Sirbonischer See

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Sirbonischer See
Sirbonis.svg
Map of the Sirbonian lake
Geographical location Egypt
Data
Coordinates 31 ° 11 '24 "  N , 33 ° 6' 36"  E Coordinates: 31 ° 11 '24 "  N , 33 ° 6' 36"  E
Sirbonischer See (Egypt)
Sirbonischer See

particularities

salt lake

The Sirbonische Lake (also Sirbonis , ancient Greek Σιρβωνίδος λίμνη or Σιρβωνίς , Latin Serbonites Lacus , Arabic مستنقع سربون, DMG Mustanqaʿ Sirbūn ) was a salt lake or salt marsh on the coast of Egypt in ancient times . Today the lake is called Bardawil Lake (after the Arabic form of the name Baldwin , which several Crusader kings carried).

Origin and location

The lake was created by the transport of material carried by the now-vanished Pelusian arm of the Nile . The spit formed by these shipments cut off a lagoon from the Mediterranean , the Sirbonian Sea. The lake became swampy due to evaporation and gained the appearance of solid land due to the sand blown in from the desert, which is why “Sirbonian Swamp” became a proverbial name for treacherous, unsafe soil, especially in the English-speaking area. The reason for this are the verses of John Milton :

A gulf profound as that Serbonian Bog
Betwixt Damiata and mount Casius old,
Where Armies whole have sunk…

An abyss, deep like the Sirbon swamp
between Damiata and the Kasion Mountains,
where entire armies were once devoured ...

At the western end of the spit was Pelusium , to the west of it the Damiette mentioned by Milton , about in the middle of the spit was Mount Kasion with a sanctuary of Zeus-Ammon and at the eastern end of the spit was Ostrakine . According to Herodotus , the lake denotes the eastern end of the coast of Egypt, which extends from Plinithine near what will later become Alexandria to the lake over 60 Schoinen (about 600 km).

That Milton describes the lake as an abyss seems astonishing given its actual depth of no more than three meters. However, there is a legend that Typhon , the gigantic monster of Greek mythology, was conquered by Zeus at this point and sunk into the abyss of the earth. However, it remains somewhat unclear which place is meant, since we are talking about the Caucasus and the Nysa plain in the same context .

Diodor's description of the Barathra

Diodorus gives a description of the lake in his Bibliotheca historica that is suitable to make the reader shudder. He writes about the natural protection of the Egyptian borders:

“And as for the eastern border, it is partly protected by the river, partly by the desert and a swampy plain called Barathra. Between Koile Syria and Egypt there is a lake that is quite narrow, but incredibly deep. It is about 200 stadia long and is called Serbonis. Dangerous surprises lurk there for anyone who approaches it without knowing its nature.
Since the water surface is narrow like a ribbon and surrounded on all sides by high dunes, a steady south wind carries large amounts of sand onto the lake. This sand hides the open water and hides the shore, which becomes indistinguishable from the land. As a result, many, even entire armies have disappeared that were not familiar with the peculiar nature of the place and deviated from the path.
For when you step on the sand it gives way only slowly, with a kind of malicious malice deceiving the travelers until it is too late to turn back; if you become suspicious and start helping each other, it is already too late to be saved. Because someone who gets into the mud cannot swim because the slime hinders any movement, but he cannot wade out either, because the feet cannot find a bottom. Due to this mixture of water and sand and their nature, it is impossible to cross on foot or by boat. Therefore, those who get into the area are pulled into the depths without being able to cling to anywhere, as the sand slips along the edge. The plain therefore rightly deserves the name Barathra. "

Sinking armies

The mention of entire armies that were sunk in the treacherous sand there deserves particular interest in this description. The question arises when and how that happened. Diodorus mentions that at the beginning of the second campaign of the Persian king Artaxerxes III. against Egypt 343 BC A part of the Persian army in the Barathra found death:

"When he [Artaxerxes] came to the great marshes called the Barathra or Abysses, he lost part of his army because of his ignorance of the area."

But this is not the only case of an army literally “bogus” in the Barathra that Diodorus reports. Almost 40 years later, the Diadoche Antigonus I Monophthalmos launched an attack on Egypt. He broke in 305 BC. BC with a large army including elephants from Gaza , whereby the army should be supplied by an accompanying fleet. But this was prevented by a storm and the army suffered great losses in the salt marshes.

