EES Delta Survey

EES/Freie University Delta Study Day

Today was our ‘Current Research in the Nile Delta’ Study Day, held jointly with the Freie University, Berlin at their research centre, the TOPOI House, just a short walk from our hotel.

The TOPOI House.

Unfortunately one of our speakers, Robert Schiestl, was unwell and unable to give his paper but around 70 people heard talks from Manfred Bietak, Ulrich Hartung, Eva Lange, Manuela Lehmann, Joanne Rowland, Jeffrey Spencer and Patricia Spencer on a wide range of topics connected with archaeology in the Nile Delta.

Standing (left to right): Patricia and Jeffrey Spencer, Ulrich Hartung, Eva Lange, Manuela Lehmann and Penny Wilson. Kneeling: Manfred Bietak and Joanne Rowland.

Jo and Penny sorting out the technology!

The audience was a mix of EES members from London, students of the Freie University, and Egyptological colleagues, all of whom we were very pleased to see. We particularly appreciated the presence all day of Dr Mamdouh Eldamaty, the Cultural Counsellor at the Egyptian Embassy in Berlin.

Dr Mamdouh Eldamaty with Professor Bietak.

There was a wine reception after the Study Day, and then most of us went to dinner at a restuarant near our hotel. We would all like especially to thank the students from the Freie University who prepared the tea/coffee breaks, reception and lunch and cleared up afterwards.

Manuela, Patricia and Eva at the reception.

Tomorrow morning is ‘free’ in Berlin to before our flight home in the afternoon. Everyone seems to think it has been a very successful trip and we have already received a number of suggestions for the next EES Delta Survey event outside the UK or Egypt!

Delta Survey in Berlin!

Tomorrow we are having a Delta Survey Study-Day in Berlin with speakers from the UK, Germany and Austria. Today started with a shopping trip to buy drinks and snacks for the tea/coffee breaks and reception tomorrow. We now have a supermarket trolley in our hotel room!

Jeff and Jo with our shopping!

This afternoon we all gathered outside the Neues Museum for our special guided tour by Dr Friedericke Seyfried, which everyone agreed was excellent. We’re very grateful to Dr Seyfried for setting aside several hours to talk to EES members about the displays, the history of the Museum and her plans for the future.

The EES members group outside the Neues Museum

Dr Seyfried describing the tomb chapel of Metjen

Tomorrow morning we have to get all our food and drink to the TOPOI House of the Freie University where our Delta Survey Study Day will be taking place, with around 60 participants.

Signing off

This morning we went to the SCA office for the Kafr es-Sheikh area, where Salwa wrote the ‘signing off’ document for the expedition and Jeff left a copy of the ‘short’ report Field Directors submit to the SCA at the end of a season. He will write a fuller, illustrated report after we get home and send it to Faten for translation into Arabic and onward submission to the SCA. After saying ‘goodbye’ to Salwa and thanking her for all her help, we did some shopping and returned to our hotel to pack. Tomorrow we will drive to Balamun to drop off some equipment there, then we have two days in Cairo - to return our hire car to Hertz and the Topcon to the EES Office, and to meet up with friends, before we fly home on Easter Sunday.

Our first season at Daba has gone very well. We were able to survey the whole site and now have a much better understanding of its archaeological remains and the development of the tell’s current appearance. Next year, we hope to return and undertake targeted excavations to try to establish the dates of the brick walls and house plans that we have noted and started to investigate this year.

Since I started this account of our stay in Kafr es-Sheikh with an image of the mosque near our hotel, it seems appropriate to ‘sign off’ this season’s Delta Survey updates with a view of the same mosque at sunset on our last day here.

Last day on site

Lovely weather on site today after all the heat – sunny and warm but with a nice cooling breeze. It’s a shame we’re leaving! First thing this morning we completed recording the ten red granite mill-stones that are visible on the surface – there could well be others completely buried.

Patricia brushing earth from one of the mill-stones.

Seeking out mill-stones took us to the south-east corner of the site which is used by the villagers as a rubbish dump and somewhere to tether animals. We then walked back to the high brick mounds along the edge of the village of Tell el-Daba and past the trenches of some SCA excavations carried out in 2003-04 to test the ground for antiquities before releasing the land to the local council for the construction of buildings for local services.

SCA excavation trenches in the foreground in front of the village of Tell el-Daba.

There are villages on both the eastern and western sides of the tell, so there are a number of tracks which cross it and are quite heavily used, both by wheeled vehicles (including heavy farm tractors and bulldozers) and by more traditional means of transport.

