Pi-Ramesses

Coordinates: 30°47′56″N 31°50′9″E / 30.79889°N 31.83583°E / 30.79889; 31.83583
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Pi-Ramses
)
Pi-Ramesses
Al Sharqia Governorate, Egypt
RegionLower Egypt
Coordinates30°47′56″N 31°50′9″E / 30.79889°N 31.83583°E / 30.79889; 31.83583
TypeSettlement
Area18 km2 (6.9 sq mi)
History
BuilderRamesses II
Founded13th century BCE
AbandonedApproximately 1060 BCE
PeriodsNew Kingdom to Third Intermediate Period

Pi-Ramesses (

pr-rꜥ-ms-sw, meaning "House of Ramesses")[1] was the new capital built by the Nineteenth Dynasty Pharaoh Ramesses II (1279–1213 BCE) at Qantir, near the old site of Avaris. The city had served as a summer palace under Seti I (c. 1290–1279 BCE), and may have been founded by Ramesses I (c. 1292–1290 BCE) while he served under Horemheb
.

Discovery

Tanis and Avaris
, near Pi-Ramesses
pr
Z1		 ramsss
pr-rꜥmssw[2]
in hieroglyphs

In 1884,

Tanis, where he arrived with 170 workmen. Later in the 1930s, the ruins at Tanis were explored by Pierre Montet. The masses of broken Ramesside stonework at Tanis led archaeologists to identify it as Pi-Ramesses. Yet it eventually came to be recognised that none of these monuments and inscriptions originated at the site.[3]

In the 1960s, Manfred Bietak recognised that Pi-Ramesses was known to have been located on the then-easternmost branch of the Nile. He painstakingly mapped all the branches of the ancient Delta and established that the Pelusiac branch was the easternmost during Ramesses' reign while the Tanitic branch (i.e. the branch on which Tanis was located) did not exist at all. Excavations were therefore begun at the site of the highest Ramesside pottery location, Tell el-Dab'a and Qantir. Although there were no traces of any previous habitation visible on the surface, discoveries soon identified Tell el-Dab'a as the Hyksos capital Avaris. Qantir was recognized as the site of the Ramesside capital Pi-Ramesses.[4] Qantir/Pi-Ramesses lies some 30 km (19 mi) to the south of Tanis; Tell el-Dab´a, the site of Avaris, is situated about 2 km (1.2 mi) south of Qantir.[3]

In 2017, archaeologists from the Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum unearthed footprints of children at the bottom of a mortar part,[5] as well as pieces of painted wall, possibly fresco pending further study, believed to have served as decoration at the site of a palace or temple.[6]

History

Hittite empire. Intelligence and diplomats would reach the pharaoh much more quickly, and the main corps of the army were also encamped in the city and could quickly be mobilised to deal with incursions of Hittites or Shasu nomads from across the Jordan.[7]

Pi-Ramesses was built on the banks of the Pelusiac branch of the Nile. With a population of over 300,000, it was one of the largest cities of ancient Egypt. Pi-Ramesses flourished for more than a century after Ramesses' death, and poems were written about its splendour. According to the latest estimates, the city was spread over about 18 km2 (6.9 sq mi) or around 6 km (3.7 mi) long by 3 km (1.9 mi) wide. Its layout, as shown by ground-penetrating radar, consisted of a huge central temple, a large precinct of mansions bordering the river in the west set in a rigid grid pattern of streets, and a disorderly collection of houses and workshops in the east. The palace of Ramesses is believed to lie beneath the modern village of Qantir. An Austrian team of archaeologists headed by Manfred Bietak, who discovered the site, found evidence of many canals and lakes and have described the city as the Venice of Egypt. A surprising discovery in the excavated stables were small cisterns located adjacent to each of the estimated 460 horse tether points. Using mules, which are the same size as the horses of Ramesses' day, it was found a double tethered horse would naturally use the cistern as a toilet leaving the stable floor clean and dry.[8]

