Skip to content

Wadi el-Hudi Expedition

About
3D Modeling at Wadi el-Hudi
Our Mission
Meet the Team
See Our Publications
- Publications
- Resources for K-12 Teachers
Support
- Support
- Our Benefactors
عربى
español

Videos

Check out the Wadi el-Hudi YouTube channel!

By clicking submit, you agree to share your email address with the site owner and Mailchimp to receive marketing, updates, and other emails from the site owner. Use the unsubscribe link in those emails to opt out at any time.

Processing…

Success! You're on the list.

Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.

Share this:

Twitter
Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

Search for:

Follow me on Twitter

Instagram

Ramadan Kareem to all of our colleagues and friends!

This season, while returning to Site 48 to continue surveying, we discovered a new site! Site 51, built directly into the sandstone cliffs, seems to have been used by pastoral nomads from the Predynastic Period until the present day. The large boulders and caves of the sandstone cliffs would have offered cool spots to sit during hot days. Rock inscriptions featuring animals commonly found in the desert and animal feces indicate the pastoral nomads would have used these spaces for animals, in addition to other activities such as burning and grinding. At least 50 rock inscriptions were carved into various surfaces throughout Site 51 and give a sense of the long time span of the use of this site. Among the rock inscriptions are a Middle Kingdom hieroglyphic inscription and three Arabic inscriptions. The vast majority of rock inscriptions, however, are desert or domesticated animals, which we assume were created by Predynastic pastoral nomads. We named one particular area the “Cow Gallery” because it features a series of horned cows and ibexes. In addition to the animal inscriptions, tally marks were carved onto various parts of the site, which could have been made by pastoral nomads to count something over the course of years while staying at the site.

This season the Wadi el-Hudi team hosted several specialists, who provided exciting information about the stone and ceramic tool technology at Wadi el-Hudi. Dr. Emmy Malak spent a week sorting and studying our various ground stone and ceramic tools. As opposed to “knapped” lithics, ground stone tools were intentionally shaped into various tools such as “pounders,” “scrapers,” or “whetstones” through grinding the surfaces of the stone. In addition to extracting amethyst from mines, ground stone tools at Wadi el-Hudi provide evidence for larger stone working. For example, these large ground stone drills are too large for amethyst process and most likely would have been used for drilling stone vessels or larger stone objects.

This season a small contingent of our team spent three days surveying Dihmit South. The team sailed across Lake Nasser via a beautiful Dahabiya and hiked to the site each day! Dihmit is similar to Site 9 at Wadi el-Hudi, but much larger in size and more extensive. The massive fortified settlement is surrounded by nearby hilltops featuring a series of cairns, stelae emplacements, and areas where people could sit and observe the landscape. During our brief survey we discovered evidence for amethyst processing, similar to other sites at Wadi el-Hudi, as well as dozens of rock inscriptions, and three new stelae that were brought to the Aswan Magazine!

Each season while conducting archaeological surveys our team has collected stone tools and debitage (waste remains of stone left over after formation into objects) that were identified as paleolithic. This season we were joined by paleolithic stone tool experts, Drs. Zeljko Rezek, Pedro Horta, and Laurent Bruxelles, who identified extensive Early and Middle Stone Age Paleolithic habitation remains at Wadi el-Hudi. Wadi el-Hudi was not only occupied during the Pharaonic and Islamic periods; certain sites exhibit multiple habitation levels during the Paleolithic! These tools were formed and frequently abandoned in the same spots, building up a dense accumulation of stone tool technology over hundreds of thousand years in the wadis.

This season was our busiest yet! New and returning team members worked for two months on our stone conservation and digital epigraphy project. Our 3D modeler, Will Feltz, created stunning 3D models that digitally reassemble Wadi el-Hudi stelae found in the 1930s and discovered by our team during past seasons. The Usersatet stela, seen here, was located at Site 4 in 2016, and refers to the Viceroy of Kush, Usersatet. After conservator Dr. Erico Peintner cleaned and conserved each stela fragment, the fragments were all photographed by Michael Kraemer, Joana Pinto and Victoria Shakespeare for photogrammetry. The digital epigraphy team, Bryan Kraemer and Amy Wilson, painstakingly figured out how each of the fragments fit together, created 3D epigraphic digital line drawings, and translated the text. This work was completed thanks to an AEF Grant from the American Research Center in Egypt.

%d bloggers like this: