Goshen (Ileb. id. ''~'^, prob. of Egyptian origin, but unknown signif.), the name of at least two places.
1. (Sept. usually Vtrrci^ or VKyifi.) A province or district of Egypt in which Jacob and his family set- tled through the instrumentality of his son Joseph, and in which thej^ and their descendants remained for a long period (Gen. xlv, 10 ; slvi, 28, 29, 34 ; xlvii, 1, 4, C, 27; 1, 8; Exod. viii, 22; ix, 26). (B.C. 1874- 1658.) It is usually called the "land of Goshen" (■■rri ■J'";".X, "country of Goshen," Gen. xlvii, 27), but also "Goshen" simply (Gen. xlv, 28, first clause, 29). It appears to have borne another name, "the land of Rameses" (DCri^'n "j'TN;, Gen. xlvii, 11), unless this be the name of a district of Goshen. (See below.) That Goshen lay on the eastern side of the Nile may be justifiably inferred from the fact that Jacob is not reported to have crossed that river ; nor does it appear that the Israelites did so in tlieir flight out of Egypt. Tlie various opinions that have been held on the sub- ject may be found classified and considered by Beller- mann in his Hdudb. der Bibl. Lit. iv, 191-220. Lake- macher {Obs. PhH. vi, 297 sq.) locates Goshen in the vicinity of Bubastis, not far from Tanis ; but this is too far fi-om Palestine. Bryant {Obs. upon the ancient Hist, of Erpjpt, p. 75 sq.) prefers the Saitic nome, which likewise is too far west (comp. Eichhorn, Bihl. vi, 854 eq.). Jablonsky (Z>e terra Gosm, Frcft. a. V. 175G; also in his Ojmsc. ii, 73) holds it to be the Heracleotic nome ; but this lay even west of the Nile (Jlichaelis, Suppl. i, 379 sq.). By comparing Exod. xiii, 17 and 1 Cin-on. vii, 21, it appears that Goshen bordered on Arabia (see Gen. xlv, 10, Sept. Ttniji 'Apajiiai:) as well as Palestine, and the passage of the Israelites out of Egypt shows that the land was not far removed from tiie Red Sea. It appears probable that we may fix the locality of Goshen in Lower Egypt, on the east side of the Pelusiac branch of the Nile^ in the district around Heroopolis. The Sept. renders the words "land of Goshen" (Gen. xlvi, 28), i;aO' 'Hommv ttoXiv, iig yi'iv 'Paiitrrrri'i, thus identifying Goslien with Ra- meses, or the district of Pithom or Heroopolis. See, however, Rajieses. This would make Goshen corre- spond with one of the divisions of what was anciently termed the Pra;fectura Arabica, Ti-Arabia, the eastern district, lying, that is, on the eastern or Arabian side of the Nile. This division was that of Heliopolis or On, :M;itiriyeli, or Ain-Sliwns. An attemi)t has been made to define it accurately, so as to identify Goshen (Rosen niilUer, Alterthum. iii, 246) with the Nomos Ara- bi;c (I'tol. iv, 5), or the country of Esh-shar Kijah (the eastern land), which stretches south from Pelusi- nm as far as Belbeis (north-east from Cairo), and to the north-east borders of tiie desert El-Jefar. Traces are found here, it is thought, of the residence of the Israelites, in large heaps of ruins, a few hours' journey to the north-east of Cairo, which the Aral)s call Tell el- Jchiid (.lews' hills), or Turbeli el-Jekud (Jews' graves) (Niebuhr, i, 100 ; comp. Soetzen, in Zach's Corresp. xx, 460; Hirtinann, Erdbrsrhr. d. Aeg. p. 880 sq.). Rob- inson (R"smrckes, i, .'i7) makes light of the evidence supposed to be supplied by "the mounds of the Jews" just mentioned. He says, " If there is any historic- al foundation for this name, which is doubtful, these mounds can only be referred l)ack to the period of the Ptolemies, in the centuries immediately be/ore the Ctiristian ara, when great numbers of Jews resorted to Egypt and erected a temple' at Leontopolis." This opinion, however, apjjears to us somewhat arbitrary.
