One of the main mysteries of biblical geography is the question of the existence and location of the legendary Sambation River, behind which, according to Old Testament legends, ten tribes of Israel hid, taken captive by the Assyrian king Shalmaneser
On weekdays, the Sambation carries water so violently that it carries huge stones along with it, and therefore it is impossible to swim across it, and the stream calms down only on Saturday. For this reason, the disappeared tribes cannot return from exile - crossing the river on Saturday would be a violation of Divine Law.
In the Bible, the Creator promises to Moses that He will lead the people out of Babylonian captivity across the Sambation River and there will show such miracles that no mortal has ever seen. Naturally, most commentators on this fragment concluded that beyond the Sambation, milk rivers flow amid the jelly banks, and every traveler dreamed of finding such a land. At least Christopher Columbus, sincerely sure that he was sailing to Asia, to India, took with him as an interpreter to communicate with the descendants of 10 tribes of Israelite connoisseur of Hebrew, the baptized Jew Luis Torres, who, in fact, was the first European who landed in American continent.
And besides Columbus, there were many who wanted to find Sambation. But they could not come to an agreement, where does the river flow - in Asia, in Africa or in South America? In the reality of the existence of Sambation, neither Pliny the Elder, nor Josephus, nor the greatest Jewish sage of the 2nd century AD, Rabbi Akiva, doubted.
A new surge of interest with Sambationu happened in the 9th-10th centuries AD in connection with the appearance in Spain of Eldad Danit, who passed himself off as a descendant of one of the disappeared tribes. He told such stories about the life of the sons of Israel in Africa, which caused quite a stir among the Jews of Western Europe. True, not everyone took his words on faith. At least, the great Jewish sage Rambam (Maimonides) believed that Sambation was not at all in Africa, but in Central Asia.and pointed to the Gozan (Amu Darya) river.
Another common point of view on the geographical location of Sambation is the Dnieper region. This version goes back to the treatise "On the management of the empire" of the Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, who mentioned that "Russian caravans, heading to Constantinople, gather in the Kiev fortress, which is called Samvatas." From this phrase, a rather bold conclusion was made that the Dnieper is the Sambation. So what?
It could well be … After all, what is known about the biblical river? She's big. It will take three months to get around it all. In some places it spills to the distance of the arrow's flight, and in some places it narrows so that those standing on different banks can reach each other. The river makes a noise like the rolling of thunder or the howling of the wind. This noise can be heard already half a day away. The strength of the stream, the height and color of the waves raised are such that it seems that the river is carrying huge stones, sand and clay. Periodically (according to the Jewish version - on Saturdays) the river stops flowing or dries up altogether, exposing a dry channel. But then it becomes full again.
Let's digress for a while from Sambation and turn to another river, more precisely, to the system of rivers, lakes and estuaries, united by the common name Manych (Kalmykia). The endless surface of the lake in the middle of the steppe always made a majestic impression. Strong winds that raged in these places raised such waves that their roar spread far across the surroundings. In some years, the lake dried up: for example, in 1926, cars drove on a dry and smooth bottom. At other times, its floods frightened local residents, about which there are many legends. There was no constant current in the lake, and changes in the direction of water flows in the area of the Manych depression have always been a mystery to specialists. So … A rumble spreading far around the area, huge waves, sudden changes in water level, a change in the direction of the current - maybe this is the biblical Sambation ?!
Why, in fact, is it possible to look for the tribe of Israel only in Central Asia, Africa or among the American Indians? Yes, it is customary to consider three directions of their flight: to the east, to the north and to the south (since, as you know, to the west, back to Israel, they did not return). The supporters of each version have their own argumentation. Moreover, the dispute about which of them is more correct: "northern", "eastern" or "southern" is devoid of even theoretical meaning, since the available historical sources have never claimed that all the disappeared tribes are somewhere in one place. According to the Jerusalem Talmud, only a third of the disappeared people live behind the Sambation, while the fate of most of it is unknown.
The "northern" version, according to which the Assyrians deported part of the ten tribes of Israel to Scythia, is less popular today among seekers of truth, in comparison with the "Pakistani-Indian", but its ardent admirers say that it was from the lost tribe that the Anglo-Saxons and Swedes went. Finns and Danes … But after all, according to the Bible, the Israelite tribes were settled in uninhabited places in the northeast of Assyria and in Media, that is, in areas close to the southwestern coast of the Caspian Sea. And here it is a stone's throw to Manych. Of course, they could have moved further north … At least, if we seriously consider the "northern" hypothesis, then the shortest and safest path to the plains of Scythia passed here. Moreover, the Northern Ciscaucasia was not some completely "unknown land" for the ancient Mediterranean.
There are suggestions that in those years the legendary Gelon existed somewhere in the Manych area, destroyed, according to Herodotus, during the campaign of Tsar Darius. By the way, a little to the northwest, some 200 kilometers from these places, and now the ruins of the ancient Greek Tanais are still visible. So, theoretically, the motivation for such distant wanderings of the exiles is also possible - a return to the Promised Land along the northern route, around the Black Sea, through the ancient Greek colonies there and Greece itself. Today it is the Manych - a nondescript tributary of the Don, and before the movements of the earth's crust several times led to the fact that its channels dropped below sea level and filled with water, connecting the Sea of Azov with the Caspian. According to the Soviet paleographer S. A. Kovalevsky, this connection between Azov and the Caspian Sea was interrupted only in the 4th century BC. e.,shortly before the campaigns of Alexander the Great.
We find confirmation in Strabo: "Jason, together with the Thessalian Armen, reached the Caspian Sea during the voyage to Colchis." This means that the Manych Strait still existed, through which the excess waters of the Caspian, formerly flowing, flowed down to the Aegean sea, central for the Greeks. NVTs According to the research of the Scientific Research Institute of S. A. Kovalevsky, active geological processes that led to the severing of the connection between the Caspian and Azov Seas took place in the Kumo-Manych depression just in the 4th century BC, that is, the Israeli exiles were at the epicenter of these events.
Yes, Manych of the XX and XXI centuries is only a pale shadow of what happened in his water system BC, and one can only guess how he amazed the imagination of people in ancient times. Alas: the water level in the Caspian system was systematically decreasing, and it never occurred to anyone to link the drying up channel of the Eastern and low-water channel of the Western Manych with the legendary “ramparts of fire” of Sambation.