Naukratis, ‘Mistress of ships’, in context (2015) (original) (raw)
Naukratis was an important hub for trade and cross-cultural exchange long before the foundation of Alexandria. Established in the late seventh century BC as a base for Greek and eastern Mediterranean traders, Naukratis also functioned as the port of the royal pharaonic city of Saïs. Previous fieldwork by Petrie and Gardner (1884–1886), Hogarth (1899–1903) and Coulson and Leonard (1970s– 1980s) concentrated particularly on the central areas of the town. Recent investigations were undertaken by the Supreme Council of Antiquities within the surrounding villages of Rashwan, Abu Mishfa, Gebril Abbas, Hassan Kasim and El Baradany, directed by Mohammed Aly Hakim. The early excavations were pioneering for their time, revealing a wealth of information, but left many questions unanswered; their significance and their effect on scholarship have been discussed in recent publications by the British Museum’s Naukratis Project. In October 2012 and April 2013 two brief seasons of new fieldwork at the site were carried out by members of the Naukratis Project in collaboration with the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA). The key incentive was to gain new and additional contextual information about Naukratis as part of the on-going reassessment the site, and to assess the potential of the site for a possible larger-scale fieldwork project. Specifically, our primary objectives were to undertake preliminary investigations of the full extent of the city and its development, its urban structures, palaeo-landscape and position in the system of waterways in the Nile Delta—pressing research questions that could not be answered solely through our on-going reassessment of the nineteenth century fieldwork at the site.
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This volume presents the results of a research project extending over four decades on the identification, location and character of the archaeological sites of Lower Egypt, continued since 1997 as the Egypt Exploration Society’s Delta Survey, supported by the British Academy. Data has been gathered from bibliographic sources, dedicated fieldwork and information from Egyptian and foreign missions to present a body of material previously available only in summary online. The present volume provides all the information in enhanced and extended form, with descriptions of each site, noting especially changes in condition over time, previous discoveries and current fieldwork, together with key references to bibliographic or other sources. This is an essential index of the ancient settlements of the Delta, alerting archaeologists and historians to the large cities, small towns, fortress and temple sites that covered the Delta in antiquity.
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