Memphis, Kom Helul
 The city of Memphis, at the apex of the Nile Delta, near modern day Cairo was long established as Egypt’s capital city. Whilst the religious capital, and royal seat varied over time Memphis retained its importance as an administrative centre.
From 1985 I worked with Dr. David Jeffreys and Dr. Lisa Giddy on the Egypt Exploration Society excavation at grid reference RAT, where my role was to assist Ms. Janine Bourriau in processing the pottery. As a result I had the opportunity not only to gain from Janine’s experience of Egyptian pottery but also to look at areas of Memphis near to where we were working, including Kom Helul.
Kom Helul is the modern name of a small area of mounds to the south-east of the present day Memphis Museum garden and is an area of the site beyond tourist access. In the early Roman period however the site was a flourishing centre of faience manufacture.
Flinders Petrie visited the site in the 1880s and was impressed by the quantity of faience debris and industrial waste which he found there. At that time he did not have permission to excavate, but returned in the early 1900s and unearthed several faience kilns there. His account of faience production at the site has remained the standard one until recent times.
My interest in the site stemmed from two sources, the first a suggestion from Dr. David Jeffreys of UCL in the 1980s when I was working on the pottery from RAT, and the second from a desire to better understand how Petrie had formed his opinion on faience production at both Memphis and Amarna.
In 2000 I began an excavation at Kom Helul designed to locate and excavate a faience kiln, since there were details of Petrie’s work which were unclear. Following a geophysical survey undertaken by Cardiff graduate Rowena Hart, a kiln was located and duly excavated. The area around the kiln was also examined, including an extensive dump of pottery which has yielded an early Roman date.
The excavation team mainly comprised Cardiff graduates and post-graduates working alongside Memphis veterans such as Ms. Bourriau and Mr. Peter French. The results of the Memphis work are currently being prepared for publication and should appear by early 2010.
Relevant Publications – Books
2000 Bourriau, J.D., Smith, L. and Nicholson P.T
| New Kingdom Pottery Fabrics. London: Egypt Exploration Society. 95pp. (ISBN 0-85698-149-4) |
Relevant Publications: Book chapters (including conference proceedings)
2006 Nicholson, P.T.
| Petrie and the production of vitreous materials. In B. Mathieu, D. Meeks and M. Wissa (Eds.) L’apport de l’Égypte à l’histoire des techniques. Cairo: I.F.A.O. 207-216 |
2003 Nicholson, P.T.
| New excavations at a Ptolemaic-Roman faience factory at Memphis, Egypt. . In Annales du 15e Congrès de l’ Association pour l’Histoire du Verre. New York-Corning: AIHV, 49-52. |
2002 Nicholson, P.T.
| Hellenistic/Roman faience production at Memphis, Egypt. In G. Kordas (ed.). Hyalos, Vitrum, Glass. Athens: Glasnet, 141-145. |
2002 Nicholson, P.T.
| Vitreous technology: evidence for faience production at Kom Helul, Memphis (Egypt). In M. Aldhouse-Green and P. Webster (eds.) Artefacts and Archaeology. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 90-101. |
Relevant Publications: Papers
2002 Nicholson, P.T.
| Kom Helul, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 87, 12-13 |
2002 Nicholson, P.T.
| A new furnace at Kom Helul, Memphis. Egyptian Archaeology, 20, 24-25. |
2001 Nicholson, P.T.
| Faience production at Kom Helul, Memphis. Egyptian Archaeology, 18, 15-17 |
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