User:Qualifiedbastion/Tanis

Noticing a lot of the links im citing are broken or blocked right now but I am working on it. putting in placeholder sources for now while I try to fix.

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The first map of Tanis as drawn by Jacotin in the Description de l'Égypte.

Tanis (/ˈteɪnɪs/ TAY-niss; Ancient Greek: Τάνις [tánis]; Latin: Tanis ['tanɪs]) or San al-Hagar (Arabic: صان الحجر, romanized: Ṣān al-Ḥaǧar; Ancient Egyptian: ḏꜥn.t [ˈcʼuʕnat]; Akkadian: 𒍝𒀪𒉡, romanized: Ṣaʾnu; Coptic: ϫⲁⲛⲓ or ϫⲁⲁⲛⲉ or ϫⲁⲛⲏ; Biblical Hebrew: צֹועַן‎, romanized: Ṣōʿan) is the Greek name for ancient Egyptian ḏꜥn.t, an important archaeological site in the northeastern Nile Delta of Egypt, and the location of a city of the same name. It is located on the Tanitic branch of the Nile, which has long since silted up.

The city of Tanis was the capital of the Egyptian kingdom

It is known for the quality and the quantity of its

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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). The burials of three pharaohs of the 21st and 22nd Dynasties – Psusennes I, Amenemope and Shoshenq II – survived the depredations of tomb robbers throughout antiquity. They were discovered intact in 1939 and 1940 by Pierre Montetand proved to contain a large catalogue of gold, jewelry, lapis lazuli and other precious stones, as well as the funerary masks of these kings.

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".

First studies and Excavation

The first study of Tanis dates to 1798 during Napoleon Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt. Engineer Pierre Jacotin drew up a map of the site in the Description de l'Égypte. It was first excavated in 1825 by Jean-Jacques Rifaud, who discovered the two pink granite sphinxes now in the Musée du Louvre, and then by François Auguste Ferdinand Mariette between 1860 and 1864, and subsequently by William Matthew Flinders Petrie from 1883 to 1886.^{[clarification needed]} The work was taken over by Pierre Montet from 1929 to 1956, who discovered the royal necropolis dating to the Third Intermediate Period in 1939. The Mission française des fouilles de Tanis (MFFT) has been studying the site since 1965 under the direction of Jean Yoyotte and Philippe Brissaud, and François Leclère since 2013.

There has been much debate over whether or not Tanis could be the biblical city of Zoan in which the Hebrews would have suffered pharaonic slavery. Pierre Montet, in inaugurating his great excavation campaigns in the 1930s, began from the same premise. He was hoping to discover traces that would confirm the accounts of the Old Testament. His own excavations gradually overturned this hypothesis, even if he was defending this biblical connection until the end of his life. It was not until the discovery of Qantir/Pi-Ramesses and the resumption of excavations under Jean Yoyotte that the place of Tanis was finally restored in the long chronology of the sites of the delta. (looking for reference to this but having difficulty)

Today, the main parts of the temple dedicated to Amun-Ra can still be distinguished by the presence of large obelisks that marked the various pylons as in other Egyptian temples. Now fallen to the ground and lying in a single direction, they may have been knocked down by a violent earthquake during the Byzantine era. They form one of the most notable aspects of the Tanis site.

Bibliography

• Bard, Katherine A. Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt. Taylor & Francis, 1998.
• Commission Des Sciences Et Arts D’egypte Napoleon I, Emperor of the French. Description de l’Egypte, Ou, Recueil Des Observations et Des Recherches Qui Ont Été Faites En Egypte Pendant l’expédition de l’armée Française. Antiquitiés, Descriptions. French Government, 1809.
• Villar Gómez, Alba María. “Notes on the cult of the Theban gods at Tanis: A general of Psusennes I.” ISIMU, vol. 18, 25 May 2017, https://doi.org/10.15366/isimu2015-2016.18-19.016.
• Saleh, Atef M., et al. “The restoration and erection of the world’s first elevated obelisk.” Scientific Reports, vol. 13, no. 1, 4 Feb. 2023, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-29092-z.
• Handwerk, Brian. “The True Story of the ‘lost City’ of Tanis.” History, www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/tanis-egypt#:~:text=In%201939%20a%20French%20archaeologist,a%20rare%20and%20marvelous%20find. Accessed 14 Mar. 2025.
• El Azazy, Sabry A. “TANIS (SAN EL-HAGAR): THE LOST GOLDEN CITY DURING THE AGES  (ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL STUDIES).” Journal of Tourism Research, vol. 25, December 2020, https://www.jotr.eu/index.php/volume25-2/283-tanis-san-el-hagar-the-lost-golden-city-during-the-ages-archaeological-and-historical-studies.
• Eveha. “Egypt Tanis.” Eveha International, eveha-international.com/?intervention=tanis&lang=en. Accessed 14 Mar. 2025.

Montet, Jean Pierre Marie. 1947. La nécropole royale de Tanis. Volume 1: Les constructions et le tombeau d’Osorkon II à Tanis. Fouilles de Tanis, ser. ed. Jean Pierre Marie Montet. Paris

- a bit confused the bibliography I made in my bibliography sandbox isn't transferring over even though im using the exact same ISSN and DOI codes