Tanis Document Summary

In Lower Egypt there are three areas that correlate with three ancient cities. Tanis
was located in San El-Hagar (San), Avaris in Tell el-Dab'a and Pi-Ramesse in Qantir.
Establishing this information as fact had not been easy. The document being summarised:
Tanis in Gold of the Pharoahs written by Yoyotte in 1988, describes the struggles which
were faced in identifying Tanis. These struggles were partly due to the lack of and the
confusing nature of the available material. It was also due to evidence not being included in
interpretations, limited exploration of theories and lack of distributed excavations.
The constant demolition of San had made it difficult to excavate. Tanis was formed
during Ptolemaic period and it is evident through the temples and royal necropolis discovered
by Montet and the enormity of the enclosure found by Dolomier and Cordier, that it was once
a great city (Yoyotte 1988, 14, 16-17). However, by the Roman period the city had
deteriorated. This was due to the subsiding northern delta and disruption of natural drainage
which eventually caused Tanis to become a wasteland. During the byzantine times Tanis had
become a bishopric and was eventually abandoned during the Islamic period due to its
inhospitable landscape (Yoyotte 1988, 11). Later, between the seventh and twelfth century,
the site became a quarry. Its buildings were demolished by lime manufacturers for limestone
and the hard stone was extracted for construction on the shores of Lake Manzala. Farmers in
1900s caused further destruction in their search for fertiliser. Whilst it resulted with few
intact structures, these demolishings helped expose hidden inscriptions on the architectural
structures (Yoyotte 1988, 11) . These inscriptions first seemed to indicate the presence of
Hyksos and Ramesses II at San but it is now known to indicate reuse of buildings. A theory
which may have been overlooked due to overestimating Egypts wealth.

The nineteenth century excavations at Tanis display the importance of analysing all
available evidence. Father Calude Sicard in 1722 first evaluated that San was Tanis.
However, he only relied on textual evidence such as Copto-Arabic glossaries and changed his
opinion when material evidence suggested it was Pi-Ramesse. After Sicard, the site was
excavated by Dolomieu and Cordier in 1798, William Hamilton and his partners in 1801 and
J. J. Rifaud in 1825. However, it was not until Auguste Mariette in 1860 that extensive
excavations were done at Tanis and stone fragments inscribed with Ramesses II name on
them were found. He also discovered a stone slab called Stela of the year 400 which places
Seth at San four centuries before Ramesses II. This combined with an inscription on a royal
statue mentioning Seth the god of Avaris (found by Emmanuel de Roug), seemed to
conclude that Avaris was located in San. Driven by these findings, Mariette then incorrectly
identified a depiction of two dyads as portraits of the Hyksos. The inscriptions of both
Ramesses II and Seth at the site led to the theory that Avaris was first located at San followed
by Pi-Ramesse. It is now known Mariettes conclusion was incorrect and can be attributed to
his sole use of material evidence (Yoyotte 1988, 14). He could have reached the correct
conclusion had he made use of texts, as Lepsius in 1866 knew of, that suggested San was too
far from the Delta to be Avaris as it was a military base (Yoyotte 1988, 16). Flinders Petrie is
another example of how looking at limited evidence can lead to incorrect conclusions. In
1884, he copied all the inscriptions, made a blueprint of the great temple and dug up trenches.
This led him to find material which provided information on occupation during the Ptolemaic
and Roman periods. Despite his significant findings, he only based his theory on the
inscriptions and concluded that San was the location of Pi-Ramesse (Yoyotte 1988, 14).

It was only when reuse of buildings was suggested and other sites were excavated,
that the true location of Tanis was revealed. From 1929-1940 Pierre Montet excavated Tanis.

Although he was the first in suggesting reuse of materials, his interpretations of evidence was
biased by his search for information on Asiatic-Egyptian relations. Similarly to Mariette, he
assigned certain features as Semitic such as burials being seen as sacrifices in an Asiatic ritual
(Yoyotte 1988, 16). Soon after in 1928, Mahmoud Hamza carried out excavations near
Qantir (22 km south of Tanis). Here he found evidence that Qantir was Pi-Ramesse. This
includes a wine-jar label mentioning a vineyard of Pi-Ramesse and decorated tiles which
depict soldiers and officials worshipping Ramesses II. However it was Labib Habachi who
definitively established this by creating a theory, similar to Montets, that buildings from PiRamesse were broken down and used for construction by the kings of the twenty-first and
twenty-second Dynasties (Yoyotte 1988, 17). It was only when theories were being disproved
by looking at other sites, that they were able to establish Taniss location.
As seen throughout the excavations on Tanis, evidence can be misinterpreted if there
is missing information. This is also true if a certain answer is being sought, as in Mariette and
Montets case rather than disproved as Habachi did.

References
Yoyotte, J.,
1988

Tanis in Gold of the Pharaohs, City of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, 1018