Egypt Exploration Society

Development of the Delta Survey

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This reference collection of archaeological sites in the Egyptian Nile Delta was adopted by the  Society in 1997. It was accepted as a British Academy Research Project in 2007. The original core of the information was collected by Jeffrey Spencer over many years, later supplemented with contributions from others, acknowleged below. The purpose of the Society's Delta Survey was to assess the current condition of the lesser-known archaeological sites in Lower Egypt, initially by visual inspection, and to combine the results with information from published and unpublished sources. Well-known sites and those which have been the subject of extensive excavation are not considered a priority for this project since they are well-documented in other sources of reference. They have been simply listed without extensive comment, with linked pages of bibliography.

Many archaeological sites in the Delta were noted in the early days of Egyptology. They appear on the map of the Déscription de L'Egypte and numerous editions of maps produced at various scales by the Egyptian Government Survey of Egypt. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, brief reports on inspections of sites for the Service des Antiquités were published, particularly by Foucart, Daressy and Edgar The most recent maps of the Delta are those of the Egyptian Survey Authority 1:50,000 series, surveyed in 1992-93 and published in 1996. Their greatest value is in showing the changes brought about through recent development, particularly many new asphalt roads, although the maps are by no means up-to-date in this respect. Also shown are the regions of drained marshland in which sites have been lost, especially around the edges of the coastal lakes where land has been converted for fish-farming. Sites are indicated as white areas, but not named so consistently as on older Survey of Egypt maps. Errors in place names have been noted on the new maps and a few tells which are known to exist are not marked at all. Verification through on-site visits is still necessary for many locations, but the increasing availability of high resolution satellite photography has provided another valuable resource, particularly accessible through Google Earth ©

Since the EES survey was initiated the Egyptian Government has established the Egyptian Antiquities Information System for site documentation (http://www.eais.org.eg/), which is intended to become a Department of the Supreme Council for Antiquities (SCA) from late 2007. At present their data is strong on site location and property boundaries but archaeological information is being added. The EES survey is sharing its data with the EAIS. The first major publication of the EAIS, edited by Neguib Amin, The Historical Sites of Egypt, Volume 1, Ash-Sharqiyyah Governorate, appeared in 2006. The SCA has also produced through CultNat a set of four colour brochures for the Delta with site reference numbers and maps.

There have been two elements to the work of the Survey. The first stage of fieldwork consists of visits to record the present condition of sites in the region, which mounds still remain and which have been levelled to agriculture or overbuilt. Details being recorded include the extent of the sites, surface features, the date of any surface pottery, occurrence of stone blocks and the degree of recent attrition. The second stage is a follow-up visit to more promising sites for full mapping surveys. The following colleagues have been generous in providing information: Manfred Bietak, Edwin van den Brink, Renée Friedman, François Leclère, Christopher Kirby, Karla Kroeper, Marie-Dominique Nenna, Steven Snape, Neal Spencer and Penelope Wilson. The staff of the Supreme Council for Antiquities have been most helpful in facilitating visits to various sites, and we wish to thank particularly Mohamed Abdel Fattah, Mohamed Abdel Maksud, Sabri Abdel-Aziz Khater, Ibrahim Soliman, Atef Abu Dahap and Mohamed Kamal Ibrahim. For the considerable amount of data collected for the Delta Survey by Penny Wilson, see now http://www.dur.ac.uk/penelope.wilson/Delta/Survey.html