Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 16 - 22 November 2000 Issue No.508
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

	Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters

Merchants of Maadi

By Jill Kamil

The pyramids of Giza, on the west bank of the Nile, and the ancient settlement at Maadi, on the east bank, were two of the first places of historic interest I visited in Egypt -- and they could not have been more different. One featured towering memorials to a period of splendour and centralised government in the third century BC; the other was a predynastic site over five centuries old.

The Giza pyramids required a massive labour force, directed by the (rather grandly-named) "Overseer of All the Works of the King"; the ruins of the Maadi settlement, believed to have been a merchant town, show that it was comprised of simple wattle-and-daub huts and semi-subterranean houses. Today, people from all corners of the globe travel to Giza to see the mighty pyramids; in sharp contrast, most people living alongside the Maadi site do not even know its archaeological significance.

Although there has been a delightful, though modest, museum on the Maadi site for at least the last half-century, precious few people know about it -- and even fewer still have visited. Situated in the desert west of Maadi, with no discernible road leading up to it, the museum (ostensibly open to the public) is "not really a museum," late Egyptologist Abdel-Moneim Abu Bakr told me, when we visited the site in the 1960s. "It's an on-site storehouse," he concluded. But the fine-quality display cabinets and organised placing of objects, not to mention the accurate and informative labels, betrayed a true museum -- albeit in need of a good dusting and paint job.

Abu Bakr was surprisingly pragmatic about it at the time, parroting the view of most Egyptian Egyptologists then: "There are so many marvelous material remains of the Pharaonic period, we have more than enough to cope with." But I was unconvinced, feeling there was little justification for an almost chronic lack of interest in predynastic Egypt.

Some 20 years later, the curtain on the Egypt's most ancient past was being drawn back as international scholars took more interest in "Egypt before the Pharaohs." I paid another visit to the museum, and this time Ibrahim Rizkana, who had been involved in the excavation of the site in the 1930s, guided me through. As custodian, he knew every object like the back of his hand and his pride and knowledge of the site was evident.

"I have been watching how the suburb of Maadi has crept eastward into the desert, which has now become Digla, and how archaeological land has been successively lost to development," he remarked. "If only the value of the site were recognised it could be protected."

On the aging museum, Rizkana was clearly fed up. "Here we have a well-organised museum, ready to receive visitors, but we don't even have a road leading to it. It's in the middle of kharaba (waste land), with not even a sign to say its here. All we ask is for an entrance gate, a little landscaping and staff to keep it clean. That's all." But Rizkana never got his wish and now, after his death, we hear about plans to demolish the old "storehouse" and erect an appropriate museum. What that means is not clear.

The big question: Should this simple, but well-designed museum be demolished and replaced with a state-of-the-art structure to house its unique collection?

"The importance of Maadi's strategic position [in prehistory] is not generally known," Rizkana told me. "It was ideal for contacts within Egypt -- Upper and Lower Egypt, that is -- and western Asia through the Isthmus of Suez. We think that the Maadians benefited from that trade." Early excavations proved the existence of a cluster of Neolithic and predynastic sites. The place was well chosen; plenty of drinking water and safe from high floods. "The settlement is on a terrace, you see, at the fringe of the desert," Rizkana explained.

The Maadi site was first excavated in 1918 and the results became public in a report to the International Congress of Geography in 1925. Three years later, famed Egyptologist J Lucas visited the site and identified three specific areas of the settlement. His observations ignited further interest and in 1929 the Department of Geography of Cairo University, in collaboration with the German Institute of Archaeology in Cairo, decided to initiate a project for the investigation of prehistoric sites and Maadi was chosen as the trial project.

Eleven archaeological missions were carried out by the Department of Geography under the directorship of various Egyptian and foreign prehistorians. The mission came abruptly to an end with World War II, but four volumes of research was published by various specialists in the fields of natural sciences, pottery, lithic industries, non-lithic objects and cemeteries resulted from the investigations.

As Rizkana guided me through the site, we looked at the barren desert around the isolated buildings -- sorrowful and neglected in the shadow of a forest of modern high-rises across the highway leading to the "autostrad." But Rizkana's dedication and enthusiasm for the site won out over dreary surroundings. He told me that the number of graves found in the cemeteries suggested a large community. "These ancient traders lived in a real town, and produced a number of innovations around 4000 BC," Rizkana explained. "It was not simply a trading post, it was a settled community where the people practised agriculture, the domestication of animals and manufactured pottery and stone vases." He recounted the actual excavations and told me about the "distinctive imported Palestinian pottery" that had aroused the interest of scholars ever since the preliminary reports first appeared. As we walked around the show room, Rizkana pointed out artefacts. "Look," he said, "they wove fabrics, used teeth and shells for ornaments, made beads and wore armbands."

We walked through what was called the "main magazine," past showcases containing animal bones and organic matter, pottery (including distinctive black-topped ware and Palestinian vases) and storage jars. "This was a more elaborate and complex settlement than the predynastic sites of Lower Egypt," he said. "The people had rectangular houses, oval huts, subterranean shelters, storage pits and sunken storage jars. Interestingly, the houses and huts were concentrated in the centre of the settlement, while the storage facilities were around its edge. Burials, except for infants, were in cemeteries away from the settlement."

The more Rizkana talked, the more incredulous I became and the more concerned that this marvelous place was so sadly neglected, so overlooked. "The subterranean houses are the most interesting of all," Rizkana went on. "Three were found. They were dug about two metres deep and in various shapes. Some appear to have been domed and covered with matting. Such houses are not common in Egypt," he added, "but they have been found at several sites in southern Palestine. This has led some archaeologists to believe that they were actually houses of foreigners in Maadi. I think the idea is rather far-fetched. More likely, they were for common use, like for religious or administrative purposes."

Rizkana wrote a delightful guide to the museum -- obviously a labour of love -- but the site remained closed from the Revolution in 1952 until his recent death. I cannot help asking myself why. Whatever the reason, plans seem to be going ahead to demolish the "store house" and build a sparkling new museum dedicated to the formative years of society in Lower Egypt. Putting aside my own ruminations on the choice to rebuild rather than restore, perhaps an energetic endeavour of the scale planned for the site will enable us to answer some old scholarly questions.

For example, was the Maadi settlement site a shanty town and trade station for different goods or was it a real town, occupied by inhabitants with innovative ideas? Why is there an absence of threshing and harvesting implements, while grinding stones can be counted in their hundreds? And why, of the nearly 100,000 stone implements discovered there, are there only a dozen sickles and a handful of axes? Mysteries always pique interest, and as far as I'm concerned, the more interest this bedraggled site can garner -- the better.

© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved

	weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg