EGYPTIAN
ARCHAEOLOGY
Mendes: city of the ram-god Since 1990 a joint mission of three north American universities, Washington, Illinois and Pennsylvania State, has undertaken excavation and survey at the ancient site of Mendes (Tell elRuba). The director of the project, Donald Redford, assesses the results achieved to date. The annual campaigns of the joint mission at Mendes have focused on three areas, all on the north of Tell el-Ruba: the royal necropolis, the riverine harbours and the temple of the ram-god Banebdjed (‘the Ram, the Lord of Djedet’) and its associated buildings. Totally unexpected was the depth and r ichness of domestic and cultic occupation of the third millennium BC. A sounding immediately west of the rear of the temple has uncovered six building phases ranging from the First Dynasty through to the early First Intermediate Period, with sealings of the Fifth Dynasty king Neferirkare (third phase) and Aha and Den of the First Dynasty (sixth phase) yielding a relative sequence. Corings beneath the First Dynasty level indicate that human occupation extends down to basal sand nearly 4m below. The original settlement, it now appears, was founded on a series of levées left by the wandering Mendesian branch of the Nile (rather than on a Pleistocene ‘turtleback’), and centred upon a shrine dedicated to Banebdjed.The earliest shrine, presumably of prehistoric foundation, has not yet been
reached in excavation, and may have been swept away by later renovations. Then, at some time dur ing the Old Kingdom (in the Fourth Dynasty?) a 40m wide mudbrick podium, over 2m high, was built over the original shrine, and a new temple was erected upon it. This was destroyed at the Human bodies within the fosse surrounding the north bastion of the end of the Sixth Dynasty in a con- temple podium; end of Old Kingdom flagration which was associated with some sort of massacre: the bodies of over 35 human victims were uncovered, sprawled in front of the podium on the north side. While some poor mud-brick walls built above the rubble suggest that an attempt was made to revive worship during the First Intermediate Period, it was not until the Twelfth Dynasty that a wholly new temple was built (see box, p.10) though this was almost entirely swept away by later constructions.The Hyksos Period has left no evidence, while the Eighteenth Dynasty also is conspicuous by its absence from the site’s archaeological record, although texts ind icate that the temple continued to be occupied. It is only with the Nineteenth Dynasty that major renovation and expansion was contemplated at the site. Ramesses II, probably late in his reign, planned (but barely carried through before his death) the construction of two pylons fronting the temple on its north side. One, 10m wide and over 50m long, stood flush with the outer face of the Twelfth Dynasty façade, while the second, 6.5m wide and slightly longer than the first, stood 35m further north. If a peristyle had been intended for the court thus enclosed, it may never have been completed. Both pylons were constructed of limestone, but most of the masonry was carried off in the Middle Ages for lime-burning, leaving only the sand-filled foundation trenches to indicate where they had once stood. A fortunately surviving gateblock from the outer pylon names both Ramesses II and his son Merenptah; while the latter is mentioned
Topography and development of the tells at Mendes The site of ancient Mendes (measuring c.3km north to south and slightly less than 1km east to west) is today marked by the ‘twin’ mounds of Tell el-Ruba and Tell Timay which were originally joined but are now separated by an area of farmland. The site is c.20km south-east of the modern city of Mansura on the Damietta branch of the Nile, and approximately 55km due south of the Mediterranean coast. In antiquity it was the main town of the Sixteenth Nome of Lower Egypt and one of the Delta branches of the Nile, the ‘Mendesian’, ran past the city, serving as the community’s riverine transit corridor, north to the Mediterranean and south to Memphis. Because of the varying strength of its discharge, however, the Mendesian branch tended to meander over time, carving beds originally west of the city, but later settling to a course on its eastern side. East-west communication was aided by a canal which ran from Buto in the west Delta and terminated at the north-west corner of Mendes. From the second century BC the local watercourses began slowly to dry up and by the time of Christ the Mendesian branch had retreated eastward, leaving the city isolated. By AD 641 the northern mound (Tell el-Ruba) had been completely abandoned, and, four centuries later, the southern mound (Tell Timay) followed suit. In spite of this somewhat chequered history, the site of Mendes is ideally suited to excavation. No modern occupation encumbers the summit of Tell el-Ruba, and even Tell Timay is largely devoid of dwellings. Moreover, the fact that until the early twentieth century extensive marshes abutted the mound meant that it was difficult of access for scholars and treasure-hunters alike, and thus the ancient site enjoyed a kind of natural protection. Extensive digging began with Edouard Naville in the late nineteenth century, and was put on a firm scientific footing by Donald Hansen and Bernard Bothmer, whose New York University team conducted excavations intermittently from 1963 to 1980.
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