Archaeologists working in the western Nile Delta of Egypt discovered remnants of an “extensive industrial complex” from as far back as the 5th century B.C.E. as well as a Roman cemetery that suggests the area was fertile ground for civilization and exchange in the Mediterranean.
As reported by Archaeology News, the findings—by an Egyptian-Italian team from the Supreme Council of Antiquities and the University of Padua at the sites of Kom el-Ahmar and Kom Wasit in Beheira Governorate—”bring to the foreground the significance of the western Delta as a center of production, trade, and settlement, linked to the Mediterranean world and the hinterland of ancient Alexandria.”
The industrial complex consisted of six rooms, two used for the production of easily tradable salted fish (as evidenced by the finding of 9,700 fish bones) and the others used to make metal and stone tools as well as ceramic amulets. In addition, imported amphorae used to store wine and fragments of Greek pottery suggest “strong cultural and commercial connections between Egypt and the Greek world,” according to Archaeology News.
In the Roman Period–era cemetery discovered nearby, evidence of “simple in-ground burials, burials in ceramic coffins, and the burial of children inside large amphorae” holds out the promise of greater understanding related to funerary traditions and social structures in the area. According to bioarchaeological analysis already started on the remains of 23 men, women, children, and adolescents, “the people buried at this site lived under relatively good conditions, with no signs of major disease or violence.”
