Pi-Ramesse

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Pi ramesse in hieroglyphics
City name under Ramses II. (Ramesisumeriamun)
O1 Z1 V10A N5 F31 S29 S29 U6 M17 Y5
N35 		G7 V11A G7

G41 G1 D28
Z1 		G7 O29
R4 		N35 G1 N5

G7 G1 G7 N27 X1
Z4 		O1 O1 G7 G7

Per-Ra-mes (i) -su-meri-Amun-pa-ka-aa-en-pa
Ra-Hor-Achti
Pr-Rˁ-msj-sw-mrj-Jmn-p3 k3-ˁ3-n-p3
Rˁ -Ḥr-3ẖtj
City / House of Ramses II.
Renamed city name under Ramses III. (Ramesisuheqaiunu)
O1 Z1 V10A N5 F31 S29 S29 S38 O28 V11A O29
R4 		N35
M3
Aa1 X1 		Z7 A24
Z2

Per-Ra-mes (i) -su-heqa-Iunu-aa-nachtu
Pr-Rˁ-msj-sw-ḥq3-Jwnw-ˁ3-nẖtw
City / House of Ramses III. ,
Ruler of Iunu , big on victories

Pi-Ramesse ( Arabic Qantir ; ancient Egyptian Per- Ra -mes (i) -su-meri- Amun -pa-ka-aa-en-pa- Ra-Hor-Achti ) was a ruler under Ramses II around 1278 BC. Built capital of the New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt . Shortly after the death of his father Seti I , Ramses II declared the summer palace built by his father in the eastern Nile Delta about one kilometer west of the older Hyksos town of Auaris to be the core of his new capital.

Ramses III. changed the city name during his reign from "House of Ramses II" to "House of Ramses III, ruler of Iunu, great in Siegen". The city was given the modern name "The Turquoise" because of the turquoise tiles found there during excavations.

According to Old Testament tradition, this city was one of the places where the events of the Exodus from Egypt took place ( Ex 1.11  EU ; 12.37 EU ; Num 33.3.5  EU ). The later to become Israelites are in the construction of (pilot) Ramesse for forced labor have been forced. It was from there that they later moved out of Egypt.

Pi-Ramesse

Position and extent

Pi-Ramesse (Egypt)
Pi-Ramesse
Pi-Ramesse
Tanis
Tanis
Pi-Ramesse and Tanis in Egypt

Pi-Ramesse is located on the eastern edge of the Nile Delta, in today's Asch-Sharqiyya Governorate . It was created between the Pelusian branch of the Nile and the drainage system of the Bahr el-Baqar . At the time of its greatest expansion, the urban area - including water and agricultural areas as well as other economic areas - comprised up to 30  km² . The city center was in the area of ​​the modern town of Qantir .

The town

The ground plan of the city has so far only been partially clarified due to the great destruction both in ancient times and in modern times. The ancient Egyptian sources indicate that the city was obviously intended to match the ancient capitals Thebes and Memphis in grandeur and size.

Pi-Ramesse is said not only to have been a beautiful city, but also of military importance, as is suggested by finds from armories workshops, horse stables and barracks . The location in the eastern Nile Delta made it very easy for the Egyptian army to quickly reach the Levant via the so-called Horus Trail . Located between the Pelusian branch of the Nile and the wetlands of the Bahr el-Baqar, the city itself was well protected against attacks. The Pelusian arm of the Nile was also an excellent route of transport, both to the Mediterranean and into Egypt.

Auaris , the capital of the previous Hyksos period, is located not far south on the other side of the Pelusian Nile, partly overgrown with the new capital (especially the Seth temple), and its port was still used, but otherwise it fell into disrepair and served as the necropolis of Pi- Ramesse.

Pi-Ramesse under Ramses III.

