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PELUSIUM (Ancient city) EGYPT
Pelusium (Pelousion, Ptol. iv. 5. § 11, viii. 15. § 11; Steph. B.
s. v.; Strab. xvii. p. 802, seq.: Eth. Pelousiotes, Pelousios), was a city of
Lower Aegypt, situated upon the easternmost bank of the Nile, the Ostium Pelusiacum,
to which it gave its name. It was the SIN of the Hebrew Scriptures (Ezek. xxx.
15); and this word, as well as its Aegyptian appellation, Peremoun or Peromi,
and its Greek (pelos) import the city of the ooze or mud (omi, Coptic, mud), Pelusium
lying between the seaboard and the Deltaic marshes, about two and a half miles
from the sea. The Ostium Pelusiacum was choaked by sand as early as the first
century B.C., and the coast-line has now advanced far beyond its ancient limits,
so that the city, even in the third century A. D., was at least four miles from
the: Mediterranean. The principal produce of the neighbouring lands was flax,
and the linum Pelusiacum (Plin. xix. 1. s. 3) was both abundant and of a very
fine quality. It was, however, as a border-fortress on the frontier, as the key
of Aegypt as regarded Syria and the sea, and as a place of great strength, that
Pelusium was most remarkable. From its position it was directly exposed to attack
by the invaders of Aegypt; several important battles were fought under its walls,
and it was often besieged and taken. The following are the most memorable events
in the history of Pelusium:
1. Sennacherib, king of Assyria, B.C. 720-715, in the reign of Sethos the Aethiopian
(25th dynasty) advanced from Palestine by the way of Libna and Lachish upon Pelusium,
but retired without fighting from before its walls (Isaiah, xxxi. 8; Herod. ii.
141 ; Strab. xiii. p. 604). His retreat was ascribed to the favour of Hephaestos
towards Sethos, his priest. In the night, while the Assyrians slept, a host of
field-mice gnawed the bow-strings and shield-straps of the Assyrians, who fled,
and many of them were slain in their flight by the Aegyptians. Herodotus saw in
the temple of Hephaestos at Memphis, a record of this victory of the Aegyptians,
viz. a statue of Sethos holding a mouse in his hand. The story probably rests
on the fact that in the symbolism of Aegypt the mouse implied destruction. (Comp.
Horapoll. Hieroglyph. i. 50; Aelian, H. An. vi. 41.)
2. The decisive battle which transferred the throne of the Pharaohs to Cambyses,
king of the Medo-Persians, was fought near Pelusium in B.C. 525. The fields around
were strewed with the bones of the combatants when Herodotus visited Lower Aegypt;
and the skulls of the Aegyptians were distinguishable from those of the Persians
by their superior hardness, a fact confirmed by the mummies, and which the historian
ascribes to the Aegyptians shaving their heads from infancy, and to the Persians
covering them up with folds of cloth or linen. (Herod. ii. 10, seq.) As Cambyses
advanced at once to Memphis, Pelusium probably surrendered itself immediately
after the battle. (Polyaen. Stratag. vii. 9.)
3. In B.C. 373, Pharnabazus, satrap of Phrygia, and Iphicrates, the commander
of the Athenian armament, appeared before Pelusium, but retired without attacking
it, Nectanebus, king of Aegypt, having added to its former defences by laying
the neighboring lands under water, and blocking up the navigable channels of the
Nile by embankments. (Diodor. xv. 42; Nepos, Iphicr. c. 5.)
4. Pelusium was attacked and taken by the Persians, B.C. 309. The city contained
at the time a garrison of 5000 Greek mercenaries under the command of Philophron.
At first, owing to the rashness of the Thebans in the Persian service, the defendants
had the advantage. But the Aegyptian king Nectanebus hastily venturing on a pitched
battle, his troops were cut to pieces, and Pelusium surrendered to the Theban
general Lacrates on honourable conditions. (Diodor. xvi. 43.)
5. In B.C. 333, Pelusium opened its gates to Alexander the Great, who placed a
garrison in it under the command of one of those officers entitled Companions
of the King. (Arrian, Exp. Alex. iii. 1, seq.; Quint. Curt. iv. 33.)
6. In B.C. 173, Antiochus Epiphanes utterly defeated the troops of Ptolemy Philometor
under the walls of Pelusium, which he took and retained after he had retired from
the rest of Aegypt. (Polyb. Legat. § 82; Hieronym. in Daniel. xi.) On the fall
of the Syrian kingdom, however, if not earlier, Pelusium had been restored to
its rightful owners, since
7. In B.C. 55, it belonged to Aegypt, and Marcus Antonius, as general of the horse
to the Roman proconsul Gabinius, defeated the Aegyptian army, and made himself
master of the city. Ptolemy Auletes, in whose behalf the Romans invaded Aegypt
at this time, wished to put the Pelusians to the sword; but his intention was
thwarted by Antonius. (Plut. Anton. c. 3; Val. Max. ix. 1.)
8. In B.C. 31, immediately after his victory at Actium, Augustus appeared before
Pelusium, and was admitted by its governor Seleucus within its walls.
Of the six military roads formed or adopted by the Romans in Aegypt,
the following are mentioned in the Itinerarium of Antoninus as connected with
Pelusium:
1. From Memphis to Pelusium. This road joined the great road from Pselcis in Nubia
at Babylon, nearly opposite Memphis, and coincided with it as far as Scenae Veteranorum.
The two roads, viz. that from Pselcis to Scenae Veteranorum, which turned off
to the east at Heliopolis, and that from Memphis to Pelusium, connected the latter
city with the capital of Lower Aegypt, Trajan's canal, and Arsinoe, or Suez, on
the Sinus Heroopolites.
2. From Acca to Alexandreia, ran along the Mediterranean sea from Raphia to Pelusium.
Pelusium suffered greatly from the Persian invasion of Aegypt in A.D.
501 (Eutychii, Annal.), but it offered a protracted, though, in the end, an ineffectual
resistance to the arms of Amrou, the son of Asi, in A.D. 618. As on former occasions,
the surrender of the key of the Delta, was nearly equivalent to the subjugation
of Aegypt itself. The khalifs, however, neglected the harbours of their new conquest
generally, and from this epoch Pelusium, which had been long on the decline, now
almost disappears from history. Its ruins, which have no particular interest,
are found at Tineh, near Damietta. (Champollion, l'Egypte, vol. ii. p. 82; Denon,
Descript. de l'Egypte, vol. i. p. 208, iii. p. 306.)
This text is from: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854) (ed. William Smith, LLD). Cited August 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
(Pelousion, Old Test. Sin; both names are derived from nouns meaning "mud"). A celebrated city of Lower Egypt, standing on the east side of the easternmost mouth of the Nile, which was called after it the Pelusiac mouth, twenty stadia (about two miles) from the sea, in the midst of morasses, from which it obtained its name. As the key to Egypt on the northeast, and the frontier city towards Syria and Arabia, it was strongly fortified, and was the scene of many battles and sieges. It was the birthplace of the geographer Ptolemaeus.
This text is cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
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