KHD April 2025
Day 1
We have returned to Kafr Hassan Dawood for the 2025 season and are staying in a house full of loud cats, overlooking the site. There are also a lot of amorous frogs, a very loud donkey and a duck that 'laughs' in the middle of the night! The site, however, makes up for all these creature discomforts. We have already opened up two new trenches and are working from 7 am to 2 pm, with a half hour break for breakfast. The afternoon is spent analysing the remains and writing up the results. It's exhausting but I wouldn't be anywhere else.
Day 2
Hello and welcome to day two. It's our day off and so we were able to lie in bed for a luxurious extra hour, before having traditional Egyptian breakfast and shooting off to do all of the boring chores that somehow get overlooked when Indiana Jones is invading temples and carrying off gold statues!
Day 3
Full day in the trenches. Dropped down another 20cm over most of my square and assiduously avoiding Islamic graves dating to a century of two ago. Now we have hit the floodplain which dates back to a little over 5000 years ago, on which the inhabitants lived, worked, died and were buried. There are shadows in the sediments denoting disturbances and (if we are lucky) interments, complete with their possessions and cultural markers, which are going to shed light on this difficult and enigmatic period.
Day 4
Blisters! Had a fas (sort of a pickaxe) race with one of the workers. Even though I won, I don't have much skin left on my hands! Work continues apace and we are happy to announce the finding of a grave that was uncovered in the 2022 season and remains to be completed. It dates to around 2900BC and has previously yielded a large range of objects, including (oddly) a pig tooth! What was it doing there? Nobody knows. But maybe the grave will be able to tell us. I am the proud owner of tan marks for the first time in ages. I have missed fieldwork!
Day 5
Amorous frogs croaked all night and kept me awake, as did the muezzin squawking from a nearby mosque (a bad recording of a muezzin, actually). Trench two now has a large mud bank denoting the original floodplain, and a series of small roundish to rectangular cuts that represent graves! Used GIS to locate a further, larger grave (1183) that we found last time we were here, and which contained twenty-plus pots, and started to take it down. The pottery person tells us its early Old Kingdom, so maybe 2800-2900BC? Not too shabby. Abandoned my hard man excavation kick with the men and reverted to digging bones – this is after all what I do! I am about to turn in and its not even nine yet. Ridiculous.
Day 6
Squiffy after last night’s chicken dinner so Claudia and I lay about eating dry toast and looking pale and interesting all day long. The laughing duck and the amorous frogs and the high-volume donkey did their best to make the night impossible. So much for the daring archaeologists, laid low by the chicken of death! Indiana Jones and the Chicken of Death? Must have missed that one. Worked out that despite the seemingly low wages we are paying the men is about a third more than the usual wages they receive…
Day 7
Trench 3 starts to produce bones! I leave Claudia with the Old Kingdom grave and go to investigate;
The fragments were no big deal but nearby was a contracted burial of a tiny little person…I will work out her (?) height later…who was adorned with more jewellery than we have had at the site so far in my experience PLUS copper! The site was meant to be a copper production area but this is the first time I have seen any here (they found more in the 1990s). By its ankles are the remains of a pot, three stone bangles [and, it later transpired, the remains of 2-3 other ones made of ivory or bone], a metal strip and the remains of maybe 3-5 strings of beads made from shell, ?ostrich eggshell, carnelian and perhaps obsidian. Brought the Pottery Hobbit in to assist in the excavation – her first burial so slightly nervy. Nevertheless, did very well although she did point out that “pottery is more by cup of tea”. My iPhone blew up expensively…and it is only two weeks old. Strand iStore – I am coming for you.