Donkey travel across the tell.

We investigated our large brick wall further this morning and worked out where would be a good place to start proper excavation next year. After saying our farewells to everyone at the site, we drove to Riyad and called at the office of the local Mamur (chief of police) who turned out to be very interested in archaeology. After drinking tea with him, we returned to Kafr es-Sheikh. Tomorrow we will meet Salwa at the local SCA office to ‘sign off’ after a short, but very successful season.

Our ‘team’ this year. From left to right: the two policemen from Riyad with the site guard between them, then Mohammed, Salwa, Patricia, Jeff and Ahmed.

Measuring mud bricks and mill stones

Initially this morning we worked on the top of the mound containing the large brick wall, defining its upper courses and measuring the well-preserved bricks, then, after our break, we returned to the southern end of the site where we suspect from the surface sherds and red bricks, that any intact deposits will be later in date than in the northern part. We started recording and photographing the red granite mill-stones that we had first noted during the survey.

Jeff and Mohammed measuring one of the mill-stones.

The mill-stones vary in their states of preservation, with some being more eroded than others. Several have wedge-slots left by their initial quarrying or re-use.

Wedge slots along the edge of one of the mill-stones.

This afternoon – at last – the weather cooled down quite dramatically so we’re hopeful that our last day of work on site tomorrow will be more pleasant – unless it pours with rain, of course!

An end to the wall

After having worked for several days on a steep slope, we moved down to the present-day surface level of the tell to see if the large brick wall we’ve been investigating continues below the level of the mound of fill and further to the east. Cleaning away the dry surface dust (mainly composed of powdered brick from the wall) revealed what appears to be the eastern end of the wall, very well preserved and apparently intact (ie: not cut by later pitting). Against the face is some undisturbed broken pottery and it was very encouraging to find intact archaeological deposits so close to the surface of the tell as we had expected it to be more disturbed and pitted. It is very promising for more detailed excavation next year.

Eastern end of the large brick wall 

There’s been no break yet in the very hot weather. Unfortunately there is almost no shade on the site so we really appreciate getting out of the sun for our ‘second breakfast’, at around 11am each day. We retreat for half an hour to an unfinished flat owned by the site guard, in a house on the western edge of the tell. After we’ve eaten the food we’ve brought with us, someone always makes tea which, even in this heat, is greatly appreciated. The site guard is often accompanied to our work by his dog, who has one upright and one floppy ear, but seems to have little memory as he barks at us when we arrive as if he’s never met us before, then he calms down, accepts us and is placid for the rest of the day, until he sees us again the next morning…. 

The site guard’s dog

Still hot…..

Unfortunately the thunderstorm we hoped we’d get to clear the air and cool things down hasn’t yet arrived, so it was very hot on site today and there was a hot strong wind blowing from the south-east (khamsin-like weather), making working conditions very unpleasant, especially as we were cleaning on a slope, over what we think is a mud-brick enclosure wall, right in the path of all the wind-blown dust and powdered brick. The photo below, taken this morning, makes the weather look a lot better than it was!

Cleaning lower courses of the same wall as the large chunk behind Jeff. The two gentlemen sitting on top of the mound are the policemen who come to the site (on the motorbike in the foreground) from Riyad every day.

We stopped work a little early as everyone was very tired and dusty, and drove back to Kafr es-Sheikh, following for quite a while, the truck below. Since we were stuck behind it, I had plenty of time to study the many logos and transfers on the back – they include Donald Duck, Mickey and Minnie Mouse, the Michelin man, the Rolling Stones’ ‘tongue’ image, the Nike logo, galloping horses, images of ‘bowling’, hearts, flowers and many variants of the Mercedes emblem!

Multi-patterned truck on the road from Riyad to Kafr es-Sheikh.

We’re going to wait until evening to go out and do some shopping, in the hope that it will have cooled down by then. I took this photo at the back of the hotel yesterday evening.

The moon and palm fronds.

A hot Friday

We were very glad we weren’t working on site today as it was exceedingly hot and still. Our first ‘Friday job’ was to wash the car which we started at 7.30am by which time the sun was already beating down.

Jeff washing our hire car at the back of the hotel.

The entrance to our hotel is actually at its ‘back’ (not on the main street), within the sports complex which houses the football stadium and a swimming pool. There hasn’t been a match in the stadium while we’ve been here but young men and boys can often be seen training and jogging around the complex. Beside the hotel entrance is a monumental stela of the type which is often found outside official or prominent buildings in Egypt recording their opening dates. Since they always start by giving the name and title of President Mubarak, they remind us very much of ancient Egyptian stelae!

