This document is part of the online version of the book An Oasis City by Roger S. Bagnall, Nicola Aravecchia, Raffaella Cribiore, Paola Davoli, Olaf E. Kaper and Susanna McFadden, which is available at http://dlib.nyu.edu/awdl/isaw/oasis-city/. It is published as part of the NYU Library's Ancient World Digital Library and in partnership with the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW). Further information about ISAW's publication program is available on the ISAW website. Please note that while the base URI of this publication is stable, the specific content available online will be updated to include more links to supplementary material and related digital resources.
3.1. The city plan of Roman and late Roman Trimithis
Paola Davoli
Trimithis is the only city of Roman Egypt for which we can recover most of the urban plan. Most other cities are concealed by modern towns on the same footprint, but in the case of Amheida only some areas of sand hide the ancient layout, down to the level of individual rooms, from our eyes. Fortunately, it has been possible to map most of the village of Kellis, allowing us to compare these two settlements. Because only a small fraction of Amheida has been excavated—and even if we spent many years on the task it would never be possible to dig all of it—a topographical survey of the site has been a major objective from the beginning, in order to allow us to understand the urban character of Trimithis.↩#p100
Figure 45. Plan of Amheida.Figure 46. Plan of Area 11.
This survey started in 2001 before the excavation itself, and was completed for the habitation areas, as far as possible, in 2013. However, several parts of the plan are still blank because of the presence of a thick coat of sand covering the buildings (Fig. 45). Moreover, the area west of the city is hidden under sand dunes that move toward the south at a speed of about 7 m per year. This natural phenomenon enabled us to discover and plot a new quarter of the settlement in 2013 (Area 11) (Fig. 46). Our knowledge will grow in the future as the dunes continue to move. Magnetometry and conductivity surveys have also been carried out, but these have added little to our knowledge of the building plans, mainly because the mud bricks and the fill surrounding them do not differ significantly in magnetic properties that are the essential data captured by such surveys, and they therefore cannot be distinguished from one another.1 The vast necropolis to the south of the settlement still needs to be recorded.↩#p101
We proceeded with our topographical survey by cleaning the surface sand and debris from the features we intended to study, then plotting their key points with a Total Station (an electronic surveying instrument); in some flat areas we used photogrammetry too. Then we processed the collected data with the software package AutoCAD.2↩#p102
The result of this survey is a plan of all the structures and walls visible on the surface today. The plan cannot take into account the different phases of the settlement, and the degree of erosion and of sand accumulation will have varied according to eras and areas—factors that have surely determined the buildings' different states of preservation as well as interfering with our perception of the urban layout. Different stages of erosion can be easily recognized even on the site surface today: a few buildings still stand, up to several meters high, while others have been eroded to floor level; in most cases, the degradation has reached the ground floor ceiling (§1.1).↩#p103
Figure 47. Chinking sherds used in the walls.
Until such time as a better, more precise date emerges through stratigraphic excavation, the dates and uses of the settlement areas and buildings can be suggested by the surface pottery. It is clear, however, that most of this surface pottery comes from the eroded walls and roofs—pottery was massively used in their construction, as the local building technique confirms (Fig. 47). We cannot tell how much older the pottery sherds reused in the masonry are than the living phase of the buildings until we proceed with a proper excavation. Pottery that was sitting on the roof at the time of abandonment will normally belong to the same period as the final occupation.↩#p104
According to the pottery3 and the excavation data, the buildings visible on the surface belong mainly to the fourth century. Pottery and other objects from earlier periods, which are found all over the area, show that this was the last phase of a settlement active from at least the Old Kingdom onwards. The older settlement stood possibly at the center of the present archaeological area. After centuries of stratification it formed a kom or tell, at present the central hill on top of which the successive temples of Thoth were built, culminating in the temple of the first century CE. The Roman-period temple was dismantled, probably in Ottoman times, along with several walls and buildings, to acquire construction material. A great temenos with an irregular perimeter wall originally surrounded the sacred area, which was probably entered by three gates on the east, north, and west sides. According to a virtual reconstruction of the Roman temple—based on limited evidence, it must be said—it was oriented toward the southeast. We would therefore expect there to have been a dromos, or processional street, crossing the main core of the Roman settlement in front of it. However, no traces of such a monumental street have been found on the surface among the fourth-century buildings. One would expect that the Imperial town was built around the main temple, partly in an area that is now blank on the plan because of the sand covering the slopes of the hill.↩#p105
Figure 48. Area 11.Figure 49. Tetradrachms from the hoard of billon coins found in the temple area (photos Thomas Faucher).
Some remains of third-century dwellings and of a public bath were found in Areas 1, 2 and 11, as we shall see. Houses in Area 11 have not yet been excavated; their date is suggested on the basis of the surface pottery (Fig. 48). If the third-century date can be confirmed, this part of the settlement would have been far beyond the visible western limit of fourth-century Trimithis, and a counterpart to Area 1. At present, we cannot say whether the settlement of the early Imperial period spread all over the archaeological site, buried as it is under sand and the fourth-century city. The Roman baths (§3.2) and the temple, made of stone blocks and carefully decorated with painted bas-reliefs in the first century CE, seem to testify to a rich and sophisticated society. A coin hoard of about 860 billon coins of the first and second centuries CE (almost all tetradrachms minted in Alexandria) found in the temple area points to the same conclusion (Fig. 49).↩#p106
We still do not know for certain if the settlement was occupied continuously from the Old Kingdom to the end of the fourth century CE, but this is a reasonable possibility. If it was, we still cannot say how much it thrived in each of the various periods. The geography of the oasis, and the presence of good supplies of water that allowed agriculture to flourish, explain why a permanent settlement was established here. Considering the ancient sites of all periods surveyed throughout the oasis by the Dakhleh Oasis Project,4 it is hardly surprising that the western part, of which Amheida was at the center, includes several ruined sites dating from the Old Kingdom to the Islamic period. In all likelihood, Amheida stood on a major road, like today's Darb Farafra. This ancient track approached Dakhla from the north, coming down from the escarpment just behind El-Qasr, then continued southward, possibly following the path of the modern paved road and connecting several settlements on the way to Mothis.↩#p107
Figure 50. A view of the necropolis.
