Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah – Part 22

Part 1

The Fourth Station of the Exodus, Pi-Hahiroth, is the scene of one of the best known episodes in the Bible: The Passage of the Red Sea. In Numbers 33:7-8 we are told very briefly:

And they removed from Etham, and turned again unto Pihahiroth, which is before Baalzephon: and they pitched before Migdol. And they departed from before Pihahiroth, and passed through the midst of the sea into the wilderness, and went three days’ journey in the wilderness of Etham, and pitched in Marah. (Numbers 33:7-8)
In the Book of Exodus, however, this episode is recounted at much greater length:

And they took their journey from Succoth, and encamped in Etham, in the edge of the wilderness. And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night: He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people.

And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they turn and encamp before Pihahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, over against Baalzephon: before it shall ye encamp by the sea. For Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, They are entangled in the land, the wilderness hath shut them in. And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, that he shall follow after them; and I will be honoured upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host; that the Egyptians may know that I am the Lord. And they did so.

And it was told the king of Egypt that the people fled ... But the Egyptians pursued after them ... and overtook them encamping by the sea, beside Pihahiroth, before Baalzephon ...

And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left.

And the Egyptians pursued, and went in after them to the midst of the sea ... And Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to his strength when the morning appeared; and the Egyptians fled against it; and the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea. And the waters returned, and covered the chariots, and the horsemen, and all the host of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them; there remained not so much as one of them. (Exodus 13:20-14:28

Their journey resumes in the following chapter:

So Moses brought Israel from the Red sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur; and they went three days in the wilderness, and found no water. And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter: therefore the name of it was called Marah. (Exodus 15:22-23)

The Passage of the Jews Through the Red Sea (Aivazovsky: 1891)

There’s a lot to digest here. Several places are mentioned by name, but most of the toponyms are of unknown provenance and therefore of little help to us:

• Succoth (Station 2)
• Etham (Station 3)
• Pi-Hahiroth (Station 4)
• Baalzephon
• Migdol
• The Red Sea
• The Wilderness of Etham
• The Wilderness of Shur
• Marah (Station 5)

Both accounts make the point that the Israelites altered the direction of their march when they reached Etham: wherever Pi-Hahiroth was, it did not lie in the same direction from Etham as Etham lay from Succoth. In fact, the Hebrew verb used in both passages—שׁוב [šub]—seems to imply that they turned back and retreated the way they had come (Gesenius 996-1000). But neither Pi-Hahiroth, Baalzephon nor Migdol has been mentioned previously, which suggests that the Israelites were not retreating.

Numbers tells us that Pi-Hahiroth was before Baalzephon but that the Israelites pitched their tents at Pi-Hahiroth before Migdol, while Exodus tell us that Pi-Hahiroth lay between Migdol and the sea, over against Baalzephon. The preposition עַל־ [‘al-], which modifies Baalzephon, has many meanings: above, over, upon, against, beside, beyond, by, towards, etc. According to Gesenius’s A Hebrew and English Lexicon, when applied to localities it connotes contiguity or proximity and corresponds to the English word by or on. (Gesenius 755). When, however, it is used with verbs of motion (as in Numbers 33:07), it implies motion towards (Gesenius 757, which cites Nu 33⁷ as an instance of this acceptation at the very bottom of the left column). This suggests that the Israelites were travelling in the direction of Baalzephon but did not reach it.

To confuse matters further, some manuscripts have ‘al-p^enê Baalzephon, which literally means to the east of Baalzephon (Hoffmeier 183).

According to Numbers, after passing through the sea, the Israelites found themselves in the wilderness of Etham. In Exodus this waste is called the wilderness of Shur. As we saw in the previous article in this series, these are clearly two names for the same place—the lowlying desert of northern Sinai, which lies to the east of Egypt, between the Tih Plateau and the Mediterranean coast.

And, of course, there is the question of the sea itself. In Numbers, the sea through which the Israelites pass is not named. It is simply called , הַיָּ֖ם [hay-yām], the sea. A few verses later, however, we read:

And they removed from Marah, and came unto Elim: and in Elim were twelve fountains of water, and threescore and ten palm trees; and they pitched there. And they removed from Elim, and encamped by the Red sea. And they removed from the Red sea, and encamped in the wilderness of Sin. (Numbers 33:09-11)

The Hebrew phrase that is translated in the King James Bible as Red sea is סֽוּף יַם־ [yam-sūp̄], a controversial name that we will return to in due course. It is often assumed that the sea through which the Israelites passed at Pi-Hahiroth and the Yam Suph between Elim and the Wilderness of Sin were one and the same, but this is not at all clear.

