EGYPTIAN
ARCHAEOLOGY
A new Ptolemaic temple at Gebel el-Nour From 15 April to 15 June 2014, excavations were carried out by a team of the Ministry of State for Antiquities at the site of Gebel el-Nour, in the area of Beni Suef inspectorate, the ancient 20th province of Upper Egypt. Mansour Boraik relates the discovery of this new monument and presents preliminary results. The excavation area is located about 500 m to the south of a modern village known as Gebel el-Nour, approximately 25 km to the south of Beni Suef on the eastern bank of the Nile. The archaeological area of Gebel el-Nour is bounded in the east by the Eastern Desert way that links Cairo and Upper Egypt; its western borders reach to about 1 km to the east of the Nile. The southern end of the Gebel el-Nour archaeological area is surrounded by agricultural lands. All in all, it measures about 49 acres. The 2014 excavations concentrated on an elevated area called ‘el Perba’ by the local people, near the western end of the area, measuring about 10 acres. During September 2013, thieves dug at el Perba, searching for gold and treasures. They exposed the remains of two limestone walls, forming an L-shape. Two weeks later, they dug another pit, located about 15 m to the east of the first one, again discovering remains of limestone walls. The Inspectors of the site informed the general directors of Beni Suef, resulting in the proposal of a salvage excavation project to determine the function of the limestone architectural elements and the dating of this monument. Stratigraphic analysis of the primary archive generated during fieldwork carried out in Gebel el-Nour area has so far revealed eight phases. These are local phases and we have not yet tied them into the overall site-wide phasing. The main phase represents the construction of a rectangular limestone building orientated east to west and measuring approximately 16.5 m (N-S) by 25 m (E-W). According to the hieroglyphic texts combined with scenes of gods, goddesses and kings and inscribed on the outer face of the eastern external wall, the building was a temple built during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, dedicated to Isis. The inscriptions, mainly from a soubassement procession, give the name of the site: ‘Isis is Mistress of Merwa’, a locality apparently unattested until now. The temple comprises 27 limestone walls, forming about 17 rooms. All of the internal walls are about 0.5 m wide, while the external boundary walls are 2 m wide. The plan of the temple may be described as follows:
R.1 could be a hypostyle hall (no column bases), followed by two main halls preceding the sanctuary. Sanctuary (R.4) with four lateral rooms (R.11-14), two on each side of the sanctuary Crypts inside the width of the back wall of the sanctuary, with access from the northern chapel (R.13). A second crypt inside the wall between the rooms R.5 and R.7 Phase II represents a modification process to the Ptolemy II temple, apparently carried out by the inhabitants over two sub-phases (designated Phase IIa and IIb by the team). Phase IIa is defined by the construction of a limestone floor located directly against the outer faces of the temple’s external limestone boundaries. This floor is very visible in the northern, southern, eastern areas outside the temple. Its limestone blocks are very smooth; some of them are rectangular, while the others are semi-square. Phase IIb is defined by a sequence of ten square red brick pillars that had been constructed on top of the limestone floor of phase IIa. The builders of these modifications thus constructed a very compact foundation of limestone blocks to carry the brick pillars. Six of them are located directly to the north of the temple, two abut the outer face of the eastern external limestone wall, and one abuts the outer face of the southern external limestone wall, while the final one has been exposed within the temple, located at the entrance that leads from Room 11 to Room 10. The westernmost pillar of the northern group stands about 1.2 m from the outer facade of the northern wall and abuts the eastern face of a possible main hypostyle hall. At the same time, we observed that the fourth pillar located to the west on the northern group seems to be located about 0.35 m from the external face of the northern wall. We believe that the temple was in very good conditions and its walls still reached their full height at the time of the brick pillars’ construction. Our hypothesis depends on the architectural design of the easternmost pillar at the northern part of the site. It abuts the corner formed by the eastern and northern external walls of the temple.The pillar survives to a height of about 1.5 m, indicating that the walls at that time were at least as high. We assume 45