News
11 May - 20 November 2019
Exhibition curators: Dr Marek Chłodnicki, Dr Agnieszka Mączyńska
The Polish Archaeological Expedition to the Eastern Nile Delta, a team of archaeologists from the Poznań Archaeological Museum and the Institute of Archaeology of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, has been conducting excavations at Tell el-Farcha since 1998. During twenty years of research, many important discoveries were made, which changed the knowledge of the oldest history of Egyptian civilisation. The research carried out by Polish archaeologists focuses on a settlement and a cemetery. The oldest traces of settlement at Tell el-Farcha date to the beginning of the 4th millennium BC.
The settlement was inhabited for almost 1 000 years and the discoveries made by Polish archaeologists are testimony to life in the period of major cultural, economic and political changes, i.e. from the Predynastic Period to the beginning of the Old Kingdom. Tell el-Farkha was an important economic and political centre during the formation of the united Egyptian state. Its inhabitants actively participated in trade with the east and the south. It is here that representatives of the royal administration of the first pharaohs had their seat. Next to the settlement a cemetery was established, where the dead were buried, also those from higher levels of the social hierarchy, equipped with a large number of burial gifts, sometimes of a luxury nature. Their presence at Tell el-Farkha confirms the high status of the site.
The exhibition organised on the occasion of the expedition's 20th anniversary presents the most important discoveries made at the site since 1998. It also shows the environment, in which the archaeologists work and live, including the inhabitants of Ghazala village. Additionally, the exhibition reveals the details of archaeologists' work at Tell el-Farkha during the exploration of the site and the analysis of the artefacts and other finds excavated.
Another important element of the exhibition is the Pre-dynastic cemetery located at Minshat Abu Omar, in the same part of the Nile Delta. It was here that, twenty years before the research at Tell el-Farkha, excavations in which archaeologists from Poznań participated began. They started a long tradition of research on the Pre-dynastic period carried out by the Poznań Archaeological Museum. The artefacts from Minshat Abu Omar are in the Museum's collection and are displayed at the exhibition.
