Molluscs from the Stone and Mud-brick Tombs in Abusir (Egypt) and the Provenance of so-called “Nile-mud”

More than 200 archaeological features were looted in Abusir during the Egyptian Lotus revolution in January 2011. The survey of the looted features brought to light among other material mollusc shells from mud-brick, mud plaster and layers covering and filling tombs and shafts. Sixteen features could be dated to the Old Kingdom (5th–6th dynasty, ca. 2435–2118 BC); there are two possible features from the 3rd dynasty or early 4th dynasty (ca. 2543–2436 BC) and one feature datable to the Late Period (664–404 BC). Four species of gastropods and five species of bivalves were identified. A number of the species are now either extinct or have a limited range in the Nile with these including: Unio elongatulus, Coelatura aegyptiaca, Anodonta cygnaea, and in all probability Etheria elliptica. The most frequent freshwater species in the corpus, from slow flowing or stagnant waters, could be evidence for the environment from which the mud for mud-brick and mud plaster was extracted. It could have been the Lake of Abusir, irrigation channels or the slower flowing part of the Old Kingdom west branch of the Nile. 2The detailed information in the chapter on marine and freshwater shells in Ancient Mesopotamian material culture is, however, not yet surpassed by any work in Egyptian archaeology (Moorey 1999, 129–140). IANSA 2013 ● IV/1 ● 9–22 Martin Odler, Veronika Dulíková, Lucie Juřičková: Molluscs from the Stone and Mud-brick Tombs in Abusir (Egypt) and the Provenance of so-called “Nile-mud” 10 Figure 1. Looted features in the concession of the Czech Institute of Egyptology in Abusir with total station coordinates. The satellite image of the Memphite necropolis is used as a basemap (Bárta, Brůna 2006).


Introduction
Concerning the area of the concession of the Czech Institute of Egyptology, more than 200 archaeological features were looted in Abusir during the Egyptian Lotus revolution in January 2011.The looters broke into storerooms and sealed tombs, ransacked the entire area and damaged as yet unexcavated tombs and shafts (Figure 1). 1 The nearby socalled Bonnet's cemetery, dating back to the Early Dynastic period and excavated only partially (Bonnet 1928), was taken over by the village of Abusir in March 2011 as an enlargement of an existing Muslim cemetery.A number of the preliminary results of the survey of the looted structures in the field are presented here with a focus on the finds of malacofauna and their provenance.
Malacofauna is a well-known indicator of the natural environment -molluscs in mud-brick and mud plaster should therefore provide information about the environment in which the so-called "Nile-mud" was gathered for the production of mud-brick and mud plaster.The freshwater malacofauna of the Nile Basin was summarised recently in a volume concerning the River Nile (Van Damme, Van Bocxlaer 2009).An overview of Ancient Egyptian molluscs is provided by entries in Lexikon der Ägyptologie (Feucht 1982;Seyfried 1986). 2 Molluscs in Ancient Egyptian mud-brick, mud plaster and pottery have not, to our knowledge, been examined in the literature as yet.Species of molluscs were thus determined and only published as finds in archaeological contexts, most recently e.g. from the Satet temple on the island of Elephantine (Falkner 1982, 155-163), from Tell el-Dab'a (Boessneck, Driesch 1992, 43-44), from Buto (Boessneck, Driesch 1997, 214-215), from the Qubbet el-Hawa cemetery (Edel, Seyfried, Vieler 2008, LXXXII-LXXXIII) and from the Early Dynastic site Tell el-Farkha  (Bárta, Brůna 2006).0 400 m (Abłamowicz 2012, 418-419).Species of molluscs found in the feature AS 57 in Abusir were determined by L. Juřičková and published by Z. Sůvová (2011); finds from the Lake of Abusir were published by L. Juřičková (Cílek et al. 2012).
A fundamental monograph on Ancient Egyptian mud-brick was published by Spencer (1979).Environmental studies of Ancient Egyptian mud-brick are scarce, with existing articles focused on erosion (Spencer 1994) and sedimentology of mud-brick (Tell el-Moqdam: Morgenstein, Redmount 1998;Karnak: Kemp 2000, 80-81;Amarna: Kemp 2000, 80-81).Pollen determination and analysis of mud-brick contents has been published from Giza (Ayyad, Krzywinski, Pierce 1991) and Abusir (Pokorný et al. 2009, 36).Information on environmental sources is also complemented by written sources.The Middle Kingdom papyrus UCL 32190, III.1 from Lahun had, among other data, an entry on the levigating of clay on the east bank of a water body for the production of mud-brick (Collier, Quirke 2006, 12-15).

