Appliance of Geophysical Methods to Detect the Ancient Remains at “Tell Defenneh” Area, Ismailia, Egypt

Abstract

The main target of this study is to detect the ancient archaeological remains by using Helicopter Electromagnetic Method (HEM) and Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) survey at “Tell Defenneh” Area, which is located in the west bank of Suez Canal at the northeastern Desert of Egypt. It is far about 15 Km to the northeast of “Qantara Gharb” town which is a part of “Ismailia” governorate. This area is full of different archaeological features, because it is located in the ancient international trade-military road (Horus Road). This road connected ancient Egypt with its neighboring eastern countries. In additional to that, this area used to protect ancient Egypt from invaders, who came from the East. HEM has been used to