Tell el-Ginn project

Fig. 1: General view of the Gezira of Tell el-Ginn, 2001.

Tell el-Ginn, meaning “Djinn’s Hill”, is located in Lower-Egypt in the north-eastern Delta around 150 km from Cairo . In the 4th millennium this site was situated along a tributary of the Nile and on the banks of the Mediterranean Sea (the present-day coastline is 50 km to the north).

It was professor Lech Kryzaniac, director of the Polish School of Egyptian Prehistory, who brought the site to our attention during the Poznan Symposium on Prehistory (Poland, 2000). Professor Kryzaniac suggested that Tell el-Ginn was very promising , having visited the site in 1981 while excavating the neighboring site of Tell es-Sabaa Banât. Tell el-Gin is indeed located around two kilometers to the north-east of Tell es-Sabaa Banât (close to the Minshat Abou Omar village), and risks being destroyed due to the extension of dwellings and agriculture in this area .

Archaeological work was performed by German excavators between 1977 and 1984 . Recent graves (Greco-Roman) and ruins of a contemporary dwelling capped the upper layers of the site. The excavations then led to evidence of a cemetery linked to the Upper-Egyptian civilization of Naqada, whose earliest graves date to Naqada IId (around 3400 BC) and whose most recent graves date to the beginning of the first Egyptian dynasties. These discoveries were considered sensational at the time, as it was the first time that Naqadan graves from that early period were discovered in Lower Egypt.

Fig. 2: Map of the location of the Tell el-Ginn site (Delta oriental).

The GREPAL visit at Tell el-Ginn in 2001.

Like innumerable sites of the eastern Delta, Tell el-Ginn’s outer appearance is that of a great sandy hillock in the midst of cultivated fields. The area’s farmers call this geological formation “Gezira” (“Island”), and English-speakers call it “Turtleback”. This hillock is around 5 meters higher than the surrounding fields, and is around 900m long by 600m wide, and looks basically like a sand dune running from east to west.

The only known archaeological activity at Tell el-Ginn is limited to a few surveys undertaken by professor Labib Habachi in 1952, which revealed graves dating to the end of the 4th millennium. The archaeological material, while not published, is preserved at the Ismailia Museum. This small museum, that we have also visited, preserves several pre- and protodynastic objects from old excavations in the region. We recognized pottery from El-Beida and others from Tell el-Ginn . The material excavated at Tell el-Ginn is made up of pottery, stone vases, and a fish-shaped schist palette. This material is characteristic of the Naqada IId2-IIIc1 period (around 3400-3000 BC).

They also told us that this mechanical delving had unearthed ceramics as well as fragments of faïence amulets (Roman ?). They also mentioned that there has been no archaeological intervention on the site in the last 50 years.  

Our surface survey on the Gezira revealed Copt, Greek, and Roman ceramics. Such material can be found on the entirety of the site’s surface. This survey also yielded skeletal remains of animals and a high level of crude ceramics, as well as stone architectural elements indicating an “urban” occupation of the site over several periods.

The stone elements include column bases and shafts in pink granite, the remains of a historical period temple. Some of the alignments could indicate that this temple, reduced now to near-oblivion, was built on the eastern edge of the hillock. Other blocks, particularly column fragments, are no longer in their original place and lay near to the temple. Traces of cutting at the center of several column segments point to their transformation into grain millstones after the abandonment of the structure . These granite blocks, without markings or decoration, cannot currently be dated precisely. With the exception of small fragments of limestone emerging at places from the ground, no large limestone block appears have been preserved on the site’s surface. In line with a longstanding Delta tradition, they were probably the targets of lime-kiln burners. We know through the history of the eastern Delta sites (particularly clearly observable at San El-Haggar/Tanis) that as during the Roman period, kiln-firers sound it easier just to use the limestone blocks from temples rather than carving them out of quarries

The earliest layers of the Delta sites date to the beginning of the 4th millennium, revealing a frequentation of this region by Levantine populations. These populations can be traced on the site of Buto I by their material culture. The archaeological artifacts includes several pottery groups, both typologically and technologically linked to Palestinian productions. The petrographical analysis demonstrates that they were locally made in Nile clay. Apparently, these groups cohabitated in the villages among Egyptian populations, in the Nile tradition. These facts perhaps would indicate that a segment of a Palestinian chiefdom migrated toward the Delta at the end of the Palestinian Chalcolithic period (around 3900 BC). These culturally Palestinian elements were settled in a less technologically advanced area, devoid of the potter’s wheel and metallurgy.

