EES Delta Survey

Kom el-Daba. Signing off.

The aim of the EES Delta Survey is to investigate those tells in the Delta about which little is known - to record surface features, get an idea of the dating of any material and the site in general and carry out surveys. If a site has any significant features, these can then be investigated in more detail. All the information gathered is fed back into the on-line data held on the Society’s website: http://www.deltasurvey.ees.ac.uk/ds-home.html to inform colleagues and record the current state of sites, many of which are under threat from urban or agricultural expansion. The work that Penny Wilson and her team are currently doing around Lake Burullos is the first stage in this process (gathering information), and the survey which they will start next week at Tell Mutubis http://ees.ac.uk/research/AEP%20Tell%20Mutubis.html is the follow-up stage of more detailed study. When we started fieldwork last year at Kom el-Daba we mapped the site and returned this year to try to establish the nature of the surviving high mounds of mud-brick. Our excavation has shown that these were town houses, probably of the Ptolemaic period. As at so many Delta sites, imagination is needed to envisage what the buildings were like before they were destroyed and in his talk in Mansura Jeff used the following two slides, of well-preserved houses at Karanis and a model, to show what our town houses would have looked like in antiquity.

A mud-brick town house at Karanis in the Fayum and a model of such a house.

Another Karanis town-house, with even the windows preserved.

This morning we went to the SCA Office here in Kafr es-Sheikh to hand in our report and complete the final documentation for the end of the season with the Director, Dr Mohammed Abd el-Rafaa and our Inspector, Magda Zaki. We are very grateful to both for their help and support during the season. Tomorrow morning we shall pack our equipment and start making our way back to Cairo for our flight home on Sunday.

Many thanks to those of you who have followed our updates from Kom el-Daba this season - we hope you have found them interesting!

Kom el-Daba. Last day on site.

Every morning when we arrive at Daba we park our car on the edge of the tell behind a half-finished house belonging to one of the site guards, where we have our second breakfast break at 11am. The house isn’t decorated or fully furnished but the room we use does have a canaba (a wooden bench), a bed and a desk with a black-and-white television.

Our hire car parked on the edge of the tell, with a small modern cemetery behind.

The desk and television in the unfinished flat where we have been having our second breakfast this season. During one of our breaks we watched part of the funeral of Pope Shenouda III.

An impressive dead tree stump close to where we park the car - I have been meaning to photograph it for the past two years!

Today was our last day on site and we spent it recording details, taking final measurements and cleaning walls and sections for photography. Investigating the sections in more detail suggests that the smaller building to the south of our town house is probably contemporary with it, but founded at a higher level as the foundations did not have to support as substantial a structure as those of the town house. Both buildings are almost certainly of the Ptolemaic Period. After we’d finished the final recording work, we backfilled the trench to protect the mud-brick walls.

The building to the south of the town house which we now think is contemporaneous with it.

The cleaned south-east corner of the town house.

Tomorrow we are meeting Magda at the SCA office in Kafr es-Sheikh to complete with Dr Mohammed Abd el-Rafaa (the local SCA Director) the paperwork for the end of the season.

Our team at Kom el-Daba this season, at the end of the work.

Kom el-Daba. Visitors, mobiles, donkeys and TV.

We had a visit this morning from Dr Assayed El-Banna and his colleagues from the Kafr es-Sheikh Museum whom we had met on Saturday when we went to Mansura. Jeff described the site in general and our current excavation. We were still tracing the line of the northern face of the house so he also demonstrated defining the wall and how to make the bricks show more clearly. Dr Assayed translated Jeff’s descriptions into Arabic.

Jeff describing the work.

Dr Assayed el-Banna translating.

After cold drinks, generously provided by the site guards, our guests left Daba to return to the Museum and we eventually found the western face of the house, after following the northern wall for its entire length which (to the missing south-east corner) is around 15 metres. The house was, therefore, rectangular in plan – not square as we had originally thought.

The western face of the house.

It is actually illegal to use a mobile phone while driving here, though the rule seems rarely to be obeyed! I’m not sure if it also applies to donkey-riding……

Riding across the tell while using a mobile phone!

