Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah – Part 20

Part 1

Over the long course of Egyptian history, the geography of the Nile Delta has changed significantly. Before trying to recover the route taken by the ancient Israelites during the Exodus, we must first reconstruct the lie of the land at that time. Particularly significant is the distribution of dry land and water in the eastern Delta. The Israelites were on foot and were accompanied by animals. It would have made no sense for them to have fled in a direction that would have led them to an impassable body of water.

Today, the Red Sea extends up the Gulf of Suez as far as the city of the same name. Clysma, the site of which is thought to be close to that of the modern city of Suez, was founded in the 2nd century CE by the Roman Emperor Trajan. Today, the Suez Canal cuts through this part of Egypt to the Mediterranean Sea. In Classical and Medieval times, however, the land between Clysma and the Mediterranean was a desert interspersed with several large brackish lakes: the Great Bitter Lake, Lake Timsah and the Ballah Lakes.

But in ancient Egypt, things were very different. The Swiss archaeologist Édouard Naville believed that at the time of the Exodus the Red Sea extended as far north as Lake Timsah:

The authors who speak of Heroöpolis are unanimous in declaring that the city was near the sea, at the head of the Arabian Gulf, which was also called Heroöpolitan. Strabo and Pliny declare it in the most distinct way. The geographer Ptolemy places Heroöpolis only at one-sixth of a degree distance from the head of the Arabian Gulf. The consequence of this agreement in the testimony of the Greeks and the Romans is that, as we said before, we must admit that formerly, under the dominion of the Romans, the Red Sea extended much further north than it does now; but that then the retreat of the sea, and the changes in the surface of the soil had already begun to be felt.

Not only were the Bitter Lakes under water, but I believe we are compelled to admit with Linant Bey, who derives his arguments from geology, that Lake Timsah, and the valleys of Saba Biar and Abu Balah were, under the Pharaohs of the XIXth dynasty, part of the sea, Some traces of this may be seen on the map of the French engineers drawn at the end of last century. Contiguous to Lake Timsah there is a narrow extension towards the west which has the appearance of the head of a gulf. Thus the sea would have extended as far as the place now called Magfar, only three miles [5 km] from Heroöpolis. There the canal ended which, before the time of Neko, watered the land of Goshen and the cities like Pithom, which were built in the Wadi Tumilât. It is possible that the canal was traced and dug in an imperfect way: at the end there may have been those marshes and pastures in which the Bedawees of Atuma asked the Pharaoh Menephtah to allow them to pasture their cattle.

It must have been at the head of the gulf near Heroöpolis that the upheaval of the soil and the retreat of the sea were first felt. Gradually the water sank, the communication with the gulf was partly cut off, and there remained salt marshes such as are seen at present in several parts of the Delta, and which were called by Strabo and Pliny the Bitter Lakes. Linant Bey very justly observes that the Bitter Lakes of the ancients cannot be identical with those of to-day, the extent of which is so considerable that it is quite impossible that they should have become sweet after the water of the Nile had been admitted into them, as we learn from Strabo. At the time of the Pharaohs there were some Bitter Lakes at the head of the gulf near Heroöpolis. Linant Bey’s statement is confirmed by Pliny, who says that the length of the canal is thirty-seven miles as far as the Bitter Lakes. Taking the beginning of the canal near Bubastis, as we know from Herodotus, thirty-seven miles would carry us only a little further than Pithom [Tell el-Maskhutah]. It was through those lakes, or rather through those marshes, that Philadelphos cut his canal, on the banks of which he built Arsinoë, the city which according to the hieroglyphic text was situate near the lake of Kemuer [Lake Timsah].

Saba Biar (El Saba Abar, or Seven Wells) and Abu Balah lie about 7-8 km southwest of the modern city of Ismailia, or a few kilometres west of Lake Timsah.

Naville identified Heroöpolis with Pithom, locating both at Tell el-Maskhutah in the Wadi Tumilat. According to more recent scholarship, however, Heroöpolis lay 12 km east of Pithom (Tell el-Maskhutah) (Cohen 308).

The location of Arsinoë is uncertain. According to some sources—for example, An Atlas of Ancient Egypt—it was immediately south or west of Lake Timsah. According to other sources, however—for example, _Research Project: The Ancient and Medieval Harbour at Suez Project—it was close to the modern city of Suez. Were there two Arsinoës in this part of Egypt, or have researchers simply been misled by the changes in the Red Sea coast? Have they, perhaps, mistaken Claudius Ptolemy’s Arsinoë for Olbia, a city that lay much further south on the Red Sea and was also known as Arsinoë? According to William Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, there were at least five cities of this name in Ptolemaic Africa.

