Auaris

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Auaris in hieroglyphics
O7 t
pr 		D56 t
niwt

Hut-waret
Ḥw.t-wˁr.t
Greek Αὔαρις (Auaris)
Tell el-daba04.jpg
View of the Tell el-Dab'a / Auaris site in a south-easterly direction; in the foreground the village of 'Ezbet Rushdi

Auaris (also Avaris ) is the Greek name of the ancient Egyptian city ​​of Hut-waret . It was located in the eastern Nile Delta in the immediate vicinity of what is now Tell el-Dab'a .

Research history

As early as 1885, Édouard Naville carried out the first investigations. Although the finds included Syrian - Palestinian bronzes and ceramics , these were only published cursory and received little attention. In 1928 Mahmud Hamza came across a huge palace complex from the 19th and 20th dynasties , which he identified as Pi-Ramesse , about 2 km north of Tell el-Dab'a, on the southern edge of the village of Qantir , during excavations . Faience tiles and architectural elements came to light that could be combined to form entrances to the throne, appearance windows and magnificent portals. After excavations west of Tell el-Dab'a from 1942 to 1944, Labib Habachi was the first to identify this site as the Hyksos capital of Auaris. At the same time he supported the view that the Qantir site was Pi-Ramesse, as he came across portals in the nearby Didamun Canal that came from the houses of high officials from the Ramesside period .

However, Egyptologists like Pierre Montet took the view that Auaris and Pi-Ramesse should be in Tanis , since there are countless stone monuments that can only come from Pi-Ramesse and Auaris. One could not imagine that the enormous number of stone monuments during the 21st and 22nd Dynasties were transported from Qantir to Tanis, 25 km away. On the other hand, not a single block in Tanis was found in original in-situ use .

During excavations from 1951 to 1954, Shehata Adam discovered part of the area from the 12th dynasty near 'Ezbet Rushdi, including a temple for the cult of Amenemhet I. Since 1966 (with a brief interruption from 1970 to 1974) the area has been covered by the Austrian Archaeological Institute investigated, from 1966 to 2009 under the direction of Manfred Bietak , since 2009 under the direction of Irene Forstner-Müller . The earlier excavations made it possible to clearly localize Auaris in Tell el-Dab'a and Pi-Ramesse in Qantir.

The more recent research focuses (as of 2014) shifted from excavations in palaces to real settlement archeology , which means that urbanistic considerations are now in the foreground. The basis for this is provided by the general plan of Tell el-Dab'a created on the basis of magnetics . This includes, among other things, the exploration of the ancient river arms and the reconstruction of the harbor landscape.

Geographical and topographical features

Reconstructed landscape of Tell el-Dab'a / Auaris

The Tell el-Dab'a site is located in the Egyptian eastern delta on the Didamun Canal, approx. 8 km north of Faqus and approx. 140 km northeast of Cairo . In ancient times, Auaris was at the most easterly of the delta arms, the Pelusian arm of the Nile. From the late eleventh century BC However, the river began to silt up and shifted westward. For the localization of Auaris near Tell el-Dab'a and Pi-Ramesse near Qantir, it was therefore particularly important to determine the original course of the Pelusian arm of the Nile. In this area in particular, it is clearly detectable on the basis of a pronounced sedimentation ridge. The two embankments have been preserved higher here, as the contours had increased significantly as a result of settlement activity, i.e. building relics made of mud bricks .

The ancient topography , which is largely no longer preserved, was able to be reconstructed in the vicinity of Tell el-Dab'a on the basis of soil drilling. The modern surface appears flat and is covered by agricultural fields. Only a small tell is visible (north of area A / II), which is now used as a cemetery.

In Pharaonic times the area consisted of a chain of hills made up of sand ridges, so-called Geziras . As land protected from flooding, these offered favorable grounds for settlement. Two broad tributaries branched off to the east from the Pelusian arm of the Nile (F2 and F3), which were connected by smaller branches and thus enclosed the Geziras as "islands". Arm F2 was shallower than F1, but still navigable. F3 was probably still active as a river arm at the beginning of the Middle Kingdom, but was largely silted up in the late Hyksos period.

Little Tell near Tell el-Dab'a with a modern cemetery; in the background on the left the village 'Ezbet Rushdi

The settlement structure reached its greatest expansion during the 19th and 20th dynasties with two urban centers, in the north at Qantir and in the south at Tell el-Dab'a. The two areas, two kilometers away, were even more closely connected by further settlement grounds on smaller sand ridges and a settlement strip along the eastern embankment zone of the Pelusian arm of the Nile. To the north of Tell el-Dab'a was a lake basin, in the middle of which the water remained for most of the year and which was fed from the Pelusian branch of the Nile to the west via a canal-like confluence. According to reports from the biography of Ahmose, son of Ibana , and the second Kamose stele , even naval operations were carried out in the waters around Auaris.

