Settlement at Dendara 2016, OI Annual Report 2016-2017, p. 33-47 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Near Eastern Archaeology , 2017
The archaeology of Pre- and Early Dynastic Egypt has been one of the most active area in Egyptology in the past few decades, but despite the intensification of the fieldwork research in the Nile Delta or Middle Egypt, our knowledge of early Egyptian settlements in Upper Egypt is still limited to several prominent sites, some under excavation since the late nineteenth century. The work undertaken by a team from The Oriental Institute—on the concession of the French Archaeological Institute (IFAO)—in the intramural area of the Hathor and Isis sanctuaries at Dendara has uncovered the earliest archaeological levels discovered to date, with several strata from the Naqada IIC–D and Early Dynastic periods. These discoveries push back the date of a first permanent community at this site by more than five hundred years and add an important point on the map of the predynastic occupation of Upper Egypt, all the more significant since the site became one of the main provincial centers, the capital of the 6th Nome of Upper Egypt, in the following centuries.
From Microcosm to Macrocosm. Individual households and cities in Ancient Egypt and Nubia, 2018
Recent fieldwork at the two major settlement sites in southern Egypt have provided new data concerning their respective foundations and long-term developments during the 3rd millennium BC. While both towns gained the status of provincial capitals during the early Old Kingdom, their initial settlement and long-term evolution show some interesting differences but also share many commonalties. Those developments seem to be related to significant changes in the floodplain regime and the course of the Nile river but there are also indications that more general trends, for example a population increase linked to the establishment of a local elite and a dynamic and sustainable regional economy, played a role in the sudden expansion of these sites at the end of the Old Kingdom. The archaeological fieldwork conducted by the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, has focused on specific areas of these two settlements that had been founded directly on the natural bedrock constituting newly established settlement quarters at different stages of their development. At Tell Edfu, the Old Kingdom town gradually expanded northwards and westwards during the Old Kingdom making use of the increasingly flood-free zone, which can be seen by the newly excavated settlement quarter dating to the late 5th Dynasty that was situated less than 20m to the much later Ptolemaic temple. Further expansion of the town occurred during the very end of the Old Kingdom / early First Intermediate Period (c. 2200 BC), a time that has usually been associated with political and economic crises which might have been triggered by the effects of a short time climate change. By this time, the town had reached its maximum northern and western limits, which remained relatively stable for centuries to come. The ancient city at Dendara has much older roots dating back at least to the late Predynastic period but it also saw a major expansion to the east of the Roman temple enclosure during the late Old Kingdom/First Intermediate Period transition, which was inhabited until the early Middle Kingdom. The new fieldwork conducted at both sites offers a glimpse of the organisation of the new town quarters in previously unsettled areas. These two examples of growing urban centres at the end of the 3rd millennium BC are especially interesting since this particular time frame corresponds to a politically troubled period that led to a fragmented state with multiple power centres. However, from an urban perspective, cities in southern Egypt seem to demonstrate a true resilience in a time of relative prosperity and expansion.
Settlement at Dendara, OI Annual Report 2015 2016, p. 35-48
Dendara (Tentyra, Iunet) is one of the major archaeological sites north of the Theban region and the ancient capital of the sixth nome of Upper Egypt, Iqer, the Crocodile nome. The site is located 55 km (34 mi) north of the Luxor area and 5 km (3 mi) south of the modern town of Qena. Situated on the " West Bank " from an ancient Egyptian perspective, Dendara lies south of the river, in a curving bend of the Nile, the only part of the valley where the river runs from the east to the west (fig. 1). Today the site is positioned along the desert fringe of the Nile valley floodplain. It seems quite likely that the river — currently situated 2 km to the north — flowed much closer to the site in ancient times. Well known by its sanctuary complex of the goddess Hathor, which dates back to the late Ptolemaic and early Roman periods (fig. 2), the main temple is one of the most iconic and the best preserved, with the Ptolemaic temple at Edfu-Behedet. Those two sanctuaries, the temple of Hathor at Dendara and the temple of Horus in Edfu, were always considered as sister-sites sharing a close religious connection. The triad of Edfu (Horus, Hathor, Harsomtus/Ihy) was honored in both temples and every year in the month of Epiphi (Season of Shemu), when the Nile waters were at the lowest level, the " Feast of the Beautiful Reunion " was celebrated. The statue of Hathor left its temple and traveled upstream by boat to the south in order to join her consort Horus in Edfu. But this highly spiritual relationship between the two sites can also be found in a more historical and archaeological aspect, with a very similar evolution of both sanctuaries and urban settlements. The new project of the Oriental Institute at Dendara is therefore narrowly interconnected to the ongoing work conducted by Nadine Moeller and Gregory Marouard at Edfu, which focuses on the extensive urban remains founded on the tell, directly next to the Ptolemaic temple. By combining these two complementary urban excavations and two sister sites, the Oriental Institute has a unique opportunity to examine on a deeply comparative level the archaeological data from two provincial capitals with the aim to better characterize the multiple facets of the urban phenomenon in addition to the process and dynamics of the development of the agglomerations of Upper Egypt over more than three thousand years, from their Pre-dynastic origins to the end of the pharaonic times. Originally engaged in 2012 with two preliminary seasons of reconnaissance survey (2012 and 2014), the Oriental Institute (OI) reached an agreement with the French Institute for Oriental Archaeology (IFAO), in order to work on its archaeological concession, investigated since the 1930s. The specific focus of the OI project lies in the study of the very poorly known settlement remains, covering the periods from the origins to the Christian period, as well as the interconnections between the civic and administrative spaces with the religious structures. In addition, as have been investigated in Edfu for a couple of years now, the various phases of enclosure and town walls, which mark the phases of extension and contraction of the site, will be under investigation as well at Dendara. The Oriental Institute program is a part of a collaborative venture that regroups the projects of major institutions in Egyptology on the concession of the Institut français d'archéologie orientale (IFAO).
UZK 35, Denkschriften der Gesamtakademie 60, 2010, 103-124, 2010
bibliography is available at the excellent Amarna-project website: http://www.amarnaproject.com; for the importance of Amarna for settlement archaeology s. also SHAW 1995. 7 BIETAK 1979a, WILSON 1960 For the latest bibliography s. www.auaris.at. 9 The recently challenged dichotomy planned versus organic cities (SMITH 2007) may well be applied, however, to the archaeological evidence of Tell el-Dab c a .
The Archaeology of Urbanism in Ancient Egypt
2016
In this book, Nadine Moeller challenges prevailing views on Egypt's non-urban past and argues for Egypt as an early urban society. She traces the emergence of urban features during the Predynastic Period up to the disintegration of the powerful Middle Kingdom state (c.3500–1650 BC). This book offers a synthesis of the archaeological data that sheds light on the different facets of urbanism in ancient Egypt. Drawing on evidence from recent excavations as well as a vast body of archaeological data, this book explores the changing settlement patterns by contrasting periods of strong political control against those of decentralization. It also discusses households and the layout of domestic architecture, which are key elements for understanding how society functioned and evolved over time. Moeller reveals what settlement patterns can tell us about the formation of complex society and the role of the state in urban development in ancient Egypt.