Mendes - Ruins

Ruins

The site is today the largest surviving tell in the Nile delta, and consists of both Tell El-Ruba (the site of the main temple enclosure) and Tell El-Timai (the settlement site of Thmuis to the south). Overall, Mendes is about 3 km long from north to south and averages about 900m east-to-west. An Old Kingdom necropolis is estimated to contain over 9,000 interments. Several campaigns of 20th-century excavations have been led by North American institutions, including New York University and the University of Toronto, as well as a Pennsylvania State University team led by Donald Redford. Under the direction of Prof. Redford, the current excavations are concentrating on a number of areas in and around the main temple. Work on the New Kingdom processional-style temple has recently uncovered foundation deposits of Merenptah below the second pylon. It is thought that four separate pylons or gates existed for each of the Avatars of the main deity worshiped here. Evidence has suggested that their construction dates from at least the Middle Kingdom, as foundation deposits were uncovered. The original structures were buried, added to, or incorporated into later ones over time by later rulers. Billy Morin, recently at University of Cambridge in England and now at Leiden University in the Netherlands led a team that investigated these further and uncovered several mud-brick walls acting as pylons and their foundations . Over thirty of the bricks were stamped with the cartouche of Menkheperre, the pre-nomen of Thutmose III. A cemetery of sacred rams was discovered in the northwest corner of Tell El-Ruba. Monuments bearing the names of Ramesses II, Merneptah. and Ramesses III were also found. A temple attested by its foundation deposits was built by Amasis. The tomb of Nepherites I, which Donald Reford concluded was destroyed by the Persians, was discovered by a joint team from the University of Washington and the University of Toronto in 1992-1993. On the edge of the temple mound, a sondage supervised by Matthew J. Adams has revealed uninterrupted stratification from the Middle Kingdom down to the First Dynasty. Coring results suggest that future excavations in that sondage should expect to take the stratification down into the Buto-Maadi Period. The material excavated so far is already the longest uninterrupted stratification for all of the Nile Delta, and possibly for all of Egypt.