Results of the Winter 2018 Excavation Season at Berenike (Red Sea Coast), Egypt. The Belzoni Bicentennial Report

The 2018 season at the Red Sea port of Berenike marked the bicentennial of Giovanni Belzoni’s rediscovery of the site in 1818. In keeping with this anniversary, the international team concentrated on Berenike’s central temple, which had been the focus of most of the visiting 19th-century explorers. Architectural fragments, temple reliefs, statuary, and numerous Greek and hieroglyphic inscriptions mainly of the Roman period were among the many among the many exceptional finds that are reshaping our understanding of this important harbor. In addition to the temple, there were excavations in the Ptolemaic hydraulic station at the settlement’s western edge, in an early Roman trash dump and pet cemetery, in a putative administration building, and at a central intersection with a tetrakionion. The season also included two brief surveys at the emerald mining settlement at Zabara in Wadi Ghadeer and a gold mining community in Umm Howeitat al-Qibli.