A.J. Mills

The Dakhleh Oasis Project (DOP) is a study of an Egyptian oasis to determine its cultural evolution and parallel environmental evolution.  Data is collected by examining the surface of the area, through aerial photography, archaeological excavation, mapping, restoration, modelling, the examination of minute and large objects, comparisons, and teamwork amongst the variety of scholars who come to study the oasis in detail.  The field work is done with the permission and participation of Egyptian officials, as well a participating scholars from countries as diverse as Australia, Canada, USA, Netherlands, France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Britain, and others.

This international team began this study in 1978 with six members and now numbers well over 100 people.  In the oasis, the project is housed in two large buildings at 'Ain el-Gindi, near Mut the oasis capital.  Teams assemble in the oasis each winter between October and April.  There are geologists, botanists, zoologists, physicists, archaeologists, photographers, draughtsmen, conservators, surveyors, papyrologists, art historians, Egyptologists, epigraphers and students of various disciplines.  Daily, in the field camp, there is a transfer of information and ideas, and cooperation between various team members on problems that arise as the result of new discoveries.

The field work began in 1978 with a walking survey of the oasis landscape, when detailed observations of ancient sites and landscape indications and features were noted and discussed.  This occupied project members from 1978 until 1982.  A total of 450 ancient sites, dating somewhere between the Middle Pleistocene, 400,000 years ago,  when man first appeared in the oasis region, down to the present day.  Old Stone Age hunters, Neolithic settlers, ancient Egyptians, Romans, Christians, Muslims, have all been a part of the cultural evolution in the oasis region – truly a microcosm of the whole eastern Saharan and Egyptian landscapes.  Since 1982, after the completion of the walking survey, the project has undertaken various excavations to investigate various details of all the various aspects of our discoveries. 

Discoveries include the prehistoric rock art made by man during the Neolithic, which includes a wide variety of animals, both domestic and wild.  One of the most interesting of these are the many scenes of giraffes, being held by a tether held by a human; yet no physical remains of a giraffe have been discovered, despite the many other large African animals for which bones have been found.  During the Neolithic, many cultural traits first appear, which are followed, some 500 years later, in the Nile Valley.  At about 100,000 years ago, we have discovered that most of the Dakhleh Oasis was submerged beneath a lake which was at  least thirty-five metres deep.  There were at least seven stone-built  temples in Dakhleh, located in various settlements.  These date to the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, although two of them go back into Pharaonic times.  They are well made and decorated with relief carving.  There are in addition, several mudbrick temples, also of the Ptolemaic-Roman periods.  They are well made and decorated with relief carving.  There are, in addition, several mudbrick temples, also of the Ptolemaic-Roman periods, which are undecorated and were probably built by locals.  There is a large and important archive of 18th - 19th century documents of the villagers of el-Qasr, and there is an archive of Manichaean texts which comprise about one-quarter of all known texts of this Middle Eastern cult of the 2nd - 10th centuries AD.  Greek texts, written on thin boards include two bound books – the earliest codex books ever found in the world.  There is the only known temple dedicated to the god Tutu; and, at another temple,  a new  deity, Amun-Nakht, never before known to Egyptology.  There are many more.

Aims of the Dakhleh Oasis Project are many and varied and depend on the individual scholars who participate.  Discoveries are physical and intellectual, and will often be joined together.  A coherent picture of the whole, including the cultural and physical evolution of man in a changing environment is one goal we all share.  Restoration, both on paper and in the oasis is another.  So, we are restoring the multi-storey mudbrick houses of el-Qasr; a replica of  a Roman villa, complete with painted decoration on the inside walls, has been built on site at Amheida.  A decorated capital from the forecourt of the temple at 'Ain Birbiyeh is being recovered from its fallen location and will be rebuilt either at the site or at the new Dakhleh Oasis Museum.

