Road station

=Tanis

San el-Hagar

Thitu, the faded remains of a name, stands for Tanis, the biblical Zoan, at San el-Hagar in the north-eastern Delta; only traces of letters survive, and older copies read Thie. Founded around 1070 BC as a royal residence, the town was built partly with statues and stones carried from the abandoned city of Ramesses, which long led scholars to mistake it for that city. From the twenty-first dynasty the kings of Lower Egypt lived and were buried here, and its main temples honoured Amun. Strabo still called it a great city; in the seventh century John of Nikiu describes ruins.

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