A well-preserved mud-brick settlement in southern Egypt is providing a rare glimpse into nearly 3,000 years of ancient Egyptian daily life, archaeologists announced Tuesday. (See photos.)
The Tell Edfu site includes a public town center that was used for collecting taxes, conducting business, recording accounting, and writing documents.
The discovery paints a picture of a relatively advanced system of society during ancient times, with commerce playing an intricate part of daily Egyptian life, according to the University of Chicago and the Egyptian Supreme Council on Antiquities.
Until now, information on common life in Egypt had come mostly from scrolls of papyrus and other documents. Part of the cause is that archaeologists have long focused on monuments and gold artifacts associated with royalty.
"Town settlements have not been excavated very much, and people were not very interested in it," said mission leader Nadine Moeller, an assistant professor in Egyptian archaeology at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute.
"These towns were all made of mud-brick, so that's obviously not as glamorous as stone architecture."
(Related: "Egypt's Earliest Farming Village Found" [February 12, 2008].)
Heart of Things
The settlement was discovered several years ago next to the Edfu Temple, one of the best-preserved large temples from ancient Egypt.
The town center contains an open hall with eight silos, partially used to collect grain taxes from farmers.
Ranging from 18 to 21 feet (5.5 to 6.5 meters) in diameter, the silos are the largest ever found in an Egyptian town center, archaeologists say.
Above the silos are rectangular storage containers containing gray ash to protect them from pests. The silos hail from the 17th dynasty, which lasted from about 1570 to 1540 B.C.
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