The Ancient Geography of the Eastern Delta (After Naville)

Whatever the truth of the matter, the foregoing map depicts Naville’s geography of the eastern Delta at the time of the Exodus. (Naville placed the Exodus in the 19th dynasty, about two centuries later than I date it.)

Compare this with Claudius Ptolemy’s map of this region, which presumably records the northern extent of the Red Sea around the middle of the 2nd century CE:

Ptolemy’s Libya Map 3 (Detail)

There are many anomalies in Ptolemy’s map which I cannot account for. Phacussa (Pa-Kes) and Bubastis, for example, are placed too far north. Memphis and Heliopolis are given the same latitude. Leontopolis and Heliopolis are distinguished from Oniu, which is surely the same as one of these two. Ptolemy also has Clysma 40 minutes of arc due south of Arsinoë. This could be cited in support of the theory that Arsinoë was on Lake Timsah and Clysma near the modern Suez, but this is hard to square with the latitude of Heroöpolis, which Ptolemy records as 30 minutes of arc north of Arsinoë. I have not come across any modern sources that discuss these anomalies. Perhaps they are simply the result of textual corruption.

Nevertheless, one thing is clear from Ptolemy’s map: in the middle of the 2nd century CE, nearly a millennium after the Exodus, the northern extent of the Red Sea was still considerably further north than both Clysma and Arsinoë, wherever these cities were.

Conrad Malte-Brun

Édouard Naville was not the first person to suggest that the Gulf of Suez extended much further north in ancient times, or that the Biblical city of Pithom was the same as the Ptolemaic city of Heroöpolis in the Wadi Tumilat. I don’t know who first suggested these things, but in the early 19th century, the Danish geographer Conrad Malte-Brun researched them for his opus magnum, Précis de Géographie Universelle ou Description de Toutes les Parties du Monde (Universal Geography, or A Description of All Parts of the World), which ran to eight volumes. In Volume 2, Malte-Brun discusses the former extent of the Gulf of Suez and takes issue both with the identification of Heroöpolis with the Biblical Pithom and with claims that the Gulf of Suez once reached as far north as Lake Timsah or even the Great Bitter Lake:

The surface of this isthmus [of Suez] generally declines from the shores of the Red Sea towards those of the Mediterranean. The level of the latter sea is thirty feet [10 m] lower than that of the Gulf of Suez. There is a similar descent towards the Delta and the bed of the river Nile ... From this account, it follows that the Red Sea never could have occupied the basin of the Bitter Lakes in a constant manner, because its waters, if raised sufficiently high to form such a communication, would have found no barrier to the north of that basin: they would have flowed all the way to the Nile by the Ras-el-Ooadi [Wadi Tumilat], and to the Mediterranean by the Ras-el-Mayah. The two seas thus brought into mutual contact would have reached a common level, and the strait would have become permanent. (Malte-Brun 437-438)

The problem with this analysis is that the excavation of the Suez Canal about a generation after Malte-Brun’s death did not result in the Red Sea spilling into the Nile and flooding the Delta.

He goes on to discuss the location of Heroöpolis and the implications of this for the extent of the Gulf of Suez in Ptolemaic times:

One plausible geographical proof has been brought forward to show that the limits of the Red Sea have been contracted. This is the position of Heröopolis ... Some insurmountable arguments concur to place the city of Heröopolis, mentioned by Strabo, Eratosthenes, and the Itineraries, at Abookesheyd [Abou-Kachab], in the valley of Sababhyar [El Saba Abar, or Seven Wells], to the north-west of the Bitter Lakes. We do not indeed believe this city to be identical with the Patumos of Herodotus, and the Pithom of the Sacred Scriptures ... We think that Pithom corresponds to the fortified place called Thou in the Itinerary of Antoninus, and Tohum in the Account of the Empire ... (Malte-Brun 438-439)

The location of Thou is uncertain. A modern candidate is the village of ’Ezbet Abu ’Atwa, which sits close to the western shore of Lake Timsah. But this would have been submerged in ancient times if Naville’s geography is correct. Naville’s map places Thou about 50 km further to the west, in the Wadi Tumilat.

