Author Archives: Kevin P. Edgecomb

One of the interesting things that has been clarified by James Hoffmeier’s (et alia) North Sinai excavations around Tel Hebua is the nature of the Shihor, the “Waters of Horus” described in various Egyptian texts alternately as a channel or a basin of water connected to the Mediterranean. It turns out to be both: the easternmost branch of the Nile in the Eastern Delta which emptied into a lagoon or estuary which in turn opened onto the Mediterranean up until the late second millennium or early first millennium BC. See Hoffmeier’s Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticiy of the Wilderness Tradition, particularly chapter 4, “The Geography of the Exodus: Ramesses to the Sea,” and Figures 3-6, 10, and 19 for topographical and geological maps of the area in question in the Eastern Nile Delta. This branch of the Nile began a bit south and west of Avaris/Pi-Ramesses and continued in a northeasterly direction until debouching into the aformentioned lagoon adjacent to Tjaru/Silu/Sile, the great border fortress of Egypt, located at Tel Hebua I and II (the fortress comprised two large buildings, one on either side of the channel, connected by a bridge). It is generally recognized that this Shihor actually defined the border of Egypt. On the western bank was Egypt, on the eastern bank, “the East.” For its entire length, the Shihor channel is paralleled by the “Way of Horus” the road leading from Avaris/Pi-Ramesses to Canaan.

The references within the Bible to this particular body of water are Jos 13.3; 1Chr 13.5; Isa 23.3; Jer 2.18. (There is also mention of a Shihor-Libnath, near Mount Carmel, in Jos 19.26, but this appears to be a Canaanite town or regional name interestingly based on a combination of the Semitic roots for “black” שחר and “white” לבן whatever the meaning may have been.) Nadav Naʾaman in two articles, “The Brook of Egypt and Assyrian Policy on the Border of Egypt” and “The Shihor of Egypt and Shur That is Before Egypt” (reprinted in Ancient Israel and Its Neighbors: Interaction and Counteraction. Collected Essays volume 1. pages 238-264 and 265-278 respectively) conveniently provides summaries of the scholarship on the subject of the Shihor, describing the various agreements and disagreements over the referents of the Shihor in these Biblical passages. The former article has become the classic statement on the subject, it seems. To summarize reactions to the Biblical use of Shihor, the Isaiah and Jeremiah references are unanimously recognized as referring to the Nile, but the Joshua and Chronicles passages are not. Some (like Naʾaman himself) would equate Shihor in the Joshua and Chronicles references to the Wadi Besor (so Naʾaman argues) as the “Brook of Egypt” rather than the Nile itself, though this “Brook of Egypt” is typically placed further south, at the Wadi el-Arish. Generally, the Joshua and Chronicles Shihor usage is denied as referring to the Nile because the Shihor is elsewhere not described as the border of Canaan or the Promised Land, while the “Brook of Egypt” is. One is forced to ask, however, “Is it necessarily objective to change the referent of a geographical name depending upon equivocal contexts?” Is that actually treating the text fairly, or is it rather attempting to force the text to fit our own theoretical understanding? In this case, it is clearly the latter.

Firstly, there is not necessarily any “Brook of Egypt” which is separate from the “River of Egypt” which is the Nile, particularly in these cases—the easternmost branch in the Delta which was called the Shihor in the second millennium BC, and, much later, the Pelusiac. There is no particular difference in the Hebrew נהר and נחל such that the former means “river” and the latter means “brook” which would justify the tendentious translation “Brook of Egypt.” They are synonyms for a lengthy, flowing body of water of whatever size, large or small. The fascinating information that Naʾaman provides from the Assyrian texts (in “The Brook of Egypt…” article noted above) is still equivocal, and the article has the overall feel of a tour de force rather than an objective, rational investigation. It’s interesting, but forced in its fitting of the evidence to a hypothetical border placed close to Gaza.