Methodology
The rescue expedition of the Czech Institute of Egyptology arrived at site in March 2011 with the main aim of documenting the damage in the field and in the storehouses.The robbers' illicit digs were documented by GPS and total station coordinates, photographs, description of the tombs, shafts and unidentifiable features in the field.The material remaining after the looting near the features was sampled, primarily pottery and occasionally other find types, yet  Table 1.Features with mollusc shells found during the survey of the looted structures in Abusir (March 2011).Three other archaeological contexts with molluscs are added to the table, excavated tombs AS 37, AS 54 and AS 57.During the survey, the molluscs were also collected from the mud-brick, mud plaster and mortar and the filling of the tombs and shafts (the specification of the contexts is in Table 2).Samples from macroscopically visible contexts were removed along with the data concerning their archaeological context.An example of the context is photographed in Figure 4, the mollusc shell in situ in the mud plaster of the tomb of Neferinpu (AS 37).The nature of the corpus is selective, influenced by the visibility of the shells in the archaeological contexts and the limited time of the rescue survey in the field, simple charting and mapping of the presence/absence of the species is chosen instead of a detailed description of the amount and fragmentarization of the mollusc shells and statistics.

Dating
Three other contexts are incorporated into the examined corpus, the molluscs found in the mud-brick of the AS 57 feature (Sůvová 2011) and the as yet unpublished finds from the features AS 37 (Bárta 2013; molluscs from the mud plaster on the western side of the superstructure) and AS 54 (Bárta 2011b; mollusc find from the tomb chapel).

Features and their dating
Molluscs were found in 19 features out of the 168 surveyed robbers' digs (Figure 2, Table 1).The robbers' digs in Bonnet's cemetery were not surveyed because of the inclusion of this part of the Abusir site into the Muslim cemetery.Molluscs were thus visible by a macroscopic survey in approximately 20% of the features.The archaeological context of the finds is: mud-brick (13 contexts), mud mortar and plaster (4 contexts) and layers covering tombs or shafts (the molluscs were removed from the layers left excavated by the robbers in the vicinity of the features; 8 contexts) (Table 2).The malacofauna contained in the mud-brick and mud plaster is a more credible source, both types of contexts provide terminus ante quem for the dating of the molluscs.
The primary architectural type of the surveyed features with the malacofauna is a tomb built of mud-brick (16 features; examples in Figures 3 and 4), while the rest are two tombs built of limestone blocks and a mud-brick core, including mud-brick shafts, with in one case the shaft being hewn into the tafl bedrock.The dimensions of the shaft openings were approximately 1×1 m.
The dating of the tombs is complicated by the lack of proper archaeological excavations.The dating must be based on observable features: the architectural types of the tombs, the size of the mud-brick and the occurrence of other datable material, in this case mainly pottery.The fragments consist of typical examples of Old Kingdom vessels, datable to the 5 th -6 th dynasty (ca.2435-2118 BC),3 without the possibility of finer dating (Table 1).The fragments near the RD S 62 shaft and the shaft of the RD T 74 tomb only contained pottery datable to the 3 rd dynasty or early 4 th dynasty (ca.2543-2436 BC), similar material was published by Arias Kytnarová (2010).The RD T 81 feature is to be dated in accordance with the architecture and pottery (dated   by K. Smoláriková, personal communication) in the Late Period (26 th -27 th dynasty; 664-644 BC) (Figure 3).The pottery could not be decisive for the dating of the tombs, the fragments were found in the already excavated filling of the tombs and shafts and there is no detailed information about the original context of the fragments.An indication of the dating of the features could be the size of the bricks (Figure 5).The dimensions of the mud-brick are clustered in an interval of 20-30 cm, apart from the RD T 81 tomb with larger mud-brick.The dating of the tombs at Abusir by virtue of the mud-brick dimensions is complicated by the occurrence of an interval of 20-30 cm among the mud-brick from the 3 rd dynasty to the 6 th dynasty. 4A detailed chronological and chorological study of the Abusir mudbrick dimensions is needed for a more convincing argument.
The observed features of the architectural structures enabled the dating of the surveyed structures to the 5 th -6 th dynasty, without a more accurate chronological division of the corpus.The RD S 62 and RD T 74 features could be traced to the 3 rd dynasty -early 4 th dynasty according to the pottery.The archaeological excavation of the looted structures is the only possible future means of more precise dating of the surveyed structures in all the cases apart from RD T 81.
The dating of the three remaining structures is secure, based on archaeological excavations and evaluation of the finds (Table 1): tomb AS 54 is dated to the late 3 rd dynasty (Bárta 2011b;Jirásková 2011), tomb AS 57 to the 5 th dynasty (Vymazalová et al. 2011) and tomb AS 37 to the late 5 th dynasty, its owner was Neferinpu (Bárta 2013).4 3 rd dynasty tombs are in this interval e.g. in the tomb of Ity (Bárta 2001, 4), the tomb of Hetepi (Bárta et al. 2010, 6) and AS 33 tomb (Bárta et al. 2010, 57); the Lake of Abusir Tomb 1 contains this dimensions but also longer mud-brick (Bárta 2001, 27).