Natural spring mounds which, as mentioned earlier, are no longer active today, are still readily visible all around the site. Although it is difficult to determine when these were productive, their large number testifies to a generally good supply of water. The huge spring mound located south of Trimithis (mentioned in the introduction) lies in the vicinity of the necropolis, its outlet toward the north (see figure 12). The cemetery spreads over a flat area 1.5 km long and is characterized by a concentration of tombs, situated especially on mounds and natural hills. Traces of channels and springs invite us to suppose that the tombs used to be interspersed among cultivated fields (Fig. 50).↩#p108
The visible buildings in the city cover an area of about 700 × 650 m (roughly half a square kilometer, or about 45 hectares), forming an open settlement without defensive or perimeter walls. Taking parts now under sand into account, the area in ancient times was no doubt larger, although we cannot tell how much was occupied during each period.↩#p109
As we have seen, mud brick was the main construction material used in Trimithis, but some buildings also used baked brick, like the thermae in Area 2 and a possible second bath to the west of the temple, of which only dumped debris is visible. Baked bricks, squared stones, and wood were probably in more frequent use than we can appreciate today, but they were massively plundered for building material for new settlements during the site's long abandonment.↩#p110
Figure 51. Panoramic view of the center of Trimithis.Figure 52. The step dividing the habitations from the south necropolis.
The settlement of the late Roman period, as far as we can tell, was oriented north–south and built on irregular-surfaced cemented dunes, no longer moving south, that formed an irregular surface, with both a continuous slope around the temple hill and several small elongated hills separated by depressions (Fig. 51). The geomorphology here will have influenced the layout of the settlement, in which some groups of houses and streets follow a different orientation from the dominant one—such as, for example, Area 1, with its Street 1 oriented northeast–southwest. Similarly, some streets and alleys follow a curvilinear path, caused by a change in the slope or following a natural terrace, while others cut across the slope abruptly. Terraces artificially supported by substructures and walls belonging to buildings were used at least on the slopes of the central temple hill, where dense habitation quarters and large buildings have been documented, especially on the east and south slopes. Containment walls clearly mark the south end of the settlement, where a steep step separates the habitations from the south necropolis (Fig. 52).↩#p111
Figure 53. Detailed plan of the habitation area.Figure 54. Plan of Area 1.
Hundreds of alleys, often very narrow, connect the buildings, showing a seemingly confused network. The layout is very dense, and from the surface it is not everywhere obvious where the alleys are or where they lead (Fig. 53). At times, the network of walls seems to close off every possible passageway, in a sort of labyrinth. The most regular buildings, aligned on orthogonal streets, are in the center of Area 2 east of the temple, and in Area 11. But the widest street, Street 1 in Area 1, has a completely different orientation from the others, and appears to be isolated or at least not directly linked to other streets (Fig. 54). Its considerable width (7 m) suggests that it was the most important road, but it ends abruptly, and the buildings on both sides are ordinary houses of the third century CE. Pottery kilns with dumps and masses of clay are concentrated in this area.5↩#p112
Figure 55. Central north–south street.
There are no visible through streets in the settlement: only one north–south-oriented street can be described as a long thoroughfare, but it is formed by at least two segments, of which the southern one seems to be an irregular extension of the first. Certainly, it cannot be considered a major highway (Fig. 55). The roads are of varying widths, from a maximum of 7 m to as little as 1.5. Their edges, formed by the irregular alignment of buildings, also feature sudden variations in width. The most regular pattern is in Area 11, where the streets seem, in contrast to other areas, to have been built on level ground on a grid: they are orthogonal, compass-oriented and hierarchical, the inner roads being 2.3 m wide and the main ones about double that size (4.8 and 5.5 m).↩#p113
Figure 56. Reconstruction of the partly covered Trimithis Street 3 (S. Prell).
Only two alleys have been excavated in Area 2, those flanking the house of Serenos (see §3.3) to the east and west. They look like private passages, closed at one end by walls, and with gates that seem to separate the "properties" and serve to regulate the comings and goings or to offer protection. Moreover, these alleys turned out on investigation to be partially covered with flat roofs made of palm beams, or in one case partly with a mud-brick barrel vault. The spaces in front of the doors in the streets were left uncovered, so as to allow the light to enter the houses (Fig. 56).6↩#p114
Figure 57. A hall with two pillars.
The center of Trimithis was densely inhabited, with a considerable number of rich and complex buildings: some have wide, columned halls, while many others are laid out on a plan characterized by the presence of two massive pillars. We can tentatively interpret these double-pillared halls as banqueting rooms, if we compare them with the stibadium "hall" found in Street 2 in front of Serenos' house (Fig. 57). It is interesting to note that most of these halls have a north–south orientation, a rectangular shape, and the same average dimensions.7 They seem to point to a particular kind of dining culture in wealthy houses of Trimithis' final period.↩#p115
Figure 58. A stairway in the house of Serenos (B1).
