Journal of Archaeological Science (1999) 26, 547–551
Article No. jasc.1998.0328, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on
An Examination of Biological Materials from Coprolites from
XVIII Dynasty Amarna, Egypt
Eva Panagiotakopulu
Department of Geography, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, U.K.
(Received 25 July 1997, revised manuscript accepted 13 July 1998)
Well-preserved animal coprolites were recovered from the Workmen’s Village, associated with the construction of the
tombs of the XVIII Dynasty at Amarna in Egypt during the mid-14th century . The purely archaeological evidence
has been interpreted as indicating the source of the dung as pigs, which was supported by study of endoparasite
remains. Careful dissection of the excreta produced a small insect fauna, which included the small eyed flour beetle,
Polorus ratzeburgi, the earliest fossil record. Further evidence of the diet of the animals was recovered.
1999 Academic Press
Keywords: COPROLITES, DIET, COLEOPTERA, TUT’ANKHAMUN, AMARNA.
Introduction
surrounded Amarna. The most favoured explanation
about the role of the site is that it housed workers and
artists employed in the cutting and decorating of the
rock-cut tombs, but the possible involvement specifically of this settlement in the building of the tomb of
Akhenaton is complicated by the existence of a second,
still unexcavated village a kilometre to the east (Kemp,
1984). Since the pottery from the site is overall homogenous, and nothing was found in the village mentioning the name of a king later than Tut’ankhamun, it
is likely to have been occupied for 20–25 years, starting with regnal year 4 of Akhenaten and continuing through the short reigns of Smenkhare and
Tut’ankhamun (c. 1350–1323 ) (Kemp, 1984).
During excavation, a part of the Workmen’s village
was interpreted as animal pens (Shaw, 1984), and
coprolites from the area were examined in an attempt
to find out the species of animal kept. Donald (1984)
carried out parasitological analysis and found eggs of
Ascaris spp., either A. suum or A. lubricoides, a worm
that infests both humans and pigs, and Taenia spp., the
tapeworm whose hosts include man, and a wide range
of domesticated and wild animals (Noble & Noble,
1976). The coprolites, which yielded Taenia spp. were
amorphous lumps and fragments, whilst those that
produced Ascaris spp. were well formed, and, despite
the variation in form, the excavator came to the
conclusion that the pens were for stalling pigs (Shaw,
1984). A botanical report on coprolites from the 1980–
1981 excavations has shown that the animals in question were being fed on food which included unthreshed
emmer wheat spikelets, barley, rye grass and sedges
(Renfrew, 1985). Study of additional coprolite samples
from the putative sties, using a range of other
T
here has been little previous work upon insect
remains from sites in Egypt, where the dry
conditions of the desert and desert fringe,
provide ideal preservation conditions. Faunas associated with offerings in tombs have been examined by
Alluaud (1908), Alfieri (1931), Burleigh & Southgate
(1978), and Chaddick & Leek (1972); Levinson &
Levinson (1985) provide a useful overview of this
material. Whilst samples from a Roman site, Mons
Claudianus in the Eastern Desert, have recently been
published (Panagiotakopulu & van der Veen, 1997),
this study represents the first attempt to apply palaeoentomological methods to a Pharaonic occupation site
in Egypt. Alfieri’s (1931) material came from the tomb
of Tut’ankhamun, and the material examined here,
also from Amarna, similarly dates to the second part of
the 14th century . Coprolites from archaeological
sites have the potential to provide detailed information
about the diet, levels of hygiene, the surrounding
environment and the species of animal related to the
excrement (e.g., Baker & Brothwell, 1980; Hall, Jones
& Kenward, 1983; Bouchet & Paicheler, 1995).
The Site
The so-called Workmen’s Village consists of a group of
well-preserved structures apparently built to house the
workers involved in the construction of the tombs of
the XVIII Dynasty. The site lies at a distance of about
1·2 km from the main city of el-Amarna, on the floor
of one branch of a shallow Y-shaped valley in a low
plateau which runs out from the foot of the cliffs that
547
0305–4403/99/050547+05 $30.00/0
1999 Academic Press
548
E. Panagiotakopulu
Figure 1. Coprolites from Amarna: (a) with evident plant remains; (b) homogenous.
techniques, particularly examining the insect remains,
provided an opportunity to evaluate not only the
original hypothesis, but also to test whether excrement
could be sourced to species on evidence other than
endoparasites.
The Samples
The material examined forms part of an extensive
palaeoecological sampling strategy for Amarna
(Kemp, Samuels & Luff, 1994). Samples were recovered during excavation directly into polythene bags
and sealed to avoid contamination. These were stored
initially on site, but later shipped to London for further
study. The coprolite samples consisted of amorphous
lumps of greyish-brown (Munsell Color 10YR 5/2) and
reddish-brown (Munsell Color 5YR 5/4 (1992))
material with evident plant remains (Figure 1(a), (b)).