Molluscs
Four species of gastropods and five species of bivalves were determined in the archaeological contexts.Each of them contains five or less mollusc species (Tables 2-3, Figure 6).The most frequent species were bellamya unicolor, Gabbiela senaariensis and Corbicula consorbina (Figure 7).Other species are rarer with a number of them only occurring once and in a fragmentary state of preservation.The spatial data indicate a regular occurrence of the species bellamya unicolor, Gabbiela senaariensis and Corbicula consorbina in the surveyed part of .This spatial distribution in all probability indicates a high frequency of these species in the source or the sources of the mud for the production of mud plaster and mud-brick.

Mollusc species
The most important information concerning the molluscs is their habitat and ecology.Previous research was primarily focused on freshwater molluscs of northern Africa, due to their parasitological importance.Terrestrial molluscs are far less known.Molluscs in Ancient Egyptian mud-brick, mud plaster and pottery have not, to our knowledge, been examined in the literature; however they could provide interesting evidence about the ancient environment.

Gastropods
Three species of gastropods are freshwater and one terrestrial.Bellamya unicolor from the Viviparidae family is living in the lakes, rivers and perennial streams of Africa, including the Nile (Ghamizi et al. 2010).It was found in mud-brick; mud plaster and layers (Figure 8, Table 2).A number of the earlier finds of this species were published by Van Damme (1984).It is found in Egypt from the Neolithic (Boessneck 1988, 147, Abb. 242), through the Second Intermediate Period (Boessneck, Driesch 1992, 44) to the Late Period (Boessneck, Driesch 1997, 215).Finds at the Lake of Abusir are assumed to have been redeposited by wind erosion (Cílek et al. 2012, 10).
Gabbiella senaariensis from the Bithyniidae family is a freshwater snail, living in lakes, rivers, pools and irrigation channels, including the Nile (Ghamizi et al. 2010).It was found in mud-brick, mud plaster as well as in the layers in the tombs and shafts (Figure 9, Table 2).There was only    Bulinus truncatus from the Planorbidae family is a freshwater snail with a current range in Eurasia and Africa.It was found in all three types of archaeological contexts in the Abusir tombs (Table 2).The Holocene sites were published by Van Damme (1984).It occurs in Egypt in the oases Kharga, Dakhla and Bahriya (Wright 1973).It was also found at the Lake of Abusir (Cílek et al. 2012, Figures 7-8).This species is the intermediate host of schistosoma haematobium causing schistosomiasis.
Eremina ehrenbergi from the Helicidae family is a xerophilous terrestrial mollusc, its detailed recent range is not known but it occurs in northern Africa.The only shell of this species was found in the chapel of the late 3 rd dynasty tomb AS 54, in a layer of grey sand, and it could be of recent origin.Additional species of this family, Eremina desertorum and Eremina irregularis, were found in Ancient Egyptian settlement layers (Boessneck 1988, 147), as well as Eremina desertorum in Buto, dated to the Early Dynastic and Late Period (Boessneck, Driesch 1997, 215).