This afternoon we met up with Penny and Rebecca for pizzas and caught up with their Delta Survey news. They have now moved on from Nashwein to investigate sites nearer to Baltim on the Mediterranean coast.

Jeff’s interview with Delta TV is going to be broadcast this evening at 9pm but we’re not sure if the TV in our hotel room can get Delta TV – we shall have to channel-hop and hope we can find it!

The TV camera filming Jeff last Saturday.

Kom el-Daba. Working uphill

After yesterday’s excitement in Mansura, today we returned to Kom el-Daba and continued investigating our town house, moving the work back from the southern end to the northern one where we had started our excavation in early March. We had then found part of the northern side of the house before it was cut by the sebakh pit which had destroyed the north-east corner. Today we followed the wall face up the mound towards the level of the base of the intact mud-brick on the top. Most of the excavating was through the deep dust fill which we had first encountered in this area and which is virtually empty with the few sherds that do occur being totally out of context – one Roman Period cooking-pot rim came up in the same pick-cut as a weathered cigarette end today! To make working on this steep slope easier for the men (and us) they cut steps in the empty fill alongside the face of the wall, to create level surfaces on which to stand.

Excavating up the side of the mound.

Nearing the top!

So far the northern face extends at least 10 metres from the position of the destroyed north-east corner so it is possible that the plan of the building is rectangular, rather than square as we had previously conjectured.

Defining the wall face.

We had some visitors on site today when a flock of sheep and goats were brought to graze on the rather sparse vegetation that the tell offers.

Mixed flock of sheep and goats passing to the north of the excavation.

After we had to turn around on Thursday when trying to return to Kafr es-Sheikh because the road was blocked by trucks and other vehicles queueing for diesel, we’ve taken the longer route to and from the site, via the main shopping street of Riyad as, this way, there are no garages on the roadside. When we were returning from Mansura yesterday in our microbus, the driver had to veer off-road through the very narrow alleys of a village because of another diesel queue that was completely blocking the road. The diesel-shortage problem does seem to be getting worse. Although our ‘new’ route wasn’t blocked by queueing vehicles, our carriageway was totally blocked at one point by a pile of pebbles for concrete-mixing and the bulldozer which was moving them around.

Today’s road blockage which meant both lanes of traffic had to negotiate though a very narrow gap behind the bulldozer.

When we got back to our hotel, there were many more vehicles here than usual with groups of people being welcomed by young men with green sashes to an event at the ‘club’ next door. Their sashes had written on them (in Arabic) ‘Moslem Brotherhood’ so we assume it is some kind of political party convention taking place in the club.

Kom el-Daba. Day in Mansura

We’re back in Kafr es-Sheikh after an amazing day in Mansura, which started when we left our hotel at 9.00 in a microbus with Dr Assayed El-Banna, his wife Rahab, our Inspector Magda and ten other SCA colleagues, and arrived at the Faculty of Arts at Mansura University about 10.30.

The courtyard of the Faculty of Arts with replica statues.

Banner announcing Jeff’s lecture in the courtyard.

We were given a very warm welcome and invited into a salon where I was presented with a lovely bouquet of flowers and we sat around chatting to people and drinking tea.

Amira El-Morsy, Curator of the Mansura Museum, Professor Randa Baligh of Mansura University and Patricia with her flowers!

On leaving the salon, we followed two students dressed in pharaonic costume in a slow procession across the courtyard to a new training facility for Egyptology students where Jeff cut the ribbon for its ‘soft-opening’. The display contains replicas of genuine antiquities and also models made by young students of Egyptian temples, the Coptic Cathedral in Cairo and renowned mosques, including that of Ibn Tulun in Cairo and the Great Mosque at Mecca.

Following our guides.

The two students dressed in pharaonic costume.

Jeff cutting the ribbon.

Inside the exhibition.

We then moved on to the lecture theatre which was already full when we arrived, and welcoming speeches were made by Dr Mohammed Ghoneim, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Dr Ahmed Mansour, Director of the Kafr es-Sheikh Museum, and Dr Nehed Kamel el-Din and Professor Randa Baligh, both of Mansura University. Jeff was presented with a commemorative plate by Dr Ghoneim.