The Anastasi II papyrus refers to the time under Ramses III. :

“His Majesty (Ramses III) has built a castle for himself, 'Groß an Siegen' is his name. It lies between Retjenu and Tameri , full of food and food. It is made in the manner of the Junu of Month, and its duration is like that of Hut-ka-Ptah . The sun rises in his two mountains of light, it sets inside him. All people leave their cities and settle in his district. Its west is a temple of Amun , its south a temple of Seth . Astarte is in its east and Uto in its north. The castle that lies in it is like the two mountains of light in heaven. Ramses II is in him as god, ' Month in the Two Lands' as reporter, 'Sun, the ruler' as vizier who is friendly to Egypt. 'Loved by Atum ' as a prince and the whole country descends to his abode. "

- Papyrus Anastasi II

The Ramses Palace is probably directly under the modern Qantir and, like the whole city center, is not accessible. However, the extensive main temple (which probably resembled the temple of Abydos ), the planned, southwestern villa district on the Nile arm and the wild-growing small house settlements in the east of the city, as far as these areas are arable land, are well documented by magnetic measurements .

The end of Pi-Ramesse and the move to Tanis

At the end of the 20th dynasty , around 1110 BC. BC, the city was abandoned. Presumably this was due to the silting up of the Pelusian arm of the Nile . With the move to Tanis , 30 km away , the transport of numerous monuments from Pi-Ramesse was connected, which led to the fact that, due to the numerous inscriptions, Tanis was initially identified with the Ramses city.

In the period that followed, the city and its name were gradually forgotten. Since the 21st dynasty , the city's large buildings evidently served as quarries.

Today's remains and excavations

Feet and base of a colossal statue of Ramses II on Tell Abu Shafei near Qantir

Due to the extensive destruction of the city already in antiquity, hardly anything is left of it today. In the 19th century, the remains of a few tells were still visible, which have now almost disappeared. Today only the base of an originally about 10 m high seated statue of Ramses II and a large granite column base can be seen on site. In the neighboring village of Samana there is a well of Ramses II.

The ancient remains of the Qantir area have been noted and studied since the late 19th century. Since the discovery of a large number of faience tiles , which most closely resemble those of the temple palace of Medinet Habu , Qantir has been in discussion as the place of the Ramesside capital Pi-Ramesse. Since Labib Habachi's seminal article in 1954, this view began to spread among experts until it finally became a generally recognized doctrine in the 1970s, following the work of Manfred Bietak . Thus Tanis was replaced, which had previously been often associated with Pi-Ramesse, particularly by the French archaeologist Pierre Montet , who had excavated in Tanis.

The archaeologists of the Hildesheim Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum have been digging in Qantir since 1980 under the direction of Edgar B. Pusch in cooperation with the team from the Austrian Archaeological Institute , which was then (1966–2009) under the direction of Manfred Bietak and since then Irene Forstner-Müller digs in Tell el-Dab'a , a few kilometers to the south , the ancient Auaris , the capital of the Hyksos . Early research was carried out by Manfred Bietak and Josef Dorner in the 1960s to 1980s.

A special pioneering achievement was the use of geomagnetic investigation methods, which resulted in impressive images of the underground ruins.

To identify with the biblical Ramses

The localization of the biblical place name Ramses plays an important role in historical Exodus research .

The "land of Ramses" (Gen 47:11), which Joseph assigned to Jacob's family who immigrated to Egypt , is likely to be the area of ​​a city of Ramses. The Israelites have to do Ramses' labor service in the “storage city” (Ex 1,11) and leave from there to leave Egypt (Ex 12,37; Num 33,3.5). The Old Testament references point to an ancient Egyptian city in the eastern Nile Delta. Although there were several places in Egypt that were called Ramses city, the Old Testament place name is mostly equated with the residence city of the Ramessidic pharaohs.

The place name "Ramses" (in Ex 1,11 raˁamses , written in 12,37 raˁmˁses ) is probably a short form of the name Pi-Ramesse. So was Alan H. Gardiner show that the "pilot" or "per-" was omitted from the Ancient Egyptian if the place name along with p3 dmi ( "the City") or N3Y stand ( "those from"), which the remaining "Ramesse" is almost identical to the biblical Raamses / Ramesse. Since several Bible passages indicate the living area of ​​the "Children of Israel" near the palace and an administrative center, according to Manfred Bietak only the famous Pi-Ramesse residence can be meant.

