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

Pottery and Finds

            Pottery was processed this year by Dr. Elisabeth Bettles, a specialist in ceramics, and, after Dr. Bettles had to leave, by Dr. Carol Redmount.  We reviewed all the excavated pottery and saved relevant pieces for further study. No whole pots were found during excavation.  Preliminary results suggest that the pottery is dominantly Late Roman/Early Byzantine in date (4th-6th centuries C.E.). 

            This year our finds were managed and recorded by our Objects Registrar, Joan Knudsen, an Egyptologist who also is the Registrar of the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology of the University of California, Berkeley.  Apart from some fragmentary reliefs recovered from secondary contexts (probably debris from the German mission's clearance of the temple in the early 1900s, as noted above), we had no major finds this year. The relief blocks presumably originally came from the temple; most were small fragments or preserved minimal relief, except for one very nice piece with the torso and legs of a striding king.  From the same secondary context came also a number of broken mudbricks with cartouches containint the names of the High Priests of Amun Menkheperre and Pinudjem. None of the stamps were clear and complete; presumably these were all rejected by the German mission when they were looking for good quality pieces to take back to Heidelberg. 

Limestone relief fragment recovered in 2002 season.

            All the relief uncovered during our excavations was recorded and photographed. Mr. Thomas Logan, a former Egyptian Curator at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and now a professor at Monterey Peninsula College, was responsible for drawing and studying the blocks. Twelve blocks with relief were transported to the SCA storehouse at Ahnasya El-Medinah. 

            We uncovered a few more coins this year and continued to study and clean the coins we found last year, although we were not able to finish all of them.  The  coins are all very small, and, so far, none is in very good condition.  We cleaned the coins in a solution of bottled water, sodium hydroxide, and zinc.

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