Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean (17.2005(2007))

SHEIKH ABD EL-GURNA

EGYPT

HERMITAGE INSIDE THE TOMB

The corridor and inner room of the tomb was
cleared completely of the fill left by modern,
more or less plunder 'excavations'. The occu-
pational layer from Coptic times was cleared,
uncovering a mud floor over virtually the
whole surface of the inner room. Contrary to
earlier assumptions, it turned out that the
monks had used the entire interior of the
tomb along with the inner room.
A pavement made of stone slabs, un-
worked stones and potsherds ran along the
south wall of the inner room. In the
southwestern corner, there was a sleeping
place separated from the rest of the room
by a low wall composed of two courses of
brick (cf. plan, Fig. 1). A similar sleeping
place was discovered by the opposite wall.
Small irregular niches had been cut into
the walls next to both these places.

The evidence indicates that the monks
had adapted the inner room for living pur-
poses, separating it from the front part of the
hermitage with a thick mud-brick wall
{Fig. 2]. A door 1.04 m wide with a mono-
lithic threshold of dressed stone led through
this wall. Debris from the collapsed upper
part of the wall preserved some fragments of
whitewashed mud plaster. Traces of a guil-
loche outlined in black appeared on some
pieces, with patches of ted and yellow-brown
paint filling in the open spaces. The guil-
loche may have framed the door or perhaps
a niche or window. The wall separating the
inner room and part of the corridor from the
front part of the corridor appears to have
been erected in the final stages of the
existence of the hermitage (possibly in the
second half ol the 7th century).


Fig. 2. Mud-brick wall separating the inner room from the front part of the hermitage
(Photo T. Gorecki)

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