A.J. Spencer
An investigation of Tell Yetwal wa Yuksur was undertaken as part of the programme of the EES Delta Survey for the general documentation of Lower Egyptian sites, especially those which have received little or no attention. The initial aims were to make a topographic and magnetic survey of the mound, and to note surface features. The site is located 2 km north of El-Masara and 4.8 km north-west of the larger town of Bilqas. It is marked by a low mound which rises to a maximum elevation of about three metres above the surrounding cultivation. In 2009, the site measured just over 400 metres from north to south and about 360 metres from east to west but like most Delta sites, it was larger in the past. An irrigation channel has been cut through the western side and it seems that a part of the site to the west of this has been levelled to agriculture. There is a small village on the eastern edge, at the end of a dirt-track from the nearby asphalt road. The surface in the higher parts of the site, towards the south end, is covered by loose dust which contains many fragments of red-brick and pottery, although most of the pottery is in a much eroded condition. On the highest point of the mound a steel survey-marker of the type placed by the Egyptian Government Survey Department was found under the dust, made from a section of railway line. The position of this marker was included in our new survey. On old maps from the early twentieth century,1 the site was named Tell Kurdud, but the name had changed to Tell Yetwal wa Yuksur by 1907. This unusual name arises from a local legend concerning a granite block lying on the mound, which alleged that the stone varied in size over the course of the day.
Fig. 1: The so-called column on the surface
The stone in question
was long thought to be part of a column, but in fact it is a slab embedded
in the ground, with only the top visible, rounded by erosion. It is broken
into two pieces with a combined length of 5 metres and a thickness of 60cm
(Fig. 1). This slab is one of a group of some 20 large blocks of red granite
which lie on the surface in the northern part of the site, with others
half-buried. Among the other blocks are some which may once have had roughly
rectangular shapes, but the surfaces have been eroded to rounded contours
(Figs. 2 to 7). Some of these blocks have been moved in modern times, and
one is now lying just off the edge of the site, in a ditch beside the fields.
In the light of the clear Late Antique occupation of the site, it is probable
that this granite was used in the construction of a church, but of course
it would have been quarried originally for a Pharaonic temple. Whether
that temple was at Tell Yetwal wa Yuksur or at another site in the vicinity
is not possible to say. The fact that the surviving stone is all granite
is a typical effect of the quarrying of ancient monuments, where the limestone
is the first material to be removed.
Fig.2 |
Fig. 3 |
Fig. 4 |
Fig. 5 |
Fig. 6 |
Fig. 7 |
An examination of
pottery fragments on the surface of the mound revealed pottery from the
Late Roman Period, but no certain older pieces in the accessible areas.
Some fragments of red-slipped wares of around the fifth century, occasionally
embellished with Christian motifs, were noted (Fig. 8). The quantity of
sherds available for study on the surface was limited and many of these
had been so broken up by erosion and salt action that they were of little
use for dating. More fragments were found in the earth thrown out from
the recent cutting an irrigation channel along the western edge of the
mound. On the surface of the site, there are also fragments of corroded
bronze, glass fragments and Roman fired bricks.
Fig. 8 |
The only previous documented work at the site was in 1907, when Mohamed Chaban noted a large piece of inscribed stone in the mound. This find was reported to the Service des Antiquités and the stone, identified as part of a sarcophagus of the queen Wadj-Shu, was cleared in preparation for transfer to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.2 Edgar appointed Antoun Youssef, Inspector of Tanya, to dig around the area of the discovery in the hope of finding adjoining fragments, but no more pieces were retrieved. The excavation did however reveal the foundations of a building of the Roman Period with walls of baked bricks and a floor of reddish mortar. The foundation contained some limestone blocks, one of which bore remains of Pharaonic decoration.
In March 2009, an
area of 4.4 hectares of the mound was surveyed by magnetometry, including
most of the western side of the site. The south-eastern part of the mound
is occupied by a modern cemetery and is not, therefore, available for mapping.
Although there are only two clusters of relatively recent tombs in this
cemetery, dating from the 1990s, a much larger area exhibits evidence for
the presence of older tombs, with traces of decayed superstructures and
grave-hollows visible. The results of the magnetic mapping at the south
were not so clear as hoped, owing to the large amount of fired brick fragments
in the surface dust, which, because of their high magnetism, interfered
with the readings and made features difficult to identify. The survey of
the lower ground to the north-east produced better results and the outlines
of several large buildings were revealed, arranged on a south-east to north-west
alignment (see fig. 1 on the Yetwal wa Yuksur details page). These structures
include at least three rectangular buildings, each of which is well over
20 metres in length. They have thick walls and are certainly more than
ordinary houses; they may be administrative buildings or some other kind
of official structures. Once the position of these buildings had been located
on the magnetic map, it was possible to see their presence from surface
traces on the ground (Fig. 10). Deposits of water-laid mud have filled
the lines of the walls, after the wall foundations had been robbed out.
