Tahpanhes in the Bible Encyclopedia - ISBE

ta'-pan-hez, ta-pan'-hez (usually in the Old Testament tachpanchec; Septuagint Taphnas; Coptic, Taphnes): The various spellings of the Hebrew text are fairly well indicated in the King James Version by Tahapanes (Jer 2:16); Tahpanhes (Jer 43:7-9; 44:1; 46:14); Tehaphnehes (Ezek 30:18), while an Egyptian queen (XXIst Dynasty) is named Tahpenes (1 Ki 11:19,20). Tahpanhes was a city on the eastern frontier of Lower Egypt, represented today by Tell Defenneh, a desert mound lying some 20 miles Southwest from Pelusium (Biblical "Sin") and a little North of the modern Al-Kantarah ("the bridge"), marking the old caravan route from Egypt to Israel, Mesopotamia and Assyria. Its Egyptian name is unknown, but it was called Daphnai, by the Greeks, and by the modern Arabs Def'neh. The site is now desolate, but it was a fertile district when watered by the Pelusiac branch of the Nile (compare Isa 19:6,7). Tahpanhes was so powerful that Jeremiah can say that it, with Memphis, has "broken the crown" of Israel's head (2:16), and Ezekiel can speak of its "daughters" (colonies or suburban towns), and names it with Heliopolis and Bubastis when the "yokes Septuagint "sceptres") of Egypt" shall be broken by Yahweh (30:18). In a later passage Jeremiah describes the flight of the Jews from their ruined capital to Tahpanhes after the death of Gedaliah (43:1-7) and prophesies that Nebuchadnezzar shall invade Egypt and punish it, establishing his throne upon the brick pavement (the King James Version "kiln") which is at the entry of Pharaoh's royal palace at Tahpanhes (Jer 43:8-11). He calls Tahpanhes as a witness to the desolation of the cities of Judah (Jer 44:1), but prophesies an equal destruction of Tahpanhes and other Egyptian cities (probably occupied by fugitive Jews) when Nebuchadnezzar shall smite them (Jer 46:14). This invasion of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar was for a long time strenuously denied (e.g. as late as 1889 by Kuenen, Historisch-critisch Onderzoek, 265-318); but since the discovery and publication (1878) of fragments of Nebuchadnezzar's annals in which he affirms his invasion of Egypt in his 37th year (568-567 BC), most scholars have agreed that the predictions of Jeremiah (43:9-13; 44:30) uttered shortly after 586 BC and of Ezekiel (29:19) uttered in 570 BC were fulfilled, "at least in their general sense" (Driver, Authority and Archaeology, 116). Three cuneiform inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar were found by Arabs probably on or near this site. The excavation of Tahpanhes in 1886 by W. M. Flinders Petrie made it "highly probable that the large oblong platform of brickwork close to the palace fort built at this spot by Psammetichus I, circa 664 BC, and now called Kasr Bint el-Yehudi, `the castle of the Jew's daughter,' is identical...