Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean (18.2006(2008))

NAQLUN

EGYPT

been preserved in nooks on the engaged
columns. At this time, the lower parts of the
wall inside the apse, the bases of the
engaged columns, the floor in the threshold
of the apse and around the altar mens a, and
some sections of the nave walls were coated
with another cream-colored wash, produced
from a fine clay with large quantities of
chaff. Then there was the beige plaster
which presumably covered the altar mensa
described above, in the section concerning
the kinds of brick used in Room 6.

In other units, more of a domestic or
living character, the walls were plastered in
a different way. Preserved fragments show
that at least the lower parts were covered
with a thin coating (2-6 mm) of dark gray
mud plaster containing fine chaff, smoothly
passing into a floor made of the same
plaster. Plasters of this kind are laid usually
on a relatively thick underground (up to
2 cm) of grayish or pale-gray-beige plaster,
both produced from raw material of desert
origin.

ROOFS

Despite a lack of evidence (the state of
preservation of the hermitage and the finds
from the fill provide no simple answers), it
can be assumed that at least some of the
outer units, like the kitchen, may have had

roofs of wooden beams covered with rushes
or jarids. As for the remaining chambers,
a common-sense solution is a natural vault
cut in the rock (W. Godlewski, pers.
comm.).

FLOORS

Technically the finest floor in the whole
hermitage was found in the oratory. It was a
pale gray-whitish lime floor, relatively thin
(5-6 mm) and very brittle, laid directly upon
bedrock. The other chambers had floors
made of dark gray mud containing huge
quantities of finely chopped chaff. They
were usually composed of one to a few thin
layers of mud (each 3-7 mm), forming a bed
even 4.5 cm thick. The top was normally
well smoothed and passed evenly into the
wall plastering. Mud floors were laid on a
bedding of sand, the latter occasionally
containing rubbish and eroded rock debris.

The exception with regard to floors was
the apse in Room 6. It was about 8-9 cm
above the floor in the nave, and consisted of
a thin outer layer (3 mm) of dark gray mud
with chaff, laid on a slightly thicker layer of
fine pale gray-beige clay with chaff, which
was the ground covering a substructure of
bricks laid flat in a bedding of sand on the
original floor of the apse.
In the kitchen, the original surface was
presumably the rock-cut floor. Later, it was
covered with a mud floor containing large
quantities of chaff, partly surviving in the
corners of the unit.

DOORS

None of the doorways in the hermitage
were well-preserved. In fact, in some of the
rooms their position could be identified
only theoretically based on certain set
assumptions.

Thresholds fall into two categories:
thresholds of bricks and thresholds using
wood in their construction. In the former
case, bricks could be laid header-on-edge,
the outer corners rounded (e.g. threshold

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