Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean (13.2001(2002))

NAQLUN

EGYPT

north. The original part of the wall has
been preserved for a distance of 3-0 m. It
reached the northwestern corner of room
AA.10.3, which was also a kind of
courtyard, but connected directly with
tower A and building AA.30. Further to
the west, the added part of the wall, which
reached the west end of the space, was of
much poorer workmanship. In the eastern
corner, a stone block or dressed bedrock
perhaps served as a foundation. A course of
stretchers laid horizontally followed the
vertically-standing bricks of the found-
ation, then another course of vertical bricks
that reached the middle of the length of
the wall, and above this a regular cross
bond. This wall appears to be earlier than
the baked-brick wall of AA.10.3 with an
underpinning of pottery.
The west wall reached the northwestern
corner of Building AA.30, but the actual
joining of the walls had been destroyed by
an ancient trench that was backfilled with
mud brick detritus. This wall extended
beyond the room in a northward direction.
Some 1.70 m away from AA.30 there was
an entrance, 0.90 m wide, pierced through
it. At some point this doorway was
blocked. In its southern end the wall was
plastered.
The east wall of AA.10.3, made of red
brick, was dismantled practically in its
entirety, only a scrap of it surviving by the
northern corner. It was 66-68 cm wide and
presently runs for a distance of c. 35 cm. It
was founded on bricks standing on end in
a loose-sand layer with substantial
quantities of early pottery and shards of
glass vessels, including lamps from the 6th
century AD. Smeared mud plaster is
visible on the northern face of the wall (of
building AA.30), where a red-brick wall
reached it. Thus it appears that the red-
brick wall bounding courtyard AA.10.3 on
the east, north and west, a wall that was

added to the north walls of both tower
A and building AA.30, was clearly later
than either one of the latter. It also
presumably suffered destruction during
the conflagration. No evidence of a big fire
was recorded in AA.20.2, suggesting that
the southern wall of this locus was
dismantled only after the catastrophe that
has been dated to the early 10th century, at
which time the entire monastic compound
on Site A was abandoned and then partly
dismantled.
ARCHITECTURE WEST
OF BUILDING AA.30
A trench 14 by 8 m dug west of building
AA.30.1-3, at its southern end, was


Fig. 8. Amphora from the fill inside room
AA.30.4 (Nd.01287)
(Photo W. Godlewski)

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