Pathros

Upper Egypt, the "land of the south": Jewish exiles settled here, and prophets foretold that captive Egyptians would return to this land of their origin.

Pathros is the Bible's name for Upper Egypt, from an Egyptian phrase meaning "land of the south." This stretch of the Nile valley ran from south of Memphis down to Syene (modern Aswan) near the first cataract, with ancient Thebes (Luxor) at its heart. A legend recorded by Herodotus held that Upper Egypt, and the Thebes area in particular, was where the first Egyptian kingdom had its capital—fittingly, Ezekiel 29:14 calls Pathros the Egyptians' "land of their origin." In Scripture Pathros always appears alongside Egypt: Isaiah foretold that Jehovah would again offer his hand to reclaim the remnant of his people "from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Cush" (Isa 11:11)—the order itself places Pathros in Upper Egypt, and an inscription of Assyrian king Esar-haddon lists the same sequence. After Judah fell to Babylon in 607 B.C.E., a group of Jews fled to Egypt against Jeremiah's warning and settled in Migdol, Tahpanhes, Noph, and "the land of Pathros" (Jer 44:1); there they kept sacrificing to the "Queen of Heaven," and Jehovah declared through Jeremiah that calamity would overtake them (Jer 44:15-30). Ezekiel mentioned Pathros twice: after forty years Jehovah would gather the captive Egyptians back to Pathros, "the land of their origin," to become an insignificant kingdom (Eze 29:14); and "I will desolate Pathros and set a fire in Zoan and execute judgment on No" (Eze 30:14). History confirms the outcome—Egypt was invaded by Nebuchadnezzar and later ruled successively by Persia, Greece, and Rome, never again exalting itself above the nations.