Red Sea. But in accord with the practice of other ancients,29 the Israelites did not distinguish the Red Sea from oceans further to the south. To their way of thinking the Red Sea—or as they called it, yam sûp—really was the sea at the end of the earth, a sea which in their minds was fraught with connotations of primeval chaos.30 These mythical associations explain the presence of yam sûp in Exod 15:4. Yam sûp stands simply as the B word in the poetic pair, yām//yam sûp; it has no more historical