King Psammetichus (664–610 BC) established a garrison of foreign mercenaries at Daphnae, mostly
Carians and
Ionian Greeks (
Herodotus ii. 154). According to the
Hebrew Bible, the Jews from
Jerusalem fled to this place after the death of
Gedaliah and settled there for a time (
Jeremiah 2:16;
Jeremiah 43:7,8,9;
44:1; ;
Ezekiel ). After Jerusalem was destroyed in 586 BC, the Jewish refugees, including
Jeremiah, came to Tahpanhes (
Jeremiah 43–
44). A platform of
brickwork, which has been tentatively described as the pavement at the entry of
Pharaoh's palace, has been discovered at this place. "Here," says the discoverer,
William Flinders Petrie, "the ceremony described by Jeremiah ; 'brick-kiln' (i.e. pavement of brick) took place before the chiefs of the fugitives assembled on the platform, and here
Nebuchadnezzar II spread his royal pavilion". When
Naucratis was given the monopoly of Greek traffic by
Amasis II (570–526 BC), the Greeks were removed from Daphnae and its prosperity never returned; in Herodotus' time the deserted remains of the docks and buildings were visible. According to the
Phoenician papyrus letters, Phoenicians settled in the site. The site was discovered by
Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie in 1886; it was then known by natives as Qasr Bint al-Yahudi, the "Castle of the Jew's Daughter". There is a massive fort and enclosure; the chief discovery was a large number of fragments of pottery, which are of great importance for the chronology of vase-painting, since they must belong to the time between Psammetichus and Amasis, i.e. the end of the 7th or the beginning of the 6th century BC. They show the characteristics of Ionian art, but their shapes and other details testify to their local manufacture. Egyptologist Noël Aimé-Giron proposed to identify Tahpanhes with the biblical location of
Baal-zephon based on the
Saqqara letter. ==See also==