From the walls that we can see it appears that the houses had different plans and dimensions, and that most streets and alleys were closed with doors, like Streets 2 and 3. Presumably they were also covered, at least in part.8 Several buildings are painted in classical style, and some have decorative appliqué in molded stucco. Although the plans of the buildings, as far as we are able to detect them, are not well defined, we know that alongside the wide, wealthy ones, the commonest houses were originally built on a square plan, apparently following two principal standard dimensions—about 15 × 15 and 11 × 10 m. These correspond to the average dimensions of B1 and B2, respectively the house of Serenos and a house excavated in Area 1.9 However, it is also clear that buildings changed their original regular shapes by the addition of rooms, extending into nearby spaces, or by annexing rooms of adjacent buildings, as happened in Serenos' house (§3.3). This practice was facilitated by the fact that the buildings were not freestanding but had party walls. This way of building permits the saving of goodly quantities of bricks and labor and contributes to creating the impression of a labyrinthine network of walls and rooms. The commonest kind of ceiling was the vault, but domes were used in the main square rooms, and wooden beams covered with palm branches were also employed to roof some rooms. Most of the houses have a staircase leading to upper floors or to a terraced roof (Fig. 58). Few of the visible buildings show clearly the presence of a second story, but this does not necessarily mean that they did not exist.↩#p116
In fourth-century Trimithis, as in Kellis, there must have been churches and other public buildings. So far only one church (B7 in Area 2.3) has been excavated (§6.1), on top of a low hill dominating the central part of the city, just in front of the temple hill. There seems to be a second church in the cemetery area southwest of the city.↩#p117
Figure 59. Pottery kilns in Area 1.
Two main areas of workshops have been identified so far, both on the city's eastern fringe. One, containing several pottery kilns and a mound of clay, is in Area 1 (Fig. 59); the second is west of the standing pyramid, in a low area characterized by points with high magnetic readings, charcoal, and glassy slag, pointing to the byproducts of combustion in the course of craft activity.↩#p118
Figure 60. A tomb in tower form, north of Trimithis (before restoration).
The Roman-period tombs are not concentrated only in the south necropolis; others were built grouped together on a hill at the east margin of the archaeological site, around a mud-brick pyramid (Area 3); at least one, towerlike, tomb (Fig. 60) is to be seen north of Trimithis, very close to the modern village.10 The far south end of the necropolis is marked by another mud-brick pyramid of Roman times. Built on hills, these two pyramids and the tower dominated the landscape, forming landmarks for people passing by. The positions of these monumental tombs suggest that, following a well-known Roman tradition, they were constructed along roads—or, as in this case, tracks. The tombs and the related chapels are in mud brick, sometimes white-plastered and painted with Egyptian-style scenes.↩#p119
3.2. The baths of Trimithis
Paola Davoli
Trimithis of the Imperial period before the fourth century is so far largely unknown to us, given the thick coat of sand that covers parts of the archaeological area and the relatively small part of the city excavated so far. However, the data collected via the topographic and ceramic surveys suggest that the settlement was extensive and quite rich; the amphoras found include imports from the eastern Mediterranean.11 Third-century houses have been identified in Areas 1 and 11, and an impressive, Roman-style public bath has been found in Area 2, below the fourth-century buildings. This last was an unexpected find, as regards both the nature of the building and its huge dimensions (approximately 41 × 34 m).↩#p120
Figure 61. Plan of the Roman baths.
The first vestiges of the public bath, or thermae, were discovered during the 2007 season, and its exploration is not yet completed. The area excavated so far is approximately 1000 m2 and includes Serenos' house (B1), a school of Greek subsequently transformed into a workshop/stable (B5; see Chapter 6), and an imposing edifice with a peristyle hall (B6)—the building that turned out to be the last form of the public bath. These structures were active during the fourth century and were abandoned, presumably, well before the end of that century. They were built at least partly on the ruins of the earlier Roman bath, which itself was built directly on the natural cemented dune. We still have no precise evidence for dating the foundation of this bath, which was abandoned, in all likelihood, no later than the end of the third century. What we have found are the remains of rooms, walls, channels, and floors that survived after years of abandonment and demolition and were then hidden or reused as foundations for the new buildings; plus other rooms that were renovated to become a new smaller bath in the second half of the fourth century (B6). The stratigraphic excavation of the area brought us to the conclusion that after its abandonment the bath was extensively quarried for building materials and at the same time used as a dumping space (Fig. 61).↩#p121
Figure 62. Central pillared hall and bathing area of the Late Roman baths (B6).
The original date and extent of the Trimithis thermae are still to be determined with any precision, but we can state with a good degree of certainty that the thermal complex was public and covered probably some 1,394 m2, a substantial part of which is still to be excavated. The bath was built with baked and unbaked bricks; stones were also used at some points, as well as wood (Fig. 62).↩#p122
The water used in the bath came probably from a well situated a few meters to the southeast, which would have been equipped with a lifting machine (saqia).12 The underground sewer system has been partly detected; using two different networks, it conveyed the wastewater to the north of the bath.↩#p123
Figure 63. Plan of the final form of the baths (B6).
The thermae saw at least three building phases, including at least one important renovation, during which some rooms were demolished and rebuilt and new ones added. Its uneven state of preservation and the limited possibility of investigation because of the presence of other buildings on top of its ruins do not so far permit us a precise view or a coherent virtual reconstruction of its phases. In all, twenty-three rooms or parts of rooms and pools have been identified, but in many cases we do not know their functions. The Imperial-period bath was half demolished and leveled after decades of abandonment, and it was on its ruins that Serenos' house and a school were built. The north half of the building, rebuilt as the new, smaller bath mentioned above, was characterized by a central pillared room (B6) (Fig. 63).↩#p124
Figure 64. The latrine in the baths.Figure 65. Room 24.
