Sesebi
Projects: Geographical Overview
View north over the domestic area of the fortress with the main temple
Surveying from the temple platform
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Ancient Egyptian Colonial Town of Sesebi
The ancient Egyptian colonial town of Sesebi lies on the east bank of the Nile opposite the modern town of Delgo in Sudan, approximately 100 km downstream from the third cataract. The town was built by Amenhotep IV at the very beginning of his reign, before he changed his name to Akhenaten and embarked on his programme of radical religious reform. The site was rapidly excavated by the Egypt Exploration Society in two seasons in 1936 and 1937, but a final report was never completed. Those excavations uncovered a buttressed town wall, within which were two temple structures, large blocks of magazines and a residential area.
From 2008–2010, a University of Cambridge team worked at the site, led by Dr Pamela Rose and Dr Kate Spence, and this project will now continue as a joint OeAI and University of Cambridge mission. The aims of the work are to contextualize Sesebi through examination of its landscape setting and long-term history, to investigate its purpose, document the urban layout through a combination of topographic mapping and survey by magnetometry, and to examine the identity and lifestyle of the ancient inhabitants of the town. The work has already established a substantial earlier New Kingdom presence at Sesebi, in the form of heavy mud brick walls, an earlier enclosure, evidence of a dismantled temple reused to build one of Akhenaten’s structures, and large amounts of pottery. There is also later use in the Napatan period. Clear evidence linking Sesebi with the processing of gold in the New Kingdom has also been identified. Future seasons will continue a programme of targeted excavation and regional survey.