Sometimes X does mark the spot …
On Christmas Eve, 2010, my team and I were nearing the end of the winter season of the Moalla Survey Project (a Yale University sponsored expedition that I directed under the auspices of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities). In preparation for surveying an area north of Moalla, I consulted a century-old article by Georg Schweinfurth, a German botanist and explorer, entitled “Die Umgegend von Schaghab und el-Kab (Ober-Ägypten).”
Schweinfurth was interested in the unique geological formations within the wadi, which he called Schech Nassr, and during his survey of the site, he discovered more than three hundred dry-stone structures (dry-stone, meaning without the use of mortar—the most common type of stone construction in most periods of ancient Egyptian history).
Schweinfurth noted that the pottery associated with the buildings could be dated to the fourth through fifth century CE, and presciently suggested that the settlements were constructed by the Eastern Desert-dwelling people known as the Blemmyes (ancestors of later Beja groups). A few pages of informative text, a schematic drawing of several of the buildings, and a single photograph of the site were it—the sum of knowledge about an extensive desert settlement—that, and a sketch map.
Until, that is, December 24, 2010—when Reis Abdu Abdullah Hassan, his sons Mohammed and Ahmed, and Mohammed Mostafa Abdullah (inspector of antiquities for the Esna region), and I piled into a Series III Land Rover and drove south from Luxor just after dawn. Once we were south of Debabiya (Debabieh on Schweinfurth’s map), we turned left into the desert, then bore right at the first large wadi. The excitement built as we kept going south, but our anticipation did not go unfulfilled for long. About a mile into the wadi, there they were—the “ruins” on Schweinfurth’s sketch map. Here, X did mark the spot.
And what a spot it was! At first, we could see a group of a dozen or so buildings on flat terraces, built up the slope of the wadi, some with rooms radiating from large boulders. The further we traveled south into the wadi, the more buildings we saw. Although identical in color to the rocky desert surroundings, once we started looking for the walls, suddenly dozens came into view, and we could make out walls beneath overhangs or in crevices that were not otherwise noticeable.
Mohammed Abdu Abdullah standing among the structures at M10-11/S1
The stones of the structures are not shaped or carved, but carefully chosen flat, rectangular rocks from the surrounding area. The walls are often preserved to their original height of 1.2 to 2 meters. Some of the structures engage with natural boulders, walls either abutting or even continuing over large rocks. The corners of walls can be surprisingly square—what looks like a fairly rectangular room from the ground can prove to be an even more precise shape when seen from above in a 3D model.
On this first day of the rediscovery of the site that Schweinfurth first noted, the Moalla Survey Project team began the immense task of recording the ancient material (which continued for several field seasons). Here—as at nearly every ancient Egyptian site—the most common artifact is broken pottery, and it would not be until we cleared some of the buildings that anything beyond ceramics would be discovered. The site was given the technical designation M10-11/S1 and the modern name of the area Wadi Mahamiyyet ed-Debabiya.
Structure 7 at the Late Antique site M10-11/S1 north of Moalla.
The most noticeable sherds were those from large amphorae that are distinctive to the Late Antique period. One type is manufactured from a silt that fires brown in color with deeply ribbed walls and another type is made from a pinkish-red marl clay from the region of Aswan. The former are known as the “Late Roman Amphora Type 7,” and they were made throughout the Nile Valley and also appear as imports elsewhere in the Late Roman and Byzantine world. Throughout the site the ceramics can be dated from about 400 to 750 CE, and in addition to amphorae, sherds from cooking pots, cups, and bowls were found in every building and on the surface.
Nearly intact amphorae in situ within a cellar at M10-11/S1 (scale is 30 cm)
When surveying—especially in the desert—you can never know what you will discover. The goal of the Moalla Survey Project was to survey, map, and record sites of any date in the region of Moalla, a site about eighteen miles south of Luxor (for an overview of the first season of work, here). The most famous monument at Moalla is the tomb of Ankhtyfy, a provincial ruler (nomarch), general, and all around remarkable individual who lived about 2100 BCE, during the civil conflicts of the First Intermediate Period.
The Moalla necropolis is covered with Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom remains, including a previously unknown Pan Grave cemetery dating to the Second Intermediate Period. My academic research until 2010 (and still today) encompasses the Predynastic Period through Late Period, with particular focus on the New Kingdom. But what I found on that Wednesday—Christmas Eve, 2010—took me to a much different period in time and the exciting challenge of publishing the results of my survey (as I did here and here [with John Coleman Darnell and Alberto Urcia]).
From 2015 onwards, as a team member of the Elkab Desert Survey Project, I would be part of many additional exciting discoveries of more Late Antique desert settlements, including one with associated rock art—a first for this type of site. The presence of handmade, decorated ceramics, specific to groups who inhabited the Eastern Desert of Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia, at the newly discovered sites in the Elkab area—combined with similar sherds from Wadi Mahamiyyet ed-Debabiya and previously known settlements—allowed the builders and occupants of the sites to come increasingly into focus. They were the Blemmyes, a people known from demotic, Greek, Latin, and Coptic sources, including letters written from the King of the Blemmyes to other individuals in his community. We can plan their living spaces, handle their cooking pots and storage jars, and study their unique ceramics. When we combine textual sources with the archaeological evidence, these ancient desert-dwelling people come to life again.