This last bathhouse (second half of the fourth century CE) was divided into two main parts: in the west part were cold and dry rooms, of which the two central ones were provided with benches (Rooms 24 and 26); in the east part were two hot rooms (caldaria) with hypocausts and two pools, one square (Room 38) and one round (Room 39), with hot water. The bathers could come into the building through any of three entrances located on the west and north streets. Then they had to pass through the entrance rooms (vestibula) and enter the main pillared hall, Room 24 (the frigidarium) (Fig. 65). To take a proper bath they had to cross the small Room 32, probably a tepidarium. A first hot room (Room 42) with a single bathtub was connected with the main bathing room, in which were two hot pools.↩#p125
These two pools had thick walls to keep the water hot as long as possible and were accessed from one of the caldaria (Room 40) by means of limestone steps. The round pool (1.7 m in diameter) has a bench in it, and the water could have reached a maximum depth of 1.25 m from the bench to the floor, which is now missing. The square pool (about 2.5 × 2 m) was surrounded by a sidewalk of limestone slabs and reached a depth of about one meter. Both pools served as full-immersion baths for a small number of people at a time; the water was kept clean by constant exchange, thanks to drains for the wastewater located at the bottom.↩#p126
The furnace (Room 41) that heated the air and the water partially survived after extensive plundering of the baked bricks of which it was made. The water was originally heated by means of a metal boiler, from which a series of metal pipes (now also removed) carried the water to the pools.↩#p127
At the end of their bath, the bathers had to follow the same path they had entered by, bringing them back to the pillared Room 24. They could make use of a latrine, a small square room (Room 33, 2.8 × 2.2 m), still well preserved to a height of 3 m and provided with two high, sloping windows on the east and west walls (Fig. 64). For privacy, the door of the latrina opened at the end of a narrow, blind corridor. The latrina's floor is missing, probably because it was made of wood, of which traces survive on the walls. The toilet seats were probably of a squat type set into the wooden floor. Water cleaned the toilet by flushing it through four channels along the perimeter of the room, and the outflow ran into a sewer channel toward the north; its destination and use are unknown.↩#p128
This new bath (B6) was abruptly abandoned during renovation works, before it was decorated: a mosaic of white, black, red, yellow, and reddish tesserae was planned for one of the main rooms but was never realized. Some 20,500 stone and pottery tesserae were found stored, with others still to be cut, inside Room 30.↩#p129
Figure 66. The laconicum.
Of the southern side of the Imperial-period bath few features are well preserved; one exception is a laconicum, a round room heated by means of a hypocaust. A furnace to heat the air for the hypocaust was situated below Serenos' house but is now missing. This laconicum, or dry sweat room, was constructed in mud brick and measured 4.3 m in diameter.13 The hypocaust, built directly into the natural cemented sand, consists of a mud-brick perimeter wall and eighteen baked-brick pillars set on a mud-brick floor. The channel that conveyed hot air enters the hypocaust from the south and was directly connected to two chimneys outside the room to its south (Fig. 66). These were managed as needed, the pipes being opened and closed by the attendants outside the bath at a spot where bathers did not pass. Four additional excavated channels conveyed the air from the hypocaust toward the outside by means of four round pottery tubuli inserted into the wall of the round room.↩#p130
The suspended floor of the laconicum was quite thin, made as it was of tiles and white plaster to a thickness of at most 8 cm, compared to the usual 20 or more. Probably for this reason, the floor was relaid with wooden planks fixed with iron nails to crossbeams, set on a series of mud and baked bricks within a mud layer 10 cm thick. Due to the humid conditions here, only the nails and the impressions of the planks have survived. The laconicum is so far the most distinctive room in the Trimithis thermae and the only one of this kind found so far in Egypt.14↩#p131
West of the laconicum we found another two rooms: another latrina and a pool. The seating system and the floor of the latrina (about 3.60 × 3.65 m) are completely missing—probably because they were made of sandstone slabs that were reused elsewhere—but the central platform and the surrounding four channels for flushing are well preserved. Water already used for bathing would have flowed into the channels from two side-rooms through two openings in the walls, then circulated counter-clockwise to be drained through an underground sewer channel opening in the northeast corner of the latrina.↩#p132
The room to the west is preserved only at floor level and was used as foundations of Room 15 in Building 5. It was rectangular and oriented north–south (its preserved dimensions are 1.60 m east–west × 3.30 m north–south), and in its northeast corner a drain funneled the water into the latrina. The walls and the floor were made of baked brick.↩#p133
Below Room 19 was a wide room from which drain water flowed southward into the latrina through a channel and a hole placed at floor level. The irregular baked-brick floor extends below Rooms 19 and 21 in B5, covering an expanse of at least 7 × 8 m. A square pedestal supported a labrum, a wide stone water basin, found broken on the floor, while a raised baked-brick platform (3.10 × 3.40 m) stood at the room's northeast corner. Although it was buried and covered by later features after having being partly demolished, it is still possible to reconstruct its shape and function: at its center was a sunken basin (2.35 × 2.15 m) or tub made of waterproof plaster. The basin was about one meter deep, had rounded corners and three rounded steps in its northwest corner, to allow for gradual immersion into the water, which was probably supplied by hand. In fact, no pipes have been found around it.↩#p134
Figure 67. A column base from the first phase of the baths.
