Tell El Sakan was an important ancient Egyptian maritime settlement during the early Bronze Age, situated at the mouth of wadi Ghazzeh. Its geographical situation endowed it with a position of importance at the crossroads on the land based trade routes to Arabia, the Egyptian empire to the south and the Canaan region to the north. The site (dated between 3500-2350 BCE) appears to be the predecessor to the Tell al-'Ajjul settlement, where geomorphological dynamics of the estuary caused settlement trans-location or abandonment. The site dates from a period prior to the Egyptian military domination of the Levant. The pottery finds at Tell es-Sakan along with Tell al-'Ajjul shows a strong ancient Egyptian link to the area, while the Bronze Age settlement at Taur Ikhbeineh has revealed a more localised pottery production with Egyptian-Canaanite interaction.
The Bronze Age port was contemporary with En Besor, an Egyptian First Dynasty Staging Post along the "ways of Horus" trade route in the Northern Negev. By comparison, Tell es-Sakan was larger and surrounded by a city-wall, the earliest Egyptian town wall datable with any certainty. There were three consecutive building-phases, correlating with three strata of occupation.
The site was discovered by chance in 1998 during construction of a new housing complex, and construction work was temporarily suspended to allow an archaeological investigation to be conducted.