No Time to Die… but Plenty to Live

Learn more about the excavations at Tell el-Ghaba in North Sinai with project director Dr Eva Calomino (Center for Studies of the History of the Ancient East, UCA/Argentina/Department of Prehistory and Archaeology, University of Granada-GEPRAN/Spain).

Egyptian archaeology has long favoured temples and tombs over settlements. Until the 1960s, this emphasis often left traces of everyday life poorly recorded and difficult to interpret. While excavations, recording, and material-culture studies have transformed the field, research on urbanism and households remains limited in Lower Egypt between the 12th and 6th centuries BCE—yet this is a key span for understanding communities on Egypt’s eastern frontier.

Tell el-Ghaba (North Sinai) is an urban settlement occupied from the early Third Intermediate to the early Saite Period (mid-10th to late-7th century BCE). Architecture, spatial organisation, and artefact assemblages from the site illuminate where people lived, how domestic spaces operated, and how routine storage, craft, foodways, and movement were organised. Compared to other settlement types in the region—fortified installations, planned towns, and smaller habitations—helps us to understand what “frontier” meant in daily life, and how state policy, military presence, and exchange shaped a borderland community.

In 2025, the Archaeological Mission at Tell el-Ghaba (AMTG) entered a new chapter as access to North Sinai reopened after fifteen years of restrictions. This return pairs intensive documentation with fresh interpretation and heritage collaboration, building the groundwork for the mission’s next cycle of research, training, and publication.