Tanis

Tanis, the Greek name of ancient Djanet, is a city in the north-eastern Nile delta of Egypt. It lays on the Tanitic branch of the Nile (now silted up).

Ruins of Tanis in 2004

History

Tanis was founded in the late Twentieth dynasty, and became the northern capital of Egypt during the following Twenty-first dynasty. It was the home city of Smendes, founder of the 21st dynasty. During the Twenty-second dynasty Tanis remained as Egypt's political capital (though there were sometimes rival dynasties located elsewhere in Upper Egypt). It was an important commercial and strategic city until it was threatened with inundation by Lake Manzala in the 6th century AD, when it was finally abandoned. The refugees founded the nearby city of Tennis.

Ruins

There are ruins of a number of temples, including the chief temple dedicated to Amun, and a very important royal necropolis of the Third Intermediate Period (which contains the only known intact royal Pharaonic burials - the tomb of Tutankhamun having been entered in antiquity). Many of the stones use to build the various temples at Tanis came from the old Ramesside town of Qantir (ancient Pi-Ramesses/Per-Ramesses), which caused many former generations of Egyptologists to believe that Tanis was, in fact, Per-Ramesses.

The chief deities of Tanis were Amun, his consort, Mut, and their child Khonsu, forming the Tanite triad. This triad was, however, identical to that of Thebes, leading many scholars to speak of Tanis as the "northern Thebes".

Trivia

In the film Raiders of the Lost Ark, Tanis was said to be the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant which was hidden in a secret chamber in Tanis. Tanis was inaccurately depicted as a lost city, having been destroyed in a sand storm and buried until 1936 when it was discovered by a German expedition outside of Cairo.