Deir el-Ballas

The palace and fortifications at Deir el-Ballas are the only monument left by Seqenenre Tao.

Preliminary Findings
Deir el-Ballas, located on the east bank of the Nile, approximately twenty kilometers south of Dendara, was excavated at the beginning of the twentieth century by George Reisner, Albert Lythgoe, and F.W. Green under the sponsorship of Phoebe A. Hearst. These excavations uncovered a large royal palace, a settlement, and a series of cemeteries dating to the late Second Intermediate Period and the early Eighteenth Dynasty. The results of the Hearst excavations were never published, however, and records of the expedition were inadequate to understand fully the nature and history of the site. Four seasons of excavation sponsored by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, published here in a preliminary report, revealed a site far larger than the Hearst expedition records had indicated, including palace complexes, a group of large houses, and remains of a previously unrecorded ancient settlement.

Peter Lacovara

1990. The American Research Center in Egypt

x + 67 pages (including figures) + 17 plates + 5 plans in pocket, 29 cm. Includes bibliographical references.

ARCE report series 12

Cloth ISBN 0 936 770 24 4

Description
The remains of a royal settlement with two palacesof the early 18th Dynasty on the West Bank of the Nile between Qena and Luxor. Standing inside a 156 x 303 meter enclosure and forming the nucleus of that settlement is the North Palace with a central residential tower, built on several storeys, surrounded by pillared halls. The South Palace (measuring 45x100m) is outside the enclosure to the south on a desert elevation. It has a pillared court at a lower level facing the valley, from where a wide brick stairway led up to the actual living quarters, now lost. A few fragments of figured wall paintings have survived. Numerous domestic structures of the period are located between the two palaces.

(The Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egyptian Architecture, by Dieter Arnold, pg 26 - 27)

Deir el-Ballas is located on the west bank of the Nile, north of Luxor, approximate level of Coptos.

During the excavations of George Andrew Reisner two brick palaces were excavated, which are about 800 meters apart. These palaces are not otherwise occupied by her type. They both have a raised center complex, which is surrounded by pillars lowered yards. The so-called South Palace has an area of approximately 100 x 45 m. It is situated on a high desert plateau. Even if a perimeter wall is missing, indicate the dimensions of the exterior walls indicate a fortress-like facility. The so-called Northern Palace is significantly larger, its dimensions are 300 x 150 m. It lies within an enclosure and is provided with strong outside walls. Both plants probably dating to the beginning of the New Kingdom. Between them lies a small town facility, which was built before the New Kingdom, as they at the beginning of the 18th Dynasty is overlaid by a cemetery. The complex may have served to secure the Dendera road. The palaces we may assume predecessors. Several blocks found in the southern palace in favor of a construction activity in the Middle Kingdom. It was during the Middle Kingdom here probably a temple. [ 1 ]

In the southern palace of Deir el-Ballas George Andrew Reisner found in his excavations in 1900 a block of Mentuhotep Nebhepetre. This is in the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology of the University of California, possibly today's Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology in Berkeley. Another block of this excavation in the same herd is of Habachi [ 2 also dated] the time Mentuhotep Nebhepetres. Both stones were used as secondary millstones (as Helck), so the round shape. Lutz [ 3 ] calls convincing a secondary use as a base for the stone pillars with attribution.

(http://www.mentuhotep.de/denkmaeler/delballas.htm)