Tell el-Fara’in (‘Mound of the Pharaohs’) is the name of the modern
village where three mounds covered the site of ancient Buto, capital
of the 6th Lower Egyptian Nome. It is located in the central Delta to
the north-west of Kafr el-Sheikh.
There has been a great deal of archaeological interest in Buto during
the latter part of the 20th century. Although Petrie had identified
the mounds at Tell el-Fara’in as Buto in 1888, the mounds were not
properly surveyed or excavated until Veronica Seton-Williams and
Dorothy Charlesworth worked there for the Egypt Exploration Society
during the 1960s. Their excavations concentrated on the town and
temple sites, where they revealed many Late Period, Ptolemaic and
Roman remains, until work was interrupted by the Middle-Eastern war in
1967. Interest in the site was resumed in 1983 with excavations by the
German Institute of Archaeology in Cairo, when Thomas von der Way
revealed a level of Predynastic stratigraphy. German excavations
continued through the 1990s under the direction of Dina Faltings and
more recently by Ulrich Hartung.
Buto was a very ancient town which was continuously occupied in
Predynastic times for over 500 years. In those times, when Buto was
probably much closer to the north coast, the population would have
taken refuge from the flooding of the plain on the tops of sand dunes
which have long since been buried by the rising silt of the Delta. The
earliest settlement at Buto, discovered 7m below the modern ground
level, resulted in a difficult and dangerous task for the excavators
as water had to be continuously pumped out of the area.
It was in these levels that the indigenous pottery of the Delta was
found to have been gradually replaced by pottery from Upper Egypt.
This seemed to confirm the semi-mythical location of the twin cities
Pe and Dep, the northern counterpart of Hierakonpolis and the home of
the cobra-goddess Wadjet who was documented in many early texts as
tutelary deity of Lower Egypt. It also suggests links with the period
of state formation, the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt which
appears to coincide with the earliest mudbrick buildings at the site.
At least one of these buildings was suggested by von der Way to have
had a cult purpose and a large pottery basin incised with two bull
figures was found sunk into the ground. It is thought that the ‘Souls
of Pe’ may have represented Predynastic kings of the area and clay
seal-impressions have been found within the Early Dynastic levels.
Between the two settlement mounds are remains of a Temple of Wadjet
which faced south within enclosure walls, and was mentioned from
Dynasty XII. The extant remains of the temple appear to have
originated in the Saite Period, but this was destroyed by the Persians
and later rebuilt by the early Ptolemies. It is mentioned in the
‘Histories’ of Herodotus as having a massive monolithic naos with a
star-studded ceiling. Other Saite and Late Period structures and
cemeteries have been uncovered in recent excavations.
Buto seems to have played an important part throughout Egypt’s
history, at least as a symbolic cult centre. During the late New
Kingdom the town was known as Per-Wadjet, meaning ‘House of the
goddess Wadjet’ and fragments of statuary and stalae have been found
from this period. The few visible remains today mostly date to the
Ptolemaic and Roman Periods and include domestic buildings, cult
buildings and cemeteries.
Buto is gradually being revealed as a huge and complex site. Ongoing
investigations of many of the levels are providing more information
every season, with the aim of clarifying important questions about
Egypt’s early chronology and culture as well as possible trade links
with other areas of the Middle-East.
The
Deutsches Archaologisches Institut website has the latest reports
of excavations at Buto. |
