Yam Suph
waterbody mentioned in Exodus, which the Israelites are said to have crossed miraculously
In the Exodus narrative, the Yam Suph (Hebrew: יַם-סוּף, romanized: Yam-Sup̄, lit. 'Reed Sea'), sometimes translated as Red Sea, is the body of water where the Crossing of the Red Sea happened in the story of the Exodus. This phrase appears in over twenty other places in the Hebrew Bible. This has traditionally been interpreted as referring to the Red Sea, following the Septuagint's rendering of the phrase. However, an appropriate translation remains a matter of dispute, as is the exact location.
Heinrich Karl Brugsch suggested that the Reed Sea is Lake Bardawil, a large lagoon on the north coast of the Sinai Peninsula. More recently, Manfred Bietak and James K. Hoffmeier have argued for an identification with the Ballah Lakes. Hoffmeier equates the Yam Suph with the Egyptian term pꜣ-ṯwfj "the papyrus marsh" from the Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt, which refers to lakes in the eastern Nile Delta. He also describes references to pꜣ-ṯwfj in the context of the Island of Amun, considered modern Tell el-Balamun. Reeds tolerant of saltwater flourish in the shallow string of lakes extending from Suez north to the Mediterranean Sea, which Kenneth Kitchen argues are acceptable locations for the Yam Suph.
Translation and location
The Hebrew word yam means 'sea', and the word suph by itself means 'reed', e.g.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Yam Suph” as waterbody mentioned in Exodus, which the Israelites are said to have crossed miraculously. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as waterbody mentioned in Exodus, which the Israelites are said to have crossed miraculously. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q116702. VIAF identifies the subject as 236065026. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Yam Suph” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.