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EGYPT AND THE BIBLE
67

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