The Nile Delta is a fickle playground for historians. Between repeated rising water levels and stagnant humidity, searching the soil in this region is a daily challenge. However, on the site of Tell el-Farain (site of the ancient city of Bouto), a team of researchers has just made an extraordinary discovery. There they unearthed the remains of an imposing building dating from the 7th century BC.
It’s not just a brick wall that the experts found, but a real time capsule. The size of the structure, 20 by 24 meters, leaves specialists perplexed as to its exact role. Is it a secondary temple dedicated to a local deity or the prestigious tomb of a high dignitary? What is certain is that the place was full of treasures.
Archaeologists have extracted carved amulets from the ground. There we come across the goddess Isis breastfeeding Horus, or Ouadjet, the protector of Bouto. Even more surprising, statuettes representing characters in explicit sexual positions were found.
According to the study published in the specialized journal Applied Geophysics and relayed by Popular Mechanics, this discovery would never have been possible without an arsenal of cutting-edge technology. Using electrical resistivity tomography (basically a scanner that sends currents into the ground to draw a 3D map), the team was able to see through 20 feet of dirt and debris.
A giant puzzle underground
One of the most precious objects found is undoubtedly a soapstone scarab bearing the name of Pharaoh Thutmose III. Although this king reigned long before the building’s construction, his name was still used centuries later as a symbol of protection and prestige. “The results of this study demonstrate the effectiveness of combining geophysical measurements and remote sensing data“, write the authors of the report, emphasizing that this method made it possible to obtain “very precise vision to detect buried establishments in a complex region“.
The team’s work did not stop at simply collecting objects. They also discovered that the engineers of the time were true visionaries. To build on this unstable ground, the ancient Egyptians literally leveled entire neighborhoods and created massive sand foundations. It is this careful preparation of the land that allowed walls almost 12 meters thick to hold up against the centuries and the floods of the Nile.
The analysis of the different layers of earth also tells a story of resilience. The site experienced an immense void of occupation for 1,500 years, probably due to a change in the course of the river, before being reinvested by populations who had to relearn how to tame this land. Today, archaeologists are convinced that this temple – or this tomb – is only the tip of the iceberg. Beneath this structure, even older layers wait to be scanned.
This discovery changes our view of the Egyptian Late Period. The erotic statuettes, far from being anecdotal, remind us that fertility and divine protection were at the heart of daily concerns. The future of archeology in the delta will now involve these “underground scanners”, making it possible to target the sites to be excavated much more precisely.
