the Fourth Week after Easter
Click to donate today!
Bible Dictionaries
Zoan
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
or ZOAN . A city in the N.E. of Lower Egypt (Egyp. Zani , Gr. Tanis ). It is now San el-Hagar, one of the most important of the ancient sites in Lower Egypt, with ruins of a great temple. The 21st Dyn. arose in Tanis, and it was probably a favourite residence of the Pharaohs, though it is now in the midst of a barren salt marsh, with only a few fishermen as inhabitants. Ramasses ii. placed in the temple a colossus of himself in granite, the greatest known, which Petrie calculates from the fragments to have measured 92 feet in height. Zoan is not mentioned in Genesis, but elsewhere ( Psalms 78:13; Psalms 78:43 , Isaiah 19:11; Isaiah 19:13 , 30, Ezekiel 30:14 ) it appears as almost or quite the capital of Egypt, perhaps as being the royal city nearest to the frontier. Tanis was very ancient: the curious reference to its building in Numbers 13:22 cannot be explained as yet.
F. Ll. Griffith.
These files are public domain.
Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com. Used by Permission.
Hastings, James. Entry for 'Zoan'. Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdb/z/zoan.html. 1909.
