Merimde Beni Salama: Early Farming Village of the Nile Delta

Merimde Beni Salama was one of the earliest farming villages of ancient Egypt, occupied from about 5000 to 4100 BC on the western edge of the Nile Delta. Its oval houses, grain stores and burials provide the most detailed picture of settled village life in Lower Egypt before the rise of the pharaohs. The site is also famous for a small clay head that is among the oldest known sculptures of a human face from Egypt.

Location and discovery

Merimde lies near the modern village of Beni Salama, on a low terrace at the junction of the desert and the floodplain of the Rosetta branch of the Nile, north-west of Cairo. Its position allowed villagers to farm the fertile flood soils while living above the reach of the annual flood.

The Austrian Egyptologist Hermann Junker excavated large parts of the site for the Vienna Academy of Sciences between 1929 and 1939. He uncovered houses, hearths, storage facilities and burials, but his work was interrupted and only partly published. Between 1976 and 1982 the German archaeologist Josef Eiwanger, working for the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo, returned with modern methods and established a sequence of five occupation phases.

A village through time

The earliest phase, sometimes called the “Urschicht” (basal layer), dates to around 5000 BC. Its pottery, decorated with a herringbone pattern, and some of its stone tools show links with the Levant and possibly with the eastern Sahara. This suggests that the first inhabitants drew on contacts beyond the Nile valley.

Later phases, from the mid 5th millennium BC, show a larger and more densely built settlement. The villagers lived in small oval houses with walls of mud, reeds or wattle, some partly sunk into the ground. Houses were arranged in loose rows, and hearths and storage pits lay between them. Over time the site covered a large area, making it one of the largest prehistoric settlements known from Egypt, though not all parts were inhabited at once.

Farming, herding and fishing

The people of Merimde grew emmer wheat and barley, crops first domesticated in south-west Asia, as did their contemporaries in the Faiyum Neolithic. They stored grain in clay-lined pits, baskets and pottery jars sunk into the floors, and carbonised grain from the site is held in museum collections today.

They kept cattle, sheep, goats and pigs, and supplemented farming with fishing for Nile species such as catfish and Nile perch, and with hunting hippopotamus, crocodile and other wild animals. Tools included polished stone axes, flint sickle blades, arrowheads and bone harpoons and fish hooks.

The clay head and burials

The best-known object from Merimde is a small clay head, roughly oval and small enough to hold in one hand, with simple holes for the eyes and mouth. Rows of small holes around the edges may once have held hair or a beard made of organic material. It probably dates to the later phases of the settlement and is now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. It is often described as one of the earliest known three-dimensional representations of a human head from Egypt. Some researchers think it was mounted on a pole or post, perhaps for use in ritual, but its purpose is unknown.

Junker reported many burials within the settlement, usually in a crouched position and with few or no grave goods. This contrasts with later Egyptian practice, in which the dead were buried in cemeteries outside settlements, and with the richer graves of Upper Egypt. Eiwanger’s work showed that some of these burials belong to periods when that part of the site was not being lived in, so their relationship to the houses is debated.

Place in Egyptian prehistory

Merimde belongs to a northern tradition of farming villages in Lower Egypt, followed by sites such as El-Omari near Helwan and later the Buto–Maadi culture of the 4th millennium BC. In Upper Egypt, the Badarian culture and the Naqada culture developed along a somewhat different path, with rich cemeteries and craft specialisation. The two traditions eventually merged as Egypt moved towards political unification around 3100 BC. In this longer story, Merimde stands near the beginning: a community that adopted crops and herds from the wider Near East and adapted them to the rhythm of the Nile flood.

Timeline

• c. 5200 BC: Faiyum A farmers store grain beside the Faiyum lake.
• c. 5000 BC: First phase of settlement at Merimde Beni Salama.
• c. 4500 BC: The village grows into a large, densely built settlement.
• c. 4100 BC: Merimde is abandoned.
• 1929–1939: Hermann Junker excavates the site for the Vienna Academy of Sciences.
• 1976–1982: Josef Eiwanger excavates for the German Archaeological Institute.
• 1984–1992: Eiwanger publishes the results in three volumes.

Why it matters

Merimde Beni Salama shows how farming took root in the Nile Delta, creating a long-lived village culture centuries before the pharaohs. Its houses, granaries and early art reveal the everyday foundations on which ancient Egyptian civilisation was later built.