The explorations of 1885-86 started under the direction of Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie, Mr. F. Llewellen Griffith, and Mr. Ernest A. Gardiner.  Gardiner set out in the direction of Naucratis, and Petrie and Griffith proceeded to explore the site of Tanis.  The mound at which they worked, like many other localities of modern and ancient Egypt, has been known by a variety of names.  It is called Tel Farum, or the Mound of the Pharaoh; Tel Bedawi, the Mound of the Bedouins; and Tel Nebesheh, after the name of the village upon this site.  There are remains here of an ancient cemetery and of two ancient towns and a temple.  The cemetery was found to be unlike those of Memphis, Thebes, or Abydos.  It contained many small chambers and groups of chambers irregularly placed about a sandy plain.  These were built mostly of brick, but there were other and larger ones built of limestone.  A black granite altar of the reign of Ahmenemhait II. was discovered, and thrones of royal statues of the twelfth dynasty.  Here were also found a statue of Harpocrates, a portion of a statue of Phtah, with an inscription of Ramses II., a sphinx and tombs of the twentieth century B.C. containing many small relics of antiquity.

Professor Petrie went on from here to the site of Tell Defenneh, the Tahpanhes of the Bible, called Taphne in the version of the Septuagint.  This proved to be the remains of the earliest Greek settlement in Egypt, and contains no remains from a later period than the twenty-sixth dynasty.  It was here that Psammeticus I. established a colony of the Carian and Ionian mercenaries, by whose aid this monarch had won the throne; and this Greek city had been built as one out of three fortresses to prevent the incursions of the Arabians and Syrians.  The city of Tahpanhes or Taphne is referred to in the book of Jeremiah.

There were found on this site the remains of a vast pile of brick buildings, which could be seen in outline from a great distance across the plains.  The Arabs called this “El Kasr el Bin el Yahudi,” that is, “The Castle of the Jew’s Daughter.”  This was found to have been a fort, and it contained a stele with a record of the garrison which had been stationed there; pieces of ancient armour and arms were also found in the neighbourhood.  There was likewise a royal hunting-box on this site, and all the principal parts of the settlement were found to have been surrounded by a wall fifty feet thick, which enclosed an area of three thousand feet in length and one thousand in breadth.  The gate on the north opened towards the Pelusiac canal, and the south looked out upon the ancient military road which led up from Egypt to Syria.  Pottery, bronze-work, some exquisitely wrought scale armour, very light but overlapping six times, were unearthed within this enclosure.  There were also Greek vases and other Greek remains, dating in the earlier part of the reign of Ahmosis, who had subsequently sent the Greeks away, and prevented