Secondly, the Joshua 13.3 and 1 Chronicles 13.5 usages are not so anomalous as we would be led to believe. The former relates a boundary of the territory of the land still to be taken by the Israelites near the end of Joshua’s life, obviously from the actual border of Egypt up to Ekron, not from some unimportant wadi. Interestingly, the “Wadi of Egypt” (as the NRSV puts it) is also mentioned to be the southern border of the promised land in both Numbers 34.5 and Joshua 15.4. Importantly, in Isaiah 27.12, the “Wadi of Egypt” is put in apposition with the Euphrates, just as in Isaiah 23.3, the Shihor is. This seems rather to suggest that no matter the period involved, the Shihor and the “Wadi of Egypt” were understood by the Biblical writers as identical, and as the theoretical or ideal, if not actual, border between Egypt and Israel. That the Egyptians considered the Shihor their border is well known and unanimously acknowledged. That the Israelites, producing the only other body of material to elaborate on this border, indeed to even mention the Egyptian name of this border feature, claimed to share this border with the Egyptians either ideally or actually should not surprise us. Theirs was a vibrant culture immediately to the north of Egypt, with a cultural territory of larger extent than any of the Canaanite or Philistine city-states, and with a literary tradition of astonishing richness which is still appreciated to this day, aside from anyone’s conception of the workings of God in their history. Such things do not indicate the Israelites to have been an inconsiderable cultural force in the region. Control by such a cultural force, to a greater or lesser degree, over the unclaimed lands to the east of Egypt should actually be expected. The incidental usage of Nile/Shihor/River of Egypt in parallel with the Euphrates as indicating the maximal extent of Israelite influence, and Canaanite before that, through several centuries of writing by the Israelites, whether it was ideal or actualized (as it seems to have been at times), should not be denied because it doesn’t fit hypothetical models of Israelite borders based on other, more equivocal and less objectively determinative factors. To do so is clearly an injustice to all the evidence, and this theory of a “Wadi of Egypt” at Wadi Besor or Wadi el-Arish should be abandoned by scholarship.

Of course, we needn’t expect anything to really change on that front, for, as they say, “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.”

On the whole Mount of Olivet there seems to be no spot higher than that from which the Lord is said to have ascended into the heavens, where there stands a great round church, having in its circuit three vaulted porticoes covered over above. The interior of the church, without roof or vault, lies open to heaven under the open air, having in its eastern side an altar protected under a narrow covering. So that in this way the interior has no vault, in order that from the place where the Divine footprints are last seen, when the Lord was carried up into heaven in a cloud, the way may be always open and free to the eyes of those who pray towards heaven.

For when this basilica, of which I have now made slight mention, was building, that place of the footprints of the Lord, as we find written elsewhere, could not be enclosed under the covering with the rest of the buildings. Whatever was applied, the unaccustomed earth, refusing to receive anything human, cast back into the face of those who brought it. And, moreover, the mark of the dust that was trodden by the Lord is so lasting that the impression of the footsteps may be perceived; and although the faith;of such as gather daily at the spot snatches away some of what was trodden by the Lord, yet the area perceives no loss, and the ground still retains that same appearance of being marked by the impress of footsteps.

Further, as the sainted Arculf, who carefully visited this spot, relates, a brass hollow cylinder of large circumference, flattened on the top, has been placed here, its height being shown by measurement to reach one’s neck. In the centre of it is an opening of some size, through which the uncovered marks of the feet of the Lord are plainly and clearly seen from above, impressed in the dust. In that cylinder there is, in the western side, as it were, a door so that any entering by it can easily approach the place of the sacred dust, and through the open hole in the wheel may take up in their outstretched hands some particles of the sacred dust.

Thus the narrative of our Arculf as to the footprints of the Lord quite accords with the writings of others–to the effect that they could not be covered in any way, whether by the roof of the house or by any special lower and closer covering, so that they can always be seen by all that enter, and the marks of the feet of the Lord can be clearly seen depicted in the dust of that place. For these footprints of the Lord are lighted by the brightness of an immense lamp hanging on pulleys above that cylinder in the church, and burning day and night. Further in the western side of the round church we have mentioned above, twice four windows have been formed high up with glazed shutters, and in these windows there burn as many lamps placed opposite them, within and close to them. These lamps hang in chains, and are so placed that each lamp may hang neither higher nor lower, but may be seen, as it were, fixed to its own window, opposite and close to which it is specially seen. The brightness of these lamps is so great that, as their light is copiously poured through the glass from the summit of the Mountain of Olivet, not only is the part of the mountain nearest the round basilica to the west illuminated, but also the lofty path which rises by steps up to the city of Jerusalem from the Valley of Josaphat, is clearly illuminated in a wonderful manner, even on dark nights, while the greater part of the city that lies nearest at hand on the opposite side is similarly illuminated by the same brightness. The effect of this brilliant and admirable coruscation of the eight great lamps shining by night from the holy mountain and from the site of the Lord’s ascension, as Arculf related, is to pour into the hearts of the believing onlookers a greater eagerness of the Divine love, and to strike the mind with a certain fear along with vast inward compunction.

