Excavations at Mendes, Lower Egypt.
Although the average tourist to Egypt spends almost all his time visiting the antiquities of
Upper Egypt, the Nile Valley, scholarship has long since realized the equal, if not overriding
importance of the lower Egypt, the Nile delta, in ancient times. Here were situated many cities of
political, cultural and religious importance, some of which have functioned at certain periods of
history as the capital of Egypt. Reduced today to ruin mounds of mud-brick rubble, they present a
challenge, but also a reward to the diligent excavator. These cities give abundant evidence of Egypt’s
relations: military, commercial and cultural, in ancient time with the external world of Phoenicia,
Greece and Rome.
For 19 years I have been excavating one of these cities, ancient Mendes, lying in the center of
the Nile Delta, midway between Cairo and the Mediterranean cost. The city has been occupied for
nearly 5,000 years, and even today could be said to continue to exist in the numerous villages around
the ruin mound. Our excavations have demonstrated the existence of human occupation from the
prehistoric period, c.4000BC., while the period of state creation, the advent of complex society and
the invention of the hieroglyphic script c.3100BC., is well represented. In fact we have recovered a
sequence of very early texts which illustrates the evolution of writing in Egypt. The thousand years
of the ‘Pyramid Age’, the Old Kingdom, is in abundant evidence with q faunal and palaeo-botanical
record that chronicles types of plant cover, land use and faunal population over this uninterrupted
time period. The city suffered an abrupt, though temporary, cessation of occupation shortly after
2200BE. [confirmed by Carbon-14 dating], when fire destroyed the local temple, and a massacre of
the inhabitants occurred. When revived in the second millennium BC. The city featured a large
processional temple, fronted by two pylons, with a long approach flanked by subsidiary temples.
From remote antiquity the inhabitants of Mendes had worshipped a ram god and a fish
goddess. The sacred rams had been embalmed and laid away at death in a special vault, each in its own
diorite sarcophagus. Immature fish of the schilby species, scared to the fish-goddess, had been
placed in pottery vessels and buried in a special part of the city reserved for the purpose.
Our excavations have been able to identify several harbours at the site, communicating with
the local branch of the Nile which provided ready access to the Mediterranean. Storehouses filled
with pottery have provided evidence of foreign trade in perfumes [for which Mendes was famous
throughout the classical world] and wine with the eastern and central Mediterranean. Sometime,
approximately in the 7th Century BC. Mendes became the eastern terminus of new east-west canal,
cut across the Delta from the city of Buto in the western Delta, to facilitate commerce and the
transfer of troops in both directions.
In 399BC, the thriving city threw up a number of families of great political power and for 20
years Mendes became the capital of Egypt. The tom of the founder of the [29th] dynasty, Neferites
I [399-393BC], was discovered by our expedition in 1993. Sadly it was not intact. Neferites had been
a ‘freedom fighter’. Instrumental in liberating Egypt from the yoke of the Persian Empire; and when,
in 343BC. The Persians succeeded in reconquering Egypt, they made a point of destroying his tomb.
After 205BC> Mendes began to decline. As the Mendes Ian branch of the Nile weakened and
moved way to the east, the great harbour silted up, and with its demise the commercial basis of life
in the city dwindled away. In the 1st century AD the city’s population began to diminish and its
industry decline; and the town centre moved south to what had earlier been a suburb of Mendes. By
the 4th century AD some of the older temples had been turned into churches.
Mendes is a cross section of Egyptian history. With no villages built over the ruins, it is
completely open to our exploration, a fascinating agenda of investigation remains to be acted upon;
urbanism inn a Lower Egyptian setting, town planning, the distribution of economies, house layout – all
these themes beckon enticingly!
Each year we offer a field school for academic credit in conjunction with a modern,
professional ‘dig’. The expedition is housed in our excavation ‘institute’ of 20 rooms, including sleeping
and eating quarters, a library. Laboratories, draftsmen’s rooms and pottery work-shop. Our
professional staff numbers historians, paleo-botanists, faunal experts, physical anthropologists,
geologists and ceramicists. [Not all are on staff during a single season, being present when lour
programme goals require their expertise]. Areas of research for this coming season of 2012 will
include
A] the clearance and partial restoration of ‘Temple T’ built by Amasis [569-526 BC]
B]the excavation of houses of the period 2300-2200BC.
Professor Donald Redford is professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at the
Pennsylvania State University and the director of the Mendes expedition, under the aegis and
sponsorship of the Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of numerous books and articles on
Ancient Egypt. Including A History of Ancient Egypt, Dubuque, 2005 and City of the Ram-man. The
Story of Ancient Mendes, Princeton 2010.