Approximate measurements obtained from the surface traces and the magnetic
map showed that the more northerly building must have had an interior length
of about 29.5 metres and a width of 15.5 metres. It is very likely that
one of these buildings is the same as that found in the work carried out
at the site for the Service des Antiquités in 1907.3
Fig. 10: Site of Building A |
Fig. 11: Wall-trench in Building A |
Fig. 12: The NE wall-trench of Building B |
Fig. 13: Plaster floor in Building B |
In the Spring of 2010, an additional area of 0.32 hectares was added to the magnetic map made in the previous year. This very small area was selected as a test to check whether any better results might be obtained in the lower ground between the ancient buildings found in 2009 and the village. In fact, no additional structures were identified so it was decided not to pursue magnetic mapping any further. Instead, the foundations of the large buildings identified by the magnetometry of 2009 were examined by small test-trenches in an attempt to determine their date from stratigraphic evidence. This excavation revealed that robbers' trenches had been cut along the walls to remove the building material after the abandonment of the buildings. The removal had been quite efficient and the trenches had been left open to fill up gradually with mud washed in by the rain. It was the bands of sterile mud in the former wall locations that were actually being detected by the magnetometry, but the effect is still to reveal the positions of the vanished walls. The first test-trench was made on the southern wall of Building A. This revealed the water-laid mud in the original location of the wall, with more compact fill containing fragments of fired bricks around it. The section in Figure 11 shows the position of the wall and the edges of the robbers' trench cut to remove the masonry. This trench was 2.5 metres wide at the top, but the original width of the actual wall must have been about 1.4 metres. Robbers' trenches are always wider than the walls they intend to remove, to allow room to work. Little more information could be retrieved from this building, since it lay at a low level, so work was transferred to the large Building B to the south (Fig. 12). The southern wall of this building has a gap in it on the magnetic map, possibly marking the excavation of 1907, especially as the surface at this point is covered by vegetation, suggesting prior disturbance of the ground. A 3 x 3 metre trench on the north-east corner of the building revealed the former location of the wall, filled with mud as in Building A, surrounded by compact fill with brick fragments. The empty mud in the former positions of the walls had preserved an impression of the angle of the corner. The wall seems to have been of greater thickness than that of Building A because the trench cut to remove it was some three metres across, so the wall itself may have been over two metres thick. A second test of 4 x 2 metres was cut some ten metres from the corner along the north-east side of the building, where the ground level was higher. This revealed part of a plaster bedding layer for a floor inside the building, cut all along one side by the trench made to remove the wall, and by later pits on the other (Fig. 13). The surviving strip of plaster had a maximum width of 178cm. Excavation beside the remains of this plaster revealed the presence of an earlier plaster floor below a layer of fill. The depth between the two floors was only 10 cm. From the fill around the remains of the floors came many pieces of red-fired bricks (size: 22 x 11 x 9cm) and a small quantity of pottery fragments of Late Roman date. From the fill on and around the upper plaster floor came a few small pieces of painted plaster, some of which bore both red and blue paint and may in fact have come from the walls of the building. Although all the walls have been destroyed, the material left around them indicates a Roman date for these structures. The lower floor had been built above a deep mass of compacted mud, probably the remains of a mud-brick wall belonging to an older archaeological level below the building. There was a thin stratum of fill between the base of the plaster and the top of the mud layer, no more than 15cm thick. The area occupied by the mud brick shows that this wall must have been over two metres in thickness, but an exact measurement was not possible owing to the north-east side having been cut by the trench made to remove the wall of the building. Like all robbers' trenches, it was cut with sloping sides, one of which has sliced the mud brick at an angle and so removed the original edge of the brick wall (Fig. 14). On the other side, the face of the wall had again been cut, this time by a pit driven down through the floor above. But at the west end of the trench the intact original face of the mud-brick wall was found, descending vertically and buried in a soft fill of earth (Fig. 15). No pottery or other material was recovered to indicate a date for the brick wall in the lower level. On excavating to greater depth, the foundation-level of the mud brick was found at a depth 40cm below the base of the plaster floor, overlying a stratum of fill which contained broken fragments of limestone.
1 Survey of
Egypt 1:100,000 map, 1916.
2 Edgar, C.C.
with Maspero, G., 'The sarcophagus of an unknown queen', ASAE 8 (1907),
277-80.
3 Ibid 277.
Fig. 14: Mud layer under plaster floors |
Fig. 15: Face of mud brick on the south west side |