Saft el-Hinna

Saft el-Hinna (also Saft el-Hinneh, Saft el-Henna, Saft el-Henneh) is a village and an archaeological site in Egypt. It is located in the modern Al Sharqia Governorate, in the Nile Delta, about 7 km southeast of Zagazig.[1]

The modern village of Saft el-Hinna lies on the ancient Egyptian town of Per-Sopdu or Pi-Sopt, meaning "House of Sopdu", which was the capital of the 20th nome of Lower Egypt and one of the most important cult centers during the Late Period of ancient Egypt. As the ancient name implies, the town was consecrated to Sopdu, god of the eastern borders of Egypt.[2][1]

During the late Third Intermediate Period, Per-Sopdu – called Pishaptu or Pisapti, in Akkadian, by the Neo-Assyrian invaders – was the seat of one of the four Great chiefdom of the Meshwesh, along with Mendes, Sebennytos and Busiris.[3]

Excavations

The reassembled “Naos of the Decades”, originally placed in the temple at Saft el-Hinna

In December 1884 Swiss Egyptologist Édouard Naville was performing a survey in the Wadi Tumilat on behalf of the Egypt Exploration Fund. He went to Saft el-Hinna, a village of hinna farmers, and here he found traces of the ancient city under the modern settlement. He believed to having found the ancient city of Phacusa in the Biblical Land of Goshen, although it is nowadays assumed that Phacusa lies under the modern town of Faqus. Even if the archaeological site was threatened by urban development and the expansion of crops, Naville managed to discover several monuments of pharaoh Nectanebo I of the 30th Dynasty, the perimeter walls of a temple, and other attestations dating to the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. Unfortunately, he never published a comprehensive excavation report.[4][5]
Among the findings dated to Nectanebo I, Naville found a naos dedicated to Sodpu. It was later discovered that the naos was one of four, meant to be accommodated within the temple whose walls were found by Naville under Saft el-Hinna; the other three naoi were discovered as well, though in other places of the Delta and not in situ: one dedicated to Shu, parts of which were found at Abukir, and which is commonly called “Naos of the Decades”, one dedicated to Tefnut, and a poorly preserved one which was discovered at Arish. All but the last one (due to its poor conservation) are surely attributable to Nectanebo I.[6]

In 1906 Flinders Petrie went to Saft el-Hinna to conduct an excavation aimed to discover evidence of Hebrew presence in ancient Egypt. He soon found that the conditions of the site were even worse than the time of Naville. So he decided to dig in two undisturbed, neighboring areas, Kafr Sheikh Zikr and Suwa, which turn out to be two ancient necropoleis of Per-Sopdu. However, like Naville before him, Petrie never published a comprehensive report of these excavations.[7]

Saft el-Hinna was later involved in two surface surveys, the Wadi Tumilat Project begun in 1977, and the Liverpool University Delta Survey (1983-85), the latter led by Steven Snape, who remarked that of the ruins described by Naville a century earlier, almost nothing is left.[8]

By combining archaeological and phylological evidences, it is now known that the sacred area of Per-Sopdu was divided into two parts called Hut-nebes and Iat-nebes, which were connected by a dromos.[9]

References

  1. 1 2 Tiribilli 2012, p. 125.
  2. ↑ Shaw & Nicholson 1995, p. 276.
  3. ↑ Kitchen 1996, p. Table 22.
  4. ↑ Naville 1887, pp. 1–13.
  5. ↑ Tiribilli 2012, p. 129.
  6. ↑ Tiribilli 2012, pp. 127–9.
  7. ↑ Tiribilli 2012, p. 130.
  8. ↑ Tiribilli 2012, p. 131.
  9. ↑ Tiribilli 2012, pp. 135–6.

Bibliography

Kitchen, Kenneth (1996). The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (1100–650 BC) (3rd ed.). Warminster: Aris & Phillips Limited. ISBN 0-85668-298-5. 
Naville, Édouard (1887). The shrine of Saft el Henneh and the land of Goshen (1885). London: The Egypt Exploration Fund. pp. 1–13. 
Shaw, Ian; Nicholson, Paul (1995). The British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt. The American University in Cairo Press. p. 276. 
Tiribilli, Elena (2012). "Una ricostruzione topografica del distretto templare di Saft el-Henna tra filologia e archeologia". Egitto e Vicino Oriente (in Italian). 35: 125–142. 

Further reading

Coordinates: 30°33′N 31°36′E / 30.550°N 31.600°E / 30.550; 31.600

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