Patricia and Jeff with Dr Mohammed Ghoneim.

The audience for Jeff’s lecture.

Jeff, Dr Ghoneim and Professor Randa Baligh who translated Jeff’s talk into Arabic.

Jeff talked about the EES Delta Survey, then our work for the British Museum at Tell el-Balamun and finally our current EES fieldwork at Kom el-Daba. After the talk there were a lot of interesting questions, both from students at the University and colleagues from Mansura, Kafr es-Sheikh, Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt.

Jeff’s closing slide.

Question time.

We then all returned to the salon where Jeff (with Randa translating again) was interviewed by Delta TV.

Jeff and Randa during the interview.

The day ended with a very welcome Egyptian meal at the police club on the Nile corniche in Mansura, before we returned to Kafr es-Sheikh in the microbus, arrving back just as the sun was setting.

We would both like to thank all our colleagues at Kafr es-Sheikh Museum and Mansura University for the very warm welcome they gave us and for such a successful day. Special thanks are due to Randa for translating Jeff’s talk and the interview, to Mohammed Beltagi who took care of many of the practicalities and, especially, to Dr Assayed El-Banna who first suggested Jeff give a talk during our season and who arranged for it to be held at Mansura University. We are very grateful to them all for their hospitality.

Jeff and Dr Assayed El-Banna in the courtyard of the Faculty of Arts at Mansura University

Kom el-Daba. Day off work

Jeff has finished preparing the talk which he is giving at Mansura University tomorrow and, since we only have three more working days on site, he’s also started writing the short end-of-season report to give to the SCA before we leave. Otherwise, there isn’t much to report as we’ve just been doing our usual Friday chores. We went out for a walk this morning when the streets were quiet with very little traffic and most of the shops shuttered and closed.

A normally very busy Kafr es-Sheikh street on a Friday morning.

The weather was lovely today – sunny and warm - and we spotted several cats basking in the sun but when I crept up on them to take their photograph, they started slinking off in different directions!

Camera-shy cats.

Kom el-Daba. Foggy morning – hot day.

When we’re driving to Daba every morning our first stop is at the bus station in Kafr es-Sheikh where our Inspector, Magda, arrives from Disuq, where she lives, by local taxi. The bus station is always very busy with microbuses and the local white and yellow taxis diving in from all directions and stopping and starting without notice. Today it was even harder to see what was happening as there was a thick fog, which lasted for all our drive to the site – the low visibility made negotiating obstacles such as holes in the road or high speed bumps even trickier than usual!

The taxis at the bus station in the fog.

Fortunately the sun burned the fog way not long after we arrived at the site and we then had our warmest day so far – even feeling a bit too hot at times! Today we started investigating the stratigraphy of the area excavated and digging deeper between the walls to try to find their foundation levels.

Jeff making notes on brick sizes in the two houses.

On our return journey after the end of work we had to do a U-turn just after we’d gone through Riyad as the road was totally blocked by lorries and trucks waiting for diesel at a garage. Cars in front of us were turning around and going back the way we had come so we did the same. Fortunately we know another route back to Kafr es-Sheikh though it meant we had to go all the way back to Riyad and along its very busy main street which we usually avoid. The diesel shortages are obviously causing a lot of problems now – especially for commercial vehicles.

This evening we met again with Dr Assayed el-Banna of Kafr es-Sheikh Museum to talk about arrangements for Jeff’s lecture on Saturday morning at Mansura University. In addition to the lecture, at which they are expecting around 250 people, Jeff is also, apparently, going to be opening an exhibition and being interviewed by Delta TV.

The official invitation to Jeff’s lecture on Saturday.

Kom el-Daba. Visit of Chris and Faten.

This morning Chris and Faten taxied from their hotel to ours and came with us in our car to Daba. Once we arrived Jeff described the site and the excavation which today was concentrating on defining the outer edges of the room on which we were working yesterday.

Jeff describing the excavation of the town house to Chris.

Chris on top of the world – well, on top of the mud-brick of the town house!

We only worked half a day today at Daba and after second breakfast we drove, with our Inspector Magda, north about 25km to visit a tell called Nashwein which Penny Wilson is surveying for the EES. Chris did sterling service (courtesy of Googlearth) navigating along bumpy roads and across steep bridges over canals.

