Volta
Cultureearly 13th century BCE

Building of Pi-Ramesses

Also called: Per-Ramesses, Rameses

Ramesses II built a new capital, Pi-Ramesses, in the eastern Nile Delta. Many scholars identify it with the “Rameses” the Bible says the Israelites built.

Colossal statue of Ramesses II at the site of Pi-Ramesses (Qantir)
Colossal statue of Ramesses II at the site of Pi-Ramesses (Qantir)

Iri-en-achti · Public domain · Source

Coming to the throne around 1279 BCE, Ramesses II built a great new capital, Pi-Ramesses (“House of Ramesses”), in his family’s homeland in the eastern Delta, beside Avaris, the old Hyksos capital. Standing on the road to Canaan and Syria, it served as the base for his campaigns against the Hittites, with temples, palaces, chariot workshops and stables.

The Book of Exodus says the Israelites, enslaved in Egypt, built “Pithom and Rameses”. Many scholars take this Rameses to be Pi-Ramesses and so place the setting of the Exodus story in the reign of Ramesses II.

When the branch of the Nile beside it silted up the city was abandoned, and later kings carried its statues and stone north to Tanis. In the 20th century Austrian and German excavations traced the city at Qantir and Tell el-Dab’a.

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The map in 1279 BC

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States at the time
New Kingdom of Egypt
Places
Pi-Ramesses (Rameses)

People

  • Ramesses II1303 BC – 1213 BC

    monarch · Nineteenth-Dynasty pharaoh (r. 1279–1213 BC) who fought at Kadesh, made peace with the Hittites and built Abu Simbel

Before and after

Earlier
1353 BC Religious Reform of Amenhotep IV
Later
1274 BC Battle of Kadesh

Themes that include this event

  • The Exodus1279 BC – 1208 BC

    From slavery and the burning bush, the ten plagues and the parted sea, to the Ten Commandments at Sinai, forty years in the wilderness and Moses on Mount Nebo — the Exodus as the Hebrew Bible tells it, followed on the map alongside Ramesses II’s capital and the Merneptah Stele, the first record to name “Israel”