Slovak archaeologists working with the Polish mission at the Tell el-Retaba site in Egypt since 2007 have created a visual reconstruction of the settlement, showing what it may have looked like 3,500 years ago.
The video shows the development of the town from the Second Intermediate Period to the New Kingdom, from the 17th to the 12th centuries BC, based on the archaeological finds, structures found and their development, from small houses to the pharaonic fortress.
The Tell el-Retaba site is located in northeast Egypt, in the Wadi Tumilat between the modern cities of Zagazig and Ismailia, about 100 kilometers east of Cairo. It was a strategic location that controlled access to raw materials from Sinai and the Syrian-Palestinian strip.
Its importance during the pharaonic era had much to do with the existence of an ancient water channel that connected the Delta with the Red Sea, and which passed through Tell el-Retaba.
This supply of drinking water was vitally important, not only to the soldiers stationed at the fortress, but also to the Bedouin whose caravans crossed the Egyptian border here, into the Bitter Lakes area that is now part of the Suez Canal.
But the population of Tell el-Retaba was not always Egyptian. Even before the Second Intermediate Period (17th-16th centuries BC), it was inhabited by the Hyksos, who arrived in several migratory waves, bringing the horse and chariot of war, among other things, to Egypt.
Although there is no single ethnic origin for the Hyksos, they came primarily from the Canaan and Syrian regions, were primarily merchants, and in many cases assimilated Egyptian customs.
After the disappearance of the kingdom of the Hyksos and the conformation of the Egyptian New Kingdom (16th-11th centuries BC), the population returned to being Egyptian. The pharaohs Ramses II and Merenptah ordered the construction of a monumental fortress on the site, to protect themselves from the peoples of the sea.
Archaeological excavations uncovered numerous buildings, tombs, workshops, and a monumental gate erected by the Hyksos in brick, belonging to the period from the 17th to the 12th century BC.
Some researchers identify Tell el-Retaba with the town of Pitom, mentioned in the Bible as the place from which the Israelites left for the exodus. However, there is not enough evidence to confirm this.