Sin

Sin (Heb. Sin, ]סַי; Sept. Σάϊς [v.r. Τάνις] or Συήνη; Vulg. Pelusium), the name of a town and of a desert perhaps adjoining, upon which modern researches have thrown important light.

1. A city of Egypt, which is mentioned in Eze 30:15-16, in connection with Thebes and Memphis, and is described as "the strength of Egypt," showing that it was a fortified place. The name is Hebrew, or, at least, Shemitic. Gesenius supposes it to signify "clay," from the unused root סַי, probably "he or it was muddy, clayey." It is identified in the Vulg. with Pelusium Πηλούσιον, "the clayey or muddy" town, from πηλός; and seems to be preserved in the Arabic Et-Tineh, which forms part of the names of Fum et-Tineh, the Mouth of Et-Tineh, the supposed Pelusiac mouth of the Nile, and Burg or Kal'at et-Tineh, the Tower or Castle of El- Tineh, in the immediate neighborhood, "tin" signifying "mud," etc., in Arabic. This evidence is sufficient to show that Sin is Pelusium. The ancient Egyptian name is still to be sought for; it has been supposed that Pelusium preserves traces of it, but this is very improbable. Champollion identifies Pelusium with the Poresoum or Peresom (the second being a variation held by Quatremere to be incorrect) and Baresoum of the Copts, El-Farma of the Arabs, which was in the time of the former a boundary city, the limits of a governor's authority being stated to have extended from Alexandria to Pilak-h, or Philae, and Peremoun (Acts of St. Sarapamon MS. Copt. Vat. 67, fol. 90, ap. Quatremere, Memoires Geog. et Hist. sur l'Egypte, 1, 259). Champollion ingeniously derives this name from the article ph prefixed to ep, "to be," and oum, "mud" (L'Egypte, 2, 82-87; comp. Brugsch. Geogr. Inschr. 1, 297). Brugsch compares the ancient Egyptian Ha-rem, which he reads Pe-rema, on our system Pe-rem, "the abode of the tear," or "of the fish rem" (ibid. pl. 55, No. 1679). Pelusium he would make the city Samhat (or, as he reads it Sam-hud), remarking that "the nome of the city Samhud" is the only one which has the determinative of a city, and comparing the evidence of the Roman nome coins, on which the place is apparently treated as a nome; but this is not certain, for there may have been a Pelusiac nome, and the etymology of the name Samhat is unknown (ibid. p. 128; pl. 28, 17).

The exact site of Pelusium is not fully determined. It has been thought to be marked by mounds near Burg et-Tineh, now called El-Farma, and not Et-Tineh. This is disputed by Capt. Spratt, who supposes that the mound of Abu-Khiyar indicates where it stood. This is further inland, and apparently on the west of the old Pelusiac branch, as was Pelusium. It is situate between Farma and Tel-Defenneh. Whatever may have been its exact position, Pelusium must have owed its strength not to any great elevation, but to its being placed in, the midst of a plain of marsh land. and mud, never easy to traverse. The ancient sites in such alluvial tracts of Egypt are in general only sufficiently raised above the level of the plain to preserve them from being injured by the inundation. It lay among swamps and morasses on the most easterly estuary of the Nile (which received from it the name of Ostium Pelusiacum), and stood twenty stades from the Mediterranean (Strabo, 16, 760; 17, 801, 802; Pliny, Hist. Nat. 5, 11). The site is now only approachable by boats during a high Nile, or by land when the summer sun has dried the mud left by the inundation; the remains consist only of mounds and a few fallen columns. The climate is very unwholesome (Wilkinson, Mod. Egypt. 1, 406. 444; Savary, Letters on Egypt, 1, let. 24; Henniker, Travels).