Kom el-Hisn: Excavation of an Old Kingdom settlement in the Nile Delta (original) (raw)
Archaeological Heritage & Multidisciplinary Egyptological Studies 3
Rivers, changeable features of earth surface and in the meantime fixed conspicuous elements of any landscape, have been chiefly chosen by human settlements as natural corridors for their expansion, trade and culture. Nile is a paradigmatic example of such a twofold function of water courses, having created with its peculiar regime of discharge suitable conditions for the development of a great civilization which played a central role in the man history. Significant examples of geo-archaeological researches, conducted for more than 20 years along the Nile valley, will be reported and commented, taking into account their representativeness and distribution in time and space.
Egypt and the Levant, 2017
The cemeteries of the southern Egyptian Nile Valley have for a long time taken up a major role in the reconstruction of the emergence of social complexity during the 5 th and 4 th millennia and of the early territorial state of Pharaonic Egypt. Whilst this data is very substantial and highly important, it has overshadowed other DUFKDHRORJLFDO LQIRUPDWLRQ WKDW LV HTXDOO\ VLJQL¿cant and that actually challenges certain interpretations deriving only from mortuary data. This paper aims at considering archaeological evidence primarily derived from a number of settlements and from material culture of the Neolithic, Chalcolithic and until the Early Dynastic Periods to better balance and contextualise the mortuary evidence of these periods. It will discuss and interpret these on the background of current scholarship on material culture, interregional exchange and social complexity and will especially seek to answer questions concerning the socioeconomic context of institutionalised leadership and its potential links to early kingship. The paper will also address the high degree of variability in archaeological data and thereby contribute to a growing scholarly consensus that Egypt's path to civilisation and statehood followed a number of different, often unrelated, trajectories within a regionally variable cultural system in the Egyptian Nile Valley.
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.
What Came Before: Ancient Egypt’s Roots in Neolithic North Africa
Presentation to the Egyptian Study Society (Denver, Colorado), February 17, 2015. Early scholars were puzzled by the sudden appearance of civilization in the Nile Valley. Where did those people come from? How did they become so civilized so fast? Modern excavations are providing the answer: the people came from the Western Desert, graduates of a climate-driven accelerated learning program. Interdisciplinary teams of archeologists, anthropologists, geologists, paleobotanists, paleobiologists, archeoastronomers and climate scientists are painting a fascinating picture of cultural adaptation and displacement, as people responded to an accelerating set of environmental challenges before transplanting themselves to the Nile Valley. We’ll explore evidence of cultural linkages from settlements and cemeteries; rock art, megalithic stonework and stellar orientations; and trading networks that fed the desire for ancient forms of consumer “stuff.” We’ll also look at some of the ways this new evidence is changing our understanding of early Egyptian culture and how human civilizations evolve.