Carol A. Redmount

Funding for this season's fieldwork is being provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and private donations. The project is directed by myself and by Dr. Renee Friedman, a former Egyptian Archaeology Ph.D. candidate in the Near Eastern Studies Department, now a research affiliate at UC Berkeley.

Tell el-Muqdam is a large site, with existing remains covering some 30.426 hectares (304,260m2). In antiquity the site was even larger, but modern agricultural fields and the adjacent village have nibbled away at (and occasionally gobbled) the edges of the site, considerably reducing the size of the mound. Archaeological investigations of Muqdam during the 1800s were casual, large-scale, and archaeologically inefficient. They were also tremendously destructive, since the early explorers kept virtually no records of their work. As a result, beyond the mention of various inscribed items deemed important, we know almost nothing of what they found.

The last large-scale excavations at the site were by Edouard Naville in 1892; and the last officially sanctioned undertaking (apart from some scattered activities by the Egyptian Antiquities Organization in recent years) was a salvage excavation in 1915 of a possibly royal, possibly Twenty-third dynasty queen's tomb. Illicit plundering of the mound has been erratic but continuous, despite the efforts of the Egyptian authorities-the site has been officially protected since the late 1800s-and numerous artefacts of varying character and date have made their way onto the international antiquities market. According to the local villagers, a cache of statues from Muqdam was smuggled out of Egypt as late as the 1970s.

From relevant historical records, we learn that the ancient Egyptian name of the site was probably T3-Rmw (Land of the Fish), which is known as the center of a powerful Delta kingdom in the fragmented Third Intermediate Period (@ 1069-664 B.C.). It has also been suggested by some that Muqdam was the seat of the Third Intermediate Period's Twenty-third Dynasty in the eighth century B.C. By Ptolemaic times (332-30 B.C.) the city was known by its Greek name, Leontopolis (City of the Lions); Leontopolis was the capital of the Leontopolite or Eleventh Lower Egyptian Nome (a nome was roughly the equivalent of one of our states). It is as Leontopolis that the site is mentioned in Strabo's Geography. References to the city occur sporadically in other classical and coptic documents.

Based on our trial visit to the mound, as well as our study of the historical documentation of and previous finds from the site, we initially identified three major goals for the project. Very little is known archaeologically or otherwise about Egyptian urbanism during the first millennium B.C., and even less about cities in the Delta in any time period. Since we were dealing with a large, comparatively well-preserved chunk of an ancient Delta city, which by all indications had significant remains dating to the first millennium, we designed our work with the aim of contributing to an understanding of the history, development, and character of Egyptian urbanism. Second, Muqdam is located on the southern end of the Mendesian Nile branch (long since defunct), and controlled an ancient and strategic trade route. We therefore sought to investigate the characteristics and importance of Mediterranean trade as reflected in the site. Finally, we hoped our work would shed additional light, both archaeological and historical, on the poorly understood, badly documented, and under-researched (archaeologically challenged?) Third Intermediate Period.

Our first two years of fieldwork have been directed towards basic exploration of the site in order to generate a base-line understanding of the mound and its development. In this way we have also been able to initiate more intensive activities at appropriate times and in appropriate areas. The results to date follow:

1. The first scientific topographic map of the site has now been completed. Mr. Joel Paulson, a former UC Berkeley Egyptology student who is now a licensed surveyor, has produced the map utilizing a total station and various computer programs, including a copy of AutoCAD donated to the project by AutoDesk. Mr. Paulson is still fine-tuning his final product by experimenting with computer graphics programs.
   
2. A regional survey of the area surrounding Muqdam has highlighted the extent of site destruction over the years. Of a total of 24 sites documented at the turn of the century, only 9 survive today, mostly in sadly reduced states. Two of the survey sites were located one kilometer or less from Muqdam, and were probably associated with the larger city. One of these survey sites produced predominantly Third Intermediate Period pottery; unfortunately the area has reverted to the private sector and been turned over to local farmers for agricultural use.
   
3. Site characterization and intra-site survey activities are being undertaken by a variety of non- and minimally destructive methods in addition to traditional excavation. Systematic surface collection (rendered problematic by the heavy vegetation covering the site, primarily the quite nasty halfa grass and camel thorn) and auguring were carried out along individual grid lines running the length and width of the site. Selected additional areas were examined in a similar fashion. Brian Muhs, formerly an undergraduate Egyptology student at UCB and now a Ph.D. candidate at the Univ. of Pennsylvania, serves as site epigrapher and has recorded all inscribed material lying on the mound's surface, including a red granite torso of Ramses II (@1279-1212 B.C.) and a red granite block with part of the titulary of Ramses II. Surface collection has produced material dating predominantly from the Saite (@ 664-525 B.C.) through Late Roman/Coptic (@ fourth through seventh centuries A.D.) periods. The soil auguring has indicated that the site continues far below the water table, which in summer ranges from about 0.75m to 3m below surface level, to depths of 3m and more. At no point did our auguring reach the end of cultural deposits. Finally, a preliminary magnetics survey using a portable gradiometer was undertaken by Dr. Maury Morgenstein of Geosciences Management Institute. Unfortunately, results of this preliminary study indicated that, for a variety of site-specific reasons, magnetics are of limited use at Muqdam.
   
4. Last, but far from least, we have opened test excavations at a number of different locations spread across the tell. In this way we have begun to identify different functional and temporal zones preserved at the site. To date, we have recovered remains dating to the Roman, Hellenistic, Persian, and Saite periods, the character of which ranges from domestic, to industrial, to monumental, to possibly cultic. Our excavations also have been rich in small finds (processed by Joan Knudsen of the Phoebe Hearst Museum who is our registrar) which include a series of small erotic figurines, mostly male; a number of terra cottas, including several horse and rider figurines that are one of the hallmarks of the Persian period in the eastern Mediterranean and an occasional sculpture fragment, as well as glass, amulets (including a wadjet eye mold), and stamped jar handles originating outside Egypt.

What have we learned so far? Muqdam seems to have been a major urban and probably administrative center in the Persian period (sixth and fifth centuries B.C.). We have found occupation of this date at broadly scattered locations in the tell; the depth of deposit is impressive-at least 2-3m in places; and we have evidence of functional differentiation at various locations (industrial, administrative or ceremonial, and domestic). The Hellenistic remains seem to be largely gone and are probably lost to research; they would have overlain the Persian period deposits, and we know that the site has been much reduced in height over the past two centuries. The Roman city seems to have been founded along the southern edge of the earlier city mound and not placed on top; consequently considerable Roman remains are preserved. Anything earlier than Persian or transitional Saite-Persian times lies below the water table. Contacts with the broader ancient Mediterranean world can be seen in the pottery and some of the other finds.

So, as we enter our third season of work, we find that some adjustments to our initial goals are in order. Although we have found little material dating to the Third Intermediate Period, our Persian period remains are unexpectedly impressive (and ubiquitous). As with the Third Intermediate Period, little is known archaeologically of the Persian period in general, and even less of the Delta region. Consequently, we are now working to shed archaeological light on this under-represented time period. Our goals of investigating Egyptian urbanism and trade/interconnections remain. And it has now become clear that since so much of the site's history lies below the water table, we must begin to devise means to deal with this problem and investigate its parameters. As one of my former field instructors put it, "The answers lie below!" It will be interesting to see what new discoveries this season brings.