This wide room with the bathtub and the labrum belongs to the second phase of the thermae. In fact, its floor covers earlier features, of which only part of a column base and of its contemporary floor have been brought to light. The column was made of clay and gypsum and was plastered with white mortar painted dark red (Fig. 67). The original floor is covered with a fine, smooth, pinkish, waterproof plaster. Apparently the room was not heated; it may have been a frigidarium, with cold-water basins.↩#p135
So far, we can suppose that at first a bathhouse with one or two round rooms, a stepped piscina, and a hall or a porch with painted columns occupied the area—in which case we can argue that the second building phase of the thermae was not a simple restoration, but a substantial restyling of the building, which was enlarged to the west and north. The considerable size of the bath along with this important restyling and enlargement work, done in the Imperial period, allow us to imagine a rich and sophisticated society living in the third-century oasis. This chronology is also suggested by the widely held view that baths with hypocausts are rare in first-century Egypt, and that this technology started to spread, slowly, only from the second century on. Despite a drastic reduction in dimensions during the second half of the fourth century when B6 was constructed—a phenomenon common at that time—the bath was intended to be a richly decorated building, with its columned porches, pillars, and at least a mosaic floor.↩#p136
No inscriptions have been found so far to indicate who financed the construction, renovations, and maintenance of the bath. We will probably learn more about the community that it served when we are able to compare this bath with the one discovered in Area A at Kellis, but not yet excavated.15↩#p137
3.3 Two houses
Paola Davoli and Roger S. Bagnall
So far, two houses have been completely excavated by the project team.16 They are in two different areas: the structure we have called the house of Serenos (B1) lies in a dense, central inhabited quarter (Area 2) characterized by the presence of large and opulent buildings, while B2 is part of a northeast quarter built on top of a hill (Area 1) and marked by the reuse of some spaces for pottery workshops in the fourth century CE.↩#p138
These two houses certainly belonged to people of different social statuses, but their different states of preservation limit the precision of our comparison. In effect, B2 has been deeply eroded and is preserved to a maximum height of 80 cm above floor level, while B1 is preserved up to the springing of the vaulted ceilings.17 Both houses are built with the same technique and materials, like mud brick, mud plaster for the floors and some of the walls, thin gypsum plaster, and a modest quantity of wood and palm branches. Their dates are also different: B1 was built around 330–340, while B2 seems to belong to the middle or third quarter of the third century CE and was abandoned perhaps a half-century before B1.18↩#p139
Figure 68. Plan of the house of Serenos (B1).
B1, to a much greater degree than B2, yielded a very considerable quantity of texts and objects that, together with the general architectural and decorative context, give us a better glimpse of the economic and family life of the occupants. Serenos, the central figure in the ostraka found in the occupation levels of this mud-brick house, is the name of its owner. The building has been well known since the Dakhleh Oasis Project survey discovered its decoration, comprising brightly colored painted scenes, in 1979. The original plan of the house (15 × 15 m) is not substantially different from that of B2: a central room gave access to the other rooms and to the staircase that leads to a second floor or a terraced roof (Fig. 58, Fig. 68). The main differences in the plan are the presence in Serenos' house of a dining room covered by a dome and of three entrances from the streets that flanked the building to the east and west. Most of the rooms were barrel-vaulted, while the hub of the house (Room 2) and Room 6 were flat-roofed. Although B1 is better preserved than B2, thanks to a rapid covering by sand, the house suffered from moisture and termites, which damaged the mud plaster, rich in straw, and all the other organic items and remains.↩#p140
As already stated (§3.2), B1 was constructed together with other buildings in an area previously occupied by a Roman-style public bath that had been partly demolished to suit the needs of new buildings on the site and partly reused in the foundations of these new buildings. Baked bricks were reused, too, but only in moderate quantity in Serenos' house.19↩#p141
The objects found above and below floors as well as the stratigraphy suggest that after the house was built (around or not long after 330), it was modified or restored in two subsequent phases, until it was definitely abandoned around or soon after 365. The lifespan of this house seems very short, but we have no evidence from phases of occupation beyond these dates, and all earlier material belongs to the dumped debris used in site preparation.↩#p142
The first-phase house was square, with eleven rooms and three entrances. Two of them opened onto Street 2 to the east and were probably secondary entrances; one of these, in the south corner, seems to have had something to do with the function—unknown—of Room 6, perhaps a reception room for estate dependents. The west entrance was certainly the main one, despite the narrow street it opened on to, with a double-leaf door and a painted side-room (Room 13). The hub of B1, Room 2, was painted in red and yellow ochre on mud plaster; the first decoration of Room 1 was painted on white plaster, now visible only in a few spots below a newer layer of painting; and Rooms 11, 13, and 14 were painted as well.↩#p143
Figure 69. The stibadium outside the house of Serenos.
In a second phase,20 which seems to have occurred a few years later, the house underwent a series of substantial alterations: some doors were walled up, starting with the entrance door into Room 6 from Street 2. Just in front of it a mud-brick stibadium (a C-shaped dining platform) was built, and the street was transformed into a sort of covered private passage or courtyard (Fig. 69).21 The door between Rooms 8 and 4 was closed, and a new door was opened between Room 7 (the east entrance room) and Room 8. Room 2 was replastered with simple mud, and Room 1 was replastered and repainted with figural scenes (§7.2); some of the floors were repaired with a new mud layer.↩#p144
Figure 70. A chicken coop in the north extension of Serenos' house.Figure 71. Feed troughs in the north extension of Serenos' house.
