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Egypt features story
*Old Predynastic Maadi**
/by Jimmy Dunn/*
The archaeological site of Maadi, for which a modern suburb of Cairo
is named, is located on an east-west
oriented desert ridge between two wadis at the southern city limits of
Cairo. Regrettably, part of this Predynastic
site has already been ruined by
modern building activities, Pottery of Maadi origin and the remaining
area is under threat from the intrusion of this highly populated area of
Egypt.
Maadi is not only the name of an ancient Egyptian settlement, but is
also used to define a specific culture of the 4th millennium BC, though
by the middle of that period it had already been abandoned. It is
closely associated with Buto, the other Lower Egyptian stronghold of
early civilization which may predate Maadi, and might certainly have
existed concurrently with Maadi.
Parts of the Maadi site was initially excavated in 1918, and the results
of this investigation became public in a report to the International
Congress of Geography in 1925. Three years later, Egyptologist J. Lucuas
visited the site and identified three specific areas of settlement.
*Excavations*
Maadi, as well as two nearby necropolises, were extensively excavated by
M. Amer and I. Rizkana in cooperation with the Department of Geography
of the University of Cairo between 1930 and 1953. In the earliest years
of this project between 1930 and 1933, the excavations were conducted in
cooperation with the German Institute of Archaeology (O. Menghin, K.
Bittle). In total, there were eleven archaeological missions carried out
by the University of Cairo under the leadership of various Egyptian and
foreign prehistorians. Though this work came to an abrupt halt during
World War II, four volumes of research were published by various
specialists in the fields of natural sciences, pottery, lithic
industries, non-lithic objects and cemeteries. Unfortunately, Menghin
and Amer never published a definitive report on Maadi.
An overall plan of the area, without some modern excavations
Throughout this period, a part of the western section of the site was
occupied by a military camp and other structures, and was therefore not
accessible to archaeologists. However, in the mid 1980s, F. A. Badawy
finally received permission to excavate that area, which resulted in the
discovery of a very ancient stone building.
Currently, and in cooperation with the Supreme Council of Antiquities
and the University of Cairo, parts of Maadi are being excavated by the
German Institute of Archaeology in Cairo. In addition to sampling
various regions of the site, the stone building excavated by F. A.
Badawy has been cleared, and the adjacent area excavated to clarify its
stratigraphic relationship to the surrounding settlement.
So far, the findings of this work provide a picture of at least two
occupation phases, including one in which wooden posts of different
sizes, probably from huts and fences, storage jars fire places and small
mud lined pits, occasionally with burnt walls was discovered.
Substantial ash deposits also point to industrial activities.
There now is recognized two subterranean or semi-subterranean stone
buildings. The one originally excavated by A. F. Badawy is entirely made
of stone and was carefully plastered with Nile mud. It has a rectangular
plan with rounded corners and an entrance lined by walls from the north.
Its interior measurements are eight by four meters, with the floor
situated two meters deeper than the upper preserved edge of its walls.
So far, this building is completely unique among ancient Egyptian sites.
A second building has now also been discovered within the recent
excavation zone. It consists of an entrance corridor of approximately
six meters in length and a one to one and a half meter width, which
slopes to a depth of two and one half meters below the upper edges of
its walls. This corridor is accessible from the south by stone steps and
communicates with a cave-like main room that has not yet been fully
excavated. While the corridor is carefully line with plastered stone,
the main room appears to be simply cut into the bedrock.
This second building is similar to others that were found in the older
excavations in the eastern part of Maadi, which scholars have connected
to the chalcolithic Beersheva culture of Southern Palestine. There is no
doubt whatsoever that both buildings date to the Predynastic Period, and
thus far, they represent the earliest examples of the use of stone as
building materials known in Egypt.
*The Settlement*
The site of Maadi is located on a narrow ridge in the mouth of the Wadi
al-Tih. Though on the surface, it appears to have the typical
characteristics of a Northern Egyptian Predynastic farming village,
evidence unearthed in this location suggests otherwise. Certainly
agriculture was a primary economic factor in this settlement, but there
was also an emphasis on trade, metallurgy and foreign contacts that was
unknown in other northern sites.
