Possibly world's oldest sea port found in Egypt

An ancient Egyptian port about 4,500 years old has been discovered on the Red Sea coast, along with hieroglyphic papyri, researchers have disclosed.

 

Pierre Tallet, and director of the archaeological mission, told Discovery News the port may be 1,000 years older than any known port.

 

"Evidence unearthed at the site shows that it predates by more than 1,000 years any other port structure known in the world," said Tallet, an Egyptologist at the University of Paris-Sorbonne.

 

Discovery News said Tallet had been excavating the area since 2011 with archaeologist Gregory Marouard, of the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, topographer Damien Laisney of the French National Center for Scientific Research, and doctoral students Aurore Ciavatti and Serena Esposito from the Sorbonne University.

 

Initially, the team zeroed in on the most visible part of the site, the galleries described by Wilkinson.

 

The port is believed to have been built during the fourth dynasty of King Cheops, owner of the Great Pyramid in the Giza Plateau.

 

Franco-Egyptian archaeologists discovered the port at Wadi el-Jarf, some 110 miles south of the coastal city of Suez.

 

Discovery News said the site had been explored in 1823 by British pioneer Egyptologist Sir John Garner Wilkinson, who found galleries cut into the bedrock a few miles from the coast.

 

Garner believed them to be catacombs.

 

"The place was then described by French pilots working on the Suez Gulf during the 1950s, but no one realized that it concealed the remains of an ancient pharaonic harbor," Tallet said.

 

Excavation

 

The excavation showed 30 of these galleries, measuring an average of 65 feet long, 10 feet wide and seven feet high.

 

The galleries were used to store dismantled boats after the expeditions from Sinai to the Nile valley, and featured an elaborate closure system that used large heavy limestone blocks inscribed with the name of Cheops (about 2650 BC).

 

Inside these galleries, Tallet and his team found fragments of boats, ropes and pottery dating to the early fourth dynasty.

 

At least three galleries contained storage jars, which may have served as water containers for boats.

 

On the other hand, an underwater exploration at the foot of the jetty showed 25 pharaonic anchors and pottery similar to that uncovered in the galleries.

 

All these dated from the fourth dynasty.

 

Some 200 meters from the seaside, the team found the remains of an Old Kingdom building where 99 pharaonic anchors had been stored.

 

"Some of them were inscribed with hieroglyphic signs, probably with the names of the boats," Tallet said.

 

Oldest papyri

 

But what is interesting is that the storage galleries also contained hundreds of papyrus fragments, 10 of which were very well-preserved.

 

Many of the papyri describe how Cheops' administration sent food, mainly bread and beer, to workers in the Egyptian expeditions departing from the port.

 

“They are the oldest papyri ever found,” Tallet said.

 

However, one papyrus appears to be very intriguing: the diary of Merrer, an Old Kingdom official involved in the building of the Great Pyramid of Cheops.

 

Researchers managed to piece together his daily activity for more than three months.

 

"He mainly reported about his many trips to the Turah limestone quarry to fetch block for the building of the pyramid ... Although we will not learn anything new about the construction of Cheops monument, this diary provides for the first time an insight on this matter," Tallet said. — TJD, GMA News