The extension of the house northward into Room 15 and into a courtyard (Rooms 9–10) probably dates to this phase: the school built north of Serenos' house and contemporary to it was closed, and its space changed its function completely, becoming a stable for Serenos' animals (Fig. 70, Fig. 71). Walls were demolished, and the floor gradually rose with waste and rubble to cover the previous school benches.↩#p145
Figure 72. House B1, Room 15 and its reconstruction with a suspended wooden floor (B. Bazzani).
The rhetoric schoolroom (Room 15) became a sort of storage magazine connected with the house through a new door and a corridor under the staircase. The room was equipped with a suspended wooden floor, perhaps to create a double space for storage vessels—found broken in great quantity on the ground—and to provide a drier area for food storage (Fig. 72). The upper space was reached by means of a newly built stair. In the open-air courtyard (Rooms 9 and 10) just mentioned—not directly connected with the living spaces—mangers were built. Its door, located in the northeast corner, was walled up at a certain point, and the courtyard became a dumping ground. The stable, Building 5, was accessible through a door opening onto the east street. This street (Street 2) underwent some changes too: a large door was built to close its passageway to the north and probably to separate the residential side of the house from the stable. The space in front of Serenos' house was covered with a flat roof—a common feature of the medieval settlements of the Western Desert oases— most probably to protect from the weather and the sand. The flat roof, made of palm beams, did not cover the entrance to the house. Two pillars separated the open-air space from the covered one, where a north-oriented stibadium was built. This dining space had a short life, and the stibadium was soon demolished and its lower part covered with new mud paving.↩#p146
Figure 73. House B1, storage bins in Room 13.
In a third phase, the house underwent a sort of restoration: some floors were replastered, others replaced,22 and bands of whitewash were applied in some rooms around niches and doors and on several walls, in some cases concealing the painted decorations. Bins, apparently for storage, were built inside Room 13 (Fig. 73), and a small cooking hearth was made with a few mud bricks in Room 4, immediately in front of the door. The smoke made by the fire would have flowed into the central Room 2 and escaped through two small vertical windows. This last phase of the life of Serenos' house seems to show less sophistication and taste than the previous ones.↩#p147
Figure 74. House B1, Room 2 (replica 2010).
Room 2 of Serenos' house was flat-roofed (Fig. 74), with light coming in from the two entrances and from four small vertical windows, three openings in the ceiling above the doors and the other above a niche on the west wall. Clearly, above Room 2 was an open-air space, probably a roof terrace. There was probably also an open space above the dome in Room 1: it has been supposed that the light entered this room through a central oculus in the dome, but we found no evidence to prove or disprove this hypothesis. The ventilation and the light sources in the house were otherwise limited to small, high openings that were feasible only in some of the ceilings (as in Rooms 1 and 2) and high in the walls of the rooms on the east and west sides. To the north and south the house shared the perimeter walls with two other buildings—respectively, the school/stable (B4/5), and another house built on the same plan but not yet extensively excavated (B8).↩#p148
Only Room 3 in this twin house has in fact been excavated so far, but a complete exploration is planned. These houses seem to be the only two in Trimithis with the same plan and dimensions. A complete study of them will, it is hoped, disclose whether the reasons for this coincidence are due to a family connection. However, at some stage barriers were built in the two streets connecting the buildings, to prevent through passage in Street 2 and to regulate it in Street 3. Relations between the families, if relations there were, must have soured, or perhaps one of the houses passed into someone else's hands.↩#p149
Figure 75. Ring from the house of Serenos.
Few of the organic materials in the house of Serenos, including the wooden doors, the shelves, the furniture, and the degradable waste, were preserved. Probably some of these items were removed after the house was abandoned, to be reused elsewhere, but others decayed naturally because of the high humidity. Just a few objects were left behind—such as bronze rings, one gold ring, bone hairpins, glass bracelets and beads, and some bronze coins (Fig. 75). Several ostraka provide the name and illuminate the business activities of the owner, but they give us little information about members of the family. Some of these ostraka were found scattered on the floor in Room 2, close to a cupboard in the southwest wall. Two rectangular and quite spacious cupboards built in recesses in the walls were found in this room, each with two shelves. It is possible that originally the ostraka and other objects were stored there. A vessel included in the wall of one of them was found to be empty.↩#p150
Figure 76. House B1, Room 1.
Without furniture, we cannot know precisely the functions of these rooms, if indeed they had fixed uses. We can, however, explore some hypotheses. The most important was Room 1, with a square plan and rich painted decoration (Fig. 76). There were three small niches on the north, east, and south walls; the last one disappeared with the collapse of the wall, but fragments of plaster decoration suggest it was used for a domestic cult. The room itself was probably used for banquets, as is also suggested by the figural scenes; it was accessed by a double-leaf wooden door that opened in the middle of the north wall. Two other painted but smaller rooms (11 and 14) connect with Room 1. These three together form a sort of separate space accessible only through the door between Rooms 1 and 2. Most probably it was used as a reception space, probably for eating, but no furniture, built either in wood or mud brick, nor even traces of their presence on the floors, have been found to confirm this function.23 Only a great quantity of chicken bones was found in Room 14 above the last floor level; these may be indications of a banquet, or at least of eating.↩#p151
Figure 77. House B1, Room 4.Figure 78. Lamps from the treasure found below the floor of Room 4.
