The Mysterious Collapse of Pharaoh's City: Unraveling the Story of Raamses

“And they built for Pharaoh storage cities, Pithom and Raamses.” Throughout the Bible, the phrase “and he built” usually refers to an individual builder—such as Solomon or Jeroboam. Here, however, the entire nation of Israel is described as the builder. They are not portrayed as individuals, but as a single entity: a mass of enslaved people bound together, forced to function as one—like a vast human machine.

The Sages expanded on this chilling image. They taught that Israelites themselves were used as building material. Children were cast into wet mortar and placed between stones. Such cruelty is not without historical precedent; in many ancient cultures, slaves who died during construction were buried within the structure itself. Some believed the spirits of the dead would protect the building, serving as a kind of dark talisman.

Since the time of Napoleon, the ruins of ancient Egyptian cities such as Giza, Luxor, and Karnak have been known and well studied. Yet Raamses—the city explicitly mentioned in the Torah as built by the Israelites—remained elusive. English Egyptologist Alan Gardiner proposed identifying Raamses with Pelusium, near modern-day Port Said, but his theory gained little acceptance. In the late nineteenth century, German Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius identified Raamses with Tanis, a site rich in ruins east of the Nile Delta. This identification dominated scholarly thought for decades, and in 1966, Pierre Montet’s excavations at Tanis were widely believed to have uncovered Raamses.

More recently, however, Egyptologist Manfred Bietak identified the true location of Raamses at Tell el-Dab‘a, approximately eighty kilometers west of Ismailia, in northern Egypt. At first glance, the site appeared unimpressive—barren and unremarkable compared to Tanis. Yet beneath the surface lay astonishing discoveries.

Tell el-Dab‘a, now identified as Pi-Raamses, was a vast royal city built by King Ramses II—whom many identify as the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Ramses II ruled for sixty years, ample time to enslave the Israelites and compel them to build this immense capital.

Pi-Raamses was a fortified military city. It contained army camps, training grounds, chariot stables, and hangars for horses. Seven massive bronze foundries were discovered, each measuring fifteen meters in length, with a total workshop area of some 30,000 square meters. “But the Lord took you and brought you out of the iron furnace of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 4:20). Here, vast quantities of bronze were produced for statues, architectural ornaments, weapons, chariots, and armor.

Yet a profound question remains: why did Raamses vanish so completely—even from Egyptian memory? Why did Merneptah, Ramses II’s son, relocate the capital to distant Memphis? And why did Ramses invest such colossal effort and human suffering into building a city that would soon be abandoned?

The answer lies in geography. Pi-Raamses was built in the Nile Delta. The Nile, one of the world’s mightiest rivers, begins with massive waterfalls in central Africa and courses through deserts before reaching the Mediterranean Sea, where it divides into numerous channels forming the Delta. Ramses constructed his city along these waterways. Egyptologists, reconstructing its layout, have dubbed it “Egypt’s Venice.”

But rivers are not static. Over time, the Nile’s branches shifted naturally, carving new paths through the desert sands. Unlike mountainous regions, Egypt’s flat terrain offered nothing to anchor the river’s course. As the water diverted elsewhere, Pi-Raamses lost its lifeline. Underground water reserves drained—much like the modern decline of the Dead Sea. Sinkholes formed, swallowing structures and infrastructure. The city, built on oppression and suffering, quite literally sank into the earth.

This explains why no visible ruins remained. Raamses did not merely decay—it collapsed inward and disappeared beneath the sands.

Remarkably, this knowledge existed in ancient Jewish sources, which describe a city built by Israelites that ultimately sank into the desert. Egyptian historical records preserved no such memory. Only Jewish tradition retained this account.

After Pi-Raamses collapsed, its remnants were quarried to rebuild the nearby city of Zoan. Stones, statues, and treasures were excavated and transported away. The former capital of Ramses II—once Egypt’s pride—was reduced to a desolate mound, invisible unless unearthed by deep excavation.

In 2017, a haunting discovery offered further confirmation of slave labor at the site. Archaeologists found children’s footprints embedded in the hardened foundations of a structure. Almost certainly, these belonged to enslaved children who roamed the construction sites as part of a nation forced into labor—perhaps even victims of the very cruelties described by the Sages, including being cast into the buildings themselves.

Thus, archaeology and ancient tradition converge, revealing the fate of a city built on bondage—and lost to history.