Overall, the city took a strategically extremely favorable place:

  • The location on the Pelusian arm of the Nile offered a quick connection to the Mediterranean coast and the Nile valley.
  • There were favorable natural harbor conditions.
  • The place was protected from the insecure eastern border by the Bahr el-Baqar drainage system and further away by the marshland of the Manzala Lakes.
  • The land route ( Horus route ) from Syria-Palestine to Egypt met the waterway of the Pelusian arm of the Nile in this area. The city thus formed the gateway to what was then the most important economic area in this region.

history

Coordinates: 30 ° 47 '  N , 31 ° 49'  E

Map: Egypt
marker
Auaris​
Magnify-clip.png
Egypt
Ancient Lower Egypt with Auaris
Granite block in Ezbet Helmi with the name of Amenemhet I.

The place appears in Egyptian and Greek sources as the capital of the Hyksos , a foreign ruler dynasty of Near Eastern origin in Egypt. The remains of the city are identified with the present-day village of Tell el-Dab'a in the eastern Nile Delta. Auaris lay on flood-free Geziras (sand ridges), which lay east of the Pelusian branch of the Nile and were surrounded by an oxbow further to the east. It was an important seaport and was the starting point of the main routes into the Levant.

Already in the early Middle Kingdom there was a large, planned settlement with a checkerboard map. The house units with approx. 27 m² are very small and suggest that a low social class has settled here. Further northeast, near Ezbet Ruschdi , was a somewhat later settlement of the Middle Kingdom with a memorial temple for the founder of the 12th dynasty Amenemhet I , Sesostris III. was built in his 5th year of reign (around 1668 BC). Here, too, a settlement pattern was found that had been laid out according to a chessboard-like plan.

From the late 12th dynasty (around 1850 BC) immigrants from the northern Levant settled south of this city - certainly with the consent of the Egyptian crown - who subsequently made the town a commercial center. During this phase, residential buildings were built according to the Near Eastern architectural traditions, such as the Syrian middle hall house and the wide room house. Soon after, from the early 13th Dynasty, these settlers adopted Egyptian house forms. Excavations uncovered a large mansion of over 1400 m², which was probably inhabited by a high dignitary. South of the house was a garden with an irrigation system. Finally, a cemetery was laid out in the garden, in which the officials of the manor were apparently buried with their families. The tomb architecture was probably Egyptian, but the additions such as Middle Eastern weapons and the custom of laying donkeys, sheep and goats in pairs in the entrance area of ​​the tombs show that the buried came from Middle East. A gold-rimmed amethyst scarab from one of the graves names a ruler of Retjenu, a common name of Canaan at this time. Soon a larger one was built next to the manor house, but it was not completed. The old mansion was also abandoned and walled up.

In the period that followed, a settlement with an egalitarian pattern emerged here. Emergency and mass graves suggest an epidemic in the second half of the 13th Dynasty. Just before the Hyksos era, the settlement became more differentiated again and gave way to a hierarchical structure in the Egyptian style. It seems as if the upper class of the city lived here in the city center with residential buildings of up to 900 m².

In the eastern part of the city there was a large sacral area with a temple of the Near Eastern type over 30 m long, the sanctuary of which was equipped with a wide room with a large niche. In front of it there was an open altar for burnt offerings. He stood in the shade of oak trees. The western edge of the cult area was lined with a bent-axis temple with a free-standing tower. A building was erected to the north of the altar and served ritual meals, the remains of which had been left on its floor and south of the house. Since this sacred area was surrounded by cemeteries, each with a chapel for the dead, these cult meals are likely to have been held on funerary occasions. In this context one can think of a bêt marzeah , as it has been handed down in the Middle East since the 3rd millennium.

One can only speculate about the dedication of the temples mentioned. Because of the oak trees, the large temple may have been dedicated to Asherah , wife of El . This identification would also make sense with regard to the function of the city as an important port place, since this goddess was connected to the sea.

Based on a locally cut cylinder seal depicting the weather god Hadad / Baal- Zephon as the patron of the seafarers, it is probable that this was introduced by the settlers from the Levant in the 13th Dynasty and finally identified as interpretatio aegyptiaca with the Egyptian weather god Seth . Seth, lord of Auaris, became the patron of the dynasty of King Nehesi (14th dynasty) and appears to have subsequently become the most important deity of Auaris, who was firmly associated with the Hyksos dynasty (15th dynasty). We can assume that Seth was venerated by Auaris all the time in the form of the Syrian weather god, based on his much later depiction in Asian form on the so-called 400-year stele as the ancestor of the 19th dynasty.