Rooms 4 and 8 were possibly service spaces, but, apart from a small and unimpressive hearth and pockets of ashes, there were no cooking facilities. No proper kitchen with bread oven, storage, or other cooking equipment has been found in this house or in its courtyard, so it is possible that the cooking area was located on the roof or in a room on the upper floor.24 Room 4 also concealed a treasure comprising bronze objects (Fig. 77). Two lamps, a round box, and a knife with a bone handle were hidden below the floor, near the entrance (Fig. 78). A possible second treasure was a collection of more than thirty bronze coins, found scattered at floor level. A great number of Greek ostraka, fragments of glass vessels, and gypsum stoppers were also found in this room, but some of them came from the collapse of the roof or an upper story. The compacted mud floor, several layers thick, had been completely destroyed by the weight of the collapsed vault.↩#p152
Figure 79. House B1, a view of Room 6 (replica 2010).
During the three phases of the house, it is possible that at least some of the rooms changed their function. What we found on the last floor must therefore be connected with the last living phase or with the abandonment of the house. Moreover, we have to consider the possibility that squatters used the rooms before they were totally filled up by sand.25 Coins were found in all rooms but in particular concentrations in Rooms 4, 8, and 14, scattered on the last-phase floors. Ostraka are also common finds in Serenos' house, particularly on the floor of Room 2 and under those of Rooms 4 and 8, in debris dumped before construction.26 There were coins as well as ostraka inside Rooms 4 and 8, the two rooms that look like service spaces, with their rough floors, scattered pockets of ashes, and white bands painted on the walls. The function of room 6 is puzzling, because during the first phase of the house it had an opening onto Street 2: three steps in baked bricks descending into the room were constructed, together with the first mud floor and a shallow bench (width 34 cm, height about 25 cm), also made of baked bricks, directly connected with the steps and running along the south wall of the room (Fig. 79). These features seem to suggest that Room 6—at 7.19 × 3.64 m, the biggest in the house—may have originally had a public or semi-public function linked to the street. The walling-up of the door, probably in connection with the construction of the stibadium just in front of it in Street 2, changed the function of the room, or reflected such a change, but no evidence has been found that can give us any inkling of what the new use was.↩#p153
The only other decorated space was Room 13, directly accessible from the entrance room (vestibulum) 12, on Street 3. Room 13 was decorated with panels painted on a purple ground and separated by stylized palmettes; the central decorative motifs, apparently inscribed with the names of gods such as Hephaistos and Polydeukes, have now almost entirely vanished.27 Its original function was possibly connected with Room 12 and thus with the household's interaction with the outside world.↩#p154
It seems that the family's bedrooms were not on the ground floor, where the most private rooms are the painted ones—Rooms 1, 11, and 14—which were probably used for dining with guests. However, multiple functions are possible, especially given movable furniture.↩#p155
Figure 80. An aerial view of House B2.
Five minutes' walk from the house of Serenos lies a district that we call Area 1, with smaller houses. One of these, our house B2, was excavated by Anna Boozer, and her and her colleagues' findings have just been published (Fig. 80).28 In a number of respects the two houses differ substantially, B2 providing a significant contrast to the upper-stratum culture of Serenos' house. This is not, however, because B2 was occupied by a lower-class family; it covers about 120 m2, is situated on a main street, and was probably the home of someone in mid-level estate management or in transportation.↩#p156
Figure 81. Plan of House B2.Figure 82. House B2, an unexplained feature in kitchen and the oven.Figure 83. House B2, storage space under the floor of Room 6.Figure 84. A clay tablet inscribed with an account of doum fruits, from House B2.
House B2 has an almost square plan (11.6 × 10.7 m) and is flanked by a courtyard to the south that may belong to another house (Fig. 81). B2 has ten rooms, of which one is a staircase leading to the second floor or to a terraced roof, and two are small cellars under the stairs. The floors are preserved only in the west half of the house. The entrance to the building is in its northwest corner. It opened directly onto Street 1, the largest thoroughfare of Trimithis. A small entrance room connects directly with a central one, Room 7, that connected with all the other rooms. It functioned as a kitchen: a bread oven and a covered storage bin are built against the north wall (Fig. 82). As in other ancient domestic contexts, the rooms were probably multi-functional:29 a small hearth, hand-molded in mud, is to be seen on the floor of Room 5, and a storage space with two jars was found under the floor in Room 6 (Fig. 83). Loom weights found inside the house and in the courtyard suggest that a domestic vertical loom was in use here. Besides the common-ware pottery vessels, other objects have been discovered such as fragments of glass vessels, and items of personal adornment—silver- and gold-glass beads, glass and faience beads, an Egyptian amulet (Bes), glass bracelets, bronze rings, and bone hairpins. A few of the items are fragments of wooden tools and furniture. A few Greek ostraka and one clay tablet with a Greek text listing disbursements of doum-fruits were found in the house, but it is impossible to determine with any confidence which, if any, of these objects had to do with the resident family and its social and economic activities (Fig. 84). We can certainly say that the ostraka found in this house deal with the transportation and handling of agricultural commodities on a larger scale than would have been typical of an ordinary household.↩#p157
It has been supposed that the rooms were barrel-vaulted, except for two that were open-air. These two are the ones with the fireplaces, and for this reason they have been interpreted by the excavator as inner courtyards, or open or partly open rooms. However, for architectural and climatic reasons this hypothesis is difficult to substantiate. It is possible that one or both of these spaces had lightweight flat roofs. The absence of collapsed walls and ceilings prevents us from assessing fully the presence or absence of niches, the position and the kind of windows, and the presence of any sort of decoration.↩#p158