The entrance to our hotel. Note the white ‘stela’ to the left of the door.

The ‘stela’ recording the opening of the hotel on 4 November 1996. The largest lettering in the third line is the name of the former President, Mohammed Hosni Mubarak. The next largest letterings (in the sixth and eight lines down) give the names of the Governor of Kafr es-Sheikh and the owner/manager (? - the writing is a bit too cursive for me to read securely!) of the hotel.

After getting the car as clean as we could, we retreated to our room to avoid the worst of the heat and to catch up with writing up notes and other chores before venturing out for a walk late morning. The streets were very quiet as most of the shops are shut on Fridays until mid-afternoon, so we had a very relaxing stroll around.

Jeff has just noticed (early evening) that there is some cloud building up – we suspect the climate got over-heated today and it is about to crash with a thunderstorm or two!!

Last day of the week

Thursday again and the last working day of the week. We’ve continued investigating some of the high mud-brick walls, though some of the chunks of what look like mud-brick are deceptive. In some cases what has survived is a wall with fill beside it which contains some fallen or displaced bricks, but isn’t actually part of an articulated wall itself. It is just what was left when people stopped work, digging away the mud bricks to use as fertiliser on the fields.

Brick wall embedded in fill on both sides.

Although the site has many low mounds which (on the surface at least) appear to contain mainly burned bricks, there are no extant red brick walls standing on the site, though there are a few chunks of burned brickwork on the surface.

Mounds which seem to be made up mainly of burned bricks, left behind after the mud-brick was removed.

A chunk of burned brickwork on the surface of the tell.

It got very hot and still on site today so we were glad to get back to our hotel only to discover the electricity was off in our room so the fridge (which we have found to be very useful!) had defrosted and the air-conditioning wouldn’t work. We reported it at reception and by the time we returned from lunch and a visit to the bank in the centre of the town, everything was working again.

Our hotel in Kafr es-Sheikh.

Three tells (and a baby donkey)

We only worked on site for half a day today as we’d arranged with our SCA Inspector, Salwa, to go and visit three other ancient tells in an area east of Daba. This meant we had again to drive through Riyad which, even though it wasn’t suq-day, was still very busy.

The main through road in Riyad on a quiet day

The first site we went to was Kom Umm Gafar which is a very large mound with a modern water-treatment plant on one end of it. Before the plant was built the SCA had carried out excavations over the area and the trenches from this work could still be seen.

Kom Umm Gafar, view to the highest part of the mound with, in the foreground, the area excavated by the SCA.

We then drove south and had to turn off the tarmac road to go along a dirt track to reach Tell Ganayin, which was an extensive, but fairly level mound, covered in vegetation, so it was hard to see any surface traces. Although the track led directly to the tell we had to leave our car and walk for the last 10 minutes or so, and although it was quite hot, it was incredibly quiet and peaceful so we enjoyed the walk through the fields. Just before we reached the tell, we passed by some ruined mud-brick houses with an impressive pigeon house outside. We have seen very few mud-brick houses this year in the Delta – they are all being replaced by red-brick and concrete ones: behind these deserted houses is a modern multi-storey building which is probably the home of the same family who once lived in the mud-brick houses.

Tell Ganayin, mud-brick houses

When we returned to our car we found it had been surrounded by a large herd of animals, including cows, goats, sheep and donkeys, including a very attractive white baby donkey. They belonged to local Bedu whose tents we could see in the adjoining field, and had sought the same shade under the trees which made us select the parking place for the car! Two of the Bedu men gently encouraged the animals to part so that Jeff could, very slowly, reverse the car out, and back onto the track.

Our car surrounded by a mixed herd of animals.

The third site we visited was one of the many Tell Ahmars in the Delta. ‘Tell Ahmar’ means ‘Red Mound’ and most of them are so-called because the have many red fired bricks and sherds on the surface – usually they are Roman in date. However, this Tell Ahmar didn’t actually look very red at all! It was another large but fairly low mound with two modern cemeteries and another water treatment plant on it – also a pack of very noisy dogs!

The edge of Tell Ahmar, cut by fields and with a modern cemetery on top.

We finally got back to Kafr es-Sheikh about 3.00pm, very tired, but it had been an interesting day that enabled us to check out three more sites for the Society’s Delta Survey: www.deltasurvey.ees.ac.uk