Donald B. Redford speaks out against an identification of Ramses with Pi-Ramesse . The missing “Pi-” or “Per-” in the biblical text indicates that reference is not being made to Pi-Ramesse, but to one of the many other place names that were constructed with the name Ramses. Van Seters suggested that the name Raamses / Ramesse came from one of the many places of worship that he believed to have existed in the 1st millennium BC. Existed in the delta for the gods of Ramses from Pi-Ramesse. According to Bietak, however, there was no evidence of such cults, apart from Bubastis and Tanis during the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. Chr.

Older research identified the biblical Ramses with the location Tanis / Ṣān al-Ḥaǧar, which in ancient Israel had been around since the 8th century BC at the latest. Was known under the name Zoan ( soˁan ) (Isa 19:11, 13; 30,4; Ez 30:14). In Ps 78:12, 43 even the exodus events are localized in the “realms of Zoan”. However, this is due to the fact that the archaeological remains from the Ramesside period were built secondarily in Tanis / Zoan. Detlef Jerike nevertheless considers it possible “that the Old Testament authors refer to the situation from the middle of the 1st millennium BC onwards. When Tanis / Zoan was also identified in Egypt with the delta residence of the Ramessids and so-called secondary cults based on the old cults of the historical were established in Tanis and in the village Boubastis / Tell el-Basta, which is about 45 km southwest of Qantir Ramsesstadt developed. "

Furthermore, the use of the short form Raamses / Ramesse for Jericke indicates that the Old Testament authors have no precise knowledge of the type and location of the Ramses city of the 13th / 12th centuries. Century BC Had. The designation as “storage city” could also be an indication that there is an old memory here, because this category is rather unsuitable for a metropolis like Pi-Ramesse.

literature

(sorted chronologically)

  • Mahmud Hamza: Excavations of the Department of Antiquities at Qantîr (Faqûs District). Season, May 21st - July 7th, 1928. In: Annales du Service des Antiquites de l'Egypte. Volume 30, 1930, ISSN  1687-1510 , pp. 31-68.
  • Ricardo A. Caminos: Late-Egyptian Miscellanies (= Brown Egyptological Studies. Volume 1, ZDB -ID 1478631-x ). Oxford University Press, London 1954.
  • Labib Habachi : Features of the Deification of Ramesses II (= treatises of the German Archaeological Institute, Cairo department. Egyptian series. Volume 5, ISSN  0418-971X ). Augustin, Glückstadt 1969.
  • Edgar B. Pusch, Anja Herold: Qantir / Pi-Ramesses. In: Kathryn A. Bard (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Archeology of Ancient Egypt. Routledge, London 1999, ISBN 0-415-18589-0 , pp. 647-49.
  • Edgar B. Pusch: Towards a map of Piramesse. In: Egyptian Archeology. No. 14, 1999, ISSN  0962-2837 , pp. 13-15.
  • Edgar B. Pusch: Piramesse Qantir. In: Susanne Petschel, Martin von Falk (Hrsg.): Pharao always wins. War and Peace in Ancient Egypt. Catalog for the exhibition Gustav-Lübcke-Museum, Hamm. March - October 31, 2004. Kettler, Bönen 2004, ISBN 3-937390-16-2 , pp. 240-263.
  • Edgar B. Pusch: With high tech in Ramsesstadt. In: Ma'at. Archeology of Egypt. Issue 1, 2004, ZDB -ID 2165218-1 , pp. 34-49.
  • Anja Herold: Chariot Technology in Ramses City. Knobs, buttons and washers made of stone. (= Research in the Ramses city - the excavations of the Pelizaeus Museum Hildesheim in Qantir-Piramesse. Volume 3). von Zabern, Mainz 2006, ISBN 3-8053-3506-7 .