In Exodus, however, this ambiguity seems to be resolved. When the Israelites reach Pi-Hahiroth and pass through the midst of the sea, we are again not told explicitly which sea this is. It is simply referred to as the sea. But a number of verses later, we read:

So Moses brought Israel from the Red sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur. (Exodus 15:22a)

Again, Red sea translates the Hebrew Yam Suph. This clearly identifies the Yam Suph as the Sea of Passage. But the fact that it is not so called in the actual account of the passage must give us pause. Although these verses are found side by side in the completed Bible, it is possible that they are of very different provenance.

The Passage of the Red Sea (Sistine Chapel)

Pi-Hahiroth

In Volume 4 of the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, M G Kyle writes:

Pi-Hahiroth Nothing is known of the meaning of the name Pi-Hahiroth. Some attempts toward an Egyptian etymology for it have been made, but without much success. Since the meaning of the name is unknown and no description of the place or its use is given, it is impossible to determine anything concerning the character of Pi-Hahiroth, whether a city, a sanctuary, a fortress, or some natural feature of the landscape.

Location Neither Pi-Hahiroth nor any other place mentioned with it can be exactly located. A recent discovery of manuscripts in Egypt furnishes a mention of this place, but affords very little assistance in locating it, nothing comparable to the account in the Bible itself. (Orr 4:2396)

Well, that wasn’t very helpful. Nor is Wilhelm Gesenius’s A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament of much assistance:

Hahiroth pr[oper] n[oun] loc[ality] SW. of Palestine, on E. border of Egypt ... (Brown, Robinson & Gesenius 1004)

In Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Pi-Hahiroth is Number 6367, which is described thus in the accompanying Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary:

Strong’s Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary, Pages 94, 93, 38

6367.פּׅי הַחׅרת Pi ha-Chîyrôth, pee hah-khee-rōthʹ; from 6310 and the fem[inine] plur[al] of a noun (from the same root as 2356), with the art[icle] interp[olated]; mouth of the gorges; Pi-ha-Chiroth, a place in Eg[ypt]:—Pi-hahiroth. [In Num 14:19 without Pi-]

6310. פֶּה peh, peh; from 6284; the mouth (as the means of blowing), whether lit[erally] or fig[uratively] (particularly speech); spec[ifically] _edge-, portion or side ...

6284. פָּאָה pâ’âh, paw-awʹ; a prim[itive] root; to puff, i.e. blow away ...

2356
(Strong 94, 93, 38)

Strong interprets Pi- as a Hebrew element, but as in Pi-Ramesse and Pithom, it is more likely that this is Pr, the Egyptian hieroglyph for house, which was also used as a determinative for place. The phrase mouth of the gorges has been taken to imply that Pi-Hahiroth was located at one of the places where the Eastern Frontier Canal emerged from one of the lakes on Egypt’s eastern border (Lake Timsah or Lake Ballah). But in the previous article, we saw that this canal was probably constructed during the 18th or 19th Dynasty—after the Exodus, if the Exodus took place at the end of the Hyksos Period. Other translations, such as place of reservoirs or entrance of caverns (Easton 1893:550), could be cited in support of a similar location.

The Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) and the early Coptic versions translate Pi-Hahiroth as farmstead (Easton 1897:941). If the term is interpreted as Egyptian, it can be translated as the place where sedge grows (Smith 538) or the place where the reeds grow (Easton 1897:941). These would again suggest that Pi-Hahiroth was on one of the eastern lakes or northern lagoons, where the papyrus reed flourished.

All of these etymologies and their possible implications are summarized in the following passage taken from The Jewish Encyclopedia:

Pi-Hahiroth : A place in the wilderness where the Israelites encamped when they turned
back from Etham. It lay between Migdol and the sea “before Baal-zephon” (Ex. xiv. 3, 9; Num. xxxiii. 7, 8). The etymology of the name, which is apparently Egyptian, was the subject of much speculation by the ancient commentators. The Septuagint, while treating the word as a proper name in Numbers (Ειρόθ [Eiroth]; translating, however, פי [pi] by στόμα [stoma = mouth].), translates it in Exodus by τῆς ἐπαύλεως (tēs epauleōs = “sheepfold” or “farm-building”), thus reading in the Hebrew text פי הגדרת [py hgdrt]. The Mekilta (Beshallah, Wayehi, 1) identifies the place with Pithom, which was called Pi-hahiroth (= “the mouth of freedom”) after the Israelites had been freed from bondage, the place itself being specified as a valley between two high rocks. The Targum of pseudo-Jonathan (ad. loc.), while following the Mekilta in the interpretation of “Pi-hahiroth,” identifies the place with Tanis. (Singer 34)