One can only vaguely guess where the Seth temple of the Hyksos period stood. In the city center (Area F / I) there were still the remains of a large temple that fell victim to farming. 200 m south of this was a Syrian-type palace (area F / II), which can be attributed to the Hyksos Chajan . This seems to have been connected to the above-mentioned temple via a processional street. In the forecourt of the palace there were pits with chopped off right hands, which were probably relics of war trophies of those soldiers who had been awarded for their bravery and killing efficiency at this point.

Under the palace mentioned, completely burned-out magazines of an older palace came to light, which can be dated to the time of the 14th Dynasty (approx. 1700–1640 BC). In the late Hyksos period (approx. 1580–1540 BC), apparently in the time of the Hyksos pharaoh Apopi I , a new palace district was laid out in the western part of the city directly on the eastern bank of the easternmost arm of the Nile (the Pelusian arm of the Nile ). Of this only gardens and peripheral buildings have been exposed. Most of the palace is likely to have fallen victim to recent canal and road construction.

In the late Hyksos period, the city was girdled by a defensive wall equipped with bastions. Perhaps this was a measure to protect against increasingly difficult and ultimately rebellious vassals, the 17th dynasty from Thebes. This city wall resulted in a lack of space in some areas of the settlement. Courtyards were occupied with residential houses. Graves were re-laid inside residential buildings. Only in the outskirts of the city (area A / V) was the parcelling still generous.

In the Second Intermediate Period, the residents of Auaris were largely of Near Eastern origin. Material culture and architectural tradition speak for the region of Lebanon and northern Syria as the country of origin. The city seems to have been a port city as early as the Middle Kingdom and especially in the Hyksos period (the Kamos stele reports on hundreds of ships) and was equipped with a large artificial harbor basin. Seafaring is therefore likely to be related to the settlement of these foreign residents. They are also to be regarded as bearers of the Hyksos rule.

The culture initially shows a high degree of Egyptization, which is particularly evident in the domestical area in architecture and material culture. In the sacred and funerary areas, however, the tradition of the Middle Bronze Age in the Levant was more tenacious. It also shows that after an initially intense phase of acculturation, the original culture remained. The economic background of the city was the trade with the Eastern Mediterranean, especially with the Levant and Cyprus on the one hand, from the Hyksos period and shortly before that with the Kerma culture in Sudan. In the course of the Hyksos period, foreign trade with the Levant declined noticeably, which may have had an impact on the decline of Auaris and the Hyksos Empire.

The vassal dynasty from Thebes finally made an advance under Kamose to Auaris. Some time later, his successor and founder of the 18th dynasty, Ahmose , Auaris around 1530 BC. Take. Archaeologically, this is shown by leaving the city, but at least part of the population is likely to have stayed behind, as can be seen from the unbroken continuation of ceramic production from the Hyksos period to the Thutmosid period. The new lords of Auaris finally used the excellent place as a military base and furthermore as a seaport, from which finally in the time of Thutmose III. and Amenhotep II developed the famous Peru-nefer naval base . According to texts, Canaanite cults continued to flourish there. In the early Thutmosid period, probably in the early reign of Thutmose III, a palace area of ​​5 hectares was built here. Two of the palaces were decorated with Minoan wall paintings, which, based on their motifs and emblems, create a direct reference to Knossos and the Minoan thalassocracy .

Minoan fresco from Auaris.

After Amenhotep II the port city seems to have been abandoned, but was fortified again under Haremhab in a precarious foreign policy situation. Soon afterwards, under Sethos I and Ramses II , the capital of Egypt and thus the seat of government of the pharaohs was relocated to the modern Qantir . Auaris became the southern area of ​​the newly built residence Pi-Ramesse . The Seth Temple in particular was expanded at that time. Part of Auaris remained the port, but the majority was a field of ruins and was mainly used as a burial place for the population of Pi-Ramesse.

The end of Pi-Ramesse and the move to Tanis

At the end of the 20th dynasty , around 1110 BC. Chr., Pi-Ramesse was abandoned. Presumably this was due to the silting up of the Pelusian arm of the Nile . With the move to Tanis , 30 kilometers away , the transport of numerous monuments from Pi-Ramesse was connected, which led to the fact that, due to the numerous inscriptions, Tanis was initially identified with the Ramses city.

