Hanes

Hanes (meaning banishment of grace) was a place in Egypt mentioned once in Isaiah 30:4 in connection with the futile embassy Judah sent to Egypt seeking political and military alliance against Assyria: For his princes were at Zoan, and his ambassadors came to Hanes. The oracle condemns this reliance on Egypt as a broken reed that will pierce rather than support the hand that leans on it (Isa. 30:1–7; 36:6).

Hanes has been identified by many scholars with Heracleopolis Magna (modern Ihnasya el-Medina), a significant city on the west bank of the Bahr Yusef canal in Middle Egypt, approximately 80 miles south of Cairo. It served as a capital during Egypt's Ninth and Tenth Dynasties and remained an important cult center of Herishef throughout Egyptian history. If this identification is correct, the mention of Zoan (Tanis, in the Delta) and Hanes in the same verse suggests that Judah's envoys were traveling deep into Egypt for this alliance—evidence of how desperate the political situation had become under Assyrian pressure.