Pelusium

Pelusium
Pelusium

Location in Egypt

Coordinates: 31°02′30″N 32°32′42″E / 31.04167°N 32.54500°E / 31.04167; 32.54500
Country  Egypt
Time zone EST (UTC+2)
 • Summer (DST) +3 (UTC)
Map of ancient Lower Egypt showing Avaris

Pelusium was an important city in the eastern extremes of Egypt's Nile Delta, 30 km to the southeast of the modern Port Said, [1] becoming a Roman provincial capital and Metropolitan archbishopric, remaining a multiple Catholic titular see.

Location

Pelusium lay between the seaboard and the marshes of the Nile delta, about two and a half miles from the sea. The port was choked by sand as early as the first century BC, and the coastline has now advanced far beyond its ancient limits, so that the city, even in the third century AD, was at least four miles from the Mediterranean.[2]

The principal product of the neighbouring lands was flax, and the linum Pelusiacum (Pliny's Natural History xix. 1. s. 3) was both abundant and of a very fine quality. Pelusium was also known for being an early producer of beer, known as the Pelusian drink.[3] Pelusium stood as a border-fortress, a place of great strength, on the frontier, protecting Egypt as regards to Syria and the sea. Thus, from its position, it was directly exposed to attack by any invaders of Egypt; it was often besieged, and several important battles were fought around its walls.

Names

Pelusium was the easternmost major city of Lower Egypt, situated upon the easternmost bank of the Nile, the Ostium Pelusiacum, to which it gave its name. The Roman name "Pelusium" was derived from the Greek name, and that from a translation of the Egyptian one. It was variously known as Sena and Per-Amun (Egyptian, Coptic: Ⲡⲉⲣⲉⲙⲟⲩⲛ Paramoun meaning House or Temple of the sun god Amun), Pelousion (Greek, Πηλούσιον), Sin (Chaldaic and Hebrew), Seyân (Aramaic), and Tell el-Farama (modern Egyptian Arabic). It was the Sin of the Hebrew Bible (Ezekiel xxx. 15); and this word, as well as its Egyptian appellation, Peremoun or Peromi, and its Greek (πήλος) connote a city of the ooze or mud (cf. omi, Coptic, "mud").[2]

History

The following are the most notable events in the history of Pelusium :

The khalifs who ruled Pelusium following the Crusades, however, generally neglected the harbors, and from that period Pelusium, which had long been on the decline, almost disappeared from history.

Roman military roads

Of the six military roads formed or adopted by the Romans in Egypt, the following are mentioned in the Itinerarium of Antoninus as connected with Pelusium:

Ecclesiastical History

Pelusium is named (as "Sin, the strength of Egypt") in the Biblical book of Ezekiel, chapter 30:15.

Pelusium became the seat of a Christian bishop at an early stage. Its bishop Dorotheus took part in the First Council of Nicaea in 325. In 335, Marcus was exiled because of his support for Athanasius of Alexandria. His replacement Pancratius, an exponent of Arianism, was at the second Council of Sirmium in 351. Several of the succeeding known bishops of Pelusium were also considered heretical by the orthodox. As the capital of the Roman province of Augustamnica Prima, Pelusium was ecclesiastically the metropolitan see of the province.[4][5]

Pelusium is still the seat of a metropolitan bishopric of the modern-day Eastern Orthodox Church.

Isidore of Pelusium (d. c.450), who was born in Alexandria, became an ascetic and settled on a mountain near Pelusium, in the tradition of the Desert Fathers.

Pelusium is today listed by the Catholic Church as a Metropolitan titular archbishopric both in the Latin Church and the Eastern Catholic Melkite Catholic Church .[6]

Latin titular see

In the 19th century, the diocese was nominally restored as a Metropolitan titular archbishopric Pelusium of the Romans.

It is vacant since decades, having had the following incumbents, of the highest rank with a single episcopal (lowest rank) exception :

Melkite titular see

Since its 20th century establishment as Metropolitan titular archbishopric, Pelusium of the (Greek) Melkites has had the following incumbents, all of this highest rank :

Notes and references

  1. ↑ Talbert, Richard J. A., ed. (2000). Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. pp. 70, 74. ISBN 978-0-691-03169-9.
  2. 1 2  Donne, William Bodham (1857). "Pelusium". In Smith, William. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography 2. London: John Murray. pp. 572–573.
  3. ↑ Diderot, Denis. "l'Encyclopedie: Beer". (University of Michigan translation project)
  4. ↑ Michel Lequien, Oriens christianus in quatuor Patriarchatus digestus, Paris 1740, Vol. II, coll. 531-534
  5. ↑ Klaas A. Worp, A Checklist of Bishops in Byzantine Egypt (A.D. 325 - c. 750), in Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 100 (1994) 283-318
  6. ↑ Annuario Pontificio 2013 (Libreria Editrice Vaticana 2013 ISBN 978-88-209-9070-1), p. 951

Sources and External links

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Pelusium.
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