TANIS (Lat., from Gk. Tcfris., Egyptian Za'net, Hebrew Zo`an). A city of ancient Egypt in the northeastern corner of the Delta. It was situated on the right bank of the Tanitic branch of the Nile, near the site of the modern fishing village of San. Tanis was the capita] of the fourteenth none of Lower Egypt, and was a place of importance in very early times. The kings of the Sixth Dynasty founded there a great temple which was subsequently restored and en larged by their successors of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Dynasties, and the city was for some time the capital of the Hyksos rulers. Under the Nineteenth Dynasty it was strongly fortified as a base of military operations against Palestine and Syria, and Rameses II., who established his resi dence there, restored the ancient temples and greatly embellished the city. The Twenty-first Dynasty, of Tanitic origin, made the city the capital of Egypt, and at the time of the Assyr ian invasions in the seventh century B.C. it was
the seat of a prince. Until the founding of Alexandria it was one of the chief commercial cities of Egypt, but the silting up of the Tanitic month of the Nile diverted its trade to the new capital of the Ptolemies, and it gradually fell into ruins. Excavations of the site, conducted by Mariette in 1860, and by Petrie in 1883-84, brought to light the remains of extensive temple buildings, many statues and sphinxes, and no less than fourteen obelisks. Tanis is undoubtedly the Biblical Zoan, which in Numbers xiii. 22 is said to have been built seven years later than Hebron, and it is identified by many Egyptologists with the city of Raamses, which the Israelites were obliged to fortify (Er. i. ). Consult: Petrie, Tunis (London, 1885-88) ; Budge, A History of Egypt (New York, 1902).