Pi-Ramesses (also known as Per-Ramesses, Piramese, Pr-Rameses, Pir-Ramaseu) was the city built as the new capital in the Delta region of ancient Egypt by Ramesses II (known as The Great, 1279-1213 BCE). Pi-Ramesses (; Ancient Egyptian: pr-rꜥ-ms-sw, meaning "House of Ramesses") was the new capital built by the Nineteenth Dynasty Pharaoh Ramesses II (1279-1213 BC) at Qantir, near the old site of Avaris. The city had served as a summer palace under Seti I (c. 1290-1279 BC), and may have been founded by Ramesses I (c. 1292-c. 1191 bce), and 20th (c. 1190-c. 1077 bce) dynasties.
It was located at the site of the modern town of Qantir in the Eastern Delta and, in its time, was considered the greatest city in Egypt, rivaling even Thebes to the south. It was the large-scale plunder and reuse of the stone of Per Ramessu that led to great confusion over the location of the Ramesside capital.
The Founding and Strategic Importance of Pi-Ramesses
The area near Avaris was the childhood home of Ramesses II. His father, Seti I (1290-1279 BCE) built a summer palace there, and Ramesses II would have grown up exploring the region when he was not in school or following his father on military campaigns. Ramesses II was already named co-ruler with his father by the age of 22 and was leading his own successful campaigns into Nubia before coming to the throne in 1279 BCE.
At some point, prior to 1275 BCE, he had his new city built, although some scholars suggest that construction actually began under Seti I who expanded on his palace. For a long time, people weren't sure exactly where Pi-Ramesses was. In 1884, a famous archaeologist named Flinders Petrie started digging in Egypt. He began his work at a place called Tanis.
Ramesses II moved Egypt's capital to Pi-Ramesses partly because it was a good military location. He built storehouses, docks, and military buildings there. But there were also important political reasons. This location meant that important news and messages from diplomats could reach the pharaoh much faster. Also, the main part of the Egyptian army was based in the city.
Associating his city with Avaris, therefore, was a clever choice of Ramesses II but hardly surprising in that he was well known for his skill in promoting himself and his grand projects. The association of the new city with Avaris gave it instant prestige in that Avaris was already legendary by the time of Ramesses II as the capital of the Hyksos who had been defeated and driven from Egypt by Ahmose I (c. 1570-1544 BCE), initiating the period of Egypt's empire now referred to as the New Kingdom (c. 1570 - c. 1069 BCE).
Read also: The Language of the Pharaohs
Military and Industrial Complex
Preparations for the campaign began in Pi-Ramesses at least by early 1275 BCE. While Ramesses II consulted his oracles and advisors for auspicious omens, he had the entire industrial military complex of his city at work making arms, training horses, equipping soldiers, and building chariots. One of the largest buildings was a vast bronze-smelting factory whose hundreds of workers spent their days making armaments.
State-of-the-art high-temperature furnaces were heated by blast pipes worked by bellows. As the molten metal came out, sweating laborers poured it into molds for shields and swords. In dirty, hot, and dangerous conditions, the pharaoh's people made the weapons for the pharaoh's army. Another large area of the city was given over to stables, exercise grounds, and repair works for the king's chariot corps...In short, Pi-Ramesses was less pleasure dome and more military-industrial complex.
The Battle of Kadesh
Ramesses II's battle with Muwatalli II at Kadesh was his most famous victory, which he celebrated through an account known as the Poem of Pentaur and another called the Bulletin. In these versions of the event, Ramesses II is every inch a warrior-king who leads his army to victory against overwhelming odds. Recent scholarship is fairly unanimous in agreeing that The Battle of Kadesh was more of a draw than a victory for either side.
Muwatalli II still held the city but had failed to crush Ramesses II's army as he had wanted, and Ramesses II had driven Muwatalli II's army from the field and inflicted heavy casualties but had not taken the city. Following Kadesh, Ramesses II would never lead another great military campaign; but that does not mean he did not commission them, and his reign is marked by decades of successful diplomatic and military victories, economic prosperity, and social stability.
