It was less than a decade ago that I wrote an article for Watani International about a shift in my research focus as an archaeologist long bound to the west coast of North American to ancient Egypt due to a serendipitous series of events
It was less than a decade ago that I wrote an article for Watani International about a shift in my research focus as an archaeologist long bound to the west coast of North American to ancient Egypt due to a serendipitous series of events. Today, I am the expert on human and animal remains for the international archaeological project at Tell El-Hibeh headed by Dr. Carol Redmount of the University of California, Berkeley. Since 2003, I have spent nearly every summer at the tell, trying to help Carol and her team with the field analysis of human mummies, skeletons, and animal remains (bones, shells) from ancient refuse heaps, the latter to learn more about the animal foods that were important in the diet of the site occupants. However, subsequent to the recent political revolution in the country, Hibeh has become the target of a gang of “mafia-like” looters, who, with nearly ten thugs led by a criminal named Abu Atia, have illegally ravaged the site in search of gold and marketable antiquities.
Dr. Redmount, with a small team of archaeologists from U. C. Berkeley, had left for Egypt on February 14 of this year anticipating a productive study season at the site. I was scheduled to join her with a graduate student of mine later this month. However, everything changed dramatically when Dr. Redmount discovered that the site was being systematic looted by armed criminals, threatening to shoot anyone who interrupted their illicit activities. What is worse was that no one was doing anything about it. The local police are unmoved, despite the efforts of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. Sadly, the Minister of Antiquities and even the military are motionless. And with each new shovel full of soil that lands in the back-dirt pile, another piece of Egypt’s priceless history is lost for good.
“Hibeh is vitally important to understanding the character of ancient Egypt in the Third Intermediate Period, a very confusing and confused historical era for which only limited archaeological resources exist,” Dr. Redmount stated in a recent press release. “Archaeology is controlled destruction, but looting is obliteration. It destroys the irreplaceable, nonrenewable cultural resource that belongs to humanity.”
Three hours south of Cairo, Tell El-Hibeh can be found on the east bank of the Nile across from the city of El-Fashn. The archaeological site contains the remains of a walled provincial town with a temple, homes, industrial facilities, and perhaps the remains of a military fort. Including the many cemeteries that surround the site, it is over two square kilometers in size. Based on current information, El-Hibeh was established in the 11th century BCE and continuously occupied up through the eighth century CE. Represented here are the remains of the late Pharaonic, Graeco-Roman, Coptic, and early Islamic peoples. What makes Hibeh especially important is the Third Intermediate Period component and its relative intactness compared to many other sites in the region. This time period represents the last of the “Dark Ages” of ancient Egypt and is poorly known from the archaeological record elsewhere.
My work at Hibeh over the past nine years has focused largely on a Byzantine Period (Coptic) walled cemetery just outside the north gate of the tell. In an effort to salvage Coptic burials from much older looting episodes, we began to remove the bodies to safety for analysis. During this process, we discovered evidence of a mass grave. The bodies were treated in an interesting fashion when they were prepared for burial, being wrapped in linen that was then held in place by red, black, and checkered linen cords wrapped in rough diamond patterns common to many Roman Egyptian burials. Subsequent analyses, including x-rays and autopsies on two of the “mummies” showed that warfare on the tell might have led to the necessity of a mass burial. The autopsies revealed that one of the bodies dating to the 4th century CE, had been purposely mummified, but not in the pagan fashion that was common up to the end of Roman times. This body, and several others, suggest that the early Copts were transitioning from pagan methods of postmortem body preparation to a method that still mummified the body (having it buried packed in natron, the salt used for millennia to create Egyptian mummies), but were in line with the edicts of St. Anthony and the early Christian church. This was new and interesting information, and it was coming from Hibeh.
No telling what other secrets of the past are still to be discovered at El-Hibeh, but without a stop to the current massive destruction, one of Egypt’s most important sites providing the story of the latter days of this civilization may forever lay silent, a giant pile of moldering bones, tattered mummy cloth, and scattered potsherds.
(For more information and photographs of the destruction, go to the Save El Hibeh Facebook page available online)
Robert Yohe is an archaeologist and professor of anthropology at California State University, Bakersfield, and has been working with Coptic and other burials at Tell El Hibeh since 2003.