pi-Ramsès (or Per-Ramsès), located at the site of current the Qantir , was the capital of the Egypt under and S.

Meaning House of Ramsès , this rich city and thrives was the center of the capacity to the time ramesside. Established on the pélusiaque branch of the the Nile, its site was selected in the vicinity immediate of Avaris, the old capital of the Hyksôs, which had reigned on the Low-Egypt at the time of the Second period intermediate. Séthi {{Ier}} had built there a first palate which will be increased by his/her son Ramsès {{II}}, when this one establishes the dynastic capital there.

The choice of the site of pi-Ramsès was certainly not due randomly. Indeed, the site had obvious advantages, which decided Ramsès {{II}} to move the royal court in the delta:

• the area of Avaris was the cradle of Ramessides. Indeed, not only Séthi {{Ier}} had made there build a palate, but in more the site of future pi-Ramsès a sanctuary dedicated to Seth, the dynastic god included/understood. Let us recall that the father of Ramsès bore the name of Séthi, which wants to say " That which belongs to Seth".

• will, following the chaotic end of, to move away the royal capacity from the clergy thébain, whose influence had been reinforced after the fallen through reforms of Akhénaton and the restoration of the old worships by Horemheb in particular. Indeed, the clergy of Amon, which had been seen granting so much richnesses under the reign of the Thoutmôsis, had to exert an increasingly heavy influence on the royalty. This influence was besides one of the probable reasons of the episode amarnien, but after the return to the established order under Horemheb, the god thébain, richly equipped, found all its capacity and its privileges of antan.

• need for approaching the ground of military operations: indeed, Séthi {{Ier}}, which had succeeded in reconstituting partly the empire of the Thoutmôsis with Raising, unceasingly had to make stopping with inclinations of conquest of the Hittites, and its son after him. It is proven besides that Thoutmôsis {{III}}, nearly one century earlier, had included/understood the strategic importance of the site by building there a palate strengthened with the site of the old city of the Hyksôs.

• Lastly, the fact that Ramsès {{II}} divinisé itself of alive sound, founding its own worship in the middle of that of the large gods of the Egypt. We have ancient descriptions of the city which attest that it did not include/understand less than three large temples dedicated to the three principal demiurges of the Egyptian Pantheon: Re, Amon and Ptah, each one placed at three cardinal points of the city, the fourth being already occupied by the temple of Seth. In the medium was the royal palace, true royal temple, entirely devoted to the worship of Pharaon. All this shows with which skill Ramsès succeeds where Akhénaton had failed. Not only it developed the worship of divinized Pharaon, but it inaugurated the synthesis of the spiritual power and the temporal power of which it had the load. It could thus delay for a time the rise to power of the Grands priests of Amon, which will seize the power only during the disorders of the Third intermediate period, with died of the last of Ramsès.

Pi-Ramsès would be the starting point since which the people of Israel left in Exode.

The city

According to the texts, pi-Ramsès was the Turquoise City, so much this color was employed to frame the doors and the windows of the residences bleached with lime. For more than 30 years, Manfred Bietak has carried out excavations to it, revealing little by little the plan of the city and its history. Thus, in addition to the large palace whose enclosure extended on more than 500 meters on side, the archeologists found there the barracks of the famous charreries of Pharaon, spearhead of the Egyptian army. A temple of Amon was excavated a little more in north of the enclosure while the town of Avaris, become a district of the capital ramesside, was localized in the south with the temple of Seth and a district palatial which we announced higher.

Surrounded on three sides by secondary arms of the pélusiaque branch of the Nile, the capital ramesside was with the node of the commercial networks and circulation of the empire. It was the first large city which one discovered while arriving to Egypt by the east, and its monumental aspect was to impress, so much it comprised imposing monuments with the glory of Pharaon. Because of the setting in systematic culture of the delta since the construction of the dam of Aswan, the site is unrecognizable. In the middle of the fields are scattered bases of columns and remainders of granite statues given up there since of the millenia. The base of a colossus of which there remain only the feet and who was to exceed ten meters in height confirms imposing descriptions of the city which marked imaginations of the time.

One found with Tanis, capital of, very many blocks and statues which come certainly from pi-Ramsès. The large obelisks which are there and which bear almost all the name of Ramsès were to be initially drawn up on the squares of the temples and the royal palace. Moreover Ramsès {{II}} had also employed again many monuments of its predecessors. Strange reversal of situation where the re-employments were in their turn re-used for new constructions for new Pharaons…

These displacements of monuments made think of the archeologists and the biblical exégètes that Tanis was the site of pi-Ramesses. However, of the recent excavations with Such el-Dab' has and Qantir identified at this place the site of the capital Hyksôs, Avaris, and the capital ramesside pi-Ramesses.

End of the city, end of an empire

It is certainly because of the displacement of the pélusiaque branch of the Nile that pi-Ramsès was little by little abandoned at the end of for more favourable sites like Tanis for example. Moreover, the dynastic crisis which followed the reign of Ramsès {{III}} (), and generosities that this last offered to the temples, supported the influence of the clergy thébain which ends up usurping the capacity during the Third intermediate period. The center of the capacity was from now on with Thèbes, in the middle of the sanctuary of Amon, from where the large priests will direct the High-Egypt by the oracular way of the statue of the god. The empire of Ramsès will be dislocated: the Palestine will escape Egypt, the Nubie and the country of Kouch will recover their independence. Never again the Pharaons will be with the head of such a vast empire, in spite of the attempts of the following dynasties.

The foundation of Tanis, Thèbes of North, confirms that the experiment of pi-Ramsès and Ramsès was indeed completed, even if the capital large latter of the delta will have the memory in its monuments of it (see higher). Given up, closed down, pi-Ramsès will become a vast career like many of other sites, to disappear definitively under the blow from the floods and the human cultures, at the end of the Low time but especially when the Romans occupy this fertile ground. Its disappearance was so complete that one a long time in vain sought his site among the great ruined sites of the delta. It will be necessary to wait the Thirties of the 20th century so that Egyptian archeologists update the remainders of the palates of Séthi {{Ier}} and of Ramsès {{II}}. Since the years 1970, regular excavations are carried out there by the Austrian archaeological Institute of Cairo, in collaboration with the institute of Egyptology of the University of Vienna, under the direction of the Austrian Egyptologist Manfred Bietak. They clarify a little more each year what was this city and its influence.