Tanis

In the northeastern Delta lies Tanis, once San el-Hagar, a city that served as a royal capital and religious centre during the Third Intermediate Period. Today it is a sprawling, tumbled field of fallen obelisks, colossal statues and temple blocks, many reused from earlier sites, an evocative wilderness of ruins where you can wander almost alone.

Tanis stunned the world in 1939 when archaeologist Pierre Montet uncovered intact royal tombs with silver coffins and gold funerary masks rivalling Tutankhamun's, a find overshadowed only by the outbreak of war. Pop culture knows it as the fictional resting place of the Ark in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Real and cinematic, it remains one of Egypt's most atmospheric, least-visited sites.