As a result of the silting up of the Pelusian arm of the Nile, the city was deserted for almost half a millennium after the 20th dynasty and was only re-inhabited by an extensive settlement with tower houses and a temple after the reactivation of this waterway from the Saïten and Persian times to the early Ptolemaic times .

literature

  • Richard Pietschmann : Auaris. In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume II, 2, Stuttgart 1896, Col. 2266 f.
  • Manfred Bietak : Avaris and Piramesse, Archaeological Exploration in the Eastern Nile Delta. Ninth Mortimer Wheeler Archaeological Lecture. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1986.
  • Manfred Bietak: Avaris, The Capital of the Hyksos - Recent Excavations at Tell el-Dab'a. The British Museum Press, London 1996.
  • Manfred Bietak: The Center of the Hyksos Rule. Avaris (Tell el-Dab'a). In: ED Oren (Ed.): The Hyksos. New Historical and Archaeological Perspectives. Philadelphia 1997, pp. 78-140.
  • Manfred Bietak: Dab'a, Tell ed-. In: The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archeology in the Near East. Volume 2, Oxford University Press, New York / Oxford 1997, pp. 99-101.
  • Manfred Bietak: Dab'a, Tell ed-. In: The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. Volume 1, Oxford University Press, New York / Oxford 2001, pp. 351-354.
  • Manfred Bietak, Nanno Marinatos , Clairy Palyvou: Taureador Scenes in Tell el-Dab'a (Avaris) and Knossos. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-7001-3780-1 .
  • Manfred Bietak: A Palace of the Hyksos Khayan at Avaris. In: Paolo Matthiae u. a. (Ed.): Proceedings of the 6th International Congress on the Archeology of the Ancient Near East (2-11 May 2008 in Rome). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2010, pp. 99-109.
  • Labib Habachi : Khatâ'na-Qantîr: Importance. In: Annales du Service des Antiquités de l'Égypte. Volume 52, 1954, pp. 443-562.
  • Johann Jungwirth: The anthropological results of the excavation campaign in 1969 in Tell ed Dab'a, Lower Egypt. In: Annals of the Natural History Museum in Vienna. Volume 64, 1970, pp. 659-666 ( PDF file, 242.81 kB ). Retrieved November 8, 2014.
Preliminary reports

Current preliminary reports appear in: Egypt and the Levant. International Journal for Egyptian Archeology and Related Disciplines. Vienna 1990 ff.

  • Irene Forstner-Müller, Manfred Bietak, Manuela Lehmann, Chiara Reali: Report on the Excavations at Tell el-Dab‛a 2011 ( PDF; 2.8 MB ).
Excavation publication

Tell el-Dab‛a

  • 1: Labib Habachi: Tell el-Dab‛a I. Tell el-Dab‛a and Qantir. The Site and its Connection with Avaris and Piramesse. from the estate ed. by Eva-Maria Engel with the assistance of Peter Janosi and C. Mlinar. Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), Vienna 2001.
  • 2: Manfred Bietak: Tell el-Dab'a II. The place of discovery as part of an archaeological-geographical investigation of the Egyptian eastern delta. ÖAW, Vienna 1975.
  • 3: Joachim Boessneck : Tell el-Dab'a III. The animal bones finds 1966-1969. ÖAW, Vienna 1976.
  • 5: Manfred Bietak: Tell el-Dab'a V. A cemetery district with a mortuary temple from the Middle Bronze Age in the eastern Nile Delta. ÖAW, Vienna 1991.
  • 6: Eike-Meinrad Winkler , Harald Wilfing: Tell el-Dab'a VI. Anthropological investigations on the skeletal remains of the campaigns 1966-1969, 1975-1980, 1985 (excavation area A). ÖAW, Vienna 1991.
  • 7: Joachim Boessneck: Tell el-Dab'a VII, animals and historical environment in the northeast delta in the 2nd millennium BC. based on the animal bones of the 1975-1986 excavations . ÖAW, Vienna 1992.
  • 8: David Aston, Manfred Bietak: Tell el-Dab'a VIII. The Classification and Chronology of Tell el-Yahudiya Ware. with contributions by H. Charraf, R. Mullins, LE Stager and R. Voss. OeAW, Vienna 2012.
  • 9: Ernst Czerny: Tell el-Dab'a IX, a planned settlement of the early Middle Kingdom. ÖAW, Vienna 1999.
  • 10: Perla Fuscaldo: Tell el-Dab'a X. The palace district of Avaris. The pottery of the Hyksos period and the New Kingdom (areas H / III and H / VI). ÖAW, Vienna 2000.
  • 11: Irmgard Hein, Peter Jánosi : Tell el-Dab'a XI. Area A / V, settlement relics from the late Hyksos period. ÖAW, Vienna 2003.
  • 12: David Aston, Manfred Bietak: Tell el-Dab'a XII. A Corpus of Late Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period Pottery. 2 volumes. Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), Vienna 2004.
  • 13: Bettina Bader: Tell el-Dab‛a XIII. Typology and chronology of marl C-clay ceramics. Materials on Domestic Trade in the Middle Kingdom and the Second Intermediate Period. ÖAW, Vienna 2001.
  • 15: Graham Philip: Tell el-Dab'a XV. Metalwork of the late Middle Kingdom and the Second Intermediate Period. ÖAW, Vienna 2006.
  • 16: Irene Forstner-Müller: Tell el-Dab'a XVI. The graves of Area A / II of Tell el-Dab'a. ÖAW, Vienna 2008.
  • 17: Vera Müller: Tell el-Dab'a XVII. Depositing of sacrifices in the Hyksos capital Auaris (Tell el-Dab'a) from the late Middle Kingdom to the early New Kingdom. 2 volumes. ÖAW, Vienna 2008.
  • 18: Robert Schiestl: Tell el-Dab'a XVIII. The palace necropolis of Tell el-Dab'a, The graves of the area F / I of Straten d / 2 and d / 1. OeAW, Vienna 2009.
  • 19: Bettina Bader: Tell el-Dab'a XIX. Auaris and Memphis in the Hyksos period. Comparative analysis of material culture. ÖAW, Vienna 2009.
  • 20: Karin Kopetzky: Tell el-Dab'a XX. The chronology of the settlement ceramics of the Second Intermediate Period from Tell el-Dab'a. 2 volumes. ÖAW, Vienna 2010.
  • 21: Louise C. Maguire: Tell el-Dab'a XXI. The Circulation of Cypriot Pottery in the Middle Bronze Age. ÖAW, Vienna 2009.

