2025 Season at Tell el-Retaba
The fifteenth season of multidisciplinary research at the Egyptian site of Tell el-Retaba took place unusually in May and June 2025. Fieldwork continued in areas that had already been excavated in previous seasons. Egyptologists from the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAS) uncovered various architectural features and findings from settlements and cemeteries dating to the Second Intermediate Period (mid-18th – mid-16th century BCE) and the early 18th Dynasty (mid-16th – late 15th century BCE).
In addition to the annex to the so-called “Black House 3” from the 18th Dynasty, which Slovak experts explored during the revolutionary years 2012 and 2014, walls and hearths from the Second Intermediate Period were found deeper beneath it. These structures were located under the remains of an eroded wall of the fortress of Pharaoh Ramesses III from the 20th Dynasty in the 12th century BCE.
In the past two seasons, the excavations encountered a massive wall damaged by interventions from this and the previous century. Broader excavations this year revealed that the wall was about one meter thick. It was part of a Ramesside structure, of which only the southwestern corner was preserved. The building’s purpose therefore remains unknown.
The foundation for the massive wall had been dug into older layers belonging to another black house. This newly discovered house was designated House 4 and joined the group also due to the characteristic find of a copper or bronze knife. Since copper and bronze were valuable commodities, the question arises as to why inhabitants left them behind in the houses, along with scarabs, tools, and decorated faience vessels.
This decree suggests that it was still necessary during her reign to act against the nomads in the northern part of the country. It cannot be ruled out that the damage caused by nomads mentioned in the text also affected Tell el-Retaba, from which the inhabitants may have had to flee without their possessions.
Due to time constraints, the excavation of a deep depression—studied during the previous two seasons and believed to be a ditch—did not continue in the 2025 season. The importance of domestic data processing and analysis became evident. When preparing a report for the journal Ägypten und Levante, it turned out that the depression might not have served as a defensive ditch. Given its dimensions and location, it may have functioned as a navigation canal. Through it, goods and heavy construction materials—stone blocks from the Nile Valley—could have been transported to the tell. Their remnants are still present at the site and in museums.
Sources from the New Kingdom mention a canal named Itej, which ran alongside the temple of the sun god Re in Heliopolis. It is assumed that it continued through the Wadi Tumilat, passing near Tell el-Retaba. Vessels could have transported reddish quartzite from Cairo quarries at Kom el-Ahmar (Red Hill), snow-white limestone from Mokattam, Tura, and Masara in Cairo, and granite from Upper Egypt. A branch of the canal—i.e., the investigated depression, estimated to be about 18 meters wide—could have allowed vessels to dock near the gates of the 19th and 20th Dynasty fortresses. Similar materials were transported for temple construction on both banks at Luxor and Karnak. The canal was likely maintained until the Ptolemaic period, when locals used it as a garbage dump. The idea that boat traffic in this area was not uncommon is also supported by findings at the Sinai fortress of Tell Abu Saifi, about
50 km away, near Lake Ballah in the Suez Isthmus. In the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, there were docks here where ships were built and repaired.
Contact Jozef Hudec, Institute of Oriental Studies SAS, kaorhudc@savba.sk