Everything about Elkab totally explained
Elkab is an
Upper Egyptian site on the east bank of the
Nile at the mouth of
Wadi Hillal, about 80km south of
Luxor, consisting of prehistoric and Pharaonic settlements, rock-cut tombs of the early 18th Dynasty (1550-1295 BC), remains of temples dating from the Early Dynastic period (3100-2686 BC) to the Ptolemaic period (332-30 BC), as well as part of the walls of a coptic monastery. First scientifically excavated by
James Quibell at the end of the nineteenth century, the site has been investigated primarily by Belgian archaeologists since 1937.
The walled Pharaonic settlement of
Nekheb was one of the first urban centres of the Early Dynastic period, and for a short time in the New Kingdom (1550-1069 BC) it eclipsed in the city of
Nekhen (
Hierakonpolis) on the opposite bank, becoming the capital of the third nome of Upper Egypt. Its massive mud-brick walls, dating to the Late Period (747-332 BC) and still largely preserved, enclosed an area of about 25,000 sq. m. Near the centre of the town are the remains of sand-stone temples dedicated to the deities
Nekhbet and
Thoth, which date primarily to the 18th to 30th Dynasties (1550-343 BC), but the original foundation of the temple of Nekhbet almost certainly dates back to the late fourth millennium BC.
The rock-tombs of the provincial governors of
Elkab in the new Kingdom include those of
Ahmose son of
Ibana, and admiral in the wars of liberatin againts the
Hyksos rulers (
c.1550 BC), and
Setau, a priest during the reign of
Ramses III (1184-1153 BC). The style of the early 18th Dynasty wall-paintings anticipates that of the first New Kingdom nobles' tombs at
Thebes.
In 1967 Pierre Vermeersch discovered a series of well-stratified epipalaeolithic campsites. Radiocarbon-dated to
c.6400-5980 BC, these are the type-sites of the Elkabian microlithic industry, filling a gap in the prehistoric cultural sequence of
Egypt, between the Upper Palaeolithic period (
c.10,000 BC) and the earliest Neolithic phase (
c.5500 BC)
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