Wikipedia's first sentence called it “city in the north-eastern nile delta of egypt”. Today it says “capital of the egyptian kingdom in its 21st and 22nd dynasties”.
Measured, not asserted. Every count, date and revision on this page was taken from Wikipedia's own history and checked against the live article. The words quoted are theirs.
Machine-checked against the full current article on 2026-08-03.
We saved snapshots of this article over twenty years; you are reading the 2005 one. Red dashes: removed from Wikipedia since.Pale dots: rewritten; the numbered note shows what it says now.Red text: written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot.1 tap a number or a side note to jump between them
The opening as it read in 2005
Tanis (Τάνις), the Greek name of ancient Djanet (modern صان الحجر Ṣān al-Ḥaǧar ), is a city in the north-eastern Nile delta of Egypt ( 30°58′N 31°52′E  /  30.967°N 31.867°E  / 30.967; 31.867 ).1It lays on the Tanitic branch of the Nile (now silted up), and it was the supposed site of some of the action in the film Raiders of the Lost Ark . Tanis is called צֹעַן ( Ṣōˁan ) Zoan in Numbers 13:22, Isaiah 19:11,13, 30:4; Ezekiel 30:14; and Psalms 78:12,43. According to Numbers 13:22 and Psalms 78:12,43 it was built seven years after Hebron . It was also in the area of Goshen, where Jospeh settled his family in Egypt, though long before Tanis was ever built. Tanis was founded in the late Twentieth dynasty , and became the the northern capital of Egypt during the following Twenty-first dynasty . During the Twenty-second dynasty Tanis was also Egypt's capital (though there were often rival dynasties located elsewhere). It was an important commercial and strategic city until it was threatened with inundation by Lake Manzala in the 6th century CE, when it was abandoned. There are ruins of a number of temples, including the chief temple dedicated to Amun , and a very important royal necropolis of the Third Intermediate Period (which contains the only known intact royal burials other than Tutankhamun ). Many of the stones use to build the various temples at Tanis came from the old Ramesside of Qantir (ancient Per-Ramesses), leading former generations of Egyptologists to believe that Tanis was, in fact, Per-Ramesses. The chief deities of Tanis were the Amun , his consort, Mut , and their child Khonsu , formering the Tanite triad. This triad was, however, identical to that of Thebes , leading many scholars to speak of Tanis as the "northern Thebes".2
This is Wikipedia's own text, saved in our repository. Their copy of it is revision 16064615.
The opening as it stood in 2010 11 passages from the previous snapshot no longer appear
Tanis Tanis (Τάνις), the Greek name of ancient Djanet (modern صان الحجر Ṣān al-Ḥaǧar ), is a city in the north-eastern Nile delta of Egypt . It is located on the Tanitic branch of the Nile which has long since silted up.
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 367555653.
The opening as it stood in 2015
Settlement in Al Sharqia Governorate, Egypt Map of ancient Lower Egypt showing Tanis Tanis ( / ˈ t æ n [invalid input: 'ɨ'] s / ; ; ; Ṣān al-Ḥagar ) is a city in the north-eastern Nile delta of Egypt .It is located on the Tanitic branch of the Nile in the ancient Land of Goshen which has long since silted up.
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 669080011.
The opening as it stood in 2020
City in Sharqia, Egypt Map of ancient Lower Egypt showing Tanis Tanis is a city in the north-eastern Nile Delta of Egypt . It is located on the Tanitic branch of the Nile which has long since silted up. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.).There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or templates on this page, but the references will not show without a template or template (see the help page ).
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 963671661.
