Douch II: La vegetation antique--Une approche macrobotanique.

• Author: Bottema, Sytze
• Position: Documents de Fouilles de l'Institut Francais d'Archeologie Orientale, vol. 27 - Book review

Douch II: La vegetation antique--Une approche macrobotanique. By HALA NAYEL BARRAKAT and NATHALIE BAUM. Documents de Fouilles de l'Institut Francais d'Archeologie Orientale, vol. 27. Cairo: INSTITUT FRANCAIS D'ARCHEOLOGIE ORIENTALE DU CAIRE, 1992. Pp. x + 105.

The necropolis of Dush, ancient Kysis, a Roman and Byzantine settlement in the southernmost part of el-Kharga Oasis, has been excavated by a team of the IFAO in Cairo since 1981, after an initial investigation in 1978. The town itself, which was occupied from the middle of the first to the beginning of the fifth century A.D., was an administrative center situated at an important crossroads of various caravan routes, especially the east-west route leading via the Dush Pass to Esna and Edfu in the Nile Valley. For this reason the town was fortified and guarded by Roman garrisons; it was in fact a military stronghold on the western frontier of Roman Egypt. The town housed an estimated five thousand inhabitants, most of whom led an agricultural existence. So far, ninety-five tombs have been uncovered in various parts of the necropolis; they belong to two main types, one with a sloping passage with or without stairs, leading to one or more rock-cut, or occasionally vaulted, mud-brick chambers, the other consisting of a pit dug vertically into the bedrock and giving access to one or two underground chambers. The remains of some seven hundred individuals have been found in these tombs. Judging by their burial customs, which included mummification, they adhered to traditional Egyptian beliefs; no archaeological evidence has yet been found at Dush for the advent of Christianity, which In this period became the dominant religion in the Nile Valley (cf. M. Redde et al., "Quinze annees de recherches francaises a Douch: vers un premier bilan." BIFAO 90 [1990]: 281 301).

The majority of the plant remains which form the subject of the present book derive from twelve tombs excavated in 1982; a further ten tombs found in 1990 provide additional material. The book is, in effect, a supplement to the excavation report on the necropolis published simultaneously (F. Dunand, J.-L. Heim, N. Henein, R. Lichtenberg, Douch I: La necropole - Exploration archeologique. Monographie des tombes I a 72 [Cairo: IFAO, 1992]). It provides hardly any background information about the archaeological context of the plant finds. The book clearly addresses itself to Egyptologists with a limited botanical knowledge...