Chris navigating on the way to Nashwein.

On arrival we met Penny and her Inspector, Heydi, and walked around and over the site which is very impressive and over a kilometre in length. It has two high mounds with a lower central area.

View of Nashwein.

Jeff and Penny wondering why someone has dug a hole about four metres deep into one of the mounds at Nashwein.

Faten and Penny.

At the end of a very successful visit one of the site guards kindly took a photograph of us all.

From left to right: Magda, Chris, Patricia, Jeff, Faten, Heydi and Penny.

After returning to Kafr es-Sheikh for something to eat, Chris and Faten left about 4pm to drive to Tanta for an overnight stay before going on tomorrow to visit the Tell Basta mission http://tellbasta.tumblr.com/ and we went to fill up with petrol at our usual garage which was being besieged by trucks, pick-ups and men carrying jerry-cans as they had just had a delivery of diesel which is in short supply here at the moment. With much shouting on the part of those ‘helping’ us, Jeff managed to get the car to the petrol pump which was (of course) behind the diesel ones and beyond the massed trucks and lorries, and we were eventually able to fill our tank.

Kom el-Daba. Another building and good company!

Many of the tells of the Nile Delta have house plans visible on their surfaces – as we had noted at Kom Ineizi on our visit two days ago. These are most visible when sites are flat and clear of surface debris or have relatively low mounds, but even on a site like Daba which has steep high mounds and areas covered in red-brick fragments, there are house plans visible in places. The mud-brick wall we found at the south end of our trench yesterday is the northern wall of a room which could be seen before excavation.

The walls of a room of another building, south of the town house, visible on the surface before excavation.

This morning we first of all asked our workmen to scrape carefully across the extended trench to show the walls and the fill between them more clearly. Even though the basic positions of the walls are known in advance, they still need to be defined accurately by excavation as the brickwork visible on the surface may include bricks fallen off the wall and lying beside it. Once the faces of the wall have been defined, then the interior fill of the room is taken down a few centimetres.

Defining the interior of the room.

In this instance the inner faces of the walls were fairly straightforward but the outer faces (much more prone to damage and wear) are proving harder to define and will need more work tomorrow.

Investigating the outer face of the eastern wall.

Kafr es-Sheikh is obviously THE place to be now – Penny Wilson arrived this afternoon to start her EES Delta Survey work at sites north of Daba and also to undertake a survey of Tell Mutubis, funded as an Amelia Edwards Project, by donations from EES members http://ees.ac.uk/research/AEP%20Tell%20Mutubis.html and a few hours later Chris Naunton and Faten Saleh arrived here to visit (tomorrow) our work and Penny’s, after they had spent a morning at Quesna with the EES team, led by Joanne Rowland http://minufiyeh.tumblr.com/. This evening we all went for a good meal, and lots of catch-up talk, at the fish restaurant near our hotel

Kom el-Daba. A corner and a new wall.

Today we finally found the south-east corner of the house – better preserved than the north-east one which has been removed by the sebbakhin - but still rather cut around. This enabled us to measure the house from north to south and it is 10.4m, which is, rather neatly, 20 cubits. We expect the house to have a square foundation so knowing its width should help us to locate the western side.

The south-east corner of the house which still needs cleaning.

To the south of the house our trench also located another mud-brick wall of an adjacent (but possibly later) building which extends further to the south. Surface traces would indicate that it is the northern wall of a much smaller structure than our town house but we need to clean and study the sections of the trench to work out the relationship of the two buildings.

Magda and Jeff defining the northern wall of the building south of the town house.

Although the wind was still strong today, it wasn’t as cold as it has been for the past few days, so we’re hoping the weather generally will start to warm up a bit now. I mentioned previously the tendency of those building new houses here to block roads with their construction materials, so here’s a photo I took today on our drive back through Riyad.

The main road from Riyad to Kafr es-Sheikh partly blocked by piles of sand and pebbles for concrete-mixing. Sometimes one carriageway is totally blocked and then parts of the central reservation (which can be seen below the mounds, are removed to create an unofficial contraflow.