Where was Goshen?

Question

Where was Goshen?

Accepted Answer

Goshen was the part of the eastern Nile Delta where Jacob's family settled and where Israel lived until the Exodus: the region around today's Faqus and Qantir and the Wadi Tumilat, which runs east from the Delta towards the Bitter Lakes. The map point stands there, about 321 km from Hebron in a straight line. Joseph told his brothers: “thou shalt dwell in the land of Goshen, and thou shalt be near unto me”, and when Pharaoh agreed, Joseph gave them “a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Rameses”. So Goshen and the land of Rameses are the same district, and Rameses is the store city of Exodus 1:11, Pi-Ramesses, the Delta capital of Ramesses II at Qantir. The Greek translators of Genesis, who knew Egypt, rendered Goshen as “Gesem of Arabia” and placed Joseph's meeting with Jacob at Heroonpolis, a town in the Wadi Tumilat, now Tell el-Maskhuta. The region was grazing land on the edge of the Delta, fit for the shepherds whom Egyptians disliked, and it was separate enough for the plagues of flies and hail to spare it. Excavations at Tell el-Dab'a, beside Qantir, have uncovered Avaris, a city settled by Canaanites from the Middle Kingdom onwards and the capital of the Hyksos kings; whatever the date of Israel's stay, this is the Egypt in which the story is set. In the fourth century the pilgrim Egeria, coming back from Sinai, travelled for two days through the land of Goshen towards Tanis and called it the finest country she had ever seen.