Egypt - Bouto

From the end of the late period to the roman period

Since 2001, the French Bouto mission has been operating at the site within the framework of a concession held by the German archaeology institute (Cairo), with which it is engaged in scientific cooperation.

The pottery workshops of Bouto, located east of the division of Rosette, were among the most prosperous in Greco-Roman Egypt (figs. 1-2). They were discovered during excavations carried out by the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) in the 1960s, which were interrupted by the Six-Day War. Large potters’ workshops were discovered, which produced, among other items, fine black and red specimens of pottery from the Greek and Roman periods [1]. The production of fine black pottery is an example of the adaptation of black Greek varnishes (fig. 3), proving that the workshops of Bouto were part of the Hellenisation movement in the Delta. It was on the basis of this problem that a team led by P. Ballet (Université de Poitiers) decided to continue the research begun by V. Seton-William and the EES.

Works focussing on the pottery industry have taken place on the site since 2001. Large workshops that in the imperial era produced fine pottery with a red slip with a firing method that used radiation, with the help of pipes, were discovered and excavated from 2002 to 2004 (sector P1) in the north of the site. To the north-east, three other sectors have been excavated, helping us better understand the nature of the structure detected by the geophysical prospecting (sectors P2, P4) and to uncover a common pottery workshop from the imperial era (sector P3).

These initial results mean that we must continue research on this important establishment in the Delta, the occupation of which from the pre-dynastic to the Late Antiquity period has been demonstrated, albeit with deep caesuras, devoid of occupation (in particular from the Ancient Empire to the Saite Period). The research of the German team focuses essentially on the earliest periods of Bouto, the Pre-dynastic and Proto-dynastic, at the assumed location of Pe and Dep, and which is home to the “Ouadjet house” (fig. 19).

This is one of the few well-preserved sites in the Delta, currently surrounded by an agricultural belt that alternates between rice and cotton production and whose archaeological perimeter is not under threat from urbanisation and the expansion of land used for agricultural purposes in the short-or medium-term.

Three tall, anthropogenic hills give rhythm to the area of Tell al-Fara’in (fig. 4): to the north, there is Kôm A; to the east, there is Kôm B, which houses the temple and its powerful belt of unbaked bricks; and to the south, Kôm C.

[1] D. Charlesworth, in M. V. Seton-Williams, “The Tell el-Fara’in Expedition, 1967”, JEA 53, 1967, p. 149-155; id., “Tell el-Fara’in : The Industrial Site, 1968”, JEA 55, 1969, p. 23-30; P. French, “A Preliminary Study of Pottery in Lower Egypt in the Late Dynastic and Ptolemaic Egypt”, CCE 3, 1992, p. 90-93. Documentation on excavations by the EES, which first and foremost relates to the production of workshops in the north-east, is currently being studied by P. French.