The best preserved archaeological sites from ancient Egypt are the monuments and tombs located beyond the floodplain in the very dry low desert. In upper Egypt sandstone temples from the New Kingdom and later are much better preserved than earlier mud-brick or stone temples, which were frequently dismantled so that new structures could be built in the same sacred space. Temples built of fine limestone, especially in the Delta, were often recycled, either for construction or to make lime.
Because of their relatively good preservation and monumental proportions, stone tombs and temples were the focus of most early scholarly fieldwork in Egypt. Well-preserved human burials and mummies also fascinated early archaeologists. Philologists and historians were interested in finding new texts, and museum curators were interested in reconstructing ancient monuments and finding works of art to send back to museums in Europe and North America. The evidence from temples, tombs, and royal mortuary complexes is highly specialized, however, and much less is known about ancient Egyptian cities and villages, and settlement patterns.
Tell (also called kom in Egypt) is an Arabic word for a mound formed by many layers of usually continuous human habitation - with people living in the same space over millennia and buildings rebuilt through time. The mound gets built up when houses or other structures are abandoned or collapse, and artifacts (especially potsherds) and debris from long-term occupation collect in layers, which represent different time periods of site use. The tells of ancient Egyptian settlements are poorly preserved, especially with the expansion and growth of Egypt’s villages, which may have destroyed tells or now cover them. In the New Kingdom the total population of Egypt may have reached nearly 3,000,000, while today Egypt’s population is around 83,000,000. Only about 2 percent of the land of modern Egypt is inhabitable (mostly in the Nile Valley and Delta), the rest being desert. This means that modern towns and villages within or near the floodplain are often built over ancient ones, making excavation impossible. In this respect Akhenaten’s capital at Tell el-Amarna is an exception in that major parts of the ancient city were built in the low desert beyond modern villages and fields. The city is also unusual in that it was abandoned not long after Akhenaten’s death, and being in an area of low population density it was not reoccupied.
Box 3-A Site preservation, context, and looting
A number of natural processes have endangered or obscured archaeological sites in Egypt. Looting has also been very destructive. But tomb looting is not only a recent phenomenon; it is ancient. old Kingdom pyramids were probably robbed during the First Intermediate Period (see 2.8), and pyramid blocks were used for building stones in medieval Cairo. Despite current Egyptian laws, looting of antiquities continues, especially after the recent uprising that led to the downfall of ex-President Hosni Mubarak. Egyptian antiquities bring high prices on the international art market, and because of the great demand art dealers are willing to acquire antiquities illegally.
An article by Ricardo Elia in the Wall Street Journal of 19 June 2002 illustrates how a New York antiquities dealer, Frederick Schultz, tried to sell stolen Egyptian antiquities. Schultz had been notified by a British associate in Egypt, Jonathan Tokeley-Parry, that “boys have just returned from the hills above Minea [in Middle Egypt] . . . and we are offered a large hoard.” Two old Kingdom reliefs were sent to Schultz, who was assured that they came from a tomb unknown to Egyptian authorities. Later a stone head of King Amenhotep III (18th dynasty) was covered with plastic resin and painted to look like a tourist souvenir, in order to smuggle it out of Egypt. In New York, Schultz claimed that the head came from an old English collection and was therefore legal to sell.
Schultz was convicted of dealing in stolen antiquities by uS district Judge Jed Rakoff. He was fined $50,000 and sentenced to 33 months in prison. But the condition of the old Kingdom tomb which was the source of the reliefs remains unknown, and the context of where the royal head was found is lost.
Why is context so important? Tutankhamen’s tomb is the only largely unrobbed royal tomb of the New Kingdom. Its artifacts are priceless, but knowing their context is even more valuable to archaeologists. For example, why were 11 oars placed on the floor between the north wall of the burial chamber and the gold-covered shrine that housed the king’s mummified body? The intentional placement of such artifacts, which was carefully recorded by Howard Carter, must have had something to do with Egyptian beliefs about the king’s burial and afterlife. Such information would be lost if Tutankhamen’s tomb had been robbed. The mummy would have been stripped of all of its gold jewelry and possibly destroyed in the process.
Without context, cultural information about artifacts is lost, archaeological sites are destroyed, and artifacts become nothing more than pretty objects in private and museum collections.
With expanded cultivation, especially of cash crops such as cotton and sugar cane, and modern economic activity, such as factories and quarries, many ancient sites have been destroyed. Farmers still excavate sebbakh - dark, nitrogen-rich deposits from ancient settlements and decayed mud-brick - which they use for fertilizer and soil conditioner. Agricultural intensification and modern industries are necessary in Egypt, but many ancient settlements have been lost as a result of these activities.
To expand cultivation, water is now pumped up to some areas of the low desert beyond the floodplain where many prehistoric sites are located. This results in destruction of settlements previously untouched by human activity. Deflation (wind erosion) has also been destructive of the stratigraphy of sites in the low desert, many of which now consist only of the heaviest artifacts - stone tools, debris from stone tool production, and potsherds.
Many prehistoric and Dynastic sites within the floodplain have been destroyed over millennia by cultivation. With meters of deposits of river alluvium (in both the Valley and Delta) over the millennia a number of settlements have either been covered or destroyed. Shifts in the course of the river over the past 5,000-6,000 years have probably removed many sites, both prehistoric and Dynastic, particularly on the east bank. While Egypt in all periods has depended on the Nile for its subsistence, the river has also created problems of preservation of ancient settlements that archaeologists must try to understand.
Recent research by geologists Katy Lutley and Judith Bunbury, who analyzed satellite images and historical maps, combined with on-ground walking surveys in the Giza region, suggests considerable migration of the Nile River over the past 5,000 years (Plate 3.2). These investigations, combined with the results of soil corings done in the Memphis area obtained by archaeologist David Jeffreys, director of the Egypt Exploration Society’s Survey of Memphis, also suggest that the head of the Delta reached a more southern point in pharaonic times. Such studies have major implications for the changing locations of ancient settlements and monuments, not only in the Giza region, but probably also in other areas of the Egyptian Nile Valley. The use of satellite image analysis, along with other relevant evidence, is thus becoming increasingly important for understanding the location of archaeological sites on a regional scale and pharaonic Egypt’s greatest resource - the Nile.
World History
