Zoan

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An important Egyptian city of great antiquity, almost as old as Hebron (Num 13:22). The "princes of Zoan" are ranked in Isa 19:11, 13 with those of Noph (Memphis), and the city itself is mentioned in Ezek 30:14 together with No (Thebes). The Israelitish embassies to it (Isa 30:4) may imply that it was the residence of Pharaoh, and a similar allusion may possibly be traced in Ps 78¹², 43, unless "the field of Zoan" is a poetic designation of Egypt in general.

Zoan (Hebr. (missing hebrew text) ; the Egyptian "Ẓa'ne" [older form, "Ẓa'net"]; the Coptic "Ja[a]ne," "Jani"; and the "Tanis" of the Greeks) was situated in the Delta on the Tanitic branch of the Nile, not far from the modern lake of Menzalah and the northeastern frontier of Egypt. The ruins, excavated by Mariette in 1860 and, more thoroughly, by Petrie in 1883, have yielded monuments ranging from the sixth dynasty to the Roman period, when the city, once a royal residence, especially of the twenty-first or "Tanitic" dynasty, began to degenerate into the fishing-village represented by the modern Ṣan al-Ḥajar.

Bibliography: Petrie, Tanis, London, 1885-87.

This entry includes text from the Jewish Encyclopedia, 1906.

(Old Egypt. Sant= "stronghold," the modern San). A city on the Tanitic branch of the Nile, called by the Greeks Tanis. It was built seven years after Hebron in Palestine (Num 13:22). This great and important city was the capital of the Hyksos, or Shepherd kings, who ruled Egypt for more than 500 years. It was the frontier town of Goshen. Here Pharaoh was holding his court at the time of his various interviews with Moses and Aaron. "No trace of Zoan exists; Tanis was built over it, and city after city has been built over the ruins of that" (Harper, Bible and Modern Discovery). Extensive mounds of ruins, the wreck of the ancient city, now mark its site (Isa 19:11, 13; 30:4; Ezek 30:14). "The whole constitutes one of the grandest and oldest ruins in the world."

This city was also called "the Field of Zoan" (Ps 78¹², 43) and "the Town of Rameses" (q.v.), because the oppressor rebuilt and embellished it, probably by the forced labour of the Hebrews, and made it his northern capital.