If the Exodus occurred at the same time as the Expulsion of the Hyksos, then Tanis probably did not yet exist. Pithom, on the other hand, cannot be ruled out as a plausible candidate. In The Legends of the Jews, Pithom and Pi-Hahiroth are identified:

Accordingly, they retraced their steps to Pi-hahiroth, where two rectangular rocks form an opening, within which the great sanctuary of Baal-zephon was situated. The rocks are shaped like human figures, the one a man and the other a woman, and they were not chiselled by human hands, but by the Creator Himself. The place had been called Pithom in earlier times, but later, on account of the idols set up there,
it received the name Hahiroth. (Ginzberg 10)

Pi-Hahiroth is proving elusive, but if it lay somewhere between Etham and Baalzephon, then the latter may be the key to its location. So, where was Baalzephon?

Baal (Louvre)

Baalzephon

Baalzephon was a Canaanite god. His name means Lord of [Mount] Zaphon, a mountain in Syria sacred to the Canaanites and other peoples. Baalzephon was primarily a storm god, but he was also a protector of sailors and maritime trade. A cylinder seal depicting him as the patron of sailors was even discovered in the ruins of the Hyksos capital of Egypt, Avaris, or Tell el-Dab‘a (Hoffmeier 190). During the Hyksos Period of Egyptian history, Baalzephon was worshipped as Sutech—another hint that the Hyksos were originally from northern Mesopotamia (Brugsch 113). He was also identified with the Egyptian god Amon:

The name of Baal-zephon, which (as the eminent Egyptologist Mr. Goodwin has discovered) is met with in one of the papyri of the British Museum under its Egyptian orthography, Baali-Zapouna, denotes a divinity whose attribute is not far to seek. According to the extremely curious indications furnished by the Egyptian texts on this point, the god Baal-zephon, the ‘Lord of the North,’ represented under his Semitic name the Egyptian god Amon, the great bird-catcher who frequents the lagoons, the lord of the northern districts and especially of the marshes, to whom the inscriptions expressly give the title of Lord of the Khirot, that is ‘gulfs’ of the lagoons of papyrus. (Brugsch 236)

There were temples dedicated to the worship of Baalzephon at Memphis and at the Phoenician (ie Canaanite) colony of Tahpanhes (Tell Defeneh) in the northeastern Delta. Tahpanhes, or Daphnae, lay on the Way of Horus approximately half-way between Avaris and Tjaru, the places which I have identified with the First and Third Stations of the Exodus (Rameses and Etham). I have not yet satisfied myself as to the location or identity of the Second Station, Succoth, but Tahpanhes lies approximately where I would like to place it. Unfortunately, I have hitherto not been able to link Tahpanhes with the toponym Succoth. Nevertheless, if the Israelites followed the Way of Horus from Avaris to Tjaru, and then turned back towards Baalzephon, they would then be travelling in the direction of Tahpanhes. If Tahpanhes is not Succoth, could it be Baalzephon?

This was actually suggested by the French Orientalist Noël Aimé-Giron in the middle of the 20th century, and his opinion has been recently endorsed by British Egyptologist David Rohl (Rohl 185-189). James Hoffmeier has disputed it, pointing out that elsewhere in the Bible Tahpanhes is referred to by its Egyptian name. But the Bible was compiled over centuries from many disparate sources, so I see no problem with the same city being referred to by two different names. If Baalzephon is Tahpanhes, then this could imply that the nearby “sea” was actually Lake Tanis (now Lake Manzala). For at least part of its history, Tahpanhes was located on, or close to, the shore of Lake Tanis. On the other hand, if the Israelites reached the sea before reaching Baalzephon, then Lake Ballah would take precedence as the Sea of Passage.

Could the name of Lake Ballah be connected with that of Baalzephon?