Day 8
Phone still dead. Spent the entire day excavating layer after layer after layer of 5000 year old stone, shell and bone/ivory jewellery from the pile by Burial 1200’s feet. Scored as female on the basis of skull morphology…there is no pelvis left…and the teeth and cranial sutures (again, not ideal) say she is probably in her 30s. Femur was small at around 37cm, providing height estimates ranging from 140-151cm depending on what assumptions you make. So a pretty tiny person. But an important one – beads are now well over 100, and the amount of work needed to make them is spectacular. Seemingly healthy insofar as bones can tell us although 90%+ of all afflictions leave no bony trace. Further beads were found by the head, neck, in the chest area and in the sediments around it. Mohammed the carpenter turned up and told me that my name in Arabic registers as Hassa, which means handsome man. Modesty forbids…!
Day 9
Well over 200 beads – the Pottery Hobbit (a little hung over) and I took it down further but still no end in sight. As many as seven bangles, and at least two of these could be ivory. Hippo or elephant ivory? Remains to be seen! The day was perfect for digging – almost cold, in fact, with big banks of grey cloud rolling across the sun, shafts of light illuminating the eternal yellow darting dace of the bulbuls (birds) that roose and soar and dip from the telephone wires to the trees to the bug-rich dunes, flashes of brilliance that look like flickers of sunlight against the drear backgrounds. In the afternoon headed for Cairo and the Polish Centre and thence to Zamalek where I had a luxurious night on an actual bed for once. Found out that to fix my phone would cost about £350 (equivalet to avout half a year’s salary for the average Egyptian…) and went to the Khan el Khalili market, qhere I first went in 1993, and its as insane now as it was then. Went down Mosque Street to the silver shop where climbing the tiny stairs to the next floor and demanding to see “the box” beings you to an Aladdin’s cave of old silver, twinkling and clanking in the harsh light, picking through the bags with increasingly dirty fingers, a haze of cigarette smoke, the TV in the background, offers of tea... Koran canisters, big spiky beads, tiny anklets for teen brides…there is no better Egyptian souvenir. Got a cab from Bab Zuwayla and collapsed gracefully into bed.
Day 10
Slow start but I still woke up at 6am…one gets in the habit. A slow breakfast, a lot of tea for me and coffee for Claudia – who is powered by espresso – and went to the Nomad store in Zamalek (where we bought Pottery Hobbit a camel), we went to various trade and craft shops, we had lunch at a rather bizarre place called Café Bucharest, themed along the general appearance of John Lennon, or possibly Jimi Hendrix, or maybe Jim Morrison of the Doors. Ran across an expensive place called Loft that has excellent craft and decor items, includibg a lught I lusted after that cost 12000LE (about £200). Wedged ourselves into the truck and an hour and a half later were back in the boondocks…the laughing duck was happy to hear us…he seems to be sitting in an echo chamber…
Day 11
Brilliantly left the card out of my camera and took nonexistent photos all day. The heat seems to be getting to me. I returned to crazy bead lady – we are up in the hundreds now – and worked on my catalogue of Mohammeds as there are at least a dozen working on the project and it’s very hard to keep track of them all (they include Mohammed gums, Mohammed water-buffalo cheese, daft Mohammed, and Mohammed good-with-a-shovel). Distracted by incredible discovery of several mother of pearl diamond-shaped plaquettes among the beads. I’ve never seen anything like them before. They’re wafer thin and incredibly fragile; they have two holes in them so they were probably sewn to clothing. Took hours to expose and lift. Passed them to the palpitating Pottery Hobbit who was acting as my assistant. She and I went for galabiyehs and dresses from the local tailor in the evening – he’s terribly squeamish about money and simply won’t ask me for any – and met about a thousand kids who swarmed around PH like locusts. Being fat and old, I survived intact! Spent the evening discussing how many camels we are all worth (https://howmanycamels.org/) – turns out I am almost entirely worthless as my boobs are simply too small…
Day 12