Excavation of a house at MaadiBetween about 3600 and 3000 BC, a number
of innovations took place at Maadi that brought Egypt into the realm of
the international world. Trade dominated this settlement more than any
other contemporary sites, and it had few rivals in Egypt even during
later periods. Its location within the Wadi al-Tih, the main historic
route to the copper mines of the Sinai, together with the presence of
housing obviously of a foreign type and pottery, domesticated donkeys,
elaborate storage facilities and a well developed copper industry all
evidence the importance of it role as a trade center.
Maadi may have in fact originated in order to exploit the Sinai copper
mines. Unearthed tidbits in the area include copper bars that are
possibly ingots, bits of unprocessed, a miscast head of an ax, and even
a possible smelting area, originally identified as a pottery kiln.
However, trade may have predated Maadi's copper industry, considering
that metallurgy had developed first in other regions like the
Mediterranean and Iranian Plateau, and spread into Egypt through trade
with foreign lands. Hence, we may note that Maadi was a mercantile
community which invested its surplus wealth into metallurgy,
transportation and storage.
There can be little question that Maadi benefited from a very favorable
geographical position. Not only did it have access to the mainstream of
the Nile ,
just south of where it branches into the Delta, but from there goods
could reach the Mediterranean and of course there was also access to the
desert frontiers to the east through the Wadi al-Tih. Its ultimate
abandonment, however, may have been due to the ease with which its
location was imitated by the ancient capital of Egypt, Memphis
, located only ten kilometers
north of Maadi. Another contributory factor may have also been the fact
that after the unification of Egypt, its rulers sought to control and
exclude the nomads that undoubtedly provided considerable trade goods to
the area.
The plan of a foreign house at MaadiOne of the most obvious evidences of
foreign contact at Maadi is a unique type of dwelling that was
apparently imported from southern Palestine. Though most of the houses
in the settlement were typical of the usual Lower Egyptian variety,
having an oval shape with post walls and frames of mud-daubed
wickerwork, there were also true underground houses which were unique
among the villages of prehistoric Egypt. However, such houses did exist
at several sites around Beersheba in southern Palestine, leading
archaeologists to believe that they were imports from that area to
Egypt, perhaps even housing foreigners at Maadi.
These foreign style structures were constructed with a pit dug two to
three meters into the subsoil. There dimensions could be as great as
three by almost five meters. Their entrance consisted of a slanting
passage with steps that were sometimes faced in stone. Around the walls
of the pit, posts were driven into the floor in order to support a roof
that was probably made of light materials such as woven mats, the
remains of which were discovered in some of the buildings. In the
center of the floor, a sunken hearth was constructed.
Excavation photo of a subterranean houseWithin these dwellings,
considerable debris was unearthed during excavations, supporting the
claim that they were houses as opposed to some sort of ceremonial structure.
However, the subterranean houses are not the only evidence of foreign
contact at Maadi. With the exception of "Fayoum A" culture locations,
Lower Egyptian sites usually only reveal storage pits and jars
associated with individual households. Though such facilities also
existed at Maadi, there were two specialized storage areas located at
opposite ends of the site. On the southern boundary of the settlement
were large, underground storage cellars while on the northern border
there were rows of great storage jars, known by the Greek name, Pithoi,
that were sunk up to their rims in the soil. The latter pithoi mostly
contained foodstuffs such as emmer wheat and barley as well as cooked
mutton, animal and fish bone and shellfish. Non-food items included
small pots, flints, spindle whorls and jar stoppers. On the other hand,
the cellars on the southern boundary of Maadi contianed luxury goods,
suggesting a fairly well organized community based system of storage and
exchange.
The storage cells measured one to two meters in depth, and could reach a
maximum length of almost four meters. Within these cellars, there were
at times large pithoi jars sunk into the floors and covered by stone
lids. There is also indication that the cellars were at one time roofed
over with light timbers. There was also at least one cellar with a
retaining wall built of stone, which was one of the earliest uses of
that material for building purposes. Some of the cellars were also
linked together, which might indicate an increasing wealth of their
owners or the settlement at large.
While many of the cellars had been disturbed or filled with trash during
later periods, surprisingly, there fortunately remained samples of their
original content, providing clues to the goods that were once flowed
through Maadi. In one of these cellars that remained sealed, there was
unearthed a number of well made stone jars and vases, carnelian beads
and a decayed, unidentifiable white substance. In other cellars, jars
contained grain and in several examples as many as twelve containers
were still in place.
Well made stone jars at Maadi perhaps indicate that at least here Lower
Egypt had finally attained the technical competence in stone grinding
found in the south, provided they were manufactured in this region.
