We spent more than a full day in the Nile Delta, more time than I had in my previous 6 trips to Egypt. I was struck by a number of things. 1) The land is green and productive everywhere. And in use. No empty space that goes unused here. 2) The use of the land for agriculture purposes, in contrast to shepherding (which was what Jacob’s descendants initially did when settling down in Goshen in the eastern Delta area). 3) The very poor preservation of the remains. The once-glorious cities of Pithom and Ramses are pathetic tells that remind one of the poor sites in Israel. (This is true whether you locate Pithom at Tell el-Maskuta or Tell er-Retabeh – both are piles of dirt.) The most impressive site is Tanis (Zoan), the capital of later pharaohs in the 21st and 22nd Dynasties (including the biblical pharaoh Shishak). But even this site is less impressive than any that we saw south of Cairo. We also saw the potential area for the crossing of the Red Sea. The best conservative scholars locate this crossing at or near the modern Timsah Lake or the Bitter Lakes. It is likely that these were connected to the Gulf of Suez in antiquity. In any case, I was impressed with how large these bodies of waters are, and how it would have been no less a miracle to part the water of a mere “lake” should they have been no more than they are today. Today’s photo shows some of the productive farmland in the area of the ancient city of Ramses (today Tell el-Daba).
