Rhinokorura

Rhinokorura ( Greek  Ῥινοκόρουρα ) or Rhinokolura ( Ῥινοκόλουρα ) refers to an ancient place in the borderland between Egypt and Palestine .

Strabo and Diodorus put the peculiar name (about "cut noses") back to the fact that an Ethiopian king - Diodor calls him Aktisanes ( Ακτισάνης ) - conquered Egypt and cut off the nose of all criminals and thieves and forced them to live in the to settle in a newly founded city, which lay in an extremely barren and desolate area, surrounded by salt marshes and with only a few freshwater wells. They had laboriously fed themselves there by building fences several kilometers long from split reeds , with which they stalked the large flocks of quail that migrated across the isthmus.

According to Flavius ​​Josephus , Rhinokorura was owned by Jews at the time of Alexander Jannäus (104 to 78 BC). When Herod in 40 BC He fled to Egypt in the 2nd century BC, and stopped in Rhinokorura, where he learned of the death of his brother Phasael .

Rhinokorura is identified with today's al-Arish in Egypt. The “brook of Egypt”, referred to at one point in the Septuagint as Rhinokolura, ie the border river between Egypt and Israel, is therefore identified with the Wadi al-Arish .

In Christian times there was a bishopric in Rhinokorura, to which the titular bishopric Rhinocorura goes back. In 1118 Baldwin I , King of Jerusalem , died here of fish poisoning.

swell

• Polybios Historien V. 80ff.
• Strabon Geographika XVI, 2,31 (p. 759)
• Diodor Library I, 60
• Flavius ​​Josephus Antiquitates Judaicae XIII, 15.4; XIV, 14.2; De bello Iudaico 14.2
• Septuagint 27.12 LXX
• Pliny the Elder Naturalis historia V, 14th century

literature

• Georg Beer : Rinocolura, Rinocorura . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume IA, 1, Stuttgart 1914, Col. 841 f.
• George Williams:  Rhinocorura . In: William Smith : Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. London 1854.