Event:

Evening at the OeAI Institute in Cairo

Date:

October 15, 2018, 18:00

Location:

OeAI Cairo ( 6A, Ismail Mohammed Street, Apt. 62, Zamalek, Cairo)

Organizer:

OeAW-OEAI

After a welcome address by the Austrian Ambassador Georg Stillfried Irene Forstner-Müller, Director of the OeAI in Cairo, will report about the latest activities of the OeAI in Egypt.

The evening will be concluded with a lecture of Nadine Moeller (Univ. of Chicago) on »The ancient town of Edfu during the Old Kingdom: New discoveries of the 2016 and 2017 seasons«. The ongoing excavations by the Oriental Institute team directed by Nadine Moeller and Gregory Marouard have during the most recent seasons focused on settlement remains dating to the Old Kingdom. Located 20 m to the west of the much later Ptolemaic temple of Horus of Edfu, excavations revealed several phases of domestic installations from the second part of the 6th Dynasty that covered an older administrative complex with several massive mudbrick structures dating to the late 5th Dynasty that had been installed directly onto the natural Nile sand deposits in an area never settled before that date. Based on their size, architectural details and related finds, the two large buildings are of official nature and constitute a newly founded settlement quarter in the ancient town of Behdet (Edfu). Among the finds are more than 220 clay sealings naming king Djedkare-Isesi (late 5th Dynasty, ca. 2434 BC), in addition to official titles that regularly mention a group of specialized workers involved in prospection and mining activities, the so-called sementiu. Additional finds such as numerous pieces of copper ore, important traces of metallurgical activities, Red Sea shells and a significant amount of Nubian ceramics found on the floor levels during the excavation further confirm the link to royal expeditions and mining activities in the Eastern desert areas.