Category: Archeology of Egypt

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The Girl at the Olive Press. A Vignette of Peasant Life in Roman Egypt

In the year 12 CE, a man named Harthotes submitted a census declaration to the local authorities in Roman Egypt. He was a 55-year-old farmer and local priest living with his elderly mother and young son in a house within the temple precinct of Theadelphia. But from other sources we knew that he also had a daughter named Tahaunes, who was about 12 years old at the time. Where was she? Not married off young, as scholars were quick to assume. The truth is more surprising: she was at work!

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Unpublished documents from Pathyris – the demotic Gebelein temple archive

The Ptolemaic Pathyris Project, funded by the National Science Centre (Polonez Bis 2 program, grant no. 2022/45/P/HS3/01807) and hosted by the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences, aims to reconstruct the urban layout and domestic architecture of Pathyris, a town located approximately 30 km southwest of Luxor in the Gebelein micro-region, using archival, papyrological, and geospatial data.

The site has yielded a vast collection of Greek and Demotic (an ancient Egyptian script used between the 7th century BCE and the 5th century CE) papyri, ostraca, and wooden tablets. To date, around 1,300 documents have been published, and many of the family archives have been extensively studied, providing a unique glimpse into various socio-economic aspects of Ptolemaic society

The lecture by Professor Quack, originally scheduled for February 18, 2025, has been postponed to April 2, 2025, at 1:00 PM.
Place: Maria Skłodowska-Curie Hall (1st floor), Staszic Palace, Nowy Świat 72, 00-330, and online.[Wykł

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Creations of Power: Depicting the Royal Family and Clergy in Medieval Nubia in Louvre!

©Paulina Matusiak & Eddy Wenting

On October 17, the Louvre Museum will host the premiere presentation of the interdisciplinary scientific project “Creations of Power: Depicting the Royal Family and Clergy in Medieval Nubia” on the costumes reconstructed on the basis of Faras paintings from the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw and the Sudanese National Museum in Khartoum. A popularization session at Sorbonne University will also be initiated.

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Ptolemaic Pathyris: Research on an Ancient Egyptian Town

Ptolemaic Pathyris is known for its rich collection of papyri and ostraca, which survive in excellent condition, buried in the ruins of the city. Thousands of texts, describing the everyday life of the ancient Egyptians and belonging to the archives of the local temple and notary’s office, but above all to the archives of the ordinary families living in the town, were discovered here in the late 19th and throughout the 20th centuries. A businesswoman, an inheritance dispute, or an unexplained murder — this is only the beginning of the story.

Although the archaeology of Ancient Egypt is dominated by studies of tombs, temples, and the realm of the elite, The Ptolemaic Pathyris Project wants to change this by showing how much we can learn about ordinary people and their everyday lives.

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‘Poles on the Nile: Polish archaeology in Egypt and Sudan

The ‘Poles on the Nile’ is an event with quite a long tradition. The first conference meeting was held in 2007 and since then, scholars conducting archaeological research in Egypt and Sudan have been meeting annually, always in June, at the University of Warsaw. The conference is attended by archaeologists, as well as specialists in other fields, who work with archaeologists, from the major national universities and research institutes based in Warsaw, Krakow, Poznan, Wroclaw and Gdansk, and abroad.

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Polish computer application in archaeology

From April 2nd to April 6th, 2023, the 50th International Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology was held in Amsterdam. Polish archaeology was represented by a strong interdisciplinary group, which prepared two sessions and presented 10 presentations and 2 posters.

Photogrammetric model of a barrow during excavation with markings showing the location of various monuments
by J. Stępnik

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Egyptian hieroglyphs discovered in Old Dongola, Sudan

During the current excavation season in Old Dongola (Sudan), an expedition of the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Warsaw, headed by Dr. Artur Obłuski, came across an unexpected find: architectural elements from a Pharaonic temple.

Dr Dawid F. Wieczorek with a block from an Egyptian monumental building
© D. F. Wieczorek/PCMA UW

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The mummy with a pickled fetus: another example of wishful thinking

In the spring of last year, the media around the world circulated sensational information about the discovery of a fetus in a female mummy held at the National Museum in Warsaw. The authors of this discovery, from the Warsaw Mummy Project team, found that the woman died in the 26th–30th gestational week, i.e. at the beginning of the third trimester, and the fetus was not pulled out during embalming – contrary to the treatment of the viscera of the female, which were removed through an incision in the lower part of the abdomen. They also observed that the mummified fetus had broken bones (not shown on the published radiograph) and was found in two parts, which was interpreted as the result of the postmortem fracture of the female pelvis.

Typical ancient Egyptian mummification process drawing by SimplisticReps, published on licence CC BY-ND 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Typical ancient Egyptian mummification process;
drawing by SimplisticReps, published on licence CC BY-ND 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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Modular construction in Byzantine Marea (Egypt)

Marea was an important port and trading center in northern Egypt in ancient times. Until now, archaeologists have focused on the study of individual single buildings on the site. In 2017, work began on a comprehensive identification of the urban grid, consisting of the buildings, streets, and the port. The results of the study, recently published in Antiquity, indicate that modular construction in Byzantine Marea was part of a larger urban program, one of the few at the end of Antiquity.

Budynki modułowe w Marei © M. Gwiazda, na licencji CC BY 4.0
Modular construction in Marea
© M. Gwiazda, published under CC BY 4.0

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