Tahpanhes

Tahp´anhes, or Tehaphnehes, a city of Egypt. The former name is used by Jeremiah (Jer 2:16; Jer 43:7-9; Jer 44:1; Jer 46:14), and the latter by Ezekiel (Eze 30:18). This was doubtless Daphne, a strong boundary city on the Pelusiac arm of the Nile. A mound called Tel Defenneh, nearly in a direct line between the modern Zan and Pelusium, is supposed from its name and position to mark the site of Daphne. Isaiah (Isa 30:4) names it in the abbreviated form Hanes. It was to this place that Johanan and his party repaired, taking Jeremiah with them, after the murder of Gedaliah.

Tah’panhes. A city of Egypt, mentioned in the time of the prophets, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The name is evidently Egyptian, and closely resembles that of the Egyptian queen, Tahpenes. It was evidently a town of lower Egypt, near or on the eastern border. When Johanan, and the other captains, went into Egypt, "they came to Tahpanhes." Jer 43:7. The Jews in Jeremiah’s time remained here. Jer 44:1. It was an important town, being twice mentioned by the latter prophet with Noph or Memphis. Jer 2:16; Jer 46:14. Here stood a house of Pharaoh-hophra, before which Jeremiah hid great stones. Jer 43:8-10.

A city on the Tanitic branch of the Nile, in Lower Egypt, called by the Greeks Daphne. On the N.E. border, near Pelusium, of which it was the outpost; therefore soon reached from Palestine by Johanan (Jer 43:7; Jer 43:9). Pharaoh had there a "palace" being built or repaired in the prophet’s time, with bricks made of clay in a "brick kiln" at the entry. Of the same materials, Jeremiah foretells, should the substructure of Nebuchadnezzar’s throne be built, implying that Nebuchadnezzar’s throne should be raised on the downfall of Pharaoh’s throne: Jer 46:14, "publish in Migdol (E.) ... Noph (S.), ... T." (W.); here Jews were dwelling (Jer 44:1). In Isa 30:4 it is "Hanes" by contraction. In Jer 2:16 "the children of Noph (Memphis, the capital) and Tahapanes" (with which the Jews came most in contact) represent the Egyptians generally, who under Pharaoh Necho slew the king of Judah, Josiah, at Megiddo, and deposed Jehoahaz for Eliakim or Jehoiakim (2Ki 23:29-30; 2Ki 23:33-35). Called from the goddess Tphnet. Now Tel Defenneh.

Tahpanhes (täh’pan-hçz). A city on the Tanitic branch of the Nile, in lower Egypt, and called Tahapanes and Tehaphnehes, Eze 30:18; possibly the Hanes of Isa 30:4; Jer 2:16; Jer 43:7-9; Jer 44:1; Jer 46:14. Jeremiah, after the murder of Gedaliah, was taken to this place, and Pharaoh had a palace built or restored there, made of bricks In a brick-kiln. The children of Noph (Memphis) and of Tahpanhes are used to represent the entire body of the Egyptians. Jer 2:16. It is identical with the Daphne of the Greeks. The site of Tahpanhes was discovered by M. Naville, and the palace of Psammetichus I. found.

[Tah’panhes] See TAHAPANES.

TAHPANHES (Jer 2:16; Jer 43:7 ff; Jer 44:1; Jer 46:14, Eze 30:18 (Tehaphnehes), in Jdt 1:9 AV [Note: Authorized Version.] Taphnes).—An Egyptian city, the same as the Greek Daphnæ, now Tett Defne. The Egyptian name is unknown. It lay on the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, which is now silted up, and the whole region converted into a waste. Petrie’s excavations showed that Daphnæ was founded by Psammetichus i. on the 26th Dyn. (b.c. 664–610). According to Herodotus, it was the frontier fortress of Egypt on the Asiatic side, and was garrisoned by Greeks. In its ruins was found an abundance of Greek pottery, iron armour, and arrowheads of bronze and iron, while numerous small weights bore testimony to the trade that passed through it. The garrison was kept up by the Persians in the 5th cent., and the town existed to a much later period. After the murder of Gedaliah (b.c. 586), Johanan took the remnant of the Jews from Jerusalem, including Jeremiah, to Tahpanhes.

