Tanis

Tanis (Greek form of Egyptian Tân; Heb. Zoan), an ancient Egyptian city in the north-east of the Delta, once the chief commercial city of Egypt, capital of the Hyksos kings about 2100 B.C., and of Rameses II. and other great monarchs of the 19th dynasty. Its prosperity was destroyed by the silting up of the Tanitic mouth of the Nile, which was named from it, and it was destroyed for rebellion in 174 A.D. The ruins near the fishing-village of Sân el Hager near the south shore of the Lake of Menzaleh were examined first by Mariette, and in 1883-84 explored by Flinders Petrie. See the explorer's monograph (1885).