Whatever the actual origin of these mounds, the ordi. nar}' account of them may be the transmission or echo of a ver3- ancient traditi(in. Robinson, however, does not deny that Goshen is to be found about where the best authorities ordinarily place it (L'esearches, i, 76). The district east of the Pelusiac Nile was suitable for a nomadic people, who would have been misplaced in the narrow limits of the valley of the Nile (Hackett's Illttst. of Script, p. 27). " The water of the Nile soaks through the eartii for some distance under the sandy tract (the neighborhood of Heliopolis), and is everj'- where found on digging wells eighteen or twenty feet deep. Such wells are very frequent in parts which the inundation does not reach. The water is raised from them by wheels turned by oxen, and applied to the irrigation of the fields. Whenever this takes place the desert is turned into a fruitful field. In passing ; to Heliopolis we saw several such fields in the differ- ent stages of being reclaimed from the desert ; some : just laid out, othei's alreadj' fertile. In returning by I another waj' more eastward, we passed a succession of beautiful plantations wholly dependent on this mode of irrigation" (Robinson, Researches, i, 36). J. D. Mi- chaelis was of opinion {Spicil. p. 371) that Gosheu ex- tended from Palestine along the Mediterranean as far as the Tanitic mouth of the Nile, and thence inland { up to Heliopolis, embracing a sweep of countr}' so as ; to take in a part of Arabia bordering on Egj-pt. Ac- j cording to Bois Aj-mj (Descrip. de I'Egijpte, viii, 111) I Goshen was the valley Sabal-yar, which begins in the vicinity of Belbeis, and embraces the district of Hero- opolis. Laborde (^Arabia Petrcea, p. 58) fixes Goshen in the couutrj' around Belbeis, on tiie eastern side of the Nile. M. Quatremcre has endeavored to define the locality, and, by comparing several passages col- lected from difl'orent writers, he infers that the wady Tumilat (wady Tomlate in Laborde), in which the ca- 1 nal of Cairo terminates, is the land of Goshen : such, at least, seems to have been the opinion of Saadias and Abu Suid, the authors of the earliest Arabic versions of the Old Testament — the one for the use of the Jews, and the other for that of the Samaritans {Mem. Geogr. stir VEgijpte, i, 61). This position is confirmed bj' the I Biblical notices. The first mention of Goshen is in : Joseph's message to his father (Gen. xlv, 10), which shows that the territory' was near the usual royal res- idence, or the residence of Joseph's Pharaoh. The d^masty to which this king belonged appears to have resided part of the year at Memphis, and part of the I year, at harvest-time, at Avaris, on the Bubastite or Pelusiac branch of the Nile : this, Manetho tells us, I W'as the custom of the first Shepherd king (Josephus, I c. Ap. i, 14). From the account of the arrival of Jacob (Gen. xlvi, 28, 29) it is evident that Goshen was be- tween Joseph's residence at the time and the frontier of Palestine, and apparently the extreme province to- : wards that frontier. The advice that Joseph gave his brethren as to their conduct to Pharaoh furtlier char- acterizes the territory as a grazing one (Gen. xlvi, 33, 34). (It is remarkable that in Coptic shos signifies both " a shepherd" and " disgrace," and the like, Ros- sellini, Monumenti Storici, i, 177.) This passage shows that (Joshen was scarcelj' regarded as a part of Egypt Proper, and was not peopled by Egyptians — charac^ teristics that would positively indicate a frontier prov ince. But it is not to be inferred that Goshen had no Egyptian inhabitants at this ])eriod : at the time of the ten plagues such are distinctly mentioned. That there was, moreover, a foreign population besides the Israel- ites seems evident from the account of the calamity of Ephraim's house (1 Chron. vii, 20-30) [sec Beui.\h], and the mention of the "mixed multitude'' (2j -1^") who went out at the Exodus (Exod. xii, 38), notices referring to the earlier and the later period of the so- journ. The name Goshen may possil)ly be Hebrew, or Shemitic — although we do not venture with Jerome