Bivalves
Five species of freshwater bivalves occur in the corpus from Abusir.Corbicula consorbina from the Corbiculidae family, freshwater bivalve, occurs in the Nile in Lower Egypt spreading through planktonic larvae.It was discovered in mud-brick and layers (Figure 10, Table 2).Pleistocene and Holocene finds from Egypt were published by Van Damme (1984).
Unio elongatulus mancus from the Unionidae family5 is found in freshwater rivers, lakes and channels.It requires clean water and is intolerant to pollution (Van Damme 2011b).It is extinct in the Nile.It was found in mud-brick as well as in layers (Figure 11, Table 2).The taxonomy of the species is unclear, the bivalves from Abusir could belong to the subspecies Unio elongatulus dembae, occurring at present only in Tana lake (Van Damme, Van Bocxlaer 2009, 615).The Unio genus was found in an undatable context in tomb 26 in Qubbet el-Hawa, the Unionidae family in two more contexts, the "Unionidae or Mutelidae" family in five cases (Edel, Seyfried, Vieler 2008, LXXXII-LXXXIII).
Etheria elliptica from the Etheriidae family is living in freshwater water bodies, preferring fast flowing rivers,   G. Falkner (1982, 162-163) has referred to a regular occurrence in the waters of tropical Africa, while it is rarer southwards down the river from the first Nile cataract.Only Upper Egyptian archaeological sites were cited by Falkner. 6 Lower Egyptian sites include Abusir in this corpus and three pieces in Buto, dated to the Old Kingdom (Boessneck, Driesch 1997, 214-215).According to the habitat of this species, the Ancient Egyptian term inr n rA mw -"stone from the water shore" (Hannig 2006, 88) could be the term for the Etheria elliptica.
There are also certain fragments of the Unionidae family in the mud-brick and in all probability the Mutela freshwater species from the Iridinidae family, in the mud plaster and layers (Table 2).
Two more species were found in the mud-brick of the tomb AS 57, an already published tomb dated to the 5 th dynasty (Sůvová 2011).They are discussed here as further evidence of molluscs in Old Kingdom mud-brick.Coelatura aegyptiaca from the Unionidae family occurs in rivers and Lake Chad, in different types of substrates in larger surface waters.It occurs in the Nile at Aswan dam and southwards from there (Van Damme, Ghamizi 2010).It was found in Buto and dated to the Old Kingdom and Late Period.It was used for food, as a pendant or could have only occurred in the environment of the settlement (Boessneck, Driesch 1997, 215).Pleistocene and Holocene finds were published by Van Damme (1984).
Anodonta cygnaea from the Unionidae family is found in the slow flowing and stagnant waters of Eurasia and Northern Africa and was only found there in Algeria and Morocco (Sůvová 2011).There were fragments of the bivalves from the Unionidae family or Mutelidae at the Qubbet el-Hawa site, similar to the Anodonta genus (Edel, Seyfried, Vieler 2008, lxxxii-lxxxiii).

Interpretation and evaluation of the mollusc finds
The dating of the features is only tentative; there are two diachronic phases, the Old Kingdom and the Late Period (tomb RD T 81).The excavations of the Czech Institute of Egyptology in Abusir have demonstrated the most frequent tomb building activity in the 5 th -6 th dynasties in Abusir.An internal division of the Old Kingdom corpus based on the finds of pottery is possible, but cannot be overemphasized in the current state of research.
The most frequently occurring freshwater species from the slow flowing or stagnant waters are evidence of the environment in which the mud was extracted.A number of the discussed species were used for food, as pendants or as paint receptacles, they are an admixture of the mudbrick matrix in the case of the mud-brick and mud plaster contents.These species do not alter our information concerning the environment in the past in the Abusir area, but do demonstrate that the range of the species was broader than the already published archaeological contexts have provided.There are several possibilities for the habitats of molluscs in the Abusir area: the banks of the Lake of Abusir, the irrigation channels or the slower flowing part of the Nile.The production of mud-brick on the bank of a water body is confirmed by one of the Lahun papyri, dated to the Middle Kingdom (Collier, Quirke 2006, 12-15).The Nile was in all probability divided into two branches during the Old and Middle Kingdom in the Memphite area, migrating over time eastwards.The western branch was nearer the Memphite necropolis (Lutley, Bunbury 2008;Jeffreys, Bunbury 2011, Figure 3;Jeffreys 2012;Bunbury 2012).Based on the current state of research, it cannot be decided in which kind of environment the molluscs found in the mudbrick were living.The exceptions are the terrestrial snail Eremina ehrenbergi and Etheria elliptica from the faster flowing water, present only as fragments of shell.The latter species could also be deposited either by wind erosion or by unintentional or intentional importation to the site.
Another corpus of malacofauna from Abusir was excavated and published from the former Lake of Abusir (Cílek et al. 2012).The trenches in the Lake of Abusir provided scarce finds of molluscs datable to the Old Kingdom; the highest frequency of the shells is in the first metre of the deposits above the Old Kingdom level (Cílek et al. 2012, 8, Figure 7).7However, the bellamya unicolor and bulinus truncatus species, found in the Lake of Abusir trenches, occur in the Old Kingdom mud-brick of our corpus.One source is thus complementing the evidence of the other.Research at the Lake of Abusir also brought to light shells of bithynia tentaculata, a common European species, which was found thus far only in Algeria and Morocco in Africa. 8acroscopic study could identify traces of fossilization on the shells; they are different in various environments, the origin and taphonomy of the determined mollusc shells could be diverse.The only possible means of a precise dating of the molluscs is 14 C method; but no samples can be exported from Egypt.The only laboratory providing 14 C dating in Egypt belongs to the Institut français d'archéologie orientale, mollusc samples for dating should weigh 50 g or 6 More finds of the family and this species were published from Qubbet el-Hawa by E. Edel, K.-J.Seyfried and G. Vieler (2008, lxxxiii).more 9 -none of the mollusc finds of this corpus weighed 50 grams or more.
There are a number of additional references to the molluscs in Abusir mud-brick (e.g.Krejčí 2006, Tables 1.6.2-1.6.9);further research on the Abusir malacofauna should also focus on these contexts to supplement other species.A survey of the looted archaeological features in Abusir enabled the identification of the mud-brick structures with higher contents of organic material.In the case of a further study of the mollusc shells, an analysis of comparable contexts should be used (e.g. standard flotation and wet sieving of the same number of mud-brick from the selected structures).A detailed description and statistics on the amount and state of preservation of all the material would be meaningful.
Another field of research could be the Old Kingdom pottery in Abusir, containing molluscs as well as mudbrick. 10It would be interesting to compare the range of species in mud-brick and pottery, as to whether there are any differences or common traits.Czech excavations in Abusir have identified a workshop for the recycling of the mudbrick in the mortuary temple of Raneferef, dated to the reign of 5 th dynasty king Nyuserra (Krejčí 1995 and2006, 114, Figure 1.6.2;Verner et al. 2006, 66, 82-83, Figures 1.3.19 and 1.3.20).The pottery workshop was used in the nearby mortuary temple of Queen Khentkaus and is dated to the reign of Unas, the last king of the 5 th dynasty (Verner 1992(Verner , 1995)).The production areas of the mud-brick and pottery were thus probably separated in the Old Kingdom; the source of mud for both could be the same.

