Hierakonpolis, Egypt
Since 2004 I have been co-director with Dr Renée Friedman from the British Museum at the important site of Hierakonpolis in Upper Egypt. Our work there is funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (2005-2007).
The ancient site of Hierakonpolis (ancient Nekhen) lies approximately 80km south of modern day Luxor near the modern village of Kom el-Ahmar. The ancient town itself is located in the agricultural floodplain roughly 400 m from the desert’s edge. Due to the importance of the site and the richness of finds, excavations and surveys have been carried out in the region of ancient Nekhen for more than 100 years.
The settlement remains of the 4th and early 3rd millennia that are located west of the ancient town of Nekhen itself, are of particular interest for this research project. In the 1980s a complex labelled HK 29A was excavated here first by the late Michael Hoffman and Renee Friedman resumed excavations of the complex in 2002. HK 29A lies in the midst of vast settlement remains dated from Naqada II to the Early Dynastic period. The complex itself consists of an oval paved courtyard with a hole for a freestanding pole possibly once carrying the totem of the local deity Horus of Nekhen. The oval, which measured 40m in length and 13m in width, was surrounded by fences and on one side four postholes were discovered. These holes, forming part of the façade of a larger building, once contained wooden poles of more than 12m height. Given their height we might conclude that they were made out of cedar wood, which had to be imported from the Lebanon. Further rectangular structures were found and interpreted as workshops. The whole compound of HK 29A was seen as a Predynastic temple dating to ca 3500BC, thus one of the earliest in Egypt. It was approximately 30-40m north of HK29A where we began our excavation in November 2005. This new area was designated HK29B. The excavation was conducted in 5m x 5m squares and a total of 25 squares were opened during the season. In some squares the Pleistocene silt deposits were reached after removing only 5-10cm of sand. In the southeast corner the terrain was in parts heavily denuded. However, in almost all the squares many postholes were discovered with discolouration of the sand showing remains of wood.
In the north-central part of the excavated area several large postholes were found. Some of the postholes had a diameter of up to 1.10m wide and a depth of about 1.30-1.40m. The postholes at HK29B can even be seen on Google Earth!
A few of the postholes contained remains of wood measuring up to 40-50cm in diameter. Unfortunately the wood was in a very fragile condition due to termites. The size of the post and postholes allows for a reconstruction of wooden poles rising perhaps 6-7m above ground. The posts were set on a slightly elevated area and eight of them form an oval with two posts in the middle; the oval measured 6m x 5m. From this group of ten postholes a trench with further postholes running in a southeastern direction could be followed for approximately 30m. The alignment of the trench is almost parallel to the orientation of HK29A.
It is possible that this oval structure and the wall trench may be linked with the ceremonial compound of HK29A and thus HK29B contains part of an outer enclosure to the temple and its adjacent workshops, which separated them from the nearby settlement. On the other hand, the structure at HK29B may be a separate entity despite its obvious alignment with HK29A.
The next question was how to reconstruct the oval structure at HK29B, although all proposals are preliminary at this point. One possibility is to see it as a tent shrine with the inner posts carrying the roof of the tent. Another intriguing option is to suggest that the postholes once contained carved wooden statues. Several statuettes that possess stylized heads of males with pointed beards are known from the Naqada I period. Their lower part is in the shape of a pole. An arrangement of statues on a colossal scale as guardians of a sacred site has been proposed recently for the early shrine at Coptos. Thus, the holes at HK29B may have been dug for carved wooden statues which were possibly 4-5m tall. Yet another option is that the posts once belonged to the structure of a tower and the adjacent wall is part of a vast enclosure for HK29A or even a larger area.
The excavation in December 2006, however, changed our views since we unearthed the remains of a long palisade of at least 40m length with around 50 postholes and many more of the larger postholes. Following the palisade trench in a northwest and southeast direction, we found a series of smaller postholes measuring in diameter around 30-40cm and sunk up to 40-50cm deep into the trench floor. In contrast to our believes in 2005 the larger postholes unearthed in 2006 did not create a recognizable pattern. Unfortunately little wood has survived within the larger postholes but the few remains indicate that local timber such as sycamore or acacia were used. Although still speculative at this point in the excavations, the larger postholes perhaps were filled with standards carrying emblems that represented the families of the ruling elite or tribes in Upper Egypt. Such standards are well-known from the Decorated Pottery of the Naqada IIC-D period that often depicts boats with cabins to which tall poles bearing various emblems are attached. The desire of human communities to have emblems and symbols with which they identify represented at central places is still visible today, for example in the flags of the member states displayed outside the headquarters of the United nations. So the future work at Hierakonpolis is sure to bring us some more exciting finds and further insight into the development of this important Predynastic settlement.
For further information on Hierakonpolis please follow this link.