An Egyptian Migdol or Watch Tower at Medinet Habu in Thebes

Migdol

In Exodus, God commands the Israelites to encamp:

before Pihahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, over against Baalzephon. (Exodus )

Migdol is often taken to be a Hebrew word, ׃ מִגְדֹּֽל (miḡ·dōl), meaning tower. But not everyone agrees that the word is Hebrew. There is no entry for this word in Brown & Robinson’s 1906 edition of Gesenius’s Hebrew and English Lexicon, though it does appear, translated as tower, in the entry for Lebanon (Gesenius 527). On the other hand, it does occur in Samuel Prideaux Tregelles’s edition of Gesenius of 1857:

[Migdol] pr[oper] name of a town of Lower Egypt, Jer. 44:1; 46:14; situated in the most northern part of the boundaries of Egypt, Ezek. 29:10; 30:6; we are not to regard as different from this, Ex. 14:2; Nu. 33:7 (see Thes. p. 268). This name is written in Egyptian ... (abundance of hills), which as a foreign name the Hebrews appear to have changed into מִגְדֹּֽל (tower); see Champollion, l’Egypte sous les Pharaons, ii, page 79. (Tregelles 447)

Following up that reference to Jean-François Champollion’s L’Égypte Sous les Pharaons, we read:

The small town was, like Tahpanhes, on the eastern bank of the Pelusiac branch, but probably closer to the city of Pelusium. It appears that Magdolum was a fortified location, and that it was garrisoned for the same reason as Daphnae [Tahpanhes].

We have already seen (p 70) that it was necessary to recognize two Egyptians towns called Meschtôl in the Arabian part of Lower Egypt: the first on the Isle of Myecphoris [opposite Bubastis] : the second, with which we are now concerned, situated on the eastern side of the Pelusiac branch. Its name occurs in Holy Scripture in the form Madjoul, a word which almost captures the sound of the genuine Egyptian name ... which can be found in the Coptic translation of the Bible, in the same passages as in the Hebrew text.

The Hebrews spelt the Egyptian word ... MGDL and MGDOUL (instead of writing MSCHTOUL), in order to approximate the word MGDL or MGDOUL, which is pronounced Magdal or Migdol, meaning a tower, and which is derived from the root GADAL. Some philologists have been misled by this resemblance. But one should remember that everyone who transcribes foreign words has a natural tendency to relate them to words of his own language or to refashion them according to the grammatical forms of his own language. This general observation applies particularly to the Arabs, and consequently to the Hebrews (as one can see from our Introduction (Volume 1, pp 38-39). (Champollion 79-80)

Continuing down this rabbit hole, we read what Champollion had to say on page 70:

The conclusion to be drawn from all this is that we must distinguish between two towns of this name in the part of Egypt which we are now describing: one on the Isle of Myecphoris ... and the other, mentioned in the Antonine Itinerary and in Holy Scripture. D’Anville has placed the latter on the Pelusiac branch, a short distance from Pelusium. (Champollion)

D’Anville’s Map of Ancient Egypt (1794)

The Antonine Itinerary is an itinerarium, or Roman roadmap, of the early Christian centuries. According to this itinerary, Magdolon lay 12 Roman miles [18 km] from Pelusium and 12 miles from Sile [Tjaru] (Wesseling 170-171):

Route from Serapeum to Pelusium: 60 Roman Miles [literally: a thousand paces]
Namely:
Thaubasium 8
Sile [Tjaru] 28
Magdolon 12
Pelusium: 12

Note that this Magdolon lay halfway between Tjaru_ and Pelusium—assuming that Sile is Tjaru, and that Tell el-Hebua marks its location. But this completely contradicts our earlier contention that Etham = Tjaru. If the Israelites travelled east along the Way of Horus as far as Tjaru, and then turned around and travelled back towards Tahpanhes, they would be moving away from this Magdolon, wherever it was. This is not at all what the Scriptures lead us to believe.

This Magdolon was identified by Alan Gardiner with the ruins of Tell el-Herr, which actually lie about 7 Roman miles (10 km) from Pelusium (Hoffmeier 181). The simplest solution to this quandary is to conclude that the Biblical Migdol is a Semitic term and has nothing to do with the Egyptian settlement of Magdolon. This would free us to locate the Biblical Migdol somewhere on the Way of Horus between Tahpanhes and Tjaru. Recently, however, James Hoffmeier has come to realize that the Egyptian Migdol was moved on more than one occasion, making it difficult to pinpoint its location at the time of the Exodus:

The place name Migdol occurs as an Egyptian eastern border site in the books of the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and it is found again in the exodus itinerary. This study will review recent archaeological data from north Sinai that bear on the identification of this toponym. As it turns out, over the 1500 years for which the name of the site is attested in Christian, Roman, Greek, Assyrian, Hebrew and Egyptian sources, the location moved more than once, making locating the various “Migdols” an ongoing challenge. However, recent finds have allowed us to narrow the window for the location of Migdol of the 2nd millennium B.C. (Hoffmeier 2008:3)

Hoffmeier eventually settles upon a site south or southeast of Tjaru. But if Tjaru is Etham, then the Biblical Migdol must lie west or southwest of it, since the Israelites turned around at Etham and began to retrace their steps. The following map (after Hoffmeier 2008:5, Figure 2), reconstructs the coastline at the time of the Exodus.