This also Arculf related to me about the same round church: That on the anniversary of the Lord’s Ascension, at mid-day, after the solemnities of the Mass have been celebrated in that basilica, a most violent tempest of wind comes on regularly every year, so that no one can stand or sit in that church or in the neighbouring places, but all lie prostrate in prayer with their faces in the ground until that terrible tempest has passed.

The result of this terrific blast is that that part of the house cannot be vaulted over; so that above the spot where the footsteps of the Lord are impressed and are clearly shown, within the opening in the centre of the above-named cylinder, the way always appears open to heaven. For the blast of the above-mentioned wind destroyed, in accordance with the Divine will, whatever materials had been gathered for preparing a vault above it, if any human art made the attempt.

This account of this dreadful storm was given to us by the sainted Arculf, who was himself present in that Church of Mount Olivet at the very hour of the day of the Lord’s Ascension when that fierce storm arose. A drawing of this round church is shown below, however unworthily it may have been drawn; while the form of the brass cylinder is also shown placed in the middle of the church.

This also we learned from the narrative of the sainted Arculf: That in that round church, besides the usual light of the eight lamps mentioned above as shining within the church by night, there are usually added on the night of the Lord’s Ascension almost innumerable other lamps, which by their terrible and admirable brightness, poured abundantly through the glass of the windows, not only illuminate the Mount of Olivet, but make it seem to be wholly on fire; while the whole city and the places in the neighbourhood are also lit up.

Excerpts from St Adomnán of Iona De Locis Sanctis (“On the Holy Places”) on the description of the Imbomon Church at the peak of the Mount of Olives, the traditional site of the Christ’s Ascension, related by a certain Frankish Bishop Arculf, who visited Jerusalem circa 670 AD. Arculf was shipwrecked at Iona when returning from his lengthy travels in the East. He related to Adomnán an account of the various holy sites he visited and, most importantly, drew diagrams of their layouts, all of which Adomnán compiled in De Locis Sanctis. This makes De Locis Sanctis an extremely valuable historical account of the appearance of these sites in the third quarter of seventh century, within fifty years of the Arabs taking control of the city. An old, but workable, English translation of Adomnán’s De Locis Sanctis is available here. The reconstruction plan (the second image, above) is from Jerome Murphy O’Connor, The Holy Land: And Oxford Archaeological Guide from Earliest Times to 1700 (Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 124. I’ve rotated both images, so that north is to the top. The dashed octogon in the reconstruction drawing indicates the outline of the currently standing dome illustrated below.

The ancient Imbomon Church in its prime must have been quite beautiful. The original church was built circa 380. The church Arculf saw circa 670 was one that was rebuilt after the Persian destruction in 614 of all churches in the Holy Land (except for that of the Nativity in Bethlehem, because its facade’s mosaic depicted the Magi as Persians). Centuries later, the victory of Saladin over the Crusaders led to the church being transferred to the ownership of some of Saladin’s retainers, who massively altered the site, though much of this alteration likely occurred under the Crusader regime. Only the central, formerly unroofed, section was retained, the outer parts of the building being razed to their foundations. The remaining structure was covered with a dome and a mihrab was added to the south wall (visible in the interior photo), making it a mosque, which it is to this day. A rough wall making mostly a round courtyard (it’s more of a semicircle now) around the central structure indicates (in the round part) roughly the original size of the church, which was massive. The following pictures date to between 1900 and 1920, and are from the online Library of Congress collection of the Matson Photo Archives.