The opening as it stood on October 6, 2023 1 passage from the previous snapshot no longer appear
City in Sharqia, Egypt Map of ancient Lower Egypt showing Tanis Tanis ( / ˈ t eɪ n ɪ s / TAY -niss ) or San al-Hagar ( ; ; ; or ϫⲁⲁⲛⲉ or ϫⲁⲛⲏ ; Hebrew : צֹועַן Ṣōꜥan [ Zoan ]) is the Greek name for ancient Egyptian ḏꜥn.t , an important archaeological site in the north-eastern Nile Delta of Egypt , and the location of a city of the same name. It is located on the Tanitic branch of the Nile , which has long since silted up. The first study of Tanis dates to 1798 during Napoléon Bonaparte 's expedition to Egypt.Engineer Pierre Jacotin drew up a map of the site in the Description de l'Égypte .It was first excavated in 1825 by Jean-Jacques Rifaud, who discovered the two pink granite sphinxes now in the Musée du Louvre , and then by François Auguste Ferdinand Mariette between 1860 and 1864, and subsequently by William Matthew Flinders Petrie from 1883 to 1886.The work was taken over by Pierre Montet from 1929 to 1956, who discovered the royal necropolis dating to the Third Intermediate Period in 1939.The Mission française des fouilles de Tanis (MFFT) has been studying the site since 1965 under the direction of Jean Yoyotte and Philippe Brissaud, and François Leclère since 2013.Today, the main parts of the temple dedicated to Amun-Ra can still be distinguished by the presence of large obelisks that marked the various pylons as in other Egyptian temples.Now fallen to the ground and lying in a single direction, they may have been knocked down by a violent earthquake during the Byzantine era.They form one of the most notable aspects of the Tanis site.This accumulation of remnants from different epochs contributed to the confusion of the first archaeologists who saw in Tanis the biblical city of Zoan in which the Hebrews would have suffered pharaonic slavery.Pierre Montet, in inaugurating his great excavation campaigns in the 1930s, began from the same premise.He was hoping to discover traces that would confirm the accounts of the Old Testament .His own excavations gradually overturned this hypothesis , even if he was defending this biblical connection until the end of his life.It was not until the discovery of Qantir / Pi-Ramesses and the resumption of excavations under Jean Yoyotte that the place of Tanis was finally restored in the long chronology of the sites of the delta. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.).
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 1166493683.
The opening as it stood in 2025 13 passages from the previous snapshot no longer appear
City in Sharqia, Egypt Map of ancient Lower Egypt showing Tanis Tanis ( / ˈ t eɪ n ɪ s / TAY -niss ; Ancient Greek : Τάνις [tánis] ; Latin : Tanis ['tanɪs] ) or San al-Hagar ( Arabic : صان الحجر , romanized : Ṣān al-Ḥaǧar ; Ancient Egyptian : ḏꜥn.t [ˈcʼuʕnat] ; Akkadian : 𒍝𒀪𒉡 , romanized: Ṣaʾnu ; Coptic : ϫⲁⲛⲓ or ϫⲁⲁⲛⲉ or ϫⲁⲛⲏ ; Biblical Hebrew : צֹעַן , romanized: Ṣōʿan ) is the Greek name for ancient Egyptian ḏꜥn.t , an important archaeological site in the northeastern Nile Delta of Egypt , and the location of a city of the same name.Tanis was the capital of the Egyptian Kingdom in its 21st and 22nd Dynasties. It is located on the Tanitic branch of the Nile , which has long since silted up. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.).
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 1291985373. This is our newest snapshot; the live article may have moved again since.
Today
Wikipedia's first sentence called it “city in the north-eastern nile delta of egypt”. Today it says “capital of the egyptian kingdom in its 21st and 22nd dynasties”. Read the current article and compare.
2005
2010
2015
2020
Oct '23
2025
Counts in the opening at each snapshot. Green: the word gained ground. Red: it was cut. Grey: no change.
What Wikipedia says this is
Every article opens by defining its subject. This one was redefined since 2005, and today's defining sentence is their current revision.
Then
city in the north-eastern nile delta of egypt
Now
capital of the egyptian kingdom in its 21st and 22nd dynasties
Struck red text is no longer in the article; dotted amber text was rewritten. Every revision id links to Wikipedia's copy; the text shown is our own saved copy. Data: /data. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA; quoted for the record; not affiliated with Wikipedia.
