TAPOSIRIS

We were originally supposed to visit Marina el-Alamein this morning, which I was looking forward to because of the variety of tombs at that site and because the chapel at Tomb 6 was the model for the chapel at Kom el-Shoqafa (the site I presented on yesterday). Unfortunately, we fell victim to the bureaucracy that is the Supreme Council of Antiquities, and required Zahi Hawass’ permission to be on site.

At least we got to spend some time with a herd of wild camels on the side of the road. They had babies!

 

——————————————

Our default plan involved a stop at Taposiris, a strange site that can’t be dated (though William thinks it was in use some time between the first centuries BCE and CE). Taposiris is a mix of many different kinds of architecture, all with strange depressions in the form of cisterns, deep stairways and would-be quarries.

A Greek-style Isis temple complex is enclosed by a temenos wall, which serves as a border for the main part of the site. The restoration team has taken the let’s-not-use-any-original-material track, so the wall is a mix of clean-cut limestone blocks and the weathered, low-quality local limestone blocks that originally stood around the temple. As a whole, the enclosure is relatively small in comparison to those we saw in the Valley. Everything is bunched together, and it’s difficult not to step on foundations as you walk.

At some point during the life of Taposiris, a basilica was erected, followed by the organization of a monastery. The basilica sits directly behind the large, H-shaped pylon of the temple, and is distinguished from earlier building phases by its grey stones and mortar. The outline of the basilica is very clear, and some of the limestone-block pavement still survives. We also found a piece of marble, about the right size and shape to serve as a floor tile; perhaps the whole place was once covered in marble like this.

Next to the basilica is a strange, short room at the end of a long staircase (it ends towards the pylon and the apse of the basilica). It looked like it had been a quarry at some point, judging by marks in the floor and on the walls—but it also had a very high water-line, where the bottom six feet or so of the room was surrounded by very bright white limestone, and the top all weathered and beige. Could it have been filled with water at one point? Was it ever a tomb, based on its strange location and depth?

The water hypothesis may hold some truth, since the whole site is snaked-through by a limestone pipe system. As for whether or not it was a tomb, an open shaft at the side of the room seems to contradict this point—but half-way down the staircase is a closed shaft dug horizontally, which may have been the beginning of a labyrinth tomb like the one at Kom el-Shoqafa.

Several other pits in the area are also confusing. At the back of the enclosure are two chambers, one oval and one rectangular, sunk very deep into the limestone and exposed because the ceilings have weathered away. At the bottom of the rectangular one are three or four limestone benches. One of them has a small, square stone placed at the end, which gives it the illusion of being a bench tomb—I do think this is wishful thinking on my part, since there’s no reason why a tomb like this should exist under a temple.

At the back corner on one side is a strange square-shaped pit, sunken at least 8 meters into the rock. At one side, a short staircase leads to a paved patio of sorts before the drop down. In the center is a tall tower made of limestone blocks, but with no door or other means of getting inside. A small ledge and a scraped-out corner (as in a quarry) are opposite each other in a diagonal axis with the tower. The theme at Taposiris seems to be re-use, albeit for unknown purposes and in a very cramped space.

Although we were fortunate enough to have been led around by a man I assume is the excavation director (he’s Egyptian, which is interesting because I thought the team working at Taposiris was Hungarian or Polish based on hearsay), we still weren’t able to deduce much more than the forms of the buildings lain before us in ruins. And although we went to the top of the tower which was once a ritual tomb for Osiris to get a better view of the place, the rest of the site looked rather barren below us.

It was odd not to see the Nile (but instead the Mediterranean Sea) as we entered Alexandria. The city has much more of an Egyptian feel than I had imagined; no Greek-themed restaurants, no European cafes. Every woman I saw in the market wore a hijab, indicating that the Coptic population (if there is one at all) is quite small. I was expecting to see the same Ottoman-Greek mix in the architecture that I saw on Cyprus last year, but I have yet to find it. I guess I was imagining the Alexandria of the past.