Sirbonischer See as "Reed Sea"

Pharaoh and his army sink in the salt flood ( Frederick Arthur Bridgman , 1900)

In connection with these reports, it was obvious to associate the sinking Persian troops with the sinking army of the Pharaoh in the Book of Exodus . The biblical version of the "Priestly Scripture " reports that when Israel left Egypt, the Jewish people did not take the shorter route across the road to the Philistine land , but took a different route through the desert to the Red Sea ( Hebrew יַם-סוּף yam-suf ; ancient Egyptian Pa-tiufi ). And YHWH said to Moses :

“Command the sons of Israel to turn and encamp at Pi-Hahirot, between Migdol and the sea. In front of Baal-Zefon, across from him, you should lie down by the sea! "

- 2 Mos 14.2  ELB

Here is a hint for the localization, as the above-mentioned mountain Kasion is on the spit north of the Sirbonischer See. From another mountain Kasion in Syria, today's Keldağ in Turkey south of the Orontes estuary , it is known that the Baal Zefon was worshiped on it (and in Greco-Roman times Zeus identified with him ). In exactly the same way, the Egyptian Kasion was a cult site of Amun or Zeus, who was identified with him. The Syrian Kasion appears conversely in the Tanach as a seat of gods B. in Isa 14,13f  ELB .

There was a border fortress of Ramses III near the mouth of the Pelusian Arm . ( West Semitic Migdol ). The road to the Philistine was the road from Migdol to Gaza, south of the Sirbonite Sea . This gives a number of clues to identify the biblical Red Sea and Baal-Zefon with the Sirbonian Sea. The first scholar to propose a route of the exodus along the spit north of the Sirbonischer See was Matthias Jacob Schleiden , who did not identify the lake with the Red Sea, but instead had the Jews turn south after crossing the spit to the north end of the gulf of Suez, whom he took for the Red Sea.

Sea of ​​Reds in hieroglyphics
G40 G1 V13 Z7 I9
Z4
M15 M2
Z2
O49

Pa-tiufi / Pa-tiufa
P3-tjwfj
The (sea) of plants / papyrus thicket

The orientalist Heinrich Brugsch took up this theory in 1874, but now saw Lake Sirbon as the more likely location of the Red Sea. Even today the theory has important proponents, e.g. B. Alan Gardiner and James Karl Hoffmeier, even if one cannot say that it would have completely prevailed.

A weighty argument was the changed translation of the biblical name Jam Suf (יַם-סוּף) as the “Red Sea” and, in connection with this, the question of whether the Egyptian “Red Sea” (hieroglyphic Pa-tiufi ) is etymologically related to the Hebrew Jam Suf . Initially, it was a tradition of the Septuagint following Yam Suf as " Red Sea translated". For a body of water covered with reed beds or papyrus , an inland lake , brackish water or salt lake is far more suitable than a sea coast.

Strabon's description and the ekrhegma

In his Geographika Strabo gives the following description of the Sirbonischer See and its surroundings:

“The area of ​​Gaza is barren and sandy and this is even more true of the adjoining region, in which the Sirbonian Sea is located, which extends almost parallel to the sea. In between there is a narrow strip of land that extends to the so-called ekrhegma. The length of the strip is 200 and the greatest width 50 stages. The ekrhegma is filled with earth. Then another strip of land follows to Kasion and then to Pelusium. The Kasion is a sandy hill without water that forms a headland. [...] Then comes the road to Pelusium, where Gerra is [...] "

Ekrhegma ( ἔκρεγμα ) denotes a "discharge" or a "breakthrough". From Strabons it can be deduced that at that time the spit was closed, the lake was actually a lake or a swamp, but that there was a time before when there was a connection between sea and lake, the Sirbonische See actually was a lagoon.

This alternation between lagoon, lake and swamp continues into modern times. The spit was still closed in the 19th century. B. can be clearly seen on the map of the Lepsius expedition . In the years after the First World War, the area was described as a treacherous salt marsh. Today the Sirbonischer See is a lagoon again, as a wide artificial opening was created in the spit.

