Ancient Theban Waterscapes: River Dynamics and Constructed Landscapes

Speaker: Dr. Angus Graham (Uppsala University)
Series: Department of Archaeology - Egyptian World Seminar Series

The presentation will briefly present some of the geomorphic processes of the River Nile observed in the work of the Theban Harbours and Waterscapes Survey. It will then look at some of the major findings of our work in the Theban floodplain that allow us to more clearly understand the changing land- and waterscapes of ancient Thebes (Pennington et al. 2025; Peeters et al. 2024; Toonen et al. 2018, 2019). In turn this enables the interpretation of the interaction and choices made by the Egyptians in locating and building temples, and the festival processions that brought together the many locales within Theban world of Amun-Re. The seminar will end with a short overview of the nascent work of the project on (micro)rhizoliths retrieved in our c. 300 boreholes in the Theban floodplain as a potential proxy for palaeoenvironmental conditions.

References:

Peeters, J., Graham, A., Toonen, W. H. J., Pennington, B. T., Durcan, J. A., Winkels, T. G., Barker, D. S., Masson-Berghoff, A., Adamson, K., Emery, V. L., Strutt, K. D., Millet, M., Sollars, L. H. and Ghazala, H. H. 2024. Shift away from Nile incision at Luxor ~4000 years ago impacted Ancient Egyptian landscape, Nature Geoscience 17, 645–653. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01451-z

Datasets: https://zenodo.org/records/11085130

Pennington, B. T., Graham, A., Masson-Berghoff, A., Millet, M., Toonen, W. H. J., Peeters, J., Winkels, T. G., Sollars, L. H., Emery, V. L., Strutt, K. D., Barker, D. S. 2025. Conceptual origins and geomorphic evolution of the temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak (Luxor, Egypt), Antiquity 99(408), 1535-1549. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2025.10185

Toonen, W. H. J., Graham, A., Masson-Berghoff, A., Peeters, J., Winkels, T. G., Pennington, B. T., Hunter, M. A., Strutt, K. D., Barker, D. S., Emery, V. L., Sollars, L., Sourouzian, H. 2019. Amenhotep III's Mansion of Millions of Years in Thebes (Luxor, Egypt): submergence of an elevated mound by river floods and Nile sediments, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 25, 195-205.

DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2019.03.003

Toonen, W. H. J., Graham, A., Pennington, B. T., Strutt, K. D., Hunter, M. A., Emery, V. L., Masson-Berghoff, A. and Barker, D. S., 2018. Holocene fluvial history of the Nile’s west bank at ancient Thebes (Luxor, Egypt) and its relation with cultural dynamics and basin-wide hydroclimatic variability, Geoarchaeology 33(3), 273-290. DOI: 10.1002/gea.21631