Tell er-Retaba

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Tell er-Retaba (Egypt)
Tell er-Retaba
Tell er-Retaba
Tell er-Retaba in Egypt

Tell er-Retaba ( Arabic تل الرطابة, DMG Tall ar-Raṭāba ) is an archaeological site in Egypt . It is located in the eastern Nile Delta region of the semi- arid valley of Wadi Tumilat . The oldest finds come from the ancient Egyptian 9th and 12th dynasties . Main building activities took place in the New Kingdom . The temple complex of " Atum , Lord of Tjeku" comes from Ramses II. As for the period after 600 BC. BC find no further traces of settlement, it is assumed that the place was abandoned in favor of Tell el-Maschuta .

Some researchers identified Tell er-Retaba with the biblical Pitom , which in the book of Exodus (Ex 1,11) is named next to Ramses as the place of residence of the Israelites from which the exodus from Egypt took place. The identification is not clear, however, as the successor settlement of Tell el-Maschuta is also an option.

background

Ramses II kills an "Asian" in front of the "Lord of Tjeku" (the god Atum). Redrawn relief from Tell er-Retaba

Older excavation findings

In 1905 Flinders Petrie had uncovered a fortress from the New Kingdom near Tell er-Retaba (near today's al-Qaṣṣāṣīn ), about 15 km west of Tell el-Maschuta . Ramses II had built a temple there for the cult of "Atum as Lord of Tjeku". A stele and statue show him with Atum. Ramses III. also erected monuments in this place and strengthened the fortress. During the time of the New Kingdom, the area was also used by the Shasu tribes :

“The Shasu tribes from Edom ( šʒśw n jdwm ) passed the Merenptah fort in Tjeku to graze their cattle by the ponds of the Atum temple. On the day of Seth's birthday (3rd Heriu-renpet), I took her to the place where the other Shasu tribes who passed the fort of Merenptah in Tjeku days ago are already staying. Report from an Egyptian border official "

The statement in the Old Testament (Gen 47:11) that " Joseph's family settled in the land of Ramses" is influenced by the tradition of the exodus motif , which requires participation in the construction of the cities of Pi-Ramesse and Pithom. Alan Gardiner had suggested that Tell er-Retaba should be equated with Pithom, while Tjeku as a place name can designate a larger area as well as a specific city and can be equated with Tell el-Maschuta.

New excavation campaigns

The fortress town of Tell er-Retaba was the only larger town in Wadi Tumilat during the New Kingdom and only from 600 to 400 BC. Uninhabited. These results show that it appears very likely that Tell el-Maschuta was re-established a little further east after Tell er-Retaba. During this time Necho II (610 to 595 BC) had the Bubastis Canal to the Red Sea built, which led through the Wadi Tumilat.

The older monuments of the Ramessid and Third Intermediate Periods, which come from Tell el-Maschuta, must therefore have been transported there later. Kenneth Anderson Kitchen contradicted this reconstruction. In his opinion, Tell er-Retaba (Pithom) and Tell el-Maschuta (Tjeku) coexisted as important settlements in the New Kingdom. Kitchen did not take the ceramic findings into account when making his assumption.

Identifications

Tell er-Retaba and the successor settlement Tell el-Maschuta were both referred to as Tjeku and Pithom. However, only the equation of Pithom with Tell el-Maschuta is certain. The excavated buildings named by Naville as "trading houses", which he referred to Ex 1.11, were only built in Ptolemaic times when Ptolemy II had the canal renewed. Herodotus located the canal built by Necho II geographically to an arm of the Nile near Bubastis , which later led through the Wadi Tumilat to the Red Sea and flowed past "the Arab city of Patumos".

From the 1st century BC There are no traces of settlement until the 2nd century AD. A short time later, under Trajan , the place reached the greatest extent through the renewed canal expansion. The name Heroonpolis supposedly used in Hellenistic times is not certain. Strabo located Heroonpolis “at the furthest corner of the Arabian Gulf ”. But then Heroonpolis cannot have been the settlement of Tell el-Maschuta.

See also

literature

  • Hans Bonnet : Pithom. In: Hans Bonnet: Lexicon of the Egyptian religious history. Nikol, Hamburg 2005, ISBN 3-937872-08-6 , p. 596.
  • Alan Gardiner : The Delta Residence of the Ramessides, IV. In: The Journal of Egyptian Archeology. Vol. 5, No. 4, 1918, ISSN  0307-5133 , pp. 242-271.
  • Pithome. In: Wolfgang Helck , Eberhard Otto : Small Lexicon of Egyptology. 4th, revised edition Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1999, ISBN 3-447-04027-0 , p. 225.
  • John S. Holladay: Tell el-Maskhuṭa. Preliminary report on the Wadi Tumilat Project 1978-1979 (= Cities of the Delta. Vol. 3 = American Research Center in Egypt. Reports. No. 6). Undena Publications, Malibu CA 1982, ISBN 0-89003-084-7 .
  • John S. Holladay: Tell el-Maschuta . In: Kathryn A. Bard, Steven Blake Shubert (eds.): Encyclopedia of the archeology of ancient Egypt. Routledge, London et al. 1999, ISBN 0-415-18589-0 , pp. 786-789.
  • Ellen Fowles Morris: The architecture of imperialism. Military bases and the evolution of foreign policy in Egypt's New Kingdom (= Problems of Egyptology. PdÄ. Vol. 22). Brill, Leiden et al. 2005, ISBN 90-04-14036-0 (also: Philadelphia PA, University, dissertation, 2001).
  • Édouard Naville : The Store-city of Pithom and the Route of the Exodus (= Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund. Vol. 1, ISSN  0307-5109 ). Trübner, London 1885, ( online ).
  • Mohamed I. Bakr, Helmut Brandl: Various Sites in the Eastern Nile Delta: Tell el-Maskhuta. In: Mohamed I. Bakr, Helmut Brandl, Faye Kalloniatis (eds.): Egyptian Antiquities from the Eastern Nile Delta. = ʾĀṯār misrīya (= Museums of the Nile Delta. Vol. 2). Opaion, Kairo / Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-00-045318-2 , pp. 78 and 266–267, catalog 72.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ellen-Fowles Morris: The architecture of imperialism. 2005, pp. 504-508 and 740-741.
  2. ^ Kurt Galling (Ed.): Text book on the history of Israel. (TGI). 3rd, revised edition. Mohr, Tübingen 1979, ISBN 3-16-142361-5 .
  3. ↑ Herbert Donner : History of the people of Israel and its neighbors in outline. Part 1: From the beginnings to the time when the state was formed (= The Old Testament in German. ATd. Supplementary series. Vol. 4, 1). 4th, unchanged edition. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-525-51679-9 , p. 103.
  4. ^ Alan Gardiner, The Delta Residence of the Ramessides, IV. 1918, pp. 267-269.
  5. ↑ Herodotus II, 158; as well as texts by Greek and Latin authors.
  6. ↑ Strabo 17: 1, 21 and 26.
  7. ↑ Pliny and Claudius Ptolemy expressed themselves similarly .

Coordinates: 30 ° 32 ′ 51 ″  N , 31 ° 57 ′ 49 ″  E