met on common ground and lived side by side. It corresponded in these
respects to the modern Port Said.

Probably in remembrance of the Jewish colony that once lived here, the
ruins of the fort still bear an Arab name which means The Palace of the
Jew's Daughter. The term palace is not altogether inappropriate, for
apparently the fort was occasionally used as a royal residence. Many
wine-jars, bearing the seals of Psamtik, Hophra, and Amasis, have been
found in the ruins. In the northwestern part of these ruins has been
uncovered a great open-air platform of brickwork, referred to in Jeremiah
43:8-10. It was the place of common meeting found in connection with every
Egyptian palace or private home. When Amasis, in 564 B.C., came to the
throne of Egypt he withdrew the privileges granted by his predecessors to
foreigners. The Greek colonists were transferred to Naukratis, and
Tahpanhes lost most of its former glory. About this time, if not before,
the great majority of the Jewish refugees, who had settled in these
frontier towns, probably returned to Palestine to find homes in its
partially depopulated towns.

Ezekiel from distant Babylon appears to have regarded the Jews in Egypt
with considerable hope (Ezek. 29:21). But Jeremiah, who knew them better,
was keenly alive to their faults. In their despair and rage many of them
evidently rejected the teachings of the prophets and became devotees of
the Aramean goddess, the Queen of Heaven, mentioned in the recently
discovered Aramean inscription of Zakar, king of Hazrak (cf. Section
LXV:vii). Jeremiah's closing words to them, therefore, are denunciations
and predictions that they should suffer even in the land of Egypt, at
the hand of Nebuchadrezzar, the same fate that had overtaken their
fellow-countrymen at Jerusalem. Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel (Ezek. 30)
predicted that Nebuchadrezzar would invade and conquer Egypt. In 568 B.C.