The Arabic word for cold is brrrrd – onomatopoeic perfection! It was brrrrd this morning but by 8 the sun was up and roasting us properly. Ayman is my PA today – you have to keep an eye on him or else his sheer enthusiasm has him digging off in all sorts of erroneous directions. That said, we managed to FINALLY complete beads lady, with further clusters of little shell beads found among the bones and underneath the body as I lifted her tenderly and laid her in her new home. Even the mouth turned out to have contained beads. She must have been someone special. Burial 1203 was entirely fragmented but that didn’t stop yesterday’s digger giving him (I think) a pelvis and other body parts he didn’t actually have, simply by carving them into the sediment. The shape is lovely in the ground but the bones are completely shattered and will not do well once lifted, so I spent as long as I could observing his characteristics and position. Pot by the face and a few beads on the right shoulder: not as fancy as beads lady. Slid off to Tell el Kebir, which has changed considerably since my father was there in 1942. The roads are crowded with carts and cars and pedestrians and vendors jostling and shouting and blowing kazoos in your face, trying to get you to buy fruit, ice cream, vegetables and lumps of raw meat lying on chopping blocks among a forest of cow carcasses. Chickens resting obliviously in cages. Up and down the sideroads we went. The noise was indescribable. The smells wafting out of side streets. Motorbike food delivery drivers. Stalls of wilting vegetables. Cats everywhere, risking their nine lives beneath the wheels of passing cars. Shamefacedly bought a Samsung knock-off (which amused PH as I have been mocking hers all week) and drove back to the house in a chorus of English, Arabic and Polish swearing to dissuade the eight grinning kids who were hitching a lift on the back of the truck. Needless to say it didn’t work and they got a free ride all the way. Various scandalous news from home – yet it all seems a world away to me now.
Day 13
Occasionally I doubt the sanity of my career, but compared to the fisherman wearing a wetsuit (and plastic bags on feet and hands) and standing in the canal with a hand-net this morning...I may be all right after all. It occurred to me that it was odd that one would eat fish that has lived in water that one doesn’t want touching one's skin? Heavenly sunny, warm day with a breeze rustling the trees - went bouncing off to the site, running the gauntlet of kids shouting “what’s your name?” at me (they will ask it 100 times without pausing…the more ridiculous version is “What’s your name, Carolina?”). The bulbuls were in a torrent, the sparrows were squabbling in the trees, a manky dog barked at me and gave up mid yap, dozing off in a heap of piebald fur. Poor Grzegorz had to waste half the day taking some of the men to Ismailia for some insurance thing, leaving me truffling about in the trench trying to work out what on earth happened to B1202 - possible suggestions: walked on a bomb, fell into a blender, run over by JCB. A horrid mess of fragments and pottery and assorted piffle. Shouting match breaks out among the men as someone who has to go to Ismailia doesn't want to. Lots of ranting and shouting later ("he don't respecting me, Larry!)" I poured some firm oil on troubled eaters, the issue was resolved, and they headed off in a triumphant cloud of black exhaust smoke. Mohammed "Mr Musk Ox Cheese" even shaved and put on a clean shirt for the occasion. The site guardian insists we all cram into his tiny hut rather than having fatour (breakfast) under the trees...but on the good side he is superb at making taamiyeh (falafel). Seems to be our day for visitors: two chaps approached, watched me for a while, said "English number one language" ("aywa", I said, gravely) followed by a museum curator who watched us digging and bagging things then brightly asked "you archaeologist?". The temptation to say that no, I was a tax consultant, was almost overpowering; after offering me a daughter and a job in his museum, he wandered off to smoke a shisha with Musa and left me to the dubious pleasures of the rubbish burial. G returned in a grumpy mood because the day was entirely wasted; three of the five men had expired IDs, thus they couldn’t even prove who they were, thus nothing could be done. Did battle with the ants who would, I think, carry me off if they could - the akrabs (scorpions) have at least so far kept their distance, as have the appalling monster camel spiders that would have arachnophobes climbing trees and pulling them up after them! Dig Baby cooked shakshuka for dinner. No news fron the laughing duck for a while - perhaps he's on holiday?
