Bible Questions and Answer

Zoan was a city in the northeastern Nile Delta, known to the Greeks as Tanis. Its ruins lie at San el-Hagar in Egypt. Numbers 13:22 makes an interesting note that Hebron "had been built seven years before Zoan in Egypt," showing how old both places were. Psalm 78 remembers the wonders God did "in the region of Zoan," connecting it with the plagues and the Exodus, since it was in the same part of Egypt. Isaiah mocked "the officials of Zoan" as fools for giving Pharaoh bad advice. Zoan became Egypt's capital around 1000 BC, in the time of Solomon, and many statues from the older city of Pi-Ramesses were moved there. In 1939, the French archaeologist Pierre Montet found royal tombs at Tanis, including a king's silver coffin and gold treasures, but the discovery got little attention because World War II broke out. Movie fans may know Tanis from the film Raiders of the Lost Ark, though its story is fiction.