New Discoveries in the Temple of Apries at Bahariya Oasis: An Overview of Two Seasons of Excavation

Abstract

This paper focuses upon the results of the excavations conducted at the Temple of Apries at Bahariya Oasis. More recently, five seasons of excavations (2015, 2016, 2018, 2019 and 2020) have been undertaken at the site by the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) in an area measuring about 4.5 acres. In 2015–2016, the focus of this paper, the modern buildings were demolished and the architectural remains of the temple, three sandstone sanctuaries and associated mud-brick buildings, within the south-east corner were exposed and recorded. The remains of material culture that the team retrieved from the fill of the investigated archaeological areas are oil lamps, locally manufactured domestic pottery, a number of Late Roman Amphorae, oblong grinding slabs, a lunette stela of Amenhotep II, a group of graffiti inscribed in both demotic and abnormal hieratic, three Greek and three Coptic ostraca. The archaeological evidence collected so far, such as a heavy cylindrical millstone, two crushing basins and three plaster-lined sedimentation troughs, strongly suggest that different activities relating almost exclusively to the manufacture of olive oil took place here from the fourth century onwards.