Older digs

  • Shehata Adam: Recent Discoveries in the Eastern Delta (Dec. 1950 - May 1955). In: Annales du Service des Antiquités de l'Egypte (ASAE). Volume 55, 1957, ISSN  1687-1510 , pp. 301-324, especially pp. 318-324.
  • Labib Habachi: Khatâ'na - Qantîr: Importance. In: Annales du Service des Antiquités de l'Egypte (ASAE). Volume 52, 1954, pp. 443-562.
  • Labib Habachi: Tell el-Dab'a and Qantir: The site and its connection with Avaris and Piramesse (= Tell El-Dab'a. Volume 1 = Investigations by the Cairo branch of the Austrian Archaeological Institute. Volume 2 = Austrian Academy of Sciences. Memoranda of the entire Academy, Volume 23). Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-7001-2986-6 .

Movie

Web links

Commons : Qantir  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Rainer Hannig : The language of the pharaohs. (2800-950 BC) Part 2: Large concise dictionary Egyptian - German. von Zabern, Mainz 2000, ISBN 3-8053-2609-2 , p. 1142.
  2. ↑ a b Rainer Hannig: The language of the pharaohs. (2800-950 BC) Part 2: Large concise dictionary Egyptian - German. Mainz 2000, p. 1143.
  3. ↑ EB Pusch: Piramesse-Qantir. Bönen 2004, p. 240: The area covered by geomagnetic investigations is 2 km² (ibid).
  4. ↑ These are four statues that are mentioned on many steles and that were obviously worshiped. The best-known group are the so-called Horbeit steles , which are now in the Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim. See also: L. Habachi: Features of the Deification of Ramesses II .
  5. ↑ Hugo Gressmann (ed.): Old oriental texts on the Old Testament. 2nd, unchanged reprint of the 2nd, completely redesigned and greatly increased edition 1926. de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 1970, p. 106.
  6. ^ M. Hamza: Excavations of the Department of Antiquities at Qantîr. 1930.
  7. ↑ M. Bietak, Tell el-Dab'a II. The place of discovery as part of an archaeological-geographical investigation of the Egyptian eastern delta. UZK II, Vienna 1975. - M. Bietak, Avaris and Piramesse, Archaeological Exploration in the Eastern Nile Delta. Ninth Mortimer Wheeler Archaeological Lecture. The British Academy. Oxford 1981. 2nd expanded edition, Oxford 1986. - J. Dorner, "The Topography of Piramesse", Egypt and Levante 9 (1999), 77-84
  8. ↑ EB Pusch: With high tech in Ramsesstadt. 2004.
  9. ↑ Detlef Jericke: The location information in the book Genesis. A historical-topographical and literary-topographical commentary. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2013, p. 241.
  10. ^ Alan H. Gardiner: The Delta Residence of the Ramessides. In: Journal of Egyptian Archeology. 5, 1918, pp. 137-138, 180, 188, 265.
  11. ^ Manfred Bietak, On the Historicity of the Exodus: What Egyptology Today Can Contribute to Assessing the Biblical Account of the Sojourn in Egypt. In: Thomas E. Levy, Thomas Schneider, William HC Propp: Israel's Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective. Springer, Cham u. a. 2015, p. 26.
  12. ↑ Donald B. Redford: Exodus I.11. In: Vetus Testamentum. 13, 1963, pp. 409-413.
  13. ↑ John Van Seters: The Geography of the Exodus. In: JA Dearman, MP Graham: The Land that I Will Show You. Essays on History and Archeology of the Ancient Near East in Honor of J. Maxwell Mille (= Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series. Volume 343). Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield 2001, pp. 255-276.
  14. ^ Manfred Bietak, On the Historicity of the Exodus: What Egyptology Today Can Contribute to Assessing the Biblical Account of the Sojourn in Egypt. In: Thomas E. Levy, Thomas Schneider, William HC Propp: Israel's Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective. Springer, Cham u. a. 2015, pp. 25–26, note 39.
  15. ^ A b Rainer Albertz: Exodus 1-18. Theological Publishing House Zurich, Zurich 2012, p. 28.
  16. ↑ Detlef Jericke: The location information in the book Genesis. A historical-topographical and literary-topographical commentary. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2013, p. 241.
  17. ↑ Detlef Jericke: The location information in the book Genesis. A historical-topographical and literary-topographical commentary. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2013, p. 241.

Coordinates: 30 ° 47 ′ 56 ″  N , 31 ° 50 ′ 9 ″  E