YENOAM

The Merneptah Stele, one of the earliest
mentions of Yenoam, courtesy, Wikipedia

Yenoam is a place in ancient Israel either located within the tribal territory of Naphtali on the west side of the Jordan, or within the territory of the half-tribe of Menasheh on the east side, today in Arab-occupied Syria. The site is known from Ancient Egyptian regnal sources such as the stela of Pharaoh Seti I discovered in 1923 in Beit She'an by Clarence Fisher, curator of the Egyptian section of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, or from the more famous, and studied, Merneptah Stele found in Arab-occupied Egypt and describing the military victories of the Pharaoh Merneptah over the peoples of Canaan in the late 13^th century BCE. That stele was discovered in 1896 by British archaeologist Flinders Petrie. A passage of the stele reads as follows:

“The princes are prostrate, saying “Peace!”; Not one raises his head among the Nine Bows. … Plundered is Canaan with every evil;…;Yenoam is made as that which does not exist; Israel is laid waste, his seed is not;…; All lands together are pacified.”

This stele is also where the name “Israel” is mentioned for the first time outside of Biblical sources.  

Some of the suggested sites of Yenoam put forth by archaeologists and historians include: 

Tell Na'am near the Jewish community of Yavne'el in southeastern Galilee. This site would be visited from time to time by the residents of Yavne’el which was established in 1901 on lands purchased by the Baron de Rothschild in coordination with the Jewish Colonization Association. Its first residents were evicted from their previous homes in the Hauran (in southern Syria) in 1898 by the Ottoman authorities;  
Tell Shihab in the Yarmouk River valley in southern Syria. During the Ottoman period, a group of Arab colonists settled there and formed a settlement in which state in remains to this day;
Tell Na'ama in the Hula Valley in the upper Galilee;
and Tell Ovadya archaeological site in the Jordan Valley. 

Yenoam has also been tentatively associated with the biblical city of Janoah situated on the northern border of Ephraim tribal territory.

WILDERNESS OF SIN

Wilderness of Sin, courtesy, Free English Site
by Duane R. Hurst

The Wilderness of Sin is a geographic area, today located in the Arab-occupied Sinai Peninsula.  The name “Sin” is a Hebrew name whose meaning is uncertain, but scholars have pointed out the similarities between that name and “Sinai” (סִינַי‎, sinay). It is mentioned in the Bible as the area traversed by the Children of Israel on their way to Mount Sinai as described in Numbers 33:10-12, “And they removed from Elim, and encamped by the Red Sea. And they removed from the Red Sea, and encamped in the Wilderness of Sin. And they took their journey out of the Wilderness of Sin, and encamped in Dophkah”.  The biblical narrative also states that on reaching the Wilderness of Sin, the Israelites began to raise objections over the lack of food, as they had already consumed all the grain they had brought with them from Egypt. According to the account, Yahweh heard their murmurings, and so provided them with abundant manna and quail. Later on, at the encampment of Rephidim, they complained about a lack of water.

The Wilderness of Sin has been identified by some (but by no means all) scholars since the 19^th century, as located in the southern part of the Sinai Peninsula. This wilderness is defined more specifically in Exodus 17:1 as the area before Rephidim. But in point of fact, since this wilderness leads to Mount Sinai, its exact location can only be determined by the location of Mount Sinai. The traditional Christian Orthodox identification of Mount Sinai as Jabal Musa - one of the peaks at the southern tip of the Sinai peninsula, would imply that the wilderness of Sin was probably the narrow plain of el-Markha, which stretches along the western shore of the peninsula for several miles between Wadi Baʿbʿa and Wadi Sidrī toward the promontory of Ras Mohammed; its position would then be between Elim (Wadi Gharandal?) and Dophkah (Ṣarābīṭ al-Khādim?, the turquoise mines exploited in ancient times). However, other scholars have since rejected these traditional identifications. Instead, they would identify Mount Sinai as present-day al-Madhbah at Petra in Arab-occupied Jordan, which would imply that the wilderness of Sin was roughly equitable with the central Arabah. (see Mount Sinai)

In 1956, Israel liberated the area, as with the rest of the Peninsula, as a result of the Suez War. International pressure, including from the United States, forced Israel to give up the region but it was liberated again in 1967 in the Six Day War. Israel kept the region until 1979. In that year, the Camp David Accords was signed by the bloodthirsty Zionist Prime Minister Menachem Begin who enthusiastically set out to brutally expel all Jews from the Peninsula. Fortunately, no Jewish communities were established in the area many believe is the Wilderness of Sin and so the place was given up without anyone noticing.