F. Ll. Griffith.

ta´pan-hēz, ta-pan´hēz (usually in the Old Testament תּחפּנחס, taḥpanḥēṣ; Septuagint Ταφνάς, Taphnás; Coptic, Taphnes): The various spellings of the Hebrew text are fairly well indicated in the King James Version by Tahapanes (Jer 2:16); Tahpanhes (Jer 43:7-9; Jer 44:1; Jer 46:14); Tehaphnehes (Eze 30:18), while an Egyptian queen (XXIst Dynasty) is named Tahpenes (1Ki 11:19, 1Ki 11:20). Tahpanhes 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. Its Egyptian name is unknown, but it was called Δαφναί, Daphnaı́, by the Greeks, and by the modern Arabs Def’neh. The site is now desolate, but it was a fertile district when watered by the Pelusiac branch of the Nile (compare Isa 19:6, Isa 19:7). Tahpanhes was so powerful that Jeremiah can say that it, with Memphis, has “broken the crown” of Israel’s head (Jer 2:16), and Ezekiel can speak of its “daughters” (colonies or suburban towns), and names it with Heliopolis and Bubastis when the “yokes Septuagint “sceptres”) of Egypt” shall be broken by Yahweh (Eze 30:18). In a later passage Jeremiah describes the flight of the Jews from their ruined capital to Tahpanhes after the death of Gedaliah (Jer 43:1-7) and prophesies that Nebuchadnezzar shall invade Egypt and punish it, establishing his throne upon the brick pavement (the King James Version “kiln”) which is at the entry of Pharaoh’s royal palace at Tahpanhes (Jer 43:8-11). He calls Tahpanhes as a witness to the desolation of the cities of Judah (Jer 44:1), but prophesies an equal destruction of Tahpanhes and other Egyptian cities (probably occupied by fugitive Jews) when Nebuchadnezzar shall smite them (Jer 46:14).

This invasion of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar was for a long time strenuously denied (e.g. as late as 1889 by Kuenen, Historisch-critisch Onderzoek, 265-318); but since the discovery and publication (1878) of fragments of Nebuchadnezzar’s annals in which he affirms his invasion of Egypt in his 37th year (568-567 BC), most scholars have agreed that the predictions of Jeremiah (Jer 43:9-13; Jer 44:30) uttered shortly after 586 BC and of Ezekiel (Eze 29:19) uttered in 570 BC were fulfilled, “at least in their general sense” (Driver, Authority and Archaeology, 116). Three cuneiform inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar were found by Arabs probably on or near this site. The excavation of Tahpanhes in 1886 by W. M. Flinders Petrie made it “highly probable that the large oblong platform of brickwork close to the palace fort built at this spot by Psammetichus I, circa 664 BC, and now called Kasr Bint el-Yehudi, ’the castle of the Jew’s daughter,’ is identical with the quadrangle ’which is at the entry of Pharaoh’s house in Tahpanhes’ in which Jeremiah was commanded to bury the stones as a token that Nebuchadnezzar would spread his pavilion over them when he led his army into Egypt” (ibid., 117). Josephus explicitly mentions that Nebuchadnezzar, when he captured Tahpanhes, carried off a Jewish contingent from that city (Ant., IX, vii). Dr. Petrie found that while a small fort had existed here since the Rameside era (compare Herodotus ii. 17), yet the town was practically founded by Psammetichus I, continued prosperous for a century or more, but dwindled to a small village in Ptolemaic times. Many sealings of wine jars stamped with the cartouches of Psammetichus I and Amosis were found in situ. Tahpanhes being the nearest Egyptian town to Palestine, Jeremiah and the other Jewish refugees would naturally flee there (Jer 43:7). It is not at all unlikely that Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion of Egypt was partly due to Egypt’s favorable reception of these refugees.

The pottery found at Tahpanhes “shows on the whole more evidence of Greeks than Egyptians in the place... Especially between 607-587 BC a constant intercourse with the Greek settlers must have been going on and a wider intercourse than even a Greek colony in Palestine would have produced... The whole circumstances were such as to give the best possible opportunity for the permeation of Greek words and Greek ideas among the upper classes of the Jewish exiles” (Petrie, Nebesheh and Defenneh, 1888, 50). This was, however, only one of many places where the Greeks and Hebrews met freely in this century (see e.g. Duruy, History of Greece, II, 126-80; Cobern, Daniel, 301-307). A large foreign traffic is shown at Tahpanhes in which no doubt the Jews took part. Discoveries from the 6th century BC included some very finely painted pottery, “full of archaic spirit and beauty,” many amulets and much rich jewelry and bronze and iron weapons, a piece of scale armor, thousands of arrow heads, and three seals of a Syrian type. One of the few inscriptions prays the blessing of Neit upon “all beautiful souls.” There was also dug up a vast number of minute weights evidently used for weighing precious metals, showing that the manufacture of jewelry was carried on here on a large scale. One of the most pathetic and suggestive “finds” from this century, which witnessed the Babylonian captivity, consisted of certain curious figures of captives, carved in limestone, with their legs bent backward from their knees and their ankles and elbows bound together (Petrie, op. cit., chapters ix-xii).