Currently, there are some eight teams being fielded by the DOP.  These include that at the Islamic village of el-Qasr, the Pharaonic and Roman settlement at Amheida, the epigraphic study of the temples at Deir el-Hagar, Amheida, Mut el-Kharab, Ismant el-Kharab,and 'Ain Birbiyeh; excavation at the settlement sites at Amheida,  'Ain el-Gazzareen, Mut el-Kharab, Ismant el-Kharab. 'Ain Birbiyeh;  physical anthropology of the human remains at the cemeteries of Ismant el-Kharab; excavation of the Roman walls at el-Qasr; mapping and study of  stone quarries for temple construction; studies of texts in ancient Greek, in Coptic, and in Arabic languages; and a linguist studies the differences in the dialects between villages in the oasis.

Our publications are numerous, including several hundred in various academic and scientific journals, some sixteen monographs on various aspects of our oasis work published by Oxbow Press and by the National Archives Documentary Service in Cairo; museum collections in Toronto, at the Royal Ontario Museum, at the New Valley Museum in Kharga Oasis, and in the National Musaeum in Cairo. The project holds open meetings each three years as public symposia, which are also published.

Future plans are rather open-ended.  Our inclination is to follow the evidence we discover, which often leads into unexpected avenues and new ventures.

Dorothea Schultz

In 1979, while surveying the late antique city of Amheida (ancient Trimithis), a team of the Dakhleh Oasis Project discovered the upper part of lavishly decorated walls. The main building, including the decorated rooms, was subsequently excavated in 2004 and 2007 by a team from Columbia University, directed by Roger S. Bagnall (it is now a project of New York University). It turned out to be a fourth century ‘villa’, once occupied by a family of high social status (the owner was a city councilman).

The well-preserved decoration in four of the rooms depicts geometrical patterns as well as figurative scenes. Both the paintings in situ and the collected fragments pose considerable conservation problems; the layer of plaster is very thin and extremely fragile. The best way of conserving this precious building for future generations is refilling it with sand – after extensive documentation. 

Because this unique Villa would be destroyed by being exposed to the public, the plan was made to build a full size reconstruction of the main house. In order to recreate the full splendor of this building the decision was taken to reconstruct the painted decoration as well. The project is financed by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Cairo and administered by the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo. The Villa was built by Nicholas Warner and finished in 2009, next to the site of Amheida. By the beginning of this year the decoration team moved in and started with two of the main rooms, the ‘Green Room’ and the ‘Red Room’. The decoration consists mainly of geometrical patterns, including hundreds of circles, heartshaped petals and tens of thousands of dots. The most beautiful part is the border in the Green Room, a wavy band with birds, grapes and flowers.

In the meantime lots of work is done to put more of the fragments together in order to reconstruct the decoration of the Domed Room. Next year the decorators will move into this central hall of the Villa to start on the reconstruction of the intricate and rich decoration there.

In March-April 2004, a Belgian-Egyptian team, sponsored by the Fund for Scientific Research – Flanders and directed by Dirk Huyge of the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels, continued rock art research at the sites of El-Hosh, on the west bank of the Nile, about 30 km south of Edfu. In addition to further recording, excavations were undertaken at several locations in order to find archaeological traces of the creators of the rock art. These activities led, amongst others, to the unexpected discovery of an intact tomb of the Naqada II period.

The rock art of El-Hosh has already been the subject of a survey organized in November 1998 (Huyge et al. 1998; Huyge 2000-2001). On that occasion a multitude of sites with thousands of petroglyphs was located. Attention was paid mainly to the oldest manifestations of rock art in the area representing intensively patinated, mushroom-shaped, curvilinear and geometric designs (including possible representations of labyrinth fish traps), as well as a number of seemingly associated anthropomorphic figures and zoomorphs. These drawings occur at three sites: Gebelet Jussef, Abu Tanqurah Bahari and Abu Tanqurah Qibli. At El-Hosh, it has been possible, for the first time in African rock art research, to obtain direct ages (termini ante quem) for the rock drawings on the basis of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) 14C dating of organic matter enclosed in rock varnish [see Huyge et al.200; Huyge et al. 2002-2003]. The results indicate that part of the rock art at El-Hosh pre-dates the early 7th millennium BP 9mid 6th millennium cal BC), making it the oldest graphic activity thus far recorded in the Nile Valley.

