Kharabet Ihrit, also known as Batn Ihrit, Batn el Harit (or simply Harit), often confused with the village of
Batn-Ihrît approximataly 3km to the North-West, is an archaeological site in
Egypt
Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...
's
Faiyum Governorate on the site of the ancient settlement of Theadelphia.
A number of archaeological expeditions have explored the site since the start of the twentieth century, at this time a number of mud brick houses were still left partially standing, however in the present day very little of those structures remains.
The site consists of two parts: the main site that was the location where the ancient village once stood and an ancient
cemetery
A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite, graveyard, or a green space called a memorial park or memorial garden, is a place where the remains of many death, dead people are burial, buried or otherwise entombed. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek ...
to the West containing a variety of Roman, Ptolemaic tombs.
[
The settlement was abandoned some time in the 4th Century AD. ]
Excavations
The site has been the subject of a number of archaeological excavations:
In 1898-99 an excavation lead by Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt was carried out, sponsored by the Graeco-Roman branch and recovered a large number of papyrii as well as other artifacts, with findings ranging from the early Ptolemaic period (c. 280 BC) to the late Roman period (c. 300 AD). Among the findings was the Heroninos Archive, a cache of documents from the 3rd century AD, which is one of the largest coherent groups of documents from the Roman Empire
The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...
. One of the artifacts discovered during this excavation was a scutum or shield. This was reported about in 1940 as the ''Kasr el Harit'' shield. This appears to have been a mistake in reporting the location likely resulting from an amalgamation of the name of the side (''Batn el Harit'' and the nearby site of '' Qasr el Banat'', as a result of which the site of often erroneously referred to a ''Kasr el-Harit'' in the literature.
Egyptologist Otto Rubensohn excavated the site in 1902 while working on behalf of the Royal Museums of Berlin and the ''Papyruskommission''. Of particular note was the discovery of painted wall niches in the Roman houses.[
An excavation was carried out by Evaristo Breccia in 1912-13 which discovered the temple of Pnepheros.]
References
Further reading
*Grenfell, Bernard P. and Arthur S. Hunt 1899. "Graeco-Roman Branch: Excavations for papyri in the Fayum; the position of Lake Moeris". Archaeological Report (Egypt Exploration Fund) (1898-1899), 8-15.
*{{cite book , last = Rathbone , first = Dominic , title = Economic Rationalism and Rural Society in 3rd Century AD Egypt:The Heroninos Archive and the Appianus Estate , year = 1991 , publisher = Cambridge University Press , isbn = 0-521-40149-6 , url = http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam031/90044288.pdf , access-date = 16 June 2025
* Breccia, E. (1926).
Monuments de l'Egypte Gréco-Romaine. Tome 2. Le rovine e i monumenti di Canopo. Teadelfia e il tempio di Pneferos
'. Bergamo: Officine dell'Istituto Italiano d'Arti Grafiche.
Archaeological sites in Egypt
Roman sites in Egypt
Former populated places in Egypt