REPORT ON THE 2002 FIELDWORK SEASON OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY AT THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL

SITE OF EL-HIBEH, BENI-SUEF GOVERNORATE

By Carol A. Redmount, Project Director

Introduction and General Observations

            The University of California, Berkeley's spring/summer 2002 fieldwork season at El-Hibeh, Beni Suef Governorate, took place between June 8 and July 4, 2002. Members of the UC Berkeley expedition team were: Dr. Carol A. Redmount, Director and Archaeologist/Egyptologist; Dr. Maurice E. Morgenstein, Associate Director and Geoarchaeologist/Geologist; Dr. Mahmoud Saleh, Environmental Chemist; Dr. Margaret Newman, Archaeologist and Scientist; Dr. Pia Anderson, Senior Archaeologist; Dr. Elizabeth Bettles, Ceramicist; Mr. Tom Logan, Egyptologist; Mrs. Joan Knudsen, Object Registrar and Egyptologist; Mr. Jon Frey, GPS Mapping Specialist, Archaeologist and Ph.D. student; Mrs. Heidi Saleh, Archaeologist/Egyptologist and Ph.D. student; Mrs. Elisabeth O'Connell, Archaeologist, Illustrator and Ph.D. student; Mr. Mark Kerry, Computer Consultant and Archaeologist. Assisting the Berkeley team from the Beni Suef Inspectorate were Mr. Atef Helmy, Chief Inspector, and Mohammed Ibrahim and Adel Abdel Salaam, Inspectors. 

            This season the Berkeley team stayed at Deir Bayad, located on the east side of the Beni-Suef bridge. Although the Deir wound up being somewhat more expensive than the hotel we stayed at last year, the price included the use of one large room as a dig laboratory and workroom and use of the gardens to wash and dry pottery.  This arrangement was therefore far preferable to last year's, but remained problematic due both to cost and because the location was not convenient to the site. Travel time took fifty minutes or more each way. Complicating matters were the cumbersome security measures; almost every day we had to wait for security, usually only a short time, but sometimes a long time, before we could leave for anywhere. 

            On-going visual study and exploration of the tell continues to confirm our initial impression that El Hibeh is both extensive and stratigraphically very complex.  Limestone bedrock outcrops occur at all levels of the site, even the very highest. Surface remains on the tell area suggest that a variety of human activities, ranging from habitation to industry to cult to  burial, took place on and between these outcrops at different places at varying times. Tracing the history and development of the site over time will therefore be a complicated undertaking.  Surrounding the tell mound proper is an extensive necropolis or series of necropoleis: the desert to the north, east, and southeast of the tell is filled with burials cut into the gebel surface and hills. In the cliff line due east of the site there is at least one tomb. There is also a large cave in this cliff line, which may possibly contain palaeolithic materials. 

            The low lying areas of the tell, in particular those closest to the river and to irrigation channels, continue to be endangered by crop irrigation cycles and by the rising water table.  These low areas include the temple temenos as well as an area north of the temenos precinct. The cemeteries and graves in the surrounding gebel, especially those immediately to the north and southeast of the tell, are in on-going danger: the village immediately north of the site is pressuring the necropolis area in that region, and agriculture is extending into the desert from the southeast and having a strongly negative impact on both the necropolis and the tell mound in that area. In addition, in the past there seems to have been consistent and sometimes massive looting of the site at irregular intervals; we are hoping our presence now at the site will help eliminate or at least minimize this practice.

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