Layout and Grandeur of the City
Ramesses II made Pi-Ramesses the most beautiful and opulent city in Egypt, rivaling the majesty of Thebes. It follows the model of Upper Egyptian Thebes and its duration is like that of Memphis. Pi-Ramesses was built right 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. 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.
Read also: Pharaohs: A detailed look
Spread across six square miles (15 square km), and housing over 300,000 people, Pi-Ramesses became the most prosperous city of its day. It would have been the first city, other than Pelusium, any visitors from the east would have seen upon entering Egypt and was intended to impress. Four large temples at each of the cardinal directions defined the city. To the north was the Temple of Wadjet, in the south the Temple of Set, east was the Temple of Astarte, and west the Temple of Amun.
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.
The choice of two of these particular deities is interesting in that Set and Astarte were both worshiped by the Hyksos at Avaris. It seems peculiar, at first, that Ramesses II would continue any tradition associated with the Hyksos since they had been cast as the supreme villains of Egyptian history by the scribes of the New Kingdom. Astarte, a Phoenician goddess, was long associated with Set as one of his consorts, however, and Set himself - although acknowledged as a god of chaos and darkness - was popular during the New Kingdom as a champion of the military.
Wadjet and Amun are logical choices in that Wadjet was one of the oldest goddesses of Egypt and the pre-eminent deity of Lower Egypt from the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3150 - c. 2613 BCE) onwards and Amun, by the time of the New Kingdom, was considered the most powerful of the gods.
The western part of the city, near the Temple of Amun, was the royal district. The temple was actually dedicated to a composite god Amun-Ra-Harakhty-Atum who encompassed the power and characteristics of the creator-god Atum, the sun god Ra (also a creator-god), Ra-Harakhty (an amalgam of Ra and Horus, signifying the sun at the two horizons of sunrise and sunset), and Amun (the supreme king of the gods at the time). The grand palace of the king was also located here in proximity to the temple as were the administrative offices.
Read also: The Art of Ancient Egypt
To the south, near Set's temple, were the military barracks, factories, a training ground, stables, the commercial district, and the two harbors which served the city. The stable complex was enormous, housing over 450 horses, and built with slightly slanting floors which allowed for waste to drop down into troughs. The training ground was a huge courtyard near the temple in which both soldiers and horses pulling chariots were put through maneuvers.
The eastern section, surrounding Astarte's temple, was the residential district as was the north, near Wadjet's temple. The houses were closely packed and, in keeping with traditional Egyptian custom, had the kitchen toward the back and open to the air, protected by a thatched roof. Each house probably also followed the traditional floor plan of a front parlor for receiving guests with the other rooms opening off of that one in a rectangular shape running toward the back.
The main temple in the city was that of Amun, Ramesses II's patron god, which was said to be massive and included enormous statues of Ramesses II in his divine aspect. Ancient writers from the time and afterwards comment on the awe-inspiring grandeur of the city, the towering scope, and beauty of the canals and monuments.
The End of an Era
Although the inscription concerning it claims that Pi-Ramesses lasted as long as Memphis, this is not so. In its time, as noted, it rivaled Thebes in grandeur and power, but Thebes would continue long after Pi-Ramesses was a memory. 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. The end of the city was signaled by the shifting of the Nile which silted the harbors so thoroughly that they became unusable.
It is now known that the Pelusiac branch of the Nile began silting up c. 1060 BC, leaving the city without water when the river eventually established a new course to the west now called the Tanitic branch. 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.
By around the year 1069 BCE, the central government was no longer effective and the high priests of Amun at Thebes were far more powerful than the king. Ramesses II was long dead by this time and his successors lacked his skills in leadership and administration. The last good pharaoh of the New Kingdom was Ramesses III (1186-1155 BCE), but even he was not as impressive as Ramesses II and the so-called Ramesside Period of Egypt is one of decline. The kings who followed Ramesses III seemed weaker with each succession until, by c. 1060 BCE, the country had been ruled for about a decade by Thebes in the south and Tanis in the north, an era known as the Third Intermediate Period of Egypt (c.
When Pi-Ramesses was abandoned, the monumental statues, sections of temples, and other buildings were moved downstream in such quantity that, centuries later, archaeologists were sure that Tanis was Pi-Ramesses or, at least, was a city built during Ramesses II's reign. 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.