It was originally thought the demise of Egyptian authority abroad during the Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt made the city less significant, leading to its abandonment as a royal residence.[9] It is now known that the Pelusiac branch of the Nile began silting up c. 1060 BCE, leaving the city without water when the river eventually established a new course to the west now called the Tanitic branch. [10] The Twenty-first Dynasty of Egypt moved the city to the new branch, establishing Djanet (Tanis) on its banks, 100 km (62 mi) to the north-west of Pi-Ramesses, as the new capital of Lower Egypt. The pharaohs of the Twenty-first Dynasty transported all the old Ramesside temples, obelisks, stelae, statues and sphinxes from Pi-Ramesses to the new site. The obelisks and statues, the largest weighing over 200 tons, were transported in one piece while major buildings were dismantled into sections and reassembled at Tanis. Stone from the less important buildings was reused and recycled for the creation of new temples and buildings.[8]

Biblical Raamses

Chapter 47 of the biblical

22nd Dynasty (10th century BCE), who tried to emulate the achievements of Ramesses. The existence of the city as Egypt's capital as late as the 10th century BCE makes problematic the claim that the reference to Ramesses in the Exodus story is a memory of the era of Ramesses II; in fact, it has been claimed that the shortened form "Ramesses", in place of the original Pi-Ramesses, is first found in 1st millennium BCE texts,[3] although it also appears in texts from the 2nd millennium BCE.[13]
: 3–4 

Ramesses II moved the capital of Egypt to Pi-Ramesses because of its military potential, thus he built storehouses, docks and military facilities in the city, which could explain why Exodus 1:11 calls the site a "treasure city".[16]

See also

Notes

  1. ISBN 978-0-14-028097-5
    .
  2. ^ Gauthier, Henri (1925). Dictionnaire des Noms Géographiques Contenus dans les Textes Hiéroglyphiques Vol. 2. p. 101.
  3. ^
    ISBN 9781841272573
    .
  4. ^ Nile Delta: a review of depositional environments and geological history. Geological Society of London, Special Publications; 1989; v. 41; p. 99-127
  5. ^ "New Discovery Shows Children Have Always Played in the Mud", Ginger Perales. New Historian. February 27, 2017. Retrieved 2 mar 2017
  6. ^ "Children’s footprints and painted murals preserved at site linked to Biblical exodus" Archived 2017-03-03 at the Wayback Machine, Garry Shaw. The Art Newspaper. February 14, 2017. Retrieved 2 mar 2017
  7. ^ Manley, Bill (1995), "The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Egypt" (Penguin, Harmondsworth)
  8. ^
    ISBN 0-8028-4960-1
    .
  9. ^ Kitchen, pp.255–256
  10. ^ "遗失的法老城市16_在线英语听力室_免费在线英语听力学习网站".
  11. ^ Ramses II, king of Egypt in Encyclopaedia Britannica. Accessed 2 Dec 2021.
  12. ^ Raamses or Rameses at biblehub.com.
  13. ^
    ISSN 1944-2815
    .
  14. Abraham Ibn Ezra
    suggests that there may have actually been two distinct sites by the name of Rameses, based on the different Masoretic vowelization of "Rameses" in Exodus 1:11 and 12:37, one a store city and the other a district in or near Goshen, as implied by Genesis 47:11.
  15. ^ Sagrillo, Troy Leiland. 2015. “Shoshenq I and biblical Šîšaq: A philological defense of their traditional equation.” In Solomon and Shishak: Current perspectives from archaeology, epigraphy, history and chronology; proceedings of the third BICANE colloquium held at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge 26–27 March, 2011, edited by P. J. James, P. G. van der Veen, and R. M. Porter. British Archaeological Reports (International Series) 2732. Oxford: Archaeopress. 61–81.
  16. ^ "Per Ramessu | ancient city, Egypt | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2022-05-09.

External links

Preceded by
Capital of Egypt

1279 BC - 1078 BC 		Succeeded by
Tanis
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