The Way of Horus

Hoffmeier suspects that there were at least three different Migdols: the one of the Exodus (which he places in the Ramesside Era around 1200 BCE), a Saitic one mentioned by Jeremiah and Ezekiel (which Hoffmeier places in Neo-Babylonian times around 590 BCE), and a late Persian-Hellenistic-Roman one. Of the latter two, he writes:

Thus we clearly have two sites that were both likely called Magdala or Migdol during the first millennium B.C. Evidently the site moved from the Saite site [Tell Qedua] to Tell el-Herr, slightly over a kilometer to the south, due to environmental change in the region, most likely the desiccation of the lagoon. (Hoffmeier 2008:6)

Hoffmeier, as I have just noted, believes that the Exodus took place during the 19th Dynasty, which he dates to the 2nd millennium BCE. He tentatively locates the Migdol of this era at T-211, a site about 7 km south-southwest of Tell el Herr. In the Short Chronology, however, the Ramesside Era is dated to the 6th century BCE, with the Exodus taking place about two hundred years before the time of Ramses II. It is possible, therefore, that the Migdol of the Exodus was an even earlier Migdol than T-211, and was located somewhere on the Way of Horus southwest of Tjaru (Tell el-Hebua I):

Era	Conventional Chronology	Short Chronology
Exodus	Ramses II (1279-1213)	End Hyksos Era (763)
Jeremiah, Ezekiel	Nebuchadnezzar II (604-562)	Artaxerxes III (358-338)
Fall of Jerusalem	587 or 586	343

James Strong was another scholar who believed that Migdol was of Egyptian origin. In his Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Migdol is Number 4024, which is described thus in the accompanying Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary:

prob[ably] of Eg[yptian] or[igin]; Migdol, a place in Eg[ypt]:—Migdol, tower. (Strong 61)

However, Strong’s Number 4026, Migdal, is given as a Hebrew word for tower:

a tower (from its size or height); by anal[ogy] a rostrum; fig[uratively] a (pyramidal) bed of flowers:—castle, flower, tower. (Strong 61)

Is it significant that in the Book of Jeremiah, Migdol and Tahpanhes are mentioned together?

The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the Jews which dwell in the land of Egypt, which dwell at Migdol, and at Tahpanhes, and at Noph, and in the country of Pathros ... (Jeremiah 44:1)

Noph was the Hebrew name for Memphis. The country of Pathros is believed to have been to the south of Memphis.

In the quotation above from Samuel Tregelles’s 1857 edition of Gesenius’s Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, the following reference was given: (see Thes. p. 268). This sends us to another of Gesenius’s works, his Philological and Critical Thesaurus of the Hebrew and Chaldee Languages of the Old Testament of 1835, where we read:

מִגְדֹּֽל, מִגְדֹּֽוֺל [migdol, migdoul] The proper name of a town of Lower Egypt, Jeremiah 44:1, 46:14, and of its location in the northern region of all Egypt, whence the boundaries of Egypt are thus described: from the tower of Syene (Ezekiel 29:10), (Ezekiel 30:6). In the Septuagint: Μαγδωλόν [Magdōlon]. Herodotus makes mention of the same place (Book 2, Chapter 159): and on foot Necos met and defeated the Syrians at Magdolus. And in the Antonine Itinerary, page 171, it is said to be twelve miles from Pelusium. No trace of its ruins exist there. They seem to have been buried beneath the sea along with a large section of the coast, where the bay of Râs el Moyeh now stands [about halfway between Ismailia and El Qantara]. Many understand this to be another city of the same name very close to the Red Sea, for instance in Niebuhr’s Beschreibung von Arabien, page 409, Exodus 14:2, Numbers 33:7, where the third station of the Israelites is thus described ... But ... if we accept that the station of the Israelites was situated to the east of the city of Pihahhiroth, then it faced Madolum (a city much more remote but famous enough). In Coptic, this name is written ..., and today two towns of Lower Egypt exist [with this name], one of which is on the Isle of Myecphoris, but which in truth do not contribute much to the elucidation of Biblical geography, as they themselves are doubtful (Champollion, L’Égypte II, 69, 79). If the word is of Hebrew origin (a plausible opinion if we assume that the Egyptian name is a translation, cf יֶרַח [yérakh = month], no. 2), it means tower. If it is of Egyptian origin, it can be translated as abundance of hills ..., as observed by J R Forster, Letters page 29. (Gesenius 1835:268)

