the name, and the Bible narrative which incidentally shows us the reason why, are remarkably in accord.

Heliopolis.—No excavations have yet been undertaken at Heliopolis, the City of the Sun, which is situated some nine miles from Cairo in a north-easterly direction. It was a very ancient city, of great celebrity as a seat of the worship of the sun god Ra, whose symbol in the form of the living bull Mnevis, was there kept and cared for and reverenced. In the Bible the city is called On or Beth Shemesh. Joseph probably served Potiphar in this city; and Pharaoh afterwards gave him to wife Asenath, daughter of Potiphera, a priest of On. There can be little doubt, either, that Moses, who was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, was educated at this seat of learning. We must believe, therefore, that he often looked upon the six obelisks which stood in front of the temple of Ra—one of which remains to this day—for they had been erected centuries before his birth. Four of them were set up by Thothmes III. and his family, about 1600 years before the Christian era, and the other two by Usertesen I. upwards of 3000 years B.C. Two of the Thothmes obelisks were at a later period transferred to Alexandria, to adorn the approach of a magnificent temple erected in honour of the Cæsars; and it is one of these two which has become known as Cleopatra’s Needle and now stands on the Thames Embankment. The one obelisk which remains at Heliopolis is the oldest object of the kind in the world.

Scarcely anything is now to be seen of the city itself. It no doubt served as a handy quarry to the builders of Cairo; but since the surviving obelisk is buried 3 or 4 feet in Nile mud, it is not improbable that many small objects of antiquarian interest are buried also. Moreover, the sides of the vast enclosure in which the temple was situated are still marked by mounds or walls of crude brick, and these, on the north side, have their continuation in the ruins of the ancient town. Here are frequently found scarabæi or images of the sacred beetle, with other sacred images, emblems in porcelain, and other antiquities, so that apparently the place would repay a systematic search.

Tell Defenneh, the Biblical Tahpanhes.—In June 1886 Mr Flinders Petrie had the felicity to discover “Pharaoh’s House,” to which Jeremiah was brought, after the calamities in Judea, and where he hid the great stones, as a symbolical act, in the mortar of the brickwork. It lies in the sandy desert bordering on Lake Menzaleh, about two days’ journey from San, some hours distant on the one hand from the cultivated Delta, and on the other hand from the Suez Canal. Here in the midst of the plain are the brick ruins of a large building; and on the first evening of his arrival in the district Mr Petrie heard to his surprise that the building was known as the Kasr el Bint el Yehudi, or the Palace of the Jew’s daughter. Obviously this might refer to the daughter of King Zedekiah who accompanied Jeremiah in his exile; and there could now be no doubt that Defenneh represented the ancient Daphnai and Tahpanhes. It was a frontier fortress or advanced post, to guard the great highway into Syria.

By the associations of Tahpanhes we are at once carried to Scripture. “The children of Noph and Tahpanhes have broken the crown of thy head” (Jer. ii. 16). This was after the slaying of Josiah, the deposition of Jehoahaz, the setting up of the tributary Jehoiakim, and the removal of Jehoahaz into Egypt—events which marked the first period of intercourse between Jews and Greeks. “This intercourse, however, was soon to be increased; three years later, Nebuchadnezzar invaded Judea, and all who fled from the war would arrive at Tahpanhes in their flight into Egypt, and most likely stop there. In short, during all the troubles and continual invasions and sieges of Jerusalem, in B.C. 607, B.C. 603, and B.C. 599 (in which a wholesale deportation of the people took place), and, above all, in the final long siege and destruction of 590–588 B.C., when “the city was broken up,” and all the men of war fled, every one who sought to avoid the miseries of war, or who was politically obnoxious, would naturally flee down into Egypt. Such refugees would necessarily reach the frontier fort on the caravan road, and would there find a mixed and mainly foreign population, Greek, Phœnician, and Egyptian, among whom their presence would not be resented, as it would be by the still strictly protectionist Egyptians further in the country. That they should largely, or perhaps mainly settle there would be the most natural course; they would be tolerated, they would find a constant communication with their own countrymen, and they would be as near to Judea as they could in safety remain, while they awaited a chance of returning.

“The last and greatest migration to Tahpanhes is that fully recorded by Jeremiah, which gives us the pattern of what doubtless had been going on long before. After Nebuchadnezzar had retired with his spoils, Gedaliah, the governor whom he set up, was quickly slain, the country fell into anarchy, and all the responsible inhabitants who were left fled into Egypt to avoid the vengeance of Nebuchadnezzar. ‘Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the captains of the forces, took all the remnant of Judah, that were returned (from all nations, whither they had been driven), to sojourn in the land of Judah; the men, and the women, and the children, and the king’s daughters [Zedekiah’s], and every person that Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, had left with Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and Jeremiah the prophet, and Baruch the son of Neriah; and they came into the land of Egypt; for they obeyed not the voice of the Lord: and they came even to Tahpanhes’ (Jer. xliii. 5–7).” This migration was undertaken in spite of the warnings of Jeremiah.

Pharaoh Hophra, the reigning monarch in Egypt, had been an ally of King Zedekiah’s, and so he placed at the disposal of his friend’s daughter the palace in this frontier fortress of Tahpanhes, which had been a royal residence sometimes. Here we may suppose the fugitives would have been comparatively contented, and thought themselves safe, only that Jeremiah vehemently prophesied that Nebuchadnezzar would come and destroy the place. This, according to Josephus, he did—“He fell upon Egypt, ... and took those Jews that were there captives, and led them away to Babylon; and such was the end of the nation of the Hebrews” (Ant. ix. 7). Josephus is not always believed, and it has even been denied in recent years that Nebuchadnezzar was ever in Egypt at all. But a recently discovered inscription tells us that he was in the country, and penetrated as far south as Assouan;[8] and now at last Mr Petrie discovers the palace to have been plundered, dismantled, and burnt, apparently in fulfilment of Jeremiah’s prediction.

The existing remains of Tahpanhes are extensive, and show that the ancient city was a large one. Under the corners of the chief buildings were found plaques of metal and of stone, engraved with the cartouche of Psammetichus I.; and under the south-east corner the teeth and bones of an ox, sacrificed at the ceremony when the building was founded. Among the antiquities found are beautiful painted Greek vases, plaques, &c., of gold, silver, lead, and copper, articles of carnelian, jaspar, and lapis lazuli.