Six of the samples were carefully dissected, and
examined under low power magnification with a
stereomicroscope. All identifiable material was
recorded (Table 1), and included plant fragments, hair,
mammal bones and insects.
The Results
The botanical remains recovered were of varied preservation and included desiccated, slightly burnt and
completely charred plant debris consisting mainly of
emmer, Triticum dicoccum, spikelets and in some cases
seeds, barley, Hordeum vulgare, and rye grass, Lolium
sp. The picture given by the plant remains is very
similar to the one described by Renfrew (1985). It
would appear that the animals associated with the
faeces were fed on cereal waste. The charred fragments
may also suggest that in some cases bread waste was
also used.
Examination of Biological Materials from Coprolites 549
Table 1. Amarna coprolites
Coprolite
samples
TA85WV CH541 1914, 1
TA85WV Ch541 1914
TA80WV L13, 3
Plant remains
Animal fibre
Bones
Large amount of plant remains
(emmer wheat spikelets+rye
grass)
Rye grass and emmer wheat
spikelets
Slightly burnt plant remains
together with desiccated ones (rye
grass)
Hair (?pig)
Small mammal bones
Hair (?pig)
Small mammal bone
TA80WV P26 Nfac8
Charred emmer spikelets and
seeds of emmer and barley and
uncharred glumes and chaff
10859 TA83WV R17 406
Desiccated plant remains (rye
grass)
Desiccated plant material (rye
grass+?flax seed)
TA85.WV?P25 Eface 10
Small mammal bone
A few insects were also recovered in the coprolites
(Table 2). Sitophilus granarius (L.), the grain weevil,
one of the most serious pests in granaries at the present
day, was found in one sample. Sitophilus granarius is
recorded from a wide range of crops including wheat,
rye, barley, maize oats, buckwheat, millet, chickpeas
and even chestnuts, acorns and cornmeal (Hoffman,
1954). It is usually found in stored cereal crops and has
not been found breeding in the field, in contrast with
the rice weevil, S. oryzae (L.). Despite the fact that it is
flightless, it is one of the most important cosmopolitan
pests, having long been transported by man together
with food supplies (Buckland, 1990). The primary
hosts of the weevil are likely to have been the wild
progenitors of cultivated cereals, and it may have
moved from the nests of rodents to the stores of man,
even before the beginnings of agriculture (Buckland,
1981). Solomon (1965) recorded S. granarius from
barley deposited in a tomb beneath the step pyramid
at Saqqara, Thebes, dated to 2300 , and Helbaek
(in Solomon, 1965) recorded further specimens of
Sitophilus from another tomb of 600 years earlier. The
Table 2. List of insects from Amarna
List of insect species
Taxa
Coleoptera
Cryptophagidae indet.
Tenebrionidae indet.
Palorus ratzeburgi (Wiss.)
Curculionidae
Sitophilus granarius (L.)
Diptera
?Calliphoridae puparia
puparia indet.
MNI
1
1
2
1
3
1
Insect remains
Indet. fragments of Dipterous
puparia. Palorus ratzeburgi Wiss.
(right elytron)
Indet. fragments
Palorus ratzeburgi Wiss. (thorax)
Fragment of indet. Tenebrionid
elytron Fragments and a whole
Dipterous puparium
Sitophilus granarius (L.) (thorax)
Cryptophagidae indet. (left
elytron) Dipterous puparia
fragments
Coleoptera indet. fragment
earliest evidence from Europe comes from Neolithic
Servia in Macedonia (Hubbard, 1979: 227) where the
insect is imprinted in a piece of pottery, and it has also
been recovered recently from a Bandkeramik site in
Germany (Büchner & Wolf, 1997). Sitophilus granarius
is also known from the Middle Bronze Age in Crete
(Jones, 1984) and the Late Bronze Age settlement of
Akrotiri on Santorini, Greece (Panagiotakopulu &
Buckland, 1991).
Palorus ratzeburgi Wiss., the small eyed flour beetle,
was recorded in two of the samples. This beetle is a pest
in cereal products and other commodities, particularly
in mouldy grain residues previously attacked by
weevils (Brendell, 1975); Pals & Hakbijl (1992) suggest
that it feeds principally on the faeces of Sitophilus spp.
The finds in the Amarna coprolites are the earliest
records of the pest. By the Roman period, the species
appears to have become a widespread pest in the
Western Roman Empire, and it has been recovered
from 1st and 2nd century Roman deposits at Amiens
(Yvinec, 1997), Laurium in the Netherlands (Pals &
Hakbijl, 1992), London (de Moulins, 1990) and York
(Kenward & Williams, 1979).