Day 14
Call to prayer awoke me at 4am and that was it, so stumbling around the house trying to make tea and not wake up everyone else. Looked out over the Delta as the sun dragged itself reluctantly up - I never fail to be astonished that this lush triangle which fed the world's greatest ancient civilisation was all attributable to one unassuming sludge-coloured trickle that’s still with us. The same land that was farmed then is farmed now, the ancestors of these dogs, these sheep, these cows, these cats were here, living in the same streets, immortalised in tomb reliefs. And if that weren’t enough, thse same animals became gpds: Anubis, Khnum, Hathor and Bast. The tombs we find contain the 150x great grandparents of the local Egyptians who work with us. And they wrote all about it - they started doing it in about 3200BC; England didn't write for another 3000 years...! I am as fond of Pudding Island as the next Brit, but I gave to admit that we do lag behind a little at times…! I kidnapped the Hobbit from her pottery duties (much to Mariusz' polite annoyance) to help Claudia with B1203 and off I went to Trench 2 where I found a pot that looks for all the world like Monty Python's Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, returning to the girls who had made a beautiful job of the burial. Served a lot of hyper-sweet black tea by Musa. Wasted two hours trying to find the base of B1183 before concluding that it doesn't have one. Decided I would delve deeper into the worker's names and I kid you not - these are five of them:
Mohammed Ayman Mohammed Mahmoud
Ahmed Mahmoud Mohammed Mahmoud
Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed Abd-el Kader
Mohammed Momin Mohammed Mahmoud
Mahmoud Mohammed Mahmoud
I’m trying to imagine this many Jesuses in Europe; it would make life a little difficult I feel. Tho I knew a few Jesuses (with a hard J) in Spain. Apropos of nothing, the village is called Daouide (Da-oo-EE-da) by the villagers…which sounds nicer than the ‘Dawood” we use.Towards the evening the muezzin's tone suddenly changed; the death (last night) of one of the worker's great uncle (aged 60) triggered a long, low lament...enumerating the deceased's virtues, announcing the body’s return from the hospital, and appealing for all able-bodied men go to the cemetery immediately to dig a grave as the funeral is to be carried out today (it must always take place within 24 hours). As I walked home, I could see a spire of dust arising from behind the white grave markers, the men oddly muted as they dug and shovelled in smooth rhythm. I am not particularly a fan of the muezzin (especially not at 4am) and I can't say I entirely 'get' Islam (or any other faith, come to that), but on this occasion it seemed entirely fitting as dusk fell, the lights twinkling in the growing darkness of the night, and the wailing tones booming their laments for the dead out over the empty streets.
KHD Gallery 2025
ABOUT THE KAFR HASSAN DAWOOD EGYPT PROJECT
The site of Kafr Hassan Dawood (KHD) is located slightly to the east of the Egyptian Delta. It is located in a dried-out tributary of the Nile called the Wadi Tumilat, which was once used as a trading route ("the Canal of the Pharaohs") between the Egyptians and their neighbors towards the coast.
In prehistoric times the whole area was extensively used by hunter gatherers, then gradually by agriculturists. These are among the earliest sedentary sites known anywhere, and are of huge importance in understanding the evolution of human society. The appearance of valuable items in some burials hints at the emergence of local elites, and also long-distance trading to Upper Egypt and the Middle East.
KHD is one of these important early sites, and is famous for having the largest Predynastic cemetery in the Delta area. Local Maadian groups saw more and more influence from the Naqadans of Upper Egypt from around 3500 BC. Egypt's unification under King Narmer c. 3150 BC may well have affected the site; finding out just how (and even if) this happened is a key aim of the KHD Research Project.
As a bioarchaologist I am fascinated by how actual humans were affected by the historical events through which they lived. Studying bones can give a more intimate look at real lives, and once we have profiled a population through time we can start to ask big questions about the nature of society, the roles of the sexes, and how statehood affected social structure.
