Avaris: the Hyksos capital at Tell el-Dabʿa

The explanations distinguish finds, interpretations and open questions. Sources appear at the end of the page.

Identification and date

According to the project page of the Austrian Archaeological Institute, Cairo branch, Tell el-Dabʿa "can be identified with certainty as Avaris, capital city of the Hyksos (ca. 1640-1530 B.C.)" and as the southern part of Pi-Ramesse (today the town of Qantir), the delta residence of Ramses II and his successors. Since 1966, with a brief interruption from 1970 to 1974, the site has been investigated by the institute's Cairo branch office, under the direction of Manfred Bietak until 2009 and of Irene Forstner-Müller since then. Source 1.

A city between river branches

According to the same page, in the pharaonic period the territory consisted of a chain of small hills of sand ridges, "geziras", protected from flooding and offering favourable settlement locations. Two wide side branches, F2 and F3, led east from the Pelusian branch of the Nile and were connected by smaller branches, so that the geziras were surrounded like "islands". Avaris was a hub of important trade routes to the sea and to the interior: it lay between the Pelusian arm, which gave access to the Mediterranean, and the Bahr el-Baqar, and at the terminus of the Horus Road, which led to Palestine over the northern Sinai peninsula. According to the source, the city served as a port where presumably much of the sea trade was transacted, a trade attested via inscriptions and in the large amount of imports, such as amphorae. The city reached its greatest extent during the 15th Dynasty, and again during the Ramesside period. Source 1.

Who the Hyksos were

The Met's timeline defines the Second Intermediate Period (about 1640-1550 BCE) as Dynasties 15-16 in Lower Egypt and Dynasty 17 in Upper Egypt, and writes that the north was controlled by the Hyksos, "descendants of people from western Asia who had settled in the eastern Nile Delta", who formed an alliance with the rulers of Kerma in Nubia against the Egyptian dynasty based in Thebes. The Austrian institute's page, as read, describes the city's location, river branches and trade, but not the palaces, temples, tombs or the origin of the inhabitants in the Hyksos period. To the question of what a capital of foreign rulers looked like, these sources therefore answer with a setting, a port and trade, not with buildings. Sources 2, 1.

A date that crosses the boundary

The Austrian institute's date begins with the Met's Second Intermediate Period, about 1640, but ends about 1530 BCE, twenty years after the Met's end of the period, about 1550, when according to the Met the Theban king Ahmose I reunited Egypt. The site does not trim the range: the article is placed in the Second Intermediate Period, and the last two decades of the range fall in the site's New Kingdom. According to the same page, branch F3 was presumably still active as a river arm at the beginning of the Middle Kingdom, but in the late Hyksos period it was already extensively silted up. The page also describes earlier and later phases of the site that this article does not cover: an area of the 12th Dynasty with a temple for the cult of Amenemhet I beneath it, and the Ramesside city of Pi-Ramesse, abandoned at the end of the 20th Dynasty, at about 1100 B.C. Sources 1, 2.

Scope of reading: the Tell el-Dabʿa page of the Austrian Archaeological Institute (Cairo branch) and the Met's timeline page for Egypt, 2000-1000 BCE, were read on 24 October 2026. The excavation reports of Tell el-Dabʿa were not read, so this page gives no plans, levels or finds of the Hyksos city.