Meaning of PYTHON

(Egyptian: "house of Atum": "Tum", "Tem"). Refers to the Egyptian god. represented by the sun at its sunset (Coptic: "Pethom", "Peithom"; gr. "Patoumos"). Along with Rameses, one of two granary cities that Israelite slaves built in Egypt for Pharaoh (Ex. 1:11).

Edouard Naville, commissioned by the Egyptian Fund to carry out excavations at Tell el-Maskhûtah, discovered the ancient Python there, on the southern bank of the freshwater canal that led from Cairo to Suez through the Wadi Tumilat. Neville attributed the first construction of this city to Ramses II, maintaining the hypothesis that he was the pharaoh of oppression.

However, the identification of Ramses II with either So (Courville) or Neco II (Velikovsky) in the time of the kings of Judah, and the documented fact that extensive reconstructions were carried out in Egypt after the dumping of the Hyksos of the country, who had devastated it, indicates that the inscriptions of Ramses II in Pitón y Rameses do not refer to his first
construction of it, but to the "reconstruction" of it.

(See EGYPT, EXODUS, PHARAOH, HYKSOS; cf. CHRONOLOGY.). As some recognize, this king is known for taking credit for the constructions of his predecessors, and thus it is explainable that he rebuilt and beautified Python and Rameses (Avaris-Tanis).

Large buildings are found underground to the northeast of the temple of Tum. The walls of these constructions are almost 2.75 m. thick; They are made of rough bricks, held together with mortar. Interestingly, some bricks do not contain straw (cf. Ex. 5:10-12).

These walls enclose a good number of rectangular rooms that do not communicate with each other; they had to be accessed from above. Naville believes that these are granaries in which the pharaoh stored provisions to supply his troops, or even the caravans ready to cross the desert to go to Syria.

Albright, like others, maintains, however, the position that Python should be identified with Tell Retabeh, about 13.5 km from Tell el-Maskhûtah. This last tell is identified by him as Sukkot. In any case, it is evident that both populations are related to warehouses and supplies, and to slave labor.