Despite the poor preservation of B2, it is clear that there was a significant gulf between the lifestyles of the occupants of these two dwellings. Even if, were we to make our way to B2 along the covered alleys of Trimithis from the house of Serenos, we perceived no change in the external environment, once we stepped inside the door of B2 we would be struck by the difference. For instance, although the owner kept his household records in Greek, like Serenos, the walls were apparently unadorned except for whitewash and stripes of color; neither classical mythology in artistic representation nor quotations from classical literature greeted the visitor.↩#p159
The assemblage of animal bones found in B2 contained not only the ubiquitous chicken but also goat, donkey, and cattle bones, along with some wild gazelle—a thoroughly Egyptian assemblage. On the archaeobotanical front, this house has yielded emmer wheat, another traditionally Egyptian foodstuff that was alien to the Greek and Roman diet and almost entirely missing from the papyrological documentation after the early Roman period; and the tablet mentioned above records distributions of doum-fruits, an Egyptian specialty. Probably the inhabitants drank wine, however—beer had lost its dominant place in Egyptian drinking by this time. Although this house was far from unmarked by six hundred years of Greek and Roman rule, it furnishes a strong reminder of just how varied and individual was the integration of the population of a remote city like Trimithis into the culture of the Roman Empire.↩#p160
These two houses of late Trimithis do not follow the classical Mediterranean typology, possessing neither peristyle nor internal courtyards. They seem to have been quite closed, in order to shut out the wind, the sand, and the sun. They were built with the same technique and the same materials, had shallow foundations and no underground cellars. Domestic life certainly took place also on a second story or a terraced roof, accessed by a staircase built around a central pillar. In both cases the staircase is located not in a corner of the house, but in the central room. Worth notice is the fact that in both dwellings people would have entered from the street via a few steps descending into a vestibule (or Room 6 in B1), and the doorways were all closed by wooden doors, including the one that opened on to the stairs. There are no bath or toilet facilities. This kind of house—whose main distinguishing feature is a central room giving access to the other rooms—is also common at Kellis.↩#p161
Chapter 3 Notes
1 Tatyana Smekalova and Sergey Smekalov worked in the temple area and in the settlement during the 2005 and 2006 seasons; Tomasz Herbich and David Swiech during the 2009 season. See the annual reports at: www.amheida.org.↩#footnote-3.1
2 The topographic survey was begun by the Museum of London team (2001–2) and continued by archaeologists from the firm Ar/S Archeosistemi of Reggio Emilia (Italy). Fabrizio Pavia deserves the largest share of the credit for the completed survey.↩#footnote-3.2
6 This system is typical of the medieval and Ottoman towns in Dakhla. Based on this parallel, we can offer the hypothesis that the vault covering the south end of Street 3 was built to support an extension or a second-floor passage between two buildings on either side of the alley: Balbo 2006.↩#footnote-3.6
7 Contrary to the practice in other regions of the empire, the stibadium hall was not provided with an apse, as we see in Street 2, and also at Kellis: Room 7 in House 1. (http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/ancient-kellis/houses-1-2-and-3/); Ellis 1995.↩#footnote-3.7
8 This system of covered and closed streets is characteristic of the medieval towns and villages in oases such as El-Qasr and Balat: Balbo 2006. It must have originated in the late Roman and Byzantine urbanism of the Middle East and North Africa, and is certainly attributable to climatic and security constraints. A similar layout can be seen at Kafr Samir, a Byzantine village in Israel: Yeivin and Finkelsztejn 2008: 186–7.↩#footnote-3.8
12 Present-day wells in the oasis typically produce water as warm as 38 degrees C. How this compares to ancient wells we cannot know, but the presence of the boiler in B6 shows that water had to be heated.↩#footnote-3.12
13 A similar round room was found to the east in 2009, but has not yet been excavated.↩#footnote-3.13
14 I would like to warmly thank Bérangère Redon for her suggestions and for having discussed with me different aspects of this bath, sharing information with great generosity.↩#footnote-3.14
16 The excavation of the house of Serenos started in 2004 and ended in 2007. The excavation of B2 started in 2005 and ended in 2006; work in Area 1 was resumed from 2012 under the direction of Anna Boozer. See Boozer et al. 2015 for a complete description of B2.↩#footnote-3.16
17 Besides other considerations, this means that the preserved stratigraphy of B2 is very close to the surface and thus more affected by contamination and destruction.↩#footnote-3.17
19 Mainly they were used in the steps, to make them more resistant to wear.↩#footnote-3.19
20 It is possible that something like an earthquake occurred at this time. Some damage to the walls and some collapses are readily visible in all the excavated buildings of this area (B1, B5 and B6). Restoration and shiftings of walls in B1 can be seen in Rooms 6, 11, 13, and 14. This damage could have caused the repainting of Room 1 and the demolition of the school along with its reshaping into a service area.↩#footnote-3.20
21 This kind of triclinium is common in the fourth-century Dakhla and Kharga oases. At Kellis in House 1, two stibadia were built in Room 7, one in front of the other: Hope, forthcoming: fig. 11 and pl. 4. For Kharga see Reddé 2004: 56–7, figs. 51–8.↩#footnote-3.21
22 The mud floor in Room 1 was probably replaced with a new one after 355 CE, as suggested by the presence of a coin under the latter floor (inv. 11324). Coins from inside the upper floor (F150) found in Room 13 confirm this date. Another coin (inv. 136), from the surface of the second floor in Room 4, also confirms the date of the renewal of the pavements.↩#footnote-3.22
23 Room functions probably changed with the seasons, the times of day, and for different occasions: Allison 2001: 192.↩#footnote-3.23
24 In the houses at Kellis, kitchens were situated in external courtyards, but bins were found also on the second story: Hope, forthcoming.↩#footnote-3.24
25 Fire traces were found on the floor and walls in the entrance to Room 12.↩#footnote-3.25
