PUBLISHED 2015. Please visit the publication's webpage.
The site of Naukratis is situated in the Nile Delta on the Canopic branch of the Nile, about 70 km inland from Alexandria, near the modern village of Korn Ge'if. Here in around 630 BCE Greeks from twelve different cities established a settlement and trading post that remained the first and only Greek city in Egypt until the establishment of Alexandria some 400 years later. Four excavation seasons at the site between 1884-1903 yielded an exceptionally rich find assemblage, which confirmed its status as a key site in the early history of Greece and of intercultural relations in the Eastern Mediterranean.
But the excavations and their finds were never fully nor adequately published, and with finds now scattered among many collections worldwide - a result of partage and the original excavations' funding structures - and over half remaining unpublished and unstudied, much of the site's potential remains untapped.
This frustrating situation has been lamented unanimously, but to this day remains unresolved. The proposed project aims to remedy this by re-uniting all the surviving material in a database, by recontextualising and by re-studying it. The goal is to elucidate the site's topography and development, evaluate and correct original interpretations, and re-assess the role of Naukratis in the highly influential relationship between Greece and Egypt during what was a formative period in the development of Greek civilization.
The publication project is directed by Dr. Alexandra Villing.