KHD is the greatest site of its type in the Delta. It straddles prehistory to history, from the local culture of the Maadians to the new, unified Egypt of Narmer. Three thousand years later Late Period and Greek/Roman peoples came by, building temples and burying both humans and animals. The KHD burials are an invaluable and threatened resource, and we are doing all we can to rescue this valuable information before the site disappears
The area is susceptible to rising groundwater - which is detrimental to human skeletons/mummies - while development of agricultural land and rampant construction also poses a significant threat. This is our last chance to rescue vital data from the site, so we have to take urgent action. If you want to help the project, please visit the ECHO Website (Egyptian Cultural Heritage Organisation) and see what you can do.
Funding the KHD Research Project
VISIT the ECHO WEBSITE
Discover more about Egyptian Cultural Heritage Organisation & learn how to fund this important project. Designate your donation for the KAFR HASSAN DAWOOD PROJECT.
2019 KHD Summary
The KHD Research Project was initiated in 2018 by Dr Geoffrey Tassie and Dr Lawrence Owens as a joint project with Ministry of Antiquities (MoA, now Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, MoTA) to be co-directed by Dr Lawrence Owens (University of Winchester) and Dr Rizq Diab (MoA/MoTA), with Dr Geoffrey Tassie as the project Deputy Director. Regrettably, Dr Tassie died suddenly in 2019 before the first season of the joint project took place. This joint project set in place an ambitious new programme of research to build upon the findings from the 1995-1999 seasons, to include mapping the extent of the cemetery, establishing its connection with the nearby settlement, examination of temporal trends in the cemetery's development, and an examination of biological and cultural change between the Late Predynastic to Early Dynastic periods.
The 'big picture' is to understand how society changed - if at all - when Egypt was unified by King Narmer in around 3150 BC, and the impact of the newly centralised administration at Memphis upon villages, towns, and people. We are also interested in how the site was used in later periods, notably by Late Period, Ptolemaic and Roman populations who buried both humans and animals here three thousand years later.
The 2019 season consisted of an exploratory programme with a small, core team to assess the archaeological area, and to consider what would be possible for our longer term research. We mapped in and opened up a series of 10 x 10m squares in the northern part of the western cemetery, near to the original excavation centre and abutting the edge of the historical Islamic cemetery. Workers from the nearby village, together with specialist archaeologists from Quft, cleared back several feet of sterile sand, before arriving at the ancient flood plain, a much muddier, darker horizon (caused by repeated Nile inundations) upon which the original inhabitants of KHD made their home. The ancient village is also nearby, but little is known about it at present, and it will be subject to future investigations.
In the 2019 season, we located a series of graves containing human remains and cultural artefacts. The dates are yet to be confirmed but all individuals seem to have been interred between about 3300 and 3000 BC. Most burials contained ceramic vessels, and some also contained offerings such as red, black and white stone beads that - judging from their positions in the graves - were probably necklaces and bracelets. The range of grave goods was not as extensive as the 1995-1999 seasons, suggesting internal differentiation – perhaps based upon status, or chronological phase – within the cemetery.
These were typically single interments, but several contained multiple individuals. What this means is uncertain – it may indicate familial ties, although the reuse of graves may reflect some form of social hierarchy or affinities. As with most burials dating from the Neolithic to the Early Dynastic period, the bodies were interred in a flexed or 'foetal' position, in oval, rectangular or circular graves: this accords with most of the human remains recovered from 1995-1999. Most individuals were buried with their heads facing towards the North, and their faces towards the East, although the presence of other variations may relate to the beliefs of the various groups within the KHD community.
Children were under-represented in the sample, as were males; while this may purely reflect the choice of trench location, it also seems possible that different ages and sexes received different treatment, and perhaps burial locale. The average adult age at death was in young adulthood - only two of the individuals recovered seemed older than 50 years of age. People were largely healthy insofar as we can see from bones; there were some slight markers of childhood stress, suggesting some form of hardship (such as illness or starvation) during development.
