ZOAN

Smith’s Bible Dictionary – Published 1863

Zo'an. (place of departure). An ancient city of lower Egypt, called Tanis by the Greeks. It stood on the eastern bank of the Tanitic branch of the Nile. Its name indicates a place of departure from a country, and hence it has been identified with Avaris (Tanis, the modern San). The capital of the Shepherd dynasty in Egypt, built seven years after Hebron and existing before the time of Abraham.

It was taken by the Shepherd kings in their invasion of Egypt, and by them rebuilt, and garrisoned, according to Manetho, with 240,000 men. This cite is mentioned in connection with the plagues in such a manner as to leave no doubt that it is the city spoken of in the narrative in Exodus as that where Pharaoh dwelt, Psalm 78:42-43, and where Moses wrought his wonders on the field of Zoan a rich plain extending thirty miles toward the east. Tanis gave its name to the twenty-first and twenty-third dynasties and hence its mention in Isaiah 19:13; Isaiah 30:4.

(The present "field of Zoan" is a barren waste, very thinly inhabited. "One of the principal capitals of Pharaoh is now the habitation of fishermen the resort of wild beasts, and infested with reptiles and malignant fevers."

There have been discovered a great number of monuments here which throw light upon the Bible history.

Brugsch refers to two statues of colossal size of Mermesha of the thirteenth dynasty, wonderfully perfect in the execution of the individual parts and says that memorials of Rameses the Great lie scattered broadcast like the mouldering bones of generations slain long ago. The area of the sacred enclosure of the Temple is 1500 feet by 1250. — Editor of the Dictionary).

Easton’s Bible Dictionary - 1897

(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 (Numbers 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 (Isaiah 19:11,13; 30:4; Ezekiel 30:14). “The whole constitutes one of the grandest and oldest ruins in the world.”

This city was also called “the Field of Zoan” (Psalm 78:12, 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.