The Wadi Tumilat (After Naville)

Finally, Malte-Brun discusses Ptolemy’s Geography in relation to Heroöpolis, Arsinoë and Clysma:

Having hitherto intentionally kept Ptolemy out of view, we now proceed to comment on his evidence, which appears to be at utter variance with all the attempts at conciliation in which we have been engaged ... When the canal, neglected and deserted, no longer supported the commerce of Heroopolis, it is probable that the inhabitants transferred their abode to a place nearer the gulf itself, or rather were removed to another city which may have taken the name of Heroopolis, on becoming the capital of the district or prefecture. This new Heroopolis, the only one known to Ptolemy, may have been properly placed by that geographer in a latitude a little north of Suez. We think that this second Heroopolis, marked in Ptolemy’s tables (Geography 4:5:7), occupied a place marked by some ruins, to the north-east of the end of the gulf. (Malte-Brun 440)

It is true that Ptolemy places Heroöpolis in latitude 30° and longitude 63° 10'. Since he locates Alexandria in longitude 60° 30', which corresponds to 29° 55' E of Greenwich, these coordinates place Heroöpolis at 30° N 32° 35' E. This would, indeed, put Heroöpolis a short distance north-east of Suez on a modern map. The problem with this literal interpretation is that Ptolemy also places the northern extent of the Gulf of Suez in latitude 29° 50' and longitude 63° 30'. In modern coordinates, this is approximately 29° 50' N 32° 55' E, which is about 40 km south-east of Suez. Malte-Brun cannot have it both ways. If the head of the Gulf of Suez lay in Ptolemy’s day at Suez, then Ptolemy’s Heroöpolis was somewhere south-west of the Great Bitter Lake—a barren location in which there are no noticeable ruins.

Several of Ptolemy’s locations are puzzling, but that of Heroöpolis is not one of them: Ptolemy places it approximately where it should be if it lay in the eastern part of the Wadi Tumilat. It is true that a literal reading of Ptolemy’s coordinates misplaces it, but its location is approximately correct in relation to known places, such as Heliopolis and Tanis.

Writing in the mid-1890s, the French Egyptologist Gaston Maspero included the following map of Lower Egypt in the first volume of his encyclopaedic Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient Classique. The Red Sea encompasses both the Great Bitter Lake and Lake Timsah, as well as the extreme eastern portion of the Wadi Tumilat.

Maspero’s Map of Lower Egypt (1895)

Canals

When the shoreline of the Red Sea retreated southwards, leaving a string of brackish lakes in its wake, the Egyptians dug canals between these lakes. One such canal was discovered in the 19th century by the French engineer Linant de Bellefonds, who believed that it was the remains of the canal Necho II excavated:

Between Lake Timsah and the southern lagoons of Lake Menzaleh is a place the Arabs call El-Gisr, or the Dyke; it gives every appearance of being a man-made dyke ... it occupies the highest point in the entire Isthmus between Suez and Pelusium. During my first visit to this region, I was struck by this altitude; and both its name and its formation suggested to me that it was of artificial construction. I had also seen, to the north-east of Chek-Ennédek and Lake Timsah, traces of a canal which I had attributed to Necho II. Finally, during my last visit to the Isthmus, I crossed this height at a more easterly point than before, and instead of a dyke, I noticed two perfectly parallel lines that clearly traced out a superb canal. I followed this canal for 18 km, and I have absolutely no doubt that it was the canal begun by Necho, and which was never finished because of the fear of inundating Egypt due to the elevation of the waters of the Red Sea. (Bellefonds 232)

Map of the Traces of the Eastern Frontier Canal

This canal was rediscovered in the 1970s. Its southern section ran 15 km from Lake Timsah to the Ballah Lakes. It was also traced north of Lake Ballah all the way to the ancient coastline on the Mediterranean:

The southernmost section of this canal, which extends between Lake Timsah and Lake Ballah, was originally discovered by the French engineer Linant de Bellefonds ... however, he incorrectly attributed the construction of this section of the canal to Pharaoh Necho ... Traces of the continuation of this canal have now been found north of Lake Ballah between Tell Abu Sefeh and Tell el-Heir, north of Tell el-Heir, and at its termination at the ancient coastline ... (Shea 31).