Archaeological Discoveries
In 1928, Egyptologist Mahmoud Hamza (1890-1976) carried out excavations in the vicinity of what is now known as the Qantir, nine kilometres north of Faqous in Sharqiya. He found several artefacts dating back to the reign of Ramesses I (1295-1242 BC) and his successors. Hamza suggested this was the site of Pi-Ramesses, thought to be the king’s residence during the 19th and 20th dynasties.
A year later, he presented his hypothesis for the first time in Berlin, but his European colleagues were not convinced. In 1930, he published the results of his research in the Annales du service des antiquités de l’Égypte (ASAE) journal. A decade later, Egyptologist Labib Habachi (1906-1984) provided evidence to support Hamza’s hypothesis. He had begun work at Qantir and continued the Hamza’s excavations in two villages adjacent to Qantir - Tell el-Dab’a and el Khat’ana.
In 1980, a team from Germany’s Romer and Pelizaeus Museum Hildesheim led by Edgar Push as field director and Arne Eggebrecht took over work on the site. Currently, the project is being led by Egyptologists from Berlin (Alexandra Verbovsek), Bologna (Henning Franzmeier), and Hildesheim (Regine Schulz) in close collaboration with representatives of the Egyptian Ministry Tourism and Antiquities.
To highlight the importance of this city, the Egyptian Museum in Cairo is holding a temporary exhibition titled ‘Antiquities of Qantir: A Century of Excavations and Researches at the Ramesside Residence’. Around 250 artefacts, of which all were found at Qantir, are on display.
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. 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.
State-of-the-art technologies were used for Pi-Ramesses project from the very beginning. In the 1980’s, databases were already in use, while magnetic measurements followed shortly thereafter. In addition, new methods were and continue to be used to analyse the findings. Portable X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy devices helped determine the composition of metal objects and thus the sources of copper used in the workshops of Pi-Ramesses. One of the surprising results was evidence for the presence of Omani copper in Egypt.
The exhibition provides an opportunity to visitors to see the virtual rebuilding of Pi-Ramesses. It is being held in Hall No. 44 on the ground floor of the Egyptian Museum.
Is This the Lost Egyptian City of Pi-Ramesses?
Pi-Ramesses and the Bible
The city is best known as the 'Rameses' from the biblical Book of Exodus 1:11: "So they put slave masters over [the Israelites] to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh," but there is no evidence that the city was built by slave labor of any kind nor was it a 'store city' which held surplus grain or supplies.
The association of Pi-Ramesses with the biblical Pharaoh of Exodus has also naturally suggested Ramesses II as that king. Although some scholars claim that Ramesses II would have omitted the story of the Exodus from his official records, because it cast Egypt in a poor light, it is far more probable that the Exodus story is a cultural myth which had nothing to do with Egypt's actual history and Pi-Ramesses was chosen for mention by the Hebrew scribe who wrote Exodus because its name would have been instantly recognizable.
The link between Ramesses II and the heartless Pharaoh of the biblical narrative, as well as his city, is unfortunate in that it obscures the great achievements of the historical king and the Egyptian citizens who labored on his monuments and temples.
Chapter 47 of the Book of Genesis states that the Hebrews were given the Land of Goshen to reside in, but also that Joseph settled his father and brothers in the best part of the land, in the land of Rameses. The Book of Exodus mentions "Raamses" or "Rames[s]es" (both spellings appear in the Masoretic Text; Hebrew: רעמסס, romanized: Ra‘m[ə]sês) as one of the cities on whose construction the Israelites were forced to labour (Exodus 1:11) and from where they departed on their Exodus journey (Exodus 12:37 and Numbers 33:3).
Mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as one of the two cities in which the Israelites labored during their servitude in Egypt, Pi Ramesses-biblical Raamses (Exodus 1:11)-is fascinating for a several reasons, not the least of which is that it could help date the period of the Exodus. Given its short period of habitation, Pi Ramesses might well hold clues for dating the Exodus from Egypt, connecting the servitude of the Israelites to a dateable, extra-biblical city.
Popular articles:
tags: #Egypt