That passage in Herodotus is a brief account of the first campaign Necho II of the 26th Dynasty against Assyria (or the Persian Empire according to the Short Chronology):

Necos then ceased from making the canal and engaged rather in warlike preparation; some of his ships of war were built on the northern sea, and some in the Arabian Gulf, by the Red Sea coast: the landing-engines of these are still to be seen. He used these ships at need, and with his land army met and defeated the Syrians at Magdolus, taking the great Syrian city of Cadytis [Kadesh] after the battle. He sent to Branchidae of Miletus and dedicated there to Apollo the garments in which he won these victories. Presently he died after a reign of sixteen years, and his son Psammis reigned in his stead. (Godley 473)

The translator, A D Godley, identifies Cadytis with Gaza in southern Palestine and Magdolus with Migdol of the Old Testament. (Godley’s identifications make more sense to me than modern contentions that the Kadesh in question was that on the River Orontes in Syria.) This passage does not help us pin down Migdol, but it does lend support to the belief that there was an Egyptian town of this name somewhere in the northeastern Delta on the way to Canaan—possibly even on the Way of Horus. Presumably this was the same place as the Magdolon of the Antonine Itinerary—and, therefore, pace Godley, not the Migdol of the Exodus.

My preferred location for the Biblical Migdol would be somewhere on the Way of Horus roughly halfway between Tahpanhes and Tjaru. This would not only put Migdol near to Lake Ballah, but close to a point where the two shores of Lake Ballah were separated by a narrow neck (where Abu Sefeh is located on the map above).

The Eastern Delta (1941)

As it happens, on maps of modern Egypt there is a feature located in this general area, about 7 km southwest of El Qantara. It is designated Ruins of el Maqṭû Sta. Could the Arabic name of this disused station be an echo of the Biblical Migdol? A few kilometres to the west is a tell called Tell el Miqauwîya, a name whose opening syllable sounds a little like that of Migdol.

Could the narrow section of Lake Ballah near Abu Sefeh be the Sea of Passage?

Yam Suph

One of the most controversial toponyms in the Old Testament is Yam Suph. For centuries this has been translated as Red Sea, copperfastening the ancient tradition that the latter was the Sea of Passage. But what does Yam Suph actually mean? The commonest interpretation is that suph is a Hebrew word for rush, reed, bulrush, seaweed (Gesenius 1835:943). It is thought that the word was adapted from the Egyptian word ṭwfi, meaning reeds (Brown 693). The implication is that the sea in question was one of the brackish lakes of the eastern Delta: Lake Ballah, Lake Timsah, or the Great Bitter Lake. (The latter, however, probably did not exist at the time of the Exodus, as the northern shoreline of the Red Sea proper lay much further north than it does today.) Brown & Robinson, according to their 1906 edition of Gesenius, believe that the traditional reference to the Red Sea is sound:

2; usu. in combin[ation] סֽוּף יַם־ [yam-sūp̄] prob[ably] = sea of rushes or reeds (> sea of (city) Suph), which G[ree]k incl[uded] in wider name θάλασσα ἐρυθρά [thalassa erythra], Red Sea (cf Di^{Ex 13, 18} and esp[ecially] WMM^{As. u. eur. 42f.}, who expl[ain] as name orig[inally] given to upper end of Gulf of Suez, extending into Bitter Lakes, shallow and marshy, whence reeds (prob[ably] also reddish colour));—name applied only to arms of Red Sea; most oft[en] a. to Gulf of Suez ... Ex 13:18 ... Nu 33:10-11 (Brown 693)

• WMM Wilhelm Max Müller, Asien und Europa Nach Altägyptischen Denkmälern, Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig (1893)

• Di August Dillmann, Die Bücher Exodus und Leviticus, Verlag Von S Hirzel, Leipzig (1897)

Samuel Tregelles, in his 1875 edition of Gesenius, has a slightly different interpretation, but he too believes that the traditional association with the Red Sea (which he calls the Arabian Gulf) is justified:

(1) rush, reed, seaweed. (The etymology is not known, and it cannot be derived from the verb סֽוּס [sūp̄ = (1) to snatch away, to carry off : (2) to make an end, to cease; to destroy]. Perhaps it may be of the same origin as the Lat[in] scirpus [=rush, bulrush] ... the letter r being gradually softened into l, and even into a vowel ... Specially—(a) sea weed ... whence סֽוּף יַם־ [yam-sūp̄] the weedy sea, i.e. the Arabian Gulf which abounds in sea weed ... It is also called in Egyptian ... the sea of weeds.