Conclusion
The survey of looted features brought to light mollusc shells from mud-brick, mud plaster and mortar and layers covering and filling the tombs and shafts.Sixteen features could be dated to the Old Kingdom (5 th -6 th dynasty, ca.2435-2118 BC); there are two possible features from the 3 rd dynasty or early 4 th dynasty (ca.2543-2436 BC) and one feature datable to the Late Period (664-404 BC).Four species of gastropods and five species of bivalves were identified.A number of species currently either extinct or with a limited range in the Nile were among them: Unio elongatulus, Coelatura aegyptiaca, Anodonta cygnaea, and in all probability Etheria elliptica.These species do not alter the information concerning the past environment of the Abusir area, but do indicate that the range of the species was broader than previously thought.The most frequent are the freshwater species from the slow flowing or stagnant waters which could be evidence for the environment in which the mud for the mud-brick and mud mortar was extracted.It could have been the Lake of Abusir, irrigation channels or the slower flowing part of the Old Kingdom west branch of the Nile.The molluscs from the layers covering the tombs or filling the shafts are also freshwater species and could have fallen out of the mud plaster or mud-brick.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Looted features in the concession of the Czech Institute of Egyptology in Abusir with total station coordinates.The satellite image of the Memphite necropolis is used as a basemap(Bárta, Brůna 2006).

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Looted features with molluscs in the concession of the Czech Institute of Egyptology in Abusir.Three other archaeological contexts with molluscs are added to the map, excavated tombs AS 37 (Neferinpu), AS 54 and AS 57.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Vaulted mudbrick tomb RD T 81 dated preliminarily by the pottery into the Late Period.Part of the vault was destroyed and the mud-brick laid scattered around along with human bones and mummy wrappings.Limestone sarcophagus was also smashed with its lower head part lying near the right lower corner of the picture (photo M. Frouz).
The occurrence of the molluscs in the archaeological contexts.Explanation of symbols: * -mud-brick, # -mud plaster, & -layers covering the tombs and filling the shafts.features were identified by the abbreviation RD (robbers' dig), a shortcut of the feature type (T -tomb, S -shaft, in the case of unknown architectural elements other than a shaft: U -unidentified) and the number of the feature.

Figure 5 .
Figure 5.The scatter plot of the mud-brick length and width in the corpus of the features.

Figure 6 .
Figure 6.Number of the archaeological contexts with molluscs in the corpus of the features.

Figure 7 .
Figure 7.The occurrence of the species in the corpus of the features.

Figure 9 .
Figure 9.The spatial range of the bellamya unicolor species in the corpus of the features.

Figure 10 .Figure 11 .
Figure 10.The spatial range of the Gabbiela senaariensis species in the corpus of the features.

Figure 12 .
Figure 12.The spatial range of the Unio elongatulus species in the corpus of the features.

Table 3 .
The habitats of the determined mollusc species.