RAMESES or RAMESSES (Gen. xlvii. I 1; Exod. xii. 37; Num. xxxiii. 3), or, with a slight change in the vowel points, RAAMSES (Exod. i. 11), the name of a district and town in Lower Egypt, is notable as affording the mainstay of the current theory that King Rameses II. was the Pharaoh of the oppression and his successor Merneptah the Pharaoh of the exodus. The first three passages cited above are all by the priestly (post-exile) author and go together. Jacob is settled by his son Joseph in the land of Rameses and from the same Rameses the exodus naturally takes place. The older narrative speaks not of the land of Rameses but of the land of Goshen ; it seems probable, therefore, that the later author interprets an obsolete term by one current in his own day, just as the Septuagint in Gen. xlvi. 28 names instead of Goshen Heroopolis and the land of Rameses. Heroopolis lay on the canal connecting the Nile and the Red Sea, and not far from the head of the latter, so that the land of Rameses must be sought in Wadi Tumilat near the line of the modern fresh-water canal. In Exod. i. 1 again, the store-cities or arsenals which the Hebrews built for Pharaoh are specified as Pithom and Raamses, to which the Septuagint adds Heliopolis. Pithom also takes us to the Wadi
Tumilat. It is possible that these names were added by a writer who knew what fortified places were in his own time to be seen in Wadi Tfimilat ; for the form of the story of the Hebrews in Egypt is throughout deficient in precise geographical data. The post-exile or priestly author indeed gives a detailed route for the exodus (which is lacking in the older story), but he, we know, was a student of geography and might supplement tradition by what he could gather from traders as to the caravan routes.
It appears, however, from remains and inscriptions that Rameses II. did build in Wadi Tumilat, especially at Tell Mask hfita, which Lepsius therefore identified with the Raamses of Exodus. This identification is commemorated in the name of the adjacent railway station. But Naville's excavations found that the ruins were those of Pithom and that Pithom was identical with the later Heroopolis. Petrie found sculptures of the age of Rameses II. at Tel Rotab, in the Wadi Tumilat west of Pithom, and concludes that this was Rameses. The Biblical city is probably one of those named Prameses, "House of Ramesses," in the Egyptian texts.