Perhaps the most significant thing to take from all of this is the possibility that Yam Suph and Pi-Hahiroth both refer to the same thing: reeds. As we saw above, some scholars have interpreted Pi-Hahiroth as an Egyptian phrase meaning place where the reeds grow. And now we have Yam Suph being interpreted as meaning sea of reeds. This is hardly a coincidence. The papyrus sedge did once flourish in Lake Ballah, but it cannot grow in sea water.

Egyptologists Manfred Bietak and James Hoffmeier both claim that Lake Ballah was the Biblical Yam Suph:

Over thirty years ago Manfred Bietak (1975: 136-137; 1987: 163-171; 1996: Fig. 1) and, more recently, I have argued that the Ballah Lakes, located just south Hebua and Tell el-Borg is p3 ṯwfy of Ramesside period texts, should be identified with Yam Sûp of Exodus (Exod. 10:19; 13:18; 15:4 & 22; Josh. 2:10; 4:23; Hoffmeier 2005: 81-89; Hoffmeier & Moshier 2006: 171-173). Furthermore, now that Sile/Tjaru has been positively identified, and that the northern limits of the Ballah Lakes have been have been traced to just two km. south of Hebua II (Figure 2), the reference to p3 ṯwfy and Tjaru in the 20th Dynasty Onomasticon of Amenemopet take on new meaning (Hoffmeier 205: 87-88; Hoffmeier & Moshier 2006: 171-173). The toponym section the Onomasticon lists cities (dmi) from south to north, beginning with Biggeh Island (#314) located just south of Aswan, and concluding with Tjaru (# 419), Egypt’s east frontier town-site. The penultimate toponym is p3 ṯwfy (# 418 – Gardiner 1947: 201-202). The juxtaposition of Tjaru and p3 ṯwfy helps to locate the latter immediately south of Tjaru. Exodus 14:2 shows that “the sea” (i.e. Yam Sûp) and Migdol were located in the same area. The collocation of the locations Tjaru, Yam Sûp/p3 ṯwfy and Migdol in biblical and Ramesside sources suggests that they were in the same general vicinity. (Hoffmeier 2008:10)

The Papyrus Reed, Cyperus papyrus

The East Wind

In the Book of Exodus we are explicitly told how God parted the Sea of Passage:

And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. (Exodus 14:21)

Some researchers have connected the Biblical description of a persistent easterly wind with a well-documented phenomenon of Lower Egypt (and elsewhere) known as wind setdown. This was actually observed and recorded by a British officer stationed in Egypt in 1882:

Some years ago (January and February, 1882) I was engaged in making a military report on the Suez Canal, in which it was necessary to investigate the possibility of the traffic being wilfully interrupted by obstacles sunk in the channel. 1 had also to examine not only the banks but the country on each side of the Canal for a considerable distance. One day, when so employed between Port Said and Kantarah, a gale of wind from the eastward set in and became so strong that I had to cease work. Next morning on going out I found that Lake Menzaleh [Lake Tanis], which is situated on the west side of the Canal, had totally disappeared, the effect of the high wind on the shallow water having actually driven it away beyond the horizon, and the natives were walking about on the mud where the day before the fishing-boats, now aground, had been floating. When noticing this extraordinary dynamical effect of wind on shallow water, it suddenly flashed across my mind that I was witnessing a similar event to what had taken place between three and four thousand years ago, at the time of the passage of the so-called Red Sea by the Israelites. (Tulloch 267-268)

The Belgian Egyptologist Édouard Naville also noted this phenomenon:

It has often been noticed by travellers in Egypt, that under the influence of a strong wind the sea recedes sometimes for a great distance, and comes back again to its former bed when the wind ceases or changes direction. (Naville 27)

Whether the Passage of the Sea was facilitated by a common phenomenon such as wind setdown, or by a unique phenomenon of a more catastrophic nature, or indeed by the miraculous intervention of the Israelites’ God, the experience of Major-General Tulloch only serves to strengthen the verisimilitude of the Biblical account.

