I. AMMON, or No-Ammon, a City of Egypt. The Chaldee and the author of the Vulgate generally translate this term Alexandria. They doubtless were not ignorant that Alexandria is much more modern than Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Nahum, who speak of No-Ammon, which by these Interpreters is render’d Alexandria; but they might believe this last to be at or near the same place where Alexandria was afterwards built, which nevertheless does not appear by History; for there was only the town of Rachotis upon the Sea near the place where the City of Alexandria was built.
The marks whereby the Prophets describe No-Ammon are, that it was situate among the Rivers, that it had the waters round about it, whose rampart was the Sea, and her wall was from the Sea; which induces us to think that No-Ammon1 is Diospolis, or the City of Jupiter, situated in the Delta, upon an arm of the Nile, between Busiris to the South, and Mendes to the North, at a very little distance from the Mediterranean. There were such lakes about it as might be well called Seas in the style of the Hebrews. The ruin of this City, which was foretold, and so distinctly describ’d by the Prophets, happen’d under Esar-haddon and Nebuchadnezzar, and perhaps under Sennacherib. See our Comments upon the Prophets Ezekiel xxx. 14, 15, 16. and Nahum iii. 8. But notwithstanding all we have here said to support the opinion of No-Ammon’s being Diospolis, we must confess ingenuously, upon farther reflection, that this is not at all certain, and Thebes, the Capital of Upper Egypt, may be understood to have been No -Ammon. The Reader may see what we have to say in favour of this opinion in the article THEBES.
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Footnotes
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Translators’ note. Sir Isaac Newton, in his short Chronicle, says, that Sesac, King of Egypt adorned Thebes, and dedicated it to his Father Ammon by the name of No-Ammon, or Ammon-No, that is, the People or City of Ammon; whence the Greeks called it Diospolis, the City of Jupiter. Sesac also erected Temples and Oracles to his Father in Thebes, Ammonia, and Ethiopia, and thereby caused his Father to be worshipped as a God in those Countries: And this, continues Sir Isaac Newton, was the original of the Worship of Jupiter Ammon, and the first mention of Oracles that I meet with in profane History, Sir Isaac Newton’s Chronology, &c. p. 18. ↩