It is early days, but the cemetery has revealed a great deal of information already – more than we could have expected after a first season. While preservation is often less than perfect, enough remains to assess the population’s possible biological origin, as well as factors such as diet, activity levels and behaviour. The ceramologists and small finds specialists also have a great deal to work with, plotting artefact origin and function, and relating these to the individuals in the graves. We also have all the data from previous seasons to collate and combine with the 2019 findings, and once we have that it will make this the largest and best understood Predynastic cemetery site in the Delta area.
We can then use this formidable dataset to address the bigger questions: what were women's status or roles? Did they change through time? Who wielded power - locals or incomers? Did the village change over time? Did people get ill more or less often? Was this to do with diet or other factors? Did people die younger or older? Were childhoods more or less healthy? We can then compare our findings with funerary evidence from Lower and Upper Egypt, to contribute to the wider understanding of local/regional/supraregional health-related developments. All of these are important issues to be considered within research into the dynamics of the origins of the state.
As with all scientific enquiries, these initial investigations have led to many new questions.
We will keep you updated, so do visit the website again!
Additional Information
The KHD project was founded by noted Egyptologist Dr Geoffrey Tassie, who spent thirty years in the field, becoming a curator of at the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) shortly before his untimely passing in 2019. The project is run in his memory by Dr Lawrence Owens, in collaboration with Dr Grzegorz Bak-Pryc of Jagiellonan University (Krakow) and the UK-based Egyptian Cultural Heritage Organisation (ECHO). Lawrence is a bioarchaeology research fellow at the Free University of Brussels, and has worked on archaeological and forensic excavations in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas since 1992. The project hosts academic specialists from the UK, Europe and the US, all of whom have volunteered their time free of charge to rescue KHD’s heritage. We have all the permissions and clearances, and a team of specialists, international volunteers and Egyptian workers standing by; all we need is the money to proceed, and this is where you come in.
ECHO is a UK-registered charity (ref:1142484) authorised to accept donations that can count for tax relief. Further, major donors can expect to receive updates, exclusive communication with site directors and staff, photographic reportage on the project as it develops, and a host of other benefits. The extraordinary rarity of KHD makes this project of the greatest possible importance to understanding the formation of early states and the very genesis of Egyptian civilisation. Equally, the sites' vulnerability in the face of modern threats such as agriculture and urbanisation cannot be overstated. This is a unique opportunity to be part of something remarkable - we hope that you can help..
This project and fundraiser is organized by the Egyptian Cultural Heritage Organisation
Memorial: Geoffrey John Tassie Ph.D. (1959-2019)
Geoffrey “Tass” Tassie came late to the field, yet by the time of his death he was known all over the world as a major force in Egyptian archaeology. He had been a noted celebrity hairdresser during what he called the ‘roaring 80s’, but while on holiday in Egypt in the early 90s he fell into a love affair with Egypt that was to possess him for the rest of his life. He did his Ph.D. research at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology, focusing first on ancient Egyptian hairstyles then on the Predynastic period. He co-founded the Egyptian Cultural Heritage Organisation (ECHO), worked on numerous important sites, wrote dozens of major research articles, taught at SOAS and the University of Winchester, and carried out research at the Freie Universitat, Berlin. His reputation led him to a curatorial position at the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo, in charge of the world’s most important Predynastic and Early Dynastic archaeological collections.
I first met him in 1999, worked with him on various books and papers, excavated with him in Egypt, and was his housemate for the last eight years of his life. He was always the life and soul of every party, while becoming more and more engrossed in his subject, piling the house with heaps of books and papers, switching on his laptop at 7 in the morning, and falling asleep over it at 11 each night. Egyptology was his greatest love; in her service he drove himself on mercilessly, maybe too hard. By the time he died in Spring 2019 he was known all over the world not just for his academic abilities, but for his his tenacity, his intense loyalty, his kindness, and the quiet, unshakeable principles that lay beneath his perpetual joie de vivre. His friends and I are continuing his work as his favourite site – Kafr Hassan Dawood – and in running ECHO. He remains forever in our thoughts.
Geoffrey John Tassie: 1959-2019