(πελος, mud), a frontier city of Lower Egypt, situated on the easternmost bank of the Nile, called the Ostium Pelusiacum, between the marshes of the delta and the sea. Its original distance from the Mediterranean was about 2½ miles; but, by the gradual deposition of sand along the coast-line, it is now more than double that distance inland. It was the Sin of the Hebrews (Ezek. xxxi. 15), and the Peremoun or Peromni of the Copts—equilis all agreeing in origin with the Greek designation, and with the modern name Tineh, as "the city of ooze or mud." It was celebrated in the time of Pliny for its flax (Linum Pelusiacum), but its situation as the key of Egypt has gained for it a yet more noisy fame. Sennacherib and his Assyrians had their bow-strings and shield-straps gnawed in sunder by field-mice while they slept under its walls (B.C. 720-715); Cambyses, the Medo-Persian, won the crown of the Pharaohs near Pelusium, B.C. 525; the Persians re-took it, B.C. 456; it opened its gates to Alexander the Great, B.C. 333; and it was taken and retained by Antiochus Epiphanes, B.C. 173, after routing the forces of Ptolemy Philometor near its gates. The invasion of Egypt by Amrou in 618 A.D., proved the ruin of Pelusium. After making it their own, the khalifs neglected its harbours and its industry, and the city gradually disappeared from history. Its site is now marked by mounds and a few broken columns. (See the works of Champollion and Denon sur L'Egypte; also Murray's Handbook for Egypt, by Sir Gardner Wilkinson.)