HOME / Table of Contents = Civilizations - Cultures - Areas - Regions - Prehistory
Other Archaeological Sites / The Neolithic of the Levant (500 Page Book Online)

Pelusium (Sin)


The Nile delta at the time of Herodotus according to James Rennell (1800) --- The Greek
Classical period (510 BC - 323 BC) based on the writings of Herodotus (484 BC - 425 BC)

Page 328-9 in A Handbook for Travellers in Lower and Upper Egypt -- Part II by John Murray (Firm ) 1880

... Salaheeyeh was probably either Tacasarta or Sile of the Itinerary of Antoninus. One of the roads is more direct than this and leaves Salaheeyeh considerably to the left. Several mounds of ancient towns are seen in the distance; among them Tel Defenneh, which marks the site of Daphne, the Tehaphnehes or Tahpanhes of the Bible, a fortified outpost of Pelusium, and distant from it 16 Roman miles. At Tahpanhes the Egyptian king is said by Jeremiah to have had a palace (Jeremia xliii 9).

Take in thy hand great stones, and thou hast hidden them, in the clay, in the brick-kiln, that [is] at the
opening of the house of Pharaoh in Tahpanhes, before the eyes of the men of Judah ...

Tahpanhes --- known by the Ancient Greeks as the Pelusiac [outlet of the Nile] Daphnae of Herodotos (3) --- was a city on the eastern frontier of Lower Egypt, represented today by Tell Defenneh, a desert mound lying some 20 miles Southwest from Pelusium (Biblical "Sin") and a little North of the modern Al-Kantarah ("the bridge"), marking the old caravan route from Egypt to Palestine -- Mesopotamia and Assyria (1) (2).

Kantarah (see Page 306)

Considerably to the left of the road are the ruins of Pelusium, the Sin of the Bible. The remains consist of mounds and a few broken columns. It is difficult of access and is only approachable during the high Nile, or when the summer's sun has dried the mud that is left there by the inundation. It stands near the sea-shore. Its modern name of Teeneh seems to indicate the muddy nature of the soil in the vicinity, for which some suppose it was indebted to its ancient appellation Pelusium, being the Greek for "mud". Pelusium in former times was a place of great consequence. It was strongly fortified, being the bulwark of the Egyptian frontier on the eastern side and was considered the " Key " or, as Ezekiel calls it, the " Strength of Egypt" (Ezekiel xxx 15-16).

(4) Page 3047-8 in Dr. William Smith's Dictionary of the Bible Volume IV (1888)

(1) Tahpanhes --- WikiPedia

(2) Tahpanhes in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE)

(3) Page 50 in Ten Years' Digging in Egypt by William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1886)

(4) Dr. William Smith's Dictionary of the Bible Volume IV (1888)

The History of the Ancient Near East Electronic Compendium