Each of these changes causes a massive transformation of the landscape. In addition, there is dune formation and dune migration, which means that large areas can be buried deep under sand or, conversely, released again in the course of a few years. For example, the sand hill at Kasion is almost 30 m high. The tectonic forces form another moment of the dynamics of the area : Strabo reports elsewhere that parts of the Sirbonis were suddenly lowered by an earthquake and others were raised in reverse.

swell

  • Diodor , Bibliothéke historiké I. 30
  • Pliny , Naturalis historia V. 12
  • Strabon , Historika Hypomnếmata I. 2.31, 3.4; XVI. 1.12, 2.26f, 2.32f; XVII. 1.11

literature

  • Heinrich Brugsch : L'Exode et les monuments égyptiens. Hinrichs, Leipzig 1875. Lecture given at the Orientalist Congress in London, September 17, 1874. archive.org English translation in: A history of Egypt under the Pharaohs derived entirely from the monuments, to which is added a discourse on the Exodus of the Israelites. 2nd Edition, 2nd Vol. Murray, London 1881, pp. 357-432 archive.org
  • Herbert Donner : History of the people of Israel and its neighbors in outline. Floor plans for the Old Testament. Vol. 4/1, 4/2. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-51679-7 .
  • William Bodham Donne: Sirbonis  Lacus . In: William Smith : Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. London 1854.
  • Otto Eißfeldt : Baal Zaphon, Zeus Kasios and the passage of the Israelites through the sea. Niemeyer, Halle 1932.
  • Glen A. Fritz: The Lost Sea of ​​Exodus: A Modern Geographical Analysis. Dissertation Texas State University-San Marcos 2006, ISBN 1-59872-745-1 , pp. 161ff. limited preview in Google Book search
  • Rainer Hannig : Large Concise Dictionary Egyptian-German: (2800–950 BC) . von Zabern, Mainz 2006, ISBN 3-8053-1771-9 .
  • Eliezer D. Oren: Migdol: A New Fortress on the Edge of the Eastern Nile Delta. In: Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. 256 (Fall 1984), pp. 7-44.
  • Matthias Jacob Schleiden : The isthmus of Suês. To judge the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. Represented from the older and more recent sources. Engelmann, Leipzig 1858.
  • Rudolf Sellheim, Fritz Maaß: Otto Eißfeldt: Small writings . Vol. 2. Mohr, Tübingen 1963.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John Milton, Alastair Fowler: Paradise Lost (= Longman annotated English poets. ). 2nd edition. Pearson Longman, Harlow GB, New York 2007, ISBN 978-1-4058-3278-6 , pp. 592-595.
  2. Herodotus, Histories II. 6
  3. Apollonios of Rhodes , Argonautika II.1215.
  4. Βάραθρα "devouring abyss". Barathron was the name of the cleft behind the castle in Athens into which criminals were thrown.
  5. ^ Diodor, Bibliothéke historiké XVI. 46.5
  6. ^ Diodor, Bibliothéke historiké XX. 73.4
  7. Herbert Donner: History of the people of Israel and its neighbors in outline. Göttingen 2001, p. 110.
  8. 2 Mos 13:18  ELB
  9. Hebrew בעל צפון
  10. Compare also 4 Mos 33.7  EU
  11. There Zefon is translated as “north”, which is due to the fact that the Hebrew word for “north” is derived from the holy mountain Kasion in the north (as seen from Israel) .
  12. ^ GA Fritz: The Lost Sea of ​​Exodus. ... San Marcos 2006, p. 160.
  13. ^ Alan Gardiner: The Geography of the Exodus . In: Recuil d'études égyptologiques dédiés à la mémoire Jean-François Champollion. Bibliothèque de l'école des hautes études, Paris 1922, pp. 203–215.
  14. James K. Hoffmeier: Ancient Israel in Sinai: the evidence for the authenticity of the wilderness tradition. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2005, ISBN 0-19-515546-7 .
  15. 37 km
  16. 9.25 km
  17. ^ Strabo, Historika Hypomnếmata XVI. 2.32f
  18. L. de Bellefonds, H. Kiepert: General map of Egypt . Berlin 1859.
  19. ^ Antiquities on the Desert Coast between Egypt and Palestine. In: The Geographical Journal. Vol. 55, No. 6, June 1920, pp. 464-467.
  20. ^ Strabo, Historika Hypomnếmata XVI. 2.26f