Department of Egyptian and Near Eastern Archaeology research history from 1980 to 2024

The Department of Egyptian and Near Eastern Archaeology was founded in 1998. Its main fields of research include Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt, the Early Bronze Age in the southern Levant, Egyptian architecture of the Middle Kingdom, and Egyptian art and architecture. Scientific expeditions organised by the department have worked in Egypt (Tell el-Farkha, Kafr Hassan Dawood and Tell el-Murra), Israel (Tel Erani), southern Jordan (the Heritage-Landscape-Community Project) and Sudan (the Akasha-Ambigol region). Excavated since 1998, Tell el-Farkha is one of the most important sites in the Nile Delta, dating back to the beginnings of the Egyptian state. The findings of the research conducted in the settlement and at the cemetery have completely changed the previous hypothesis about the prehistory of this region and have presented newer and more convincing theories. Tell el-Murra has been studied since 2008. The site was inhabited since ca. 3500 BC (the Lower Egyptian culture) until ca. 2200 BC (the end of the Old Kingdom), with a short period of abandonment just after the Lower Egyptian culture. Both the cemetery and the settlement were explored there. Tel Erani is located in the northern Negev. The main outcome of the department’s investigations here was confirmation of the existence of the defensive wall, which may date to around the middle part of the Early Bronze 1b phase. Identification of the scale and nature of the relationship between Egypt and the southern Levant at the end of 4th millennium BC was also one of our main achievements. The Heritage-Landscape-Community Project completed in the southern part of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is the first complex attempt to establish the functional stages and significance of the region of southern Jordan in the late prehistory, especially during the Early Bronze Age. The research objective here was to determine the stages and specifics of human activity within this period in this area. The main aim of research between Akasha and Ambigol was to survey the area as well as create a digital archaeological map of the area and evaluate the contemporary potential of this area for long-term excavations.