This Eastern Frontier Canal, as it is also known, is now thought to have been constructed primarily with the defense of Egypt in mind:

Evidence for the western arm of this canal is lacking, but it seems most likely that it ran from Lake Timsah through the Wadi Tumilat to the Nile, which means that it connected the Nile to the Mediterranean. Navigation can therefore be excluded as the primary reason for this canal, because the Mediterranean was more readily accessible to Egyptian ships through the branches of the Nile. The can was used to some extent for irrigation, but that does not appear to have been the primary use, because the Isthmus of Suez was an unlikely area for a land reclamation project. thus we are left with the conclusion that the primary purpose of this canal was defense. (Shea 33)

The construction of this canal has been tentatively placed in the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, as there are possible references to it in three texts from that period. But this relies on the conventional dating of the tenth, eleventh and twelfth dynasties, which I dispute. One of these texts, Teaching for King Merikare, actually mentions the building of a canal on Egypt’s eastern frontier during the 10th Dynasty, but the earliest extant copies only date back to the 18th Dynasty. Two other texts, The Prophecy of Neferti and The Story of Sinuhe refer to a border wall in the eastern Delta, but not to any canal—which implies that Merikare did not construct one. They are both set in the 12th Dynasty, which in the Short Chronology of Lynn E Rose and Charles Ginenthal began more than two centuries after the Exodus: the Exodus is tentatively set in 763 BCE, and the 12th Dynasty between 503 and 332 BCE (Ginenthal 655, 624-632).

It is much more likely that such elaborate eastern defenses were constructed by the Egyptians some time after the expulsion of the Hyksos. The canal was certainly in use during the 19th dynasty, as it is depicted in artwork from that time (Shea 226):

A Relief of Seti I with a Crocodile-Infested Canal (Karnak Temple)

If the Exodus took place during the 19th Dynasty, as many scholars believe, the Eastern Frontier Canal would have provided a serious challenge to the fleeing Israelites. But if the Exodus took place at the same time as the Expulsion of the Hyksos, as I believe, then there is every likelihood that there were two corridors of dry land—one between the Mediterranean Sea and Lake Ballah, and one between Lake Ballah and what is now Lake Timsah—through which the Israelites could have left Egypt on foot.

This still does not tie down the location of Succoth. But let’s move on and see whether we can locate the next few Stations of the Exodus: in the process, we may learn more about the identity of Succoth.

To be continued ...

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References

• Linant de Bellefonds (Bey), Mémoires sur les Principaux Travaux d’Utilité Publique Exécutés en Égypte, Depuis la Plus Haute Antiquité jusqu’a Nos Jours, Arthus Bertrand, Paris (1872-73)
• Heinrich Karl Brugsch, Geographica, in C R Lepsius (editor), Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde, Volume 13, pp 5-13, J C Hinrichs’sche, Leipzig (1875)
• Heinrich Karl Brugsch, The True Story of the Exodus of Israel, Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Francis H Underwood, Lee and Shepard Publishers, Boston (1880)
• Getzel M Cohen, The Hellenistic Settlements in Syria, the Red Sea Basin, and North Africa, University of California Press, Berkeley (2006)
• Egypt Exploration Fund, An Atlas of Ancient Egypt, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co, London (1894)
• Charles Ginenthal, Pillars of the Past, Volume 4, Ivy Press Books, Forest Hills NY (2012)
• James K Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition, Oxford University Press, Oxford (1996)
• Conrad Malte-Brun, A System of Universal Geography: Or A Description of All the Parts of the World on a New Plan, Volume 2, Anthony Finley, Philadelphia (1827)
• Gaston Maspero, Archibald Henry Sayce (editor), M L McClure (translator), History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1, The Grolier Society, London (1903-04)
• Édouard Naville, The Store-City of Pithom and the Route of the Exodus, Fourth Edition, Egypt Exploration Fund, London (1903)
• William H Shea, A Date for the Recently Discovered Eastern Canal of Egypt, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Number 226 (April 1977), pp 31-38, Washington DC (1977)
• Friedrich Wilhelm Wilberg, Claudii Ptolemæi Geographiæ Libri Octo [The Geography of Claudius Ptolemy in Eight Books], G D Bædeker, Essen (1838)

Image Credits

• The Wadi Tumilat (After Naville): An Atlas of Ancient Egypt, Map VIII, Map of Goshen and the Probable Route of the Exodus, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co, London (1894)
• Maspero’s Map of Lower Egypt (1895): L. Thuillier (artist), Public Domain
• Map of the Traces of the Eastern Frontier Canal: © 1977 The American Schools of Oriental Research, Fair Use
• A Relief of Seti I with a Crocodile-Infested Canal (Karnak Temple): Alan H Gardiner, _The Ancient Military Road between Egypt and Palestine, _Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Volume 6, Number 2, Plate XI, The Egypt Exploration Society, London (1920)