The Tell el-Balamun Excavation since 1991
Summary of results
After ten years' work in El-Ashmunein, Jeffrey Spencer went on
to direct excavation at the site known as Tell el-Balamun in the
northern Nile Delta. This huge and relatively intact stratified
archaeological mound marks the position of Behdet or Sma-Behdet,
the northernmost city of Pharaonic Egypt, established by 2400 BC
and continuously occupied down to the beginning of the sixth
century AD. The mound is over a kilometre in diameter and rises to
a maximum elevation of nearly eighteen metres above the surrounding
agricultural land. In antiquity it was a port on the estuary of a
branch of the Nile, but the advance of the Delta coastline means
that the site now lies some fifteen kilometres from the sea. By the
New Kingdom the town had acquired the additional name of
Paiuenamon, "The Island of the [god] Amun", from which 'Balamun' is
derived.
Excavation began in 1991 and has continued each Spring since. As
a city-mound in the fertile land of the Nile Delta, excavation at
Tell el-Balamun is very different from work on the desert sites of
Egypt, the ground being compact and muddy. Having attracted only
limited attention from previous excavators, so little was known
about this site that it proved possible to make major discoveries
very rapidly. Chief among these were the following:
The finding of three enclosure walls of sun-dried bricks which
surround the temple area. The largest of these, over twenty metres
in thickness and enclosing an area of 16,000 square metres, dates
from the Thirtieth Dynasty or about 360 BC. Within it on an only
slightly smaller perimeter is an earlier wall from around 650 BC,
with ruins of a brick-built
citadel at the south corner. Subsequently, an enclosure of the
Ramesside Period was discovered closer to the temple of Amun. The
processional approach to this temple from the entrances of the
enclosures of the Twenty-sixth and Thirtieth Dynasties was later
overbuilt by a paved street in the Roman Period, for secular
use.
The remains of three destroyed temples inside the Late-Period
enclosures. The plans of these had to be recovered from the
outlines of their vast sand-filled foundations. Buried in the
foundation sand was crucial dating evidence in the form of several
foundation deposits containing small objects inscribed with the
royal names of the founders. These temples comprise the main temple of
the god Amun and subsidiary temples of Psamtik I and Nectanebo
I.
A small elite
cemetery, discovered unexpectedly at the front of the main
temple site, a location usually reserved for the burial of
important persons. Some of the tombs were built of sun-dried bricks
but other contained chambers or coffins of limestone. They were
excavated with great difficulty since they had been entered by
subsoil water, the level of which has risen since antiquity. The
burials date from between 900 and 700 BC and had been equipped with
fine sets of inner coffins decorated with gold leaf.