Web links

Commons : Avaris  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Édouard Naville: The Shrine of Saft el Henneh and the Land of Goshen (1885). London, 1887, pp. 21-23 ( online ); Francis Llewellyn Griffith: The Antiquities of Tell el Yahudiyeh and Miscellaneous Work in Lower Egypt during the Years 1887-1888. London, 180, pp. 56-57, Pl. 19.
  2. ↑ Mahmud Hamza: Excavations of the Department of Antiquities at Qantir (Faqus District) (Season May 21st - July 7th, 1928). In: Annales du Service des Antiquités de l'Égypte 30 , 1930, pp. 31–68.
  3. ↑ Bietak: Tell el-Dab'a II. Pp. 100, 106, 107, with reference to William C. Hayes: Glazed Tiles from a Palace of Ramesses II at Kantir. New York, 1937.
  4. ↑ Labib Habachi: Khata'na-Qantir. Importance. In: Annales du Service des Antiquités de l'Égypte 52, pp. 443-562; Habachi: Tell el-Dab'a I. pp. 80-83.
  5. ↑ Habachi: Tell el-Dab'a I. pp. 65-72; Bietak: Avaris. P. 1.
  6. ↑ Pierre Montet: Géographie de l'Égypte Ancienne. Premiere game. To-Mehou, La Basse Égypte. Paris, 1957.
  7. ↑ Bietak: Tell el-Dab'a II. P. 24.
  8. ^ Shehata Adam: Report on the Excavations of the Department of Antiquities at Ezbet Rushdi. In: Annales du Service des antiquités de l'Egypte 56, pp. 207–226.
  9. ↑ Bietak: Tell el-Dab'a II. Pp. 179–220.
  10. ↑ Irene Forstner-Müller: Research in Tell el-Dab'a. In: Homepage of the OeAI (accessed on Feb. 9, 2014)
  11. ↑ Bietak: Tell el-Dab'a II. Pp. 77-87, 113-116.
  12. ↑ a b Josef Dorner: Result of the field investigations for the reconstruction of the historical topography of Auaris and Piramesse. A preliminary report. In: Manfred Bietak, Josef Dorner, Irmgard Hein, Peter Janósi: New excavation results from Tell el-Dab'a and 'Ezbet Helmi in the eastern Nile Delta 1989-1991. In: Egypt and Levante 4, 1994, (pp. 11–15), p. 12.
  13. ↑ Schiestl: Tell el-Dab'a XVIII. P. 23.
  14. ^ Bietak: Tell el-Dab'a II. Pp. 35, 190, 205.
  15. ↑ Kurt Sethe : Documents of the Old Empire Volume 4, Hinrichs, Leipzig 1903-1933, Section 3.10.
  16. ↑ Labib Habachi: The Second Stela of Kamose. Glückstadt 1972, p. 37.