 View of the village of Abū Schurūf | ||
| Abū Schurūf · أبو شروف | ||
| Governorate | Maṭrūḥ | |
|---|---|---|
| Residents | 630 (2006) | |
| height | −15 m | |
no tourist info on Wikidata:  | ||
| location | ||
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Abu Shuruf (also Abu Shuruf, Arabic:أبو شروف, Abū Schurūf) is a village with about 630 inhabitants [1] in the east of the city Siwa on the east bank of the salt lake Birkat ez-Zeitūn, about 7 kilometers southeast of ʿAin Qureishat and about 40 kilometers southeast of Siwa located.
background
The area of today's village Abū Schurūf has been populated since the Ptolemaic (Greek) times. Surface finds mostly come from Roman times. Oil lamps found here date back to late antiquity. In ancient times, several freshwater springs were tapped in basins that fed a system of irrigation canals. With this water, inter alia. Irrigated olive groves. Parts of the ancient settlement are still preserved as far as they were not overbuilt by the modern village. The remains include Roman residential buildings, including a building made of limestone blocks, and the remains of a cemetery about 100 meters to the south.
The first research results come from the Egyptian Egyptologist Ahmed Fakhry (1905–1973), who had carried out investigations in Siwa since 1938. Since the 1980s, excavations have been carried out by the Egyptian Antiquities Service, mostly as a result of robbery excavations. The stone building was examined again in March 2009 by Michael Heinzelmann and his excavation team from the University of Cologne.
The village of Abu Shuruf has existed since the beginning of the 20th century. Since the 1980s there has been a strong influx from Siwa because of the new land project undertaken here. In 1996 about 420 people lived in the village.[2]
The village is now divided into two parts. The old part of the village is to the west and the new part to the south-east. The ancient sites are in the old part of the village. In the area of the village there is a large spring pond with clean water. Mineral water is produced in a factory in the north of the village.
getting there
For the journey you can take the asphalt road from Siwa over the Zeitūn lake to ʿAin āfī to use. The archaeological site itself has to be explored on foot.
Tourist Attractions
In the south of the old village are the remains of the ancient settlement.
Most important testimony is a 1 antique limestone stone building(29 ° 10 '52 "N.25 ° 44 ′ 47 ″ E) from the time between the 1st century BC And the first half of the 3rd century AD. Fakhry saw this as a burial temple, while Heinzelmann refers to this as a residential building. There are no finds that confirm the use of the building as a temple.
The roughly square, 10.40-meter-long and 9.90-meter-wide building, made of little carefully placed limestone blocks, is oriented roughly from west to east. Its entrance in the west leads directly to an arched corridor in the longitudinal axis, from which three rooms of different sizes and a stairwell extend on the left and two on the right. The rooms only have slotted windows and wall niches. The 1.6 meter high entrances to the four rear rooms are decorated with a cove.
The staircase in the south-west corner immediately behind the entrance leads to an upper floor that was built only from adobe bricks. The walls were plastered with stucco but never decorated.
Fakhry believed that the narrow alcove about four feet above the floor on the left on the way to the stairs could possibly have been used for the erection of a temple deity. Heinzelmann, on the other hand, believes that there were stables and storage rooms on the ground floor and living rooms of an upper-class house on the upper floor.
To the north of this stone building are the remains of other ancient stone buildings that are up to a meter tall.
About 200 meters south of the street you can see the big one 2 source(29 ° 10 ′ 58 ″ N.25 ° 44 ′ 36 ″ E) of the village.
kitchen
There are restaurants in the nearby town Siwa. There is a small shelter for tea, coffee and shisha pipes directly to the west of the source pond.
accommodation
Accommodation is available in the nearby town Siwa.
trips
The visit to the archaeological site can be combined with the ʿAin Qureishat, ez-timeun, ʿAin āfī and Abū el-ʿAuwāf connect.
literature
- : Siwa Oasis. Cairo: The American Univ. in Cairo Pr., 1973, The oases of Egypt; 1, ISBN 978-977-424-123-9 (Reprint), pp. 130-132.
- : Investigations into the settlement structure of the Siwa oasis in Hellenistic-Roman times: preliminary report on a first research campaign at Birket Zaytun 2009. In:Cologne and Bonn Archaeologica (Cuba), ISSN2191-6136, Vol.1 (2011), Pp. 65-76, in particular pp. 69, 71-73, PDF.
Individual evidence
- ↑Population according to the 2006 Egyptian census, accessed June 3, 2014.
- ↑: Siwa - the oasis of the sun god: Living in an Egyptian oasis from the Middle Ages to the present day. Bonn: Political Working Group Schools (PAS), 1997, ISBN 978-3-921876-21-3 , P. 35.