Further surveying of the El-Hosh area in March-April 2004 has led to the discovery of several new rock art localities bearing an archaic repertoire of drawings. The most remarkable find, however, was a new petroglyph location at the southernmost tip of Abu Tanqurah Bahari. It shows several images of bovids executed in a ‘Franco-Cantabrian, Lascaux-like’ style. They are quite different from the stylized cattle representations in ‘classical’ Predynastic iconography of the 4th millennium BC. On the basis of patination and weathering, these bovid representations are definitely extremely old (possibly Late Palaeolithic or Early Neolithic?). They are comparable to similar bovid images that had been discovered in 1962-1963 on the opposite bank of the Nile, in the Gebel Silsila area (see Smith 1985).

With the intention to recover archaeological traces of the people responsible for the creation of the archaic rock art repertoire at El-Hosh, several soundings were made at the site of Gebelet Jussef. Three of the four soundings were made at shelter-like overhangs in the vicinity of rock art panels. Unfortunately, the shallow deposits in these shelters were thoroughly disturbed and no archaeological material was found in situ. The finds, mainly ceramics, indicate that the site of Gebelet Jussef was frequented throughout the Predynastic and early pharaonic periods. Traces of occupation phases which could be linked to the pre-7th millennium rock art repertoire, however, were not found.

In addition, a number of circular stone structures were investigated at the southern extremity of Gebelet Jussef. On the basis of the rough ceramics found in and near these constructions, these are probably ‘Bedouin’ and/or ‘Nubian’ in nature. Their function and age remain unknown. Below one of the structures, but evidently unrelated to it, an intact tomb was found, dug into the bedrock. This tomb is clearly of Naqada IIC age (c. 3500-3400 BC) and contained a skeleton and a number of grave goods including two small Rough jars, two large Red-Polished bowls and a superb Decorated vase. The latter item is decorated with boats, human figures and birds. The deceased faced west and was buried in a contracted position, the hands covering the face. Below the skeleton lay several well preserved fragments of a reed matting. According to a preliminary anthropological analysis (by Dr. Caroline Polet) the skeleton is probably that of a female aged between forty and fifty and with a stature of about 1.55-1.60 m. It is currently unknown whether or not this tomb indicates the location of a Naqada II cemetery.

References

D. Huyge, M. De Dapper, D. Depraetere, M. Ismail, E. Marchi, R. Mommaerts, I. Regulski and A. Watchman, Hilltops, Silts, and Petroglyphs: ‘The Fish Hunters of El-Hosh (Upper Egypt)’, Bulletin van de Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis/Bulletin des Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire 69 (1998), 97-113.

D. Huyge, ‘Rock Art Research in Upper Egypt: The Environs of El-Hosh. Report on the work done in 1998’, Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Egypte 76 (2000-2001), 45-52.

D. Huyge, A. Watchman, M. De Dapper and E. Marchi E., ‘Dating Egypt’s Oldest ‘Art’: AMS 14C Age Determinations of Rock Varnishes Covering Petroglyphs at El-Hosh (Upper Egypt)’, Antiquity 75 (2001), 68-72.

D. Huyge, M. De Dapper, E. Marchi and A. Watchman, ‘Les chasseurs de poissons d’El-Hosh (Haute-Egypte): l’art rupestre le plus ancien de la vallée du Nil’, in J. Polet (dir.), Afrique: Archéologie & Arts 2 (Paris, 2002-2003), 39-46.

P.E.L. Smith, ‘An Enigmatic Frieze from Upper Egypt : A Problem in Nilotic Rock Art’, in M. Liverani, A. Palmieri and R. Peroni (eds), Studi di paletnologia in onore di Salvatore M. Puglisi (Roma, 1985), 359-368.

