The archaeological site of Maadi, for which a modern suburb of Cairo is named, is located on an east-west oriented desert ridge between two wadis at the southern city limits of Cairo. Regrettably, part of this Predynastic site has already been ruined by modern building activities,  and the remaining area is under threat from the intrusion of this highly populated area of Egypt.

Maadi is not only the name of an ancient Egyptian settlement, but is also used to define a specific culture of the 4th millennium BC, though by the middle of that period it had already been abandoned. It is closely associated with Buto, the other Lower Egyptian stronghold of early civilization which may predate Maadi, and might certainly have existed concurrently with Maadi.

Parts of the Maadi site was initially excavated in 1918, and the results of this investigation became public in a report to the International Congress of Geography in 1925. Three years later, Egyptologist J. Lucuas visited the site and identified three specific areas of settlement.

Maadi, as well as two nearby necropolises, were extensively excavated by M. Amer and I. Rizkana  in cooperation with the Department of Geography of the University of Cairo between 1930 and 1953.  In the earliest years of this project between 1930 and 1933, the excavations were conducted in cooperation with the German Institute of Archaeology (O. Menghin, K. Bittle). In total, there were eleven archaeological missions carried out by the University of Cairo under the leadership of various Egyptian and foreign prehistorians. Though this work came to an abrupt halt during World War II, four volumes of research were published by various specialists in the fields of natural sciences, pottery, lithic industries, non-lithic objects and cemeteries. Unfortunately, Menghin and Amer never published a definitive report on Maadi.

Throughout this period, a part of the western section of the site was occupied by a military camp and other structures, and was therefore not accessible to archaeologists. However, in the mid 1980s, F. A. Badawy finally received permission to excavate that area, which resulted in the discovery of a very ancient stone building.

Currently, and in cooperation with the Supreme Council of Antiquities and the University of Cairo, parts of Maadi are being excavated by the German Institute of Archaeology in Cairo. In addition to sampling various regions of the site, the stone building excavated by F. A. Badawy has been cleared, and the adjacent area excavated to clarify its stratigraphic relationship to the surrounding settlement.

So far, the findings of this work provide a picture of at least two occupation phases, including one in which wooden posts of different sizes, probably from huts and fences, storage jars fire places and small mud lined pits, occasionally with burnt walls was discovered. Substantial ash deposits also point to industrial activities.

There now is recognized two subterranean or semi-subterranean stone buildings. The one originally excavated by A. F. Badawy is entirely made of stone and was carefully plastered with Nile mud. It has a rectangular plan with rounded corners and an entrance lined by walls from the north. Its interior measurements are eight by four meters, with the floor situated two meters deeper than the upper preserved edge of its walls. So far, this building is completely unique among ancient Egyptian sites.

A second building has now also been discovered within the recent excavation zone. It consists of an entrance corridor of approximately six meters in length and a one to one and a half meter width, which slopes to a depth of two and one half meters below the upper edges of its walls. This corridor is accessible from the south by stone steps and communicates with a cave-like main room that has not yet been fully excavated. While the corridor is carefully line with plastered stone, the main room appears to be simply cut into the bedrock.

This second building is similar to others that were found in the older excavations in the eastern part of Maadi, which scholars have connected to the chalcolithic Beersheva culture of Southern Palestine. There is no doubt whatsoever that both buildings date to the Predynastic Period, and thus far, they represent the earliest examples of the use of stone as building materials known in Egypt.

The Settlement

The site of Maadi is located on a narrow ridge in the mouth of the Wadi al-Tih. Though on the surface, it appears to have the typical characteristics of a Northern Egyptian Predynastic farming village, evidence unearthed in this location suggests otherwise. Certainly agriculture was a primary economic factor in this settlement, but there was also an emphasis on trade, metallurgy and foreign contacts that was unknown in other northern sites.

Between about 3600 and 3000 BC, a number of innovations took place at Maadi that brought Egypt into the realm of the international world. Trade dominated this settlement more than any other contemporary sites, and it had few rivals in Egypt even during later periods. Its location within the Wadi al-Tih, the main historic route to the copper mines of the Sinai, together with the presence of housing obviously of a foreign type and pottery, domesticated donkeys, elaborate storage facilities and a well developed copper industry all evidence the importance of it role as a trade center.

Maadi may have in fact originated in order to exploit the Sinai copper mines. Unearthed tidbits in the area include copper bars that are possibly ingots, bits of unprocessed, a miscast head of an ax, and even a possible smelting area, originally identified as a pottery kiln. However, trade may have predated Maadi’s copper industry, considering that metallurgy had developed first in other regions like the Mediterranean and Iranian Plateau, and spread into Egypt through trade with foreign lands. Hence, we may note that Maadi was a mercantile community which invested its surplus wealth into metallurgy, transportation and storage.

There can be little question that Maadi benefited from a very favorable geographical position. Not only did it have access to the mainstream of the Nile, just south of where it branches into the Delta, but from there goods could reach the Mediterranean and of course there was also access to the desert frontiers to the east through the Wadi al-Tih. Its ultimate abandonment, however, may have been due to the ease with which its location was imitated by the ancient capital of Egypt, Memphis, located only ten kilometers north of Maadi. Another contributory factor may have also been the fact that after the unification of Egypt, its rulers sought to control and exclude the nomads that undoubtedly provided considerable trade goods to the area.

One of the most obvious evidences of foreign contact at Maadi is a unique type of dwelling that was apparently imported from southern Palestine. Though most of the houses in the settlement were typical of the usual Lower Egyptian variety, having an oval shape with post walls and frames of mud-daubed wickerwork, there were also true underground houses which were unique among the villages of prehistoric Egypt. However, such houses did exist at several sites around Beersheba in southern Palestine, leading archaeologists to believe that they were imports from that area to Egypt, perhaps even housing foreigners at Maadi.

These foreign style structures were constructed with a pit dug two to three meters into the subsoil. There dimensions could be as great as three by almost five meters. Their entrance consisted of a slanting passage with steps that were sometimes faced in stone. Around the walls of the pit, posts were driven into the floor in order to support a roof that was probably made of light materials such as woven mats, the remains of which were discovered in some of the buildings.  In the center of the floor, a sunken hearth was constructed.