Biblical Raamses[edit]

Chapter 47 of the biblical Book of Genesis states that the Hebrews were given the Land of Goshen to reside in, but also that Joseph settled his father and brothers in the best part of the land, in the land of Rameses. The Book of Exodus mentions "Raamses" or "Rames[s]es"^[11][12] (both spellings appear in the Masoretic Text; Hebrew: רעמסס, romanized: Ra‘m[ə]sês) as one of the cities on whose construction the Israelites were forced to labour (Exodus 1:11) and from where they departed on their Exodus journey (Exodus 12:37 and Numbers 33:3). Understandably, this Ramesses has been identified by modern biblical archaeologists with the Pi-Ramesses of Ramesses II.^[13] Still earlier, the 10th-century Bible exegete Rabbi Saadia Gaon believed that the biblical site of Ramesses had to be identified with Ain Shams.^[14] When the 21st Dynasty moved the capital to Tanis, Pi-Ramesses was largely abandoned and the old capital became a quarry for ready-made monuments, but it was not forgotten. Its name appears in a list of 21st Dynasty cities, and it had a revival under Shishaq, usually identified with the historical pharaoh Shoshenq I^[15] of the 22nd Dynasty (10th century BCE), who tried to emulate the achievements of Ramesses. The existence of the city as Egypt's capital as late as the 10th century BCE makes problematic the claim that the reference to Ramesses in the Exodus story is a memory of the era of Ramesses II; in fact, it has been claimed that the shortened form "Ramesses", in place of the original Pi-Ramesses, is first found in 1st millennium BCE texts,^[3] although it also appears in texts from the 2nd millennium BCE.^{[13]: 3–4}


Ramesses II moved the capital of Egypt to Pi-Ramesses because of its military potential, thus he built storehouses, docks and military facilities in the city, which could explain why Exodus 1:11 calls the site a "treasure city".^[16]