Dr Kim Duistermaat (NVIC) en Niels Groot (TU Delft)

Whoever visited Fustat recently will have noticed: new concrete buildings with domed roofs are being built in the pottery quarter between Coptic Cairo and the archaeological site of Fustat. What are they for? And what is happening to the old pottery workshops? And why has NVIC started a new ethnoarchaeological project there?

Fustat, medieval Cairo, was famous for its beautiful glazed pottery. Since then, potters have always been working in this area of the city. Nowadays, the potteries of Cairo are still concentrated here. They used to be located around the mosque of Amr Ibn el-‘As. But when the SCA fenced off the archaeological site of Fustat, the potters had to move. Most of them relocated to the south, to an area called ‘Batn el-Baqara’. However, in 1999 the Egyptian government wanted to remove the potters here too: the black smoke of their kilns created too much pollution. The potters, together with a local NGO, developed a plan to modernise their workshops. At this moment, the old workshops are demolished to make space for new buildings. It is planned that the potters will return here, and work in more modern and cleaner circumstances.

‘Traditional’ crafts are interesting for archaeologists. It is the only way to directly observe techniques, the use of tools and space, how people organise themselves and what material traces their activities leave. The potters in Fustat were documented by ethnoarchaeologists twice before. A French-Egyptian team made a detailed study of the workshops, buildings, tools and products in the 1970’s. Most potters were then producing ‘olla’s’, water jars, that were fired in enormous kilns with two or three floors. In 1998, a small NVIC team visited the potters again for a short documentation. The production of water jars had stopped, and they were making a variety of pots. Today, the potters are producing a diverse range of garden pots, rooftiles, lanterns and garden decorations. The enormous kilns have disappeared, and only smaller kilns are used. Because of the future changes, the work of the potters will change tool. Some of them will not be able to bridge the period between the demolishing of their old workshop and the move to the new buildings. They will relocate to another area in Cairo, or leave the craft. Others will continue, but their work will change. They will use gas kilns, have a different kind of space, and perhaps cater more for a market of tourists.

To document the pottery workshops in Fustat one last time in detail, before these changes take effect, the NVIC started an ethnoarchaeological documentation project in 2008. The project is carried out in cooperation with Leiden University and the Technical University of Delft, and is sponsored by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Cairo. Based on archaeological questions, we are describing technology, use of space and organisation of the work. The descriptions are illustrated with maps, photo’s and video. The final publication will also contain information on the archaeological and historical information on pottery production in the area, and compare the current situation with the 1970’s. When the project started, about ten workshops were still active, of the more than 60 once located here.

Most of the fieldwork was carried out in October and November 2008. The Dutch team spent three weeks in Fustat, and consisted of A. van As, L. Jacobs (Leiden University) and Niels Groot (Delft University). They studies the techniques of production and the use of space. Three students of archaeology from Leiden assisted them (R. Zineldeen, N. Staring and J. Schoester). A visual anthropology student, F. Breeksema, recorded the work of the potters on film. The architecture was documented by D. Bakhoum and her assistants, while M. Kačičnik took care of the photographic documentation. K. Duistermaat is working on a study of the way production is organised, and P. Sheehan will provide an overview of the archaeological and historical sources for the pottery craft in Fustat.

During the project we were touched by the hospitality and willingness of the potters to assist us with our research, even when the whole group was roaming the area with a camera. They always answered our many questions in a friendly manner, and even if we did not have questions they were always ready to tell us all about their work.

Further reading:

Duistermaat, K. and N.C.F. Groot (2008), A new ethnoarchaeological documentation project at the Fustat pottery workshops, Egypt. Leiden Journal of Pottery Studies 24: 181-186.
Golvin, L., J. Thiriot and M. Zakariya (1982), Les potiers actuels de Fustat, IFAO Cairo.
Van der Kooij, G. and W.Z. Wendrich (2002), The potters of el-Fustat (Cairo) and el-Nazla (Fayoum). In: W.Z. Wendrich and G. van der Kooij (eds.), Moving Matters. Ethnoarchaeology in the Near East, Leiden: 147-158.