A second migratory wave from the South Levant seems to have reached the south of the Delta after the fall of the Palestinian chiefdoms. Ma’adi has produced elements of material cultural linked to Levantine population groups dating to the beginning of the Early Bronze Age I (EB Ia1), around 3700 – 3600 BC. The most spectacular fact is clearly the local adoption of Palestinian architectural models. At least one semi-subterranean structure made of stone slabs, of a sub-rectangular shape (probably storage pits), adopt the traditional shape of dwellings from the beginning of the Palestinian Early Bronze Age I . Another characteristic of the Ma’adian civilization is the practice of copper metallurgy, the earliest such practice n the Nile valley. Lastly, we note the spectacular development of animal burials associated with funerary offerings. At Heliopolis, as demonstrated by the Debono’s excavations it appears that animals (goats and dogs) were buried in a special area of the cemetery.

Our knowledge of the Delta cultures after the fall of Ma’adi and before the expansion of Naqadan culture into Lower-Egypt remains limited. On the other hand, the following phase is well represented by Tell el-Ginn’s neighboring site, that of Minshat Abou Omar. The culturally Naqadan identity of Minshat is underlined by funerary deposits, and it seems to have been settled by populations from Upper-Egypt. The earliest tombs (Minshat Ia) sometimes feature weapons (rippleflake knives, pear-shaped maceheads) which might point to settlement by force. If these hypotheses are correct, we can consider Minshat as a kind of Upper-Egyptian outpost/colony settled in the eastern Delta on the trade routes leading to Palestine. Its establishment corresponds to an expansion phase of Upper-Egyptian civilization into the Delta beginning in Naqada IId (around 3300 BC).

Fig. 7: Grave 787 of Minshat Aou OmarI, a site located 2km to the southwest of Tell el-Ginn. Presence of a small decorated baratte typical of the mid Early Bronze Age I in Palestine (around 3400 BC).

Given its position in the eastern Delta, Tell el-Ginn would certainly have played a part in the busy inter-regional trade, which poses questions on the relationship between Upper and Lower-Egypt, the nature of the relationship to the east of the Delta, as well as that of the origin of the Lower-Egyptian civilization.

Tell el-Ginn: a promising an untapped site requiring multi-disciplinary research.

Egyptian archaeology has long focused on cemeteries, better preserved and easier to exploit, particularly in Upper-Egypt. Very few sites in Lower-Egypt actually have multi-disciplinary teams working to resolve questions of dwellings and their environment. Tell el-Ginn, by its geographical position (the easternmost site of the Delta) could testify with relationships beyond Egypt.

The relationship with the East is indeed one of the major phenomenon in the history of the region. The excavation of Merimde Beni Salame, a Neolithic site, the most ancient discovered to this day in the southern Delta, have, for instance, revealed remains of domestic animals (goats), probably from the Levant (Merimde I). The same links hold true at Buto I for thrown ceramics, and for Ma’adi for metallurgy and stone architecture in more recent periods.

Other disciplines would shed light on the special relationship between the Delta and the east, notably achaeo-zoologicical studies. The location of the site at the seaside would allow an ichthyologist to evaluate the status of fishing in the local economy, and could also determine the species consumed by the populations and estimate the culinary evolution over time. Portuary installations could also exist, opening up the issue of seafaring communication, to confront with the recent discoveries on the Palestinian shore.

Anthropology could attempt to determine the origin of these populations. We suppose that in the 4th millennium, at leats two major migratory movements took place in Lower-Egypt, the first one originating in the Southern Levant toward the Delta during an early period (that of Buto I), and the second one originating in Upper-Egypt in a more recent timeframe (that of Minshat Abou Omar I). All these hypotheses must be verified and refined.

Carpology, a field little developed in Egypt, would enhance the information by opening the field to studies of the landscape, possible agricultural practices, and trade within the geographic areas.

The presence of dwelling remains would make possible confrontation with ethnology. It would be pertinent to compare early remains with those of current populations. These populations, both sedentary and agricultural, as we observed, currently live in socio-economic conditions close to those of early populations .

The possibility that the earliest layers could be flooded by a rise in the water table, a situation on several Delta sites, may require the use of water pumps. Such may have led to good conservation of organic remains (wood, bones, and leather) and could lead to Tell el-Ginn becoming a reference site.

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