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Pi-Ramesses (; Ancient Egyptian: , 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. 1292–1290 BC) while he served under Horemheb.
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.Nile Delta: a review of depositional environments and geological history. Geological Society of London, Special Publications; 1989; v. 41; p. 99-127 Qantir/Pi-Ramesses lies some to the south of Tanis; Tell el-Dab´a, the site of Avaris, is situated about south of Qantir.
In 2017, archaeologists from the Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum unearthed footprints of children at the bottom of a mortar part, "New Discovery Shows Children Have Always Played in the Mud", Ginger Perales. New Historian. February 27, 2017. Retrieved 2 mar 2017 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. "Children’s footprints and painted murals preserved at site linked to Biblical exodus" , Garry Shaw. The Art Newspaper. February 14, 2017. Retrieved 2 mar 2017
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 or around long by 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 located adjacent to each of the estimated 460 horse tether points. Using , 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.
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.Kitchen, pp.255–256 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, 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.K. A. Kitchen. On the Reliability of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, Michigan. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 2003, p.255. .
When the 21st Dynasty moved the capital to Tanis, Pi-Ramesses was largely abandoned and the old capital became a quarry for ready-made monuments, but it was not forgotten. Its name appears in a list of 21st Dynasty cities, and it had a revival under Shishaq, usually identified with the historical pharaoh Shoshenq ISagrillo, 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. of the 22nd Dynasty (10th century BC), who tried to emulate the achievements of Ramesses. The existence of the city as Egypt's capital as late as the 10th century BC 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 BC texts, although it also appears in texts from the 2nd millennium BC.
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".
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