These items, manufactured from a variety of stone including granite,
gneiss, diorite, Fayoum basalt,
limestone and alabaster, were both well made and attractive. They were
usually fashioned as elongated cylinders with flat rims, small handles
and flaring, ring-like bases. These were undoubtedly used for commercial
purposes, while local limestone was roughly shaped into dishes, bowls,
cups and lamps for domestic use.
Palestinian lug-handled jarCarnelian beads may have possibly served as a
crude form of trade currency. The beads that were found in the sealed
cellar were almost certainly made from material remote from Maadi. It
may have originated in the Eastern Desert, and the beads may have also
been manufactured elsewhere and brought into Maadi by nomads. These
attractive red-orange, translucent carnelian beads were in considerable
demand in the ancient Middle East and South Asia during the fourth and
third millennia BC. They were also easy to transport and relatively scarce.
There was also found the distinctive black-topped red ware of Upper
Egypt, which is not surprising considering the site of ancient Gerzeh
lies only about thirty kilometers south of Maadi. Other southern
imports included the ubiquitous slate pigment palettes.
Another indication of Maadi's role in foreign trade is the so-called
Palestinian pottery unearthed at this site. Maadi contained several
ceramic type that, like its subterranean houses, have precedents in the
the Beersheba area of southern Palestine. They included ledge-handled
jars, round-body lug-handled pots and loop-handled pots with light bodies.
This pottery corresponds well with the discovery of some of the earliest
domesticated donkey remains known in prehistoric Egypt Even today, jars
are strapped on the backs of donkey or camels by nomads and transported
with ease over long distances, and evidences the method that allowed the
foreign pottery to be transported over their long journey form southern
Palestine.
The Maadi South cemetery
*The Maadi South cemetery*
As stated earlier, Maadi choose to invest most of its wealth in trade,
storage and metallurgy, rather than fancy tombs and luxury goods as did
their southern counterparts in Upper Egypt. However, they were not
without some quest for prestige, and just bout the time that foreign
contacts accelerated around 3,600 BC, they began to adopt many of their
southern neighbors A burial within the cemetery burial customs, though
always on a poorer scale. Unfortunately, the early excavations at the
three necropolises located in the area were not very well documented,
and thus scholars have found it extremely difficult to date many of the
burials.
Two of the cemeteries located in Wadi al-Tih and Maadi North, may
probably be dated later than the Predynastic period. The necropolis that
probably was used by the townspeople at Maadi, Maadi South, and which
was luckily the best reported, is located about a kilometer southeast of
the town on a low rise in the mouth of the Wadi Digla. Here, Amer and
Rizkana unearthed some 468 burials between 1952 and 1953, all
distributed over little more than an acre of land. Besides the human
burials there were also burials for thirteen gazelles and one dog. At
least one of the gazelles had its throat cut in what might have been a
ritual sacrifice. The poorest graves were segregated at the western end
of the site where the fourteen animal burials occur.
The prehistoric date for this cemetery is supported by the contents of
its graves, including artifacts that closely resemble those excavated in
the settlement. These included any number of pots of the familiar oval,
ring-based variety on smooth red and polished black wares, stone vases
of alabaster, basalt and limestone, flake and blade tools, trapezoidal
and rhomboidal palettes with beveled edges similar to those of the
Naqadan culture, shell pigment containers and combs, bracelets and
combs. Of course, there were also carnelian and other colored stone The
Museum at Maadi beads. Interestingly, little copper was discovered,
presumably because it was simply considered too valuable for trade
purposes to bury with the dead.
With the coming of the unification of Egypt, Maadi disappears from our
history of Egypt, but it certainly contributed to the future of the
empire with its unique cultural and knowledge of trade with the outside
world.
As a side note, there is, or was at least until recently a museum at
Maadi. It is both difficult to find and difficult to reach, having no
signs and no real road. However, we are told that those truly interested
in the archaeological site would do very well to seek it out.
References:
*Title* *Author* *Date* *Publisher* *Reference Number*
Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, The Shaw, Ian; Nicholson, Paul 1995
Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers ISBN 0-8109-3225-3
Egypt Before the Pharaohs Hoffman, Michael A. 1979 Barnes & Noble
Books ISBN 0-88029-457-4
History of Ancient Egypt, A Grimal, Nicolas 1988 Blackwell None Stated
Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, The
Shaw, Ian 2000 Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-815034-2
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