The Passage of the Red Sea (Danby: 1825)

Conclusions

Tentatively, I am going to identify the narrow neck of Lake Ballah as the Sea of Passage, or Yam Suph. The Biblical Migdol was located at a currently unidentified site roughly halfway between Tahpanhes and Tjaru. Pi-Hahiroth was on the western shore of Lake Ballah, in the general vicinity of El Qantara—possibly at or close to the archaeological site of Tell Abu Sefêh, which lies about 2 km east of El Qantara, but which does not contain any pre-Persian remains.

To be continued ...

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References

• Noël Aimé-Giron, Ba`al Saphon et les Dieux de Tahpanhes dans un Nouveau Papyrus Phénicien, Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Égypte, Number 40, pp 433-460, (1941)
• Francis Brown, Edward Robinson, William Gesenius, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1906)
• 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)
• Jean-François Champollion, L’Égypte Sous les Pharaons, Volume 2, De Bure Frères, Paris (1814)
• August Dillmann, Die Bücher Exodus und Leviticus, Verlag Von S Hirzel, Leipzig (1897)
• Matthew George Easton, Illustrated Bible Dictionary, Thomas Nelson, Edinburgh (1893)
• Matthew George Easton, A Dictionary of Bible Terms, Thomas Nelson, Edinburgh (1897)
• Alan Gardiner, The Ancient Military Road Between Egypt and Palestine, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Volume 6, Number 2, pp 99-116, The Egypt Exploration Society, London (1920)
• Wilhelm Gesenius, Philological and Critical Thesaurus of the Hebrew and Chaldee Languages of the Old Testament, Volume 1, F C G Vogel, Leipzig (1835)
• Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, Volume 3, Translated from the German by Paul Radin, The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia (1911)
• Alfred Denis Godley, Herodotus: With an English Translation by A D Godley in Four Volumes, Volume 1, Loeb Classical Library, L117, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA (1920)
• James K Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition, Oxford University Press, Oxford (1996)
• James K Hoffmeier, The Search for Migdol of the New Kingdom and Exodus 14:2: An Update, Buried History, Volume 44, pp 3-12, (2008)
• Wilhelm Max Müller, Asien und Europa Nach Altägyptischen Denkmälern, Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig (1893)
• Édouard Naville, The Route of the Exodus, Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute, Volume 26, pp 12-30, London (1893)
• Édouard Naville, The Store-City of Pithom and the Route of the Exodus, Fourth Edition, Egypt Exploration Fund, London (1903)
• James Orr (General Editor), The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, Volume 4, The Howard-Severance Company, Chicago (1915)
• David Rohl, From Eden to Exile: The Epic History of the People of the Bible, Arrow Books Ltd, New York (2003)
• Isidore Singer (managing editor), The Jewish Encyclopedia, Volume 10, Funk & Wagnalls Co, New York (1905)
• William Smith, _A Dictionary of the Bible _, D Lothrop & Co, Boston (1880)
• James Strong, The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Eaton & Mains, New York (1890)
• Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, Wilhelm Gesenius, A Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures, Bagster, London (1857)
• Alexander B Tulloch, _The Passage of the Red Sea by the Israelites: Notes Made During a Military Survey, Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute, Volume 28, pp 267-276, London (1896)
• George Valsamis, Septuagint Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy: The Greek Old Testament, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (2018)
• Petrus Wesseling (editor), Vetera Romanorum Itineraria, sive, Antonini Augusti Itinerarium [Ancient Itineraries of the Romans, or, The Itinerary of the Emperor Antoninus Pius], J. Wetstenium & G. Smith, Amsterdam (1735)

Image Credits

• The Passage of the Jews Through the Red Sea (Aivazovsky: 1891): Ivan Aivazovsky (artist), Public Domain (1891)
• The Passage of the Red Sea (Sistine Chapel): © Web Gallery of Art, Fair Use
• Baal (Louvre): © Jastrow, Department of Near Eastern Antiquities of the Louvre, AO 15775, Public Domain
• An Egyptian Migdol or Watch Tower at Medinet Habu in Thebes: © Rémih, Creative Commons License
• D’Anville’s Map of Ancient Egypt (1794): Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville, Complete Body of Ancient Geography, Laurie and Whittle, London (1795), Public Domain
• The Way of Horus: © James K Hoffmeier, Fair Use
• The Eastern Delta (1941): Perry-Castañeda Library
  Map Collection, University of Texas Libraries, Geographical Section, General Staff, Number 4085, Published by Great Britain War Office/US Army Map Service 1941, Public Domain
• The Papyrus Reed (Cyperus papyrus): © Kurt Stüber, Creative Commons License
• The Passage of the Red Sea (Danby: 1825): Bridgeman Images, Francis Danby (artist), Public Domain (1825)