The fortress has produced no stratigraphic evidence so far to indicate a long occupation, and nothing archaeological dating before or after the reign of Ramesses II. This suggests that the fort was abandoned by it's Egyptian population during or soon after Ramesses II's reign. The attempted Libyan invasion of Egypt in Year 5 of the reign of Merenptah possibly marks the end of the fort's occupation, although there is no conclusive proof of this. Perhaps the the fort's population saw the approach of the massed Rebu and "Sea People" invasion force, realised they were overwhelmed and made a hasty retreat to raise the alarm, explaining why we find no evidence of conflict at ZUR.
There is also some evidence to suggest that the fort's commandant Neb-Re may have got "too big for his boots", attempting to set up his own little empire distant from the king's influence. The fact that his name has been excised from many of his monuments indicates that he plummeted from grace at some stage.
After being abandoned, the fort may have seen a phase of Libyan "squatter" occupation and provided a handy source of stone during the Roman period, before being swallowed by the sands of time and remaining, as far as we know, undisturbed until the 1940sAD.
The work undertaken so far at Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham has produced a wealth of evidence. That the fort possessed a defensive function has been confirmed - the 5m thick mud-brick wall leaves no doubt about this. But beyond its defensive role, there is evidence for other activities. The foreign pottery suggests that the fort may have had some dealing with visitors from overseas, traveling the trade routes of the Late Bronze Age that took in the Mediterranean coast. Some of these preliminary conclusions have already been discussed and others will be elaborated on in later sections. However, it is important to remember that any conclusions drawn at this stage can only be speculative, with future excavation perhaps necessitating their revision. Whilst large areas of ZUR have now been revealed, at least 50% of the forts 20,000m2 remains undisturbed.
Furthermore, one cannot assume that any conclusions drawn regarding what went on at ZUR can be applied to other sites that may have existed on Egypt's Mediterranean coast in the Late Bronze Age, the evidence from ZUR being unique at present. It is the only one of the supposed chain of fortresses that defended the Egyptian frontier in this period to have been extensively investigated. Even the assumption that such a chain existed has yet to be put to proved conclusively.
So, what is really known about the other forts that supposedly made up Egypt's western frontier defence system? The answer is, in fact, very little, as we shall see in the next section...