Other species found could not be identified to the
generic level, but included the family Cryptophagidae,
usually associated with damp and mouldy deposits,
often stored product residues, and Tenebrionidae. This
family includes stored product pests, but many species
are associated with arid environments, and the
unidentified fragment from the coprolite probably relates to the natural background fauna of the site. The
beetles recorded from the samples, are closely associated with the plant remains, and point further to the
deduction that part of the diet of the animals consisted
of infested cereals. High pest infestation levels,
however, can make grain inedible and in some
cases, depending on increases in the microflora, toxic.
550
E. Panagiotakopulu
Buckland (1982) refers to a mediaeval English case of
grain being so infested with weevils that it killed the
hogs and capons to which it was fed. Feeding the
domestic animals on wheat waste products as well as
infested grains, however, remains a common practice
in the Mediterranean (Halstead & Jones, 1989; A.
Belas, pers. comm.).
The puparial fragments of Diptera found in the
samples are very fragmented and their identification
cannot be certain. They are, however, most probably
Calliphoridae, the maggots of which feed on carrion,
indicating that meat or similar food residues were also
fed to the animals.
A few small mammal bones were also recovered.
Largely too fragmentary for identification or undiagnostic, their size range would suggest small rodents, a
not improbable further pest of stored products, which
could have been ingested by the stalled animals.
Conclusion
The insect fauna from the coprolites, consisting of
animals accidentally ingested by the stock refines the
interpretation available from purely botanical sources.
The mix of animal and plant debris in the coprolites
indicates stock able to process an omnivorous diet,
and in this context, the most probable animal is the
domestic pig.
Discussion
References and depictions of pigs and swine herding
are very rare in Egypt, until the New Kingdom. During
the XVIII Dynasty, 1500 pigs were owned by Renni,
the mayor of al-Kab, 2000 pigs and piglets were owned
by the temple of Amenhotep III at Memphis, and
during the XIX Dynasty, herds of pigs were kept at the
temple of Seti I at Abydos (Houlihan, 1996: 28). The
pig was associated with the god Seth, and considered a
symbol of evil, as revealed in Spell 157, of the Middle
Kingdom Coffin Texts (Houlihan, 1996: 29). Also in
the late XVIII Dynasty Book of Gates, Seth took the
form of a black pig (Houlihan, 1996: 29). A detail of
the story is depicted in the sarcophagus chamber of
the late XVIII Dynasty tomb of king Horenhab
(Houlihan, 1996: 29). Another pictorial representation
of pigs from the same period comes from the tomb of
Nebamun at Thebes (Davies, 1932: 57, figures 8 & 9).
Whilst it is apparent that in the New Kingdom pigs
were considered as impure, perhaps not appropriate
food for the Egyptian upper class, the maintenance of
the pig stalls in the Workmen’s Village implies that
they were used as food for the lower classes.
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to Paul Buckland for comments
and advice, both on the identification of the insect
fauna, and the text. Thanks are also due to the
excavation director, Barry Kemp, for providing the
material, and Delwen Samuels for discussion of
the sample contexts. The Egypt Exploration Society
kindly provided the funding for the fieldwork, and the
laboratory research forms part of a more extended
study of the history of synanthropic insect faunas in
Egypt, funded by the Leverhulme Trust.
References
Alfieri, A. (1931). Les insectes de la tombe de Toutankhamon.
Bulletin de la Société Royale Entomologique d’E
u gypte 3/4, 188–189.
Alluaud, C. (1908). Notes sur les coléoptères trouvés dans les momies
d’E
u gypte. Bulletin de la Société Royale Entomologique d’ E
u gypte 1,
29–36.
Baker, J. & Brothwell, D. (1980). Animal Diseases in Archaeology.
London: Academic Press.
Bouchet, F. & Paicheler, J. C. (1995). Presumption of a case
of bilharzia on an archaeological site of the XVth century at
Montbellard (Doubs, France). Comptes Rendues de l’Academie des
Sciences Serie III—Sciences de la Vie-Life Sciences 7, 811–814.
Brendell, M. J. D. (1975). Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae. Handbooks
for the Identification of British Insects Vol. 10. London: Royal
Entomological Society of London.
Büchner, S. & Wolf, G. (1997). Der Kornkäfer—Sitophilus granarius
(Linné)—aus einer bandkeramischen Grube bei Göttingen. Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt 27, 211–220.
Buckland, P. C. (1981). The early dispersal of insect pests of stored
products as indicated by archaeological records. Journal of Stored
Products Research 17, 1–12.
Buckland, P. C. (1982). The Malton burnt grain: a cautionary tale.
Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 54, 53–61.
Buckland, P. C. (1990). Granaries stores and insects. The archaeology of insect synanthropy. In (D. Fournier & F. Sigaut, Eds) La
préparation alimentaire des céréales, Rapports présentés à la Table
ronde. Ravello au Centre Universitaire pour les Biens culturels,
avril 1988. Rixensart, Belgium: PACT, pp. 68–81.
Burleigh, R. & Southgate, B. J. (1975). Insect infestation of stored
Egyptian lentils in antiquity. Journal of Archaeological Science 2,
391–392.
Chaddick, P. R. & Leek, F. F. (1972). Further specimens of stored
products insects found in ancient Egyptian tombs. Journal of
Stored Products Research 8, 83–86.
Davies, N. de G. (1932). The work of the graphic branch of the
expedition. BMMA (Section II, March), 51–62.
Donald, C. R. (1984). Examination of the archaeological samples
supplied by Barry J. Kemp from Tell el-Amarna site. In (B. J.
Kemp, Ed.). Amarna Reports I. London: Egypt Exploration
Society, pp. 56–58.
Hall, A. R., Jones, A. K. G. & Kenward, H. (1983). Cereal bran and
human faecal remains from archaeological deposits-some preliminary observations. In (B. Proudfoot, Ed.). Site, Environment
and Economy. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. S173,
pp. 85–104.
Halstead, P. & Jones, G. (1989). Agrarian ecology in the Greek
islands: time stress, scale and risk. Journal of Hellenic Studies 109,
41–55.
Hoffman, A. (1954). Coléoptères Curculionides. Faune de France 59,
Paris: Lechevalier.
Houlihan, P. F. (1996). The Animal World of the Pharaohs. London:
Thames and Hudson.
Hubbard, R. N. L. B. (1979). Appendix 2: Ancient agriculture and
ecology at Servia. In (C. Ridley & K. A. Wardle, Eds) Rescue
excavations at Servia 1971–1973. A preliminary report. Annual
Report of the British School at Athens 74, 226–229.
Jones, G. (1984). The LMII plant remains. Appendix 1. In (M. R.
Popham, Ed.) The Minoan Unexplored Mansion at Knossos.
Athens: British School at Athens, pp. 303–306.
Examination of Biological Materials from Coprolites 551
Kemp, B. J. (1984). Amarna Reports I. London: Egypt Exploration
Society.
Kemp, B. J., Samuels, D. & Luff, R. (1994). Food for an Egyptian
city: Tell el Amarna. In (R. Luff & P. Rowley-Conwy,
Eds) Whither Environmental Archaeology? Oxford: Oxbow Monograph 38, 133–170.
Kenward, H. K. & Williams, D. (1979). Biological evidence from the
Roman warehouses in Coney Street. Archaeology of York 14(2),
London: Council for British Archaeology for York Archaeological
Trust.
Levinson, H. Z. & Levinson, A. R. (1985). Storage and insect
species of stored grain and tombs in ancient Egypt. Zeitschrift
fürangewandte Entomologie 100, 321–339.
Moulins, D. de (1990). Environmental Analysis. In (C. Mahony &
D. de Moulins, Eds). The Archaeology of Roman London 1. The
Upper Walbrook in the Roman Period London: Council for
British Archaeology Research Report 69, pp. 85–152.
Munsell Soil Color Charts (1992). Revised edition. Macbeth.
Division of Kollmorgen Instrument Corp. Munsell Color.
Noble, E. R. & Noble, G. A. (1976). Parasitology. Philadelphia, PA:
Lea & Febiger.
Pals, J. P. & Hakbijl, T. (1992). Weed and insect infestation of a
grain cargo in a ship at the Roman fort of Laurium in Woerden
(Province of Zuid-Holland). Review of Palaeobotany and
Palynology 73, 287–300.
Panagiotakopulu, E. & Buckland, P. C. (1991). Insect pests of stored
products from Late Bronze Age, Santorini, Greece. Journal of
Stored Products Research 27, 179–184.
Panagiotakopulu, E. & van der Veen, M. (1997). Synanthropic insect
faunas from Mons Claudianus, a Roman quarry site in the Eastern
Desert, Egypt. In (A. C. Ashworth, P. C. Buckland & J. P. Sadler,
Eds) Studies in Quaternary Entomology—An Inordinate
Fondness for Insects. Quaternary Proceedings 5, 199–206.
Renfrew, J. (1985). Botanical report. In (B. J. Kemp, Ed.). Amarna
Reports II. London: Egypt Exploration Society, p. 182.
Shaw, I. (1984). Report on the 1983 Excavations. The animal pens
(Building 400). In (B. J. Kemp, Ed.). Amarna Reports I. London:
Egypt Exploration Society, pp. 40–56.
Solomon M. E. (1965). Archaeological records of storage pests:
Sitophilus granarius (L.) (Coleoptera, Curculionidae) from an
Egyptian pyramid tomb. Journal of stored Products Research 1,
105–107.
Yvinec, J.-H. (1997). Infestation par les insectes d’un grenier
carbonisé de la fin du IIe siècle A.D. à Amiens (Somme).
L’Entomologiste (Paris) 53, 113–128.