Settling the cemeteries: late antique Hagr Edfu

Project leader: Elisabeth R. O’Connell

Department: Ancient Egypt and Sudan

Project start: 2007
End date: Ongoing

Other British Museum staff: Claire Thorne, Rebecca Stacey, Jim Rossiter

Other departments: Conservation and Scientific Research, Photographic

Project funded by: the British Museum, Yale Egyptological Institute in Egypt, www.yale.edu/egyptology

Description:

Temples converted into churches offer perhaps the most vivid portrayal of cultural transformation in the built environment of Christian Egypt. However, the landscape was perhaps more radically reworked when Christians adapted the funerary architecture of their predecessors for domestic purposes. 

Literary and archaeological (including papyrological) sources demonstrate that living in funerary architecture was a widely practiced option for monks in Middle and Upper Egypt. This was not only the case during the early development of monasticism, but throughout Late Antiquity. Such habitation is usually documented by Egyptologists interested primarily in pharaonic phases of use, with the result that archaeological remains are rarely studied in their late antique topographical and historical contexts. At the same time, adaptive reuse of tombs is surprisingly under-studied by historians of this period.

The ancient necropolis of Hagr Edfu presents an excellent opportunity to survey and document adaptive reuse of funerary architecture for occupation in Late Antiquity. In contrast to most reused necropoles in Egypt, which have usually been cleared by excavators eager to uncover pharaonic remains, it is relatively undisturbed.

Hagr Edfu is located 3.5 kms west of the ancient town of Tell-Edfu and was used for burial from as early as the Middle Kingdom and into Ptolemaic and Roman periods. In late antiquity, Tell-Edfu (Apollônos anô/Tbô) was still the primary civic settlement in the region. Rather than continuing to serve primarily as a necropolis, however, Christians transformed Hagr Edfu into a settlement.

Since 2001, the British Museum Epigraphic Expedition, directed by W. V. Davies, has undertaken the conservation, epigraphic documentation and mapping of open tombs at Hagr Edfu. In 2007, the mission identified and prioritised areas of late antique occupation to document, planned architecture and recorded inscriptions, and continued to incorporate late antique remains into the overall topographical survey of the site. 

A preliminary survey of surface pottery suggests dates between the fifth and ninth century and onomastica (the names used) in inscriptions are paralleled in seventh and eighth century Greek and Coptic papyri excavated at Tell-Edfu. The chronological extent and character of late antique settlement at Hagr Edfu and its relationship with Tell-Edfu will be the subject of future work.

Objectives:

The project aims to systematically record the physical remains of late antique settlement at Hagr Edfu and situate them in their historical and topographical contexts. The analysis of pottery from the site will contribute substantively to the refinement of a late antique ceramics sequence. Inscriptions from the site may provide the basis for identifying its ancient name in contemporary texts.

Numerous objects in the British Museum and the British Library collections are from or said to be from Tell Edfu and Hagr Edfu and further investigation may provide the means to re-establish their social-historical contexts.

Study of the desert track that passes Hagr Edfu, extending to Kharga Oasis and to destinations north and south, will provide some indication of the relative isolation of communities at Hagr Edfu, or the lack thereof. The study of Hagr Edfu is not only a self-contained project, but illustrates a widespread practice (tomb-habitation) that has significant consequences for the history of monasticism and Egyptian Christianity.

Images (from top):

• View from a rock-cut tomb to the modern monastery at Hagr Edfu. Photo: E.R. O’Connell
• View southeast over rock-cut tombs towards the modern Monastery of St. Pachomios. Photo: E.R. O’Connell
• Mud brick installations in and around rock-cut tombs. Photo: J. Rossiter