Before the Pharaohs by Julian Heath;Julian Maxwell Heath;

Author:Julian Heath;Julian Maxwell Heath;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Archeology
Publisher: Casemate Publishers & Book Distributors, LLC
Published: 2021-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Sacred Mountain Tumuli

About 2 miles to the north of the Valley of the Sacrifices is a prominent desert massif that has been labelled the ‘Sacred Mountain’ or Gebel el-Muqaddas in Arabic. In 2005, a team of Polish archaeologists discovered ‘a large sacred area’ above a large, sandy basin or ‘cirque’ that dissected the southern part of the mountain. This area contained a massive hearth, hundreds of cairns made from sandstone boulders, and pavement-like structures comprising low piles of sandstone slabs.19

The Polish archaeologists returned in the winter of 2007/2008 to investigate a small section of this area (Site E-06-4), although their excavations yielded little in the way of artefacts. For example, below Tumulus 2, which measured about 4m in diameter and c.0.5m high (although originally it may have been much higher), an oval pit measuring about 1m in diameter and 1.5m deep was discovered, and the only objects found in its fill were two microlithic tools. Excavation of the pit that lay below the roughly circular arrangement of slabs forming Structure 2/1 (c.1.4m in diameter and 0.4m high) unearthed four microlithic tools and two box-like arrangements of thin sandstone slabs. The artefacts found in the excavated pits below the other cairns and ‘slab pavement’ structures included twelve fragments from the long bone of a gazelle, two more microlithic tools, a fragment of shell from a Nile oyster, nine fragments of gazelle teeth and thirty-five pieces of charcoal from a tamarisk tree. A radiocarbon date of c.7000 BCE was obtained from the latter, placing the Sacred Mountain sites in the Early Neolithic.

Although artefacts may have been scarce at Site E-06-4, the evidence found here suggests that the ‘Sacred Mountain’ is an apt name for this distinctive desert massif, and that the Early Neolithic inhabitants of Nabta Playa came here to make offerings in specially constructed monuments to the spirits or deities that they believed lived in the mountain. Support for the idea that the mountain was a Neolithic ‘holy’ place reserved for religious rituals and ceremonies is provided by the fact that no evidence of settlement has been found on the mountain. Other archaeological evidence found by the Polish archaeologists (e.g. the huge hearth mentioned above and a low sandstone hill scattered with butchered animal bones) has been dated to the Middle and Late Neolithic, indicating the continued importance of the Sacred Mountain to the Neolithic inhabitants of Nabta Playa.

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