Tag Archives: red sea

An Ancient Tradition of the Red Sea Parting?

Here is an excerpt from Antiquities and Chronology by John Jackson, ca. 1752:

Diodorus Siculus has a remarkable passage in his History of the Ichthyophagi, [fish eaters] who lived near the Arabian Gulf, amongst whom, he saies, was preserved a Tradition handed down to them from their Ancestors many Ages then ago, that the (Arabian) Gulf was all laid dry by a great Reflux of the Sea, insomuch that dry Land appeared at the Bottom of it: the Water of the Sea afterward by a violent Tide returned into its former channel. This seems to been an imperfect Tradition of the Passage of the Israelites through the Arabian Gulf of the Red Sea. (Jackson 1752, 329)

Greek historian Diodorus (fl. BC 90-30) wrote that the Ichthyophagi “…inhabit the coast which extends …to the farthest limits of the arm of the sea which is found at the Arabian Gulf, which extends inland an unbelievable distance and is enclosed at its mouth by two continents, on the on side by Arabia Felix and on the other by the land of the Trogodytes” (Diodorus 1967, 123, Book III:15.1).

In explanation, the Trogodytes inhabited the west side of the Red Sea (Arabian Gulf) below Egypt (Murray and Warmington 1967, 24). Arabia Felix began east of the head of the Gulf of Aqaba and extended down through the Arabian Peninsula on the east side of the Red Sea (Stevenson 1932, 137).

Midian explorer Richard Burton (1984, 117, 118) noted that the Arab Hutaym tribe likely descended from the Ichthyophagi. This tribe was associated with the east coast of the Red Sea from Al-Wijh northward into parts of Midian and the interior.

Could it be that Ichthyophagi had lived on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Aqaba in antiquity and witnessed a disturbance of the sea related to the Exodius sea crossing event?

References:

Burton, Richard Francis. 1984. The Land of Midian (Revisited), vol. II. New York: Oleander Press.

Diodorus. 1967. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes, trans. C. H. Oldfather. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

Jackson, John. 1752. Antiquities and Chronology, vol. II. London

Murray, G. W. and E. H. Warmington. 1967. Trogodytica: The Red Sea Littoral in Ptolemaic Times. The Geographical Journal 133(1): 24-33.

Stevenson, Edward Luther, trans., ed. 1932. Claudius Ptolemy The Geography. New York: New York Public Library.