On (Heliopolis)

Al-Masalla obelisk

און


Genesis 41:45 and 41:50 name it as a city of Mitsrayim (Egypt), though it was called Heliopolis ("city of the sun-god") by the Greeks; the Egyptian (or rather Coptic) name likewise means "light" or "sun". It stood on the eastern shore of the Nile (presumably because the sun rises in the east and one always faces the east in prayer, so to stand on the west bank of a major river might encourage the river-god to think he was the one being worshipped and get ideas above his station), a few miles north of Memphis (Biblical Moph); its obelisks of sun-worship still exist. It is known today as Eyn Shems = "fountain of the sun".

I have deliberately described it as above to give it its ancient context; the fact is, go to Cairo today, and Eyn Shems is a mere suburb on the north-eastern fringes of the city. And why is it called Eyn Shems? Because it is literally sitting on the ancient "fountain of the sun", the ruins of On-Heliopolis, which lie buried beneath the modern city, save only several ancient obelisks that are still visible and preserved.

It was to On that Yoseph was taken when his brothers sold him into slavery (Genesis 37 ff), though in fact we are never told this until half-way through the tale. The last verse of chapter 37 (37:36) states that "the Beney Midyan sold him in Mitsrayim to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of his guard", which is repeated in the first verse of the next chapter (39:1 - the tale of Yehudah and Tamar occupies chapter 38, somewhat incongruously, which is why the verse is repeated when the tale resumes, albeit with the variation that version one has Beney Midyan as is traffickers, but version two has Beney Yishma-El). 

When the list is presented of those who went down to Mitsrayim with Ya'akov, Yoseph's children are added (46:20), with the statement: "And to Yoseph in the land of Mitsrayim were born Menasheh and Ephrayim, whom Asnat the daughter of Poti-Phera the priest of On mothered with him." This appears to be the same man as previously - Potiphar then, Poti-Phera now, the captain of the guard then, a priest now; clearly the merging of two versions of the same story. There is no other reference to On in Bere'shit (The Book of Genesis).

Ezekiel 30:17 appears to mention the city; however, though it is written the same in Yehudit, the Masoretic pointing causes it to be pronounced Aven (און), which allows us to wonder if other towns carrying the name Aven were not also centres of sun-worship, especially Beit Aven (בית און), a Benjamite town to the east (NB!) of Beit-El (Joshua 7:2 and 18:12; 1 Samuel 13:5. In the Talmud this town is actually confounded with Beit-El (בית אל). Why?

The word Aven in later Yehudit came to mean "emptiness" and "vanity" and even, because that is what those two epithets really meant, "idol-worship". It is a matter of dispute (though I am unaware that the dispute has ever been live, except on this page) whether the Yehudit word Aven was derived from the perception of On as the centre of idol-worship in the region, or just happened by coincidence to be written the same as the name On. The former is feasible; we have seen other words in Yehudit - e.g. Luz, Ai - whose etymological source was the name of a town.

Much more likely, however, the root of Aven was Ayin (עין), which can mean "an eye" or "a well" or "a fountain", all of which are forms of emptiness - and all of which therefore connect back to the meaning of Heliopolis as "the fountain of the sun". Ayin is generally used to mean "nothing", exactly like the English prefix "un" (און), though the latter is probably not borrowed from the Yehudit (some coincidences may well be genuine coincidences!); whence Eyn (אין), still used in modern Ivrit as the antonym for Yesh (יש) = "there is, there are", equivalents of "Il y a" and "Il n'y a pas" in French.

In the prophetic writings Aven is used repeatedly to mean "wickedness" in the sense of idol-worship. There are simply too many examples to list; four examples are Isaiah 41:29, Zechariah 10:2, 1 Samuel 15:23 and Job 22:15. Jeremiah 4:14 compounds the problem even further, because the word there is pronounced Onech (אוֹנֵֽךְ - "your wickedness") and not Avonech - the same issue with the letter Vav that occurs with the names of David (which probably should be Daoud) and Esav (probably should be E-sow). The same issue recurs in Psalm 94:23, where it is pronounced Onam (אוֹנָם - "their iniquity").

Jeremiah 43:13 refers to Beit Shemesh (נית שמש) = "city of the sun".

There is also Ono (אונו) = a town in the tribal territory of Bin-Yamin which is referred to in Ezra 2:33, Nehemiah 7:37 and 11:35, 1 Chronicles 8:12. Our second connection to the tribe of Bin-Yamin, and remember that Bin-Yamin was Ya'akov's name for his son, but Rachel named him Ben-Oni.

Nehemiah 6:2 refers to a valley of the same name. However, this is probably from a different root again, one that means "strong" and also gives the name Onam, (אוֹנָֽם - Genesis 36:23, 1 Chronicles 2:26) and more relevantly Onan (אוֹנָן - Genesis 38:9, 46:12, Numbers 26:19) - the latter a key figure in that tale of Yehudah and Tamar, and perhaps the reason why the tale of Yehudah and Tamar is placed where it is.

Let me pick up that most significant "coincidence", that all these towns appear to be in the tribe of Bin-Yamin, and that Rachel named Bin-Yamin Ben-Oni (בן-אני), which is usually translated as "son of my affliction" - meaninglessly, because ON does not mean "affliction", it means, as we have seen, "sin" or "wickedness" or "vanity" or "iniquity", and that is not a likely name to give one's child, especially when one is dying in the rigours of childbirth and all one can manage is to name it. Much more like Ben-Oni relates to his tribal origins in Mitsrayim (see my notes to Ben Oni rather than me repeating everything here), where Yoseph's story takes place almost entirely, where he is employed, at home and later in prison, by the High Sun-Priest of On.

Was Bin-Yamin himself born at On in Mitsrayim, and not at Tseltsach as the Tanach claims (Genesis 35:16-18)? This seems highly implausible, unless we regard Bin-Yamin and Yoseph as originally being the same person - Bin-Yamin ("right hand man") being his epithet rather than his name - and Yoseph's exclusion from the tribal list as a consequence of his having been "introduced" into the tribe at a later stage, when the national historical identity was being invented by the Redactor. What we can say for certain is that the cult of Yoseph was brought to Kena'an and established in a particular geographical area that later became the tribal territory of Bin-Yamin, centred on Beit Lechem Ephratah and the tomb of the fertility-goddess Rachel at Tseltsach (Zelzah see 1 Samuel 10:2), and worshipped by a particular tribe, the Bene Yamin or Bene Jamun, an Amorite tribe who may have been the one described in the tale of the arrival of Ya'akov from Padan-Aram.

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