Year 400 Stela

The Year 400 Stela, also known as the Stela of Year 400, is an intriguing artifact of ancient Egyptian history, dating back to the 13th century BCE. Discovered by Auguste Mariette in 1863 at the great temple in Tanis and later rediscovered by Pierre Montet in 1933, this remarkable piece is now housed in the Cairo Museum.

This stela was created during the reign of Ramesses II of the 19th Dynasty and portrays Ramesses II offering wine jars to the deity Seth, with an official named Seti standing behind him. Seti, identified as the creator of the stela, is shown venerating Seth and commemorating the occasion through this inscribed granite stela. The inscription dates the event to the "Year 400, fourth day of the fourth month of the Season of the Inundation" under a pharaoh named Aapehtiseth Nubti.

Initially, scholars speculated that Nubti could have been an unknown Hyksos ruler and that the 400th anniversary commemorated either the construction of a temple of Seth or the beginning of a new era. However, more recent research has clarified that Seti was indeed the father of Ramesses II, Seti I, and that "Nubti" was a symbolic title attributed to Seth. By retroactively calculating 400 years from Seti I's early rule, it is now believed that the event celebrated on the stela likely occurred around 1730–1720 BCE.