13th
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
