Video: How to Make a Mudbrick at Tell Timai (Ancient Thmuis)
Mudbrick-making and conservation at Tell Timai
Robert Littman and Jay Silverstein
May 19, 2015
3 Comments
6312 views
The excavations at Tell Timai, directed by Robert Littman and Jay Silverstein, are exposing the ancient city of Thmuis in the Egyptian Nile Delta. Occupied as early as the fifth century B.C.E., the Greco-Roman city was a Christian center in the early first millennium C.E.
In this video, excavation staff member and mudbrick architecture specialist Marta Lorenzon provides a look into the creation of new mudbricks to conserve the ancient walls at Tell Timai.
Videography by Alyssa Bokovoy. Courtesy of Robert Littman and Jay Silverstein. Visit the Tell Timai project website at www.telltimai.org.
Learn more about mudbrick-making at Tell Timai:
In “With and Without Straw: How Israelite Slaves Made Bricks” in the March/April 2014 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Robert Littman, Marta Lorenzon and Jay Silverstein describe the recreation of ancient mudbrick-making techniques to conserve ancient walls at Tell Timai.
Learn how to make a mudbrick in a web-exclusive slideshow from Tell Timai.
Watch exclusive videos from the 2014 excavations at Tell Timai:
Week One: Tell Timai archaeologists provide a look at their dig site and their research goals for the 2014 season while giving viewers a taste of travel in Egypt and the atmosphere on an archaeological field crew.
Week Two: Meet Kufti archaeologists, explore ancient streets and the preserved mudbricks that shaped them and dive into the port of Alexandria with rare underwater video footage.
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Surely ‘conserve’ is the wrong term to use here?
If new mud bricks are being used then the city walls are being replicated or recreated with modern materials rather than the ancient walls being preserved or conserved. Conservation implies the use of original material – anything else is a modern replica or reconstruction.
@Andrew I’d suggest conserve is appropriate, since the aim is to preserve the ancient mud brick walls from active destruction by bracing and shielding them with modern ones. Another project in Egypt a few years ago at Abydos took a similar tack, cf. http://www.wmf.org/project/shunet-el-zebib
Music by Ennio Morricone: “Farewell to Cheyenne” from Once Upon a Time in the West.