About the project..
The primary objective of this project is to conduct interdisciplinary research on the urban layout and residential architecture of the town of Pathyris in the Ptolemaic period (332–30 B.C.). Pathyris is the Greek name for a site located about 30 km southwest of Luxor, spread over the top and slopes of the East Mountain of Gebelein, in the Gebelein micro-region (Egypt). What makes this town stand out is its strategic role as a stronghold guarding the Nile Valley. Due to its significance, the locality has been inhabited since prehistory and received a new impulse for development after 186 B.C., when the Great Revolt in Upper Egypt was suppressed. As a result, a Ptolemaic military camp was erected there between 165 and 161 B.C., where local people could serve as soldiers-serving-for-pay. Pathyris was the capital of its nome from the 2nd century B.C. to 88 B.C. After the new revolt, during the reign of Ptolemy X Alexander, Pathyris disappeared from the written records. What makes the town unique is a large number of Greek and Demotic papyri, found in archives maintained by the town authorities, temples, and individual families. These documents show how the municipal authorities attempted to Hellenise the town several times, eventually giving birth to a bilingual community with coexisting Greek and Egyptian practices, institutions, and languages. Thus, the project’s sources offer a unique glimpse into various socio-economical facets of the Ptolemaic society. Despite its significant presence in the written records, which cannot be overlooked by any scholar dealing with the Ptolemaic period in Egypt, Pathyris has remained largely unexplored by archaeologists. Moreover, since dynamite had been used to clear the land for modern housing, the majority of traces of this ancient town are irretrievably lost by now. Therefore, there is a risk of its complete disappearance not only from the face of the earth but also from the scholarly debate. How can we then recreate its appearance? What sources do we have at our disposal? The latter are many and varied. First, the archival sources, namely the unpublished Notebook with sketches and photographs from Italian excavations conducted at the beginning of the 20th century. The Notebook combines drawings and descriptions of excavated architectural structures with detailed measurements of the preserved walls – the plans include information about the dimensions of individual rooms, as well as wall thicknesses, placement of stairs, stoves, etc. This information, coupled with photographs showing houses in the town, sometimes preserved up to 2–3 meters above the ground, will allow us to understand what the architectural remains looked like. Abundant, and often accurate, information about the topography of the town and features of residential architecture can also be found in the papyri and ostraca discovered there.
Documents such as contracts of sale or agreements on division or rent of real property (houses and vacant plots) included a number of standardised elements: enumerations of typical building elements (e.g. courtyard, vaulted room) as well as of neighbours on all four sides. Analysed jointly, these documents will allow for the reconstruction of the layout of larger parts of the town and, by identifying the characteristic elements of houses mentioned in the papyri (such as vaulted structures, dovecote, light wells, etc.), putting them in proper archaeological context. We hope that in this way we will be able to identify, for example, the houses of Gi, Psenmenthos, and maybe even the famous Dryton and his wife Apollonia. The analysis of papyri documentation will also allow for reconstructing the street grid within the town and approximating the locations of public structures, such as temples or fortifications. Finally, the town plan obtained in this way will be embedded in the field thanks to georeferencing. In conjunction with the Digital Elevation Model (raster representation of the relief of the terrain), a hypothetical 3D visualisation of Pathyris will be compiled, shedding light on how its architecture was adjusted to the natural topography of the Eastern Gebelein Hill. All the above analyses will add to our understanding of urbanisation in the Ptolemaic period by revealing whether the process of Hellenisation was reflected also in the residential architecture and urban landscape of Pathyris and how it compared to other Ptolemaic towns. Another goal of the project is to digitise as much data on Pathyris as possible and make them available online, thus preserving knowledge on this unique and important site. An online website and papyrological database will then be an integral part of the project. The website will serve as a publication hub for archival documentation and plans. The database will organise the papyrological evidence, now heavily dispersed, in a clear and easily-accessible manner, creating a homogenous thematic catalogue focused on the urban layout of Pathyris. After basic contextualisation of each document (edition reference, type of document, date, provenance, and language), all terms or phrases related to the urban layout will be recorded (e.g., districts, roads, buildings, temples, etc.). The tangible outcomes of the project will include a major paper (written by the PI) published in an international peer-reviewed journal as well as a series of shorter papers in international periodicals. The publications, website, and database will serve as reference tools for papyrologists, archaeologists, Egyptologists, historians, and experts in geoscience.