Archaeologists have found a 3,500-year-old army fortress with a zigzag-style wall within the north Sinai Desert of Egypt, not removed from the Mediterranean coast. The fort is remarkably effectively preserved, and even has the remnants of ovens and a hunk of fossilized dough that the fortress’ troopers by no means received an opportunity to eat.
Artifacts from the roughly 2-acre (0.8 hectares) fortress counsel that it could have been constructed throughout the reign of Thutmose I (circa 1504 to 1492 B.C.), the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities mentioned in a translated statement. Thutmose I used to be a pharaoh who expanded Egypt’s empire into modern-day Syria, which helps clarify the fortress’ location.
One of the walls located inside the fortress has a zigzag pattern, it runs from north to south and divides part of the western section that was used as a residential area. The zigzag pattern “helped reinforce the wall’s stability and reduce the impact of wind and sand erosion,” Hesham Hussein, the undersecretary for Lower Egypt and Sinai Archaeology with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities who led the group that excavated the location, informed Live Science in an electronic mail.
Some of the outer recesses contained small ovens that have been doubtless used “for daily domestic activities inside the fortress,” he added. This is close to the place the group discovered the fossilized dough beside one of many ovens.
The giant fortress was effectively guarded. So far, archaeologists have found 11 defensive towers within the fort, and among the towers have “foundation deposits” fabricated from pottery buried there when development started. Some of the pottery has the identify of Thutmose I stamped on it. In historical Egypt, basis deposits have been generally buried as ritual choices at newly constructed buildings.
Given its dimension it might have had a lot of troopers. “Taking into account storerooms, courtyards, and other facilities, we estimate that the garrison likely ranged between 400 and 700 soldiers, with a reasonable average of around 500 soldiers,” Hussein mentioned.
Within the fortress, archaeologists found residences for soldiers. They discovered volcanic rock from the Aegean Islands, possibly used for construction, within the fortress. The team is looking to see if there is a nearby port that may have helped supply the garrison.
“The discovery of this fort is a very exciting one,” said James Hoffmeier, an archaeologist and professor at Trinity International University who has excavated a special fortress within the Sinai Desert on the website of Tell el-Borg however was not concerned with the brand new discovery.
The newfound fort and the beforehand found fort at Tell el-Borg are “part of the military road from Egypt to Canaan which made Egypt’s control of the east Mediterranean coast possible for most of four centuries,” Hoffmeier informed Live Science in an electronic mail. He famous that Egypt would management the shoreline into Canaan for many of the New Kingdom interval, which lasted from round 1550 to 1070 B.C.
The discovering that the newly found fort was doubtless constructed underneath the orders of Thutmose I is vital as a result of it helps “the long held view that Thutmose I was the father of Egypt’s empire in Western Asia and that he likely was a key player in the beginning of this defense system which succeeding kings added more forts,” Hoffmeier mentioned.
Gregory Mumford, an Egyptologist and anthropology professor on the University of Alabama at Birmingham who was not concerned with the excavation, informed Live Science that the analysis on the website will “expand greatly our understanding of the nature of Egypt’s early New Kingdom’s securement of Northeast Sinai along the ‘Ways of Horus,'” and supply extra perception into how Egypt guarded its japanese border.
Excavation of the location and evaluation of the stays are ongoing.