Naqada tombs uncovered in Egypt's Daqahliyah

Four pre-dynasty tombs have been uncovered at Tel Al-Farkha in the Nile Delta 

By Nevine El-Aref , Tuesday 7 Jul 2015 

A Polish mission at Tel Al-Farkha in Daqahliyah has discovered four pre-dynastic tombs, Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty announced on Tuesday.

Eldamaty said three of the tombs are in a very poor condition and include child burials. Meanwhile the fourth tomb is in very good conservation condition and can be dated to the Naqada IIIC2 era.

The minister told Ahram Online that the tomb is a small mastaba with two chambers. The southern one was filled with 42 clay vessels, mainly beer jars, bowls as well as a collection of 26 stone vessels of different shapes and sizes. Some of them are cylinder and globular. A collection of 180 small carnelian beads is also among the deceased funerary collection. The corpse of the deceased was also unearthed in the northern chamber.

Mahmoud Afifi, head of the Ancient Egyptian Antiquities Department at the Ministry of Antiquities, pointed out that the most important discovery was the remains of a brewery with fragments of two vats surrounded with multiple clay and burned fire-dogs.

Head of the Polish mission, Marek Chlodnicki, told Ahram Online that on the eastern sand pile located on the northern and eastern sides of the Naqada III mastaba, the mission discovered the remains of two huge buildings. The first is a rectangular shaped structure, with very thick walls and a row of rooms located on the eastern side of a wide courtyard, raised in Naqada IIIA1 period.

The second is a rounded structure, located on the north-eastern slope of the sand pile, built during the second half of the First Dynasty. Chlodnicki said that the rounded structure consists of double adjacent mud-brick walls, each 95cm thick, with the interior seven metres in diameter. Close to the rounded building, a unique ceramic big stamp with hieroglyphs was discovered. 

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/134767/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/Naqada-tombs-uncovered-in-Egypts-Daqahliyah.aspx

Poles reconstructed houses of the first Egyptians

Virtual 3D model of more than 5 thousand years old Egyptian homes, discovered during the excavations at Tell el-Farcha in the Nile Delta, prepared by Jacek Karmowski, PhD student of the Institute of Archaeology of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków.

Source: J. Karmowski

"We associate the architecture of ancient Egypt primarily with stone construction - due to the most recognizable structures left by this civilization: the pyramids and monumental stone temples" - Jacek Karmowski told PAP. "In fact, the contemporary villages and towns were dominated by houses made of mud bricks" - he added.

Structures built with such bricks are not particularly durable, unlike to those made with stones. Durability of the building material ensured their present, in some cases very good state of preservation. "It must be remembered that the stone architecture is a special, cult type of Egyptian construction, associated with religion and belief in the afterlife" - explained Karmowski.

Work on the reconstruction of non-existent mudbrick structures really began during the excavations - the way of conducting excavations and documenting discovered layers is important. The scientist traced the visible relics of bricks and outlines of houses from the functioning of the settlement with a total station laser and imported to a computer with CAD software - although archaeologists still usually draw on excavations in the classical way, using pencil and paper. With specialized software, he combined these data with photographs taken during field work.

One of the world's oldest breweries reconstructed

Over 5.5 thousand years old brewing installation discovered by Polish archaeological mission at Tell el-Farcha in Egypt has been reconstructed in 3D by Karolina Rosińska-Balik, PhD student at the Jagiellonian University Institute of Archaeology.

"The presented reconstruction is a hypothetical assumption based on preserved structures of similar analogous buildings at both Tell el-Farcha and other brewing centres in Upper Egypt" - reserved the archaeologist.

The installation consists of three vat pits and measures about 3.4 by 4 m. The entire structure, with plan reminiscent of a three-leaf clover, was surrounded by a wall with a height of up to 60 cm. Vat pits were also separated from each other with low, narrow walls.

In order to stabilize the vessels used for brewing beer, base was used in the form of a solid clay, which was surrounded by a clay ring with a clear break.

"The purpose of this solution was probably better air circulation, which in turn would allow better control of constant temperature. Such base was usually surrounded with two concentric rows of bricks with D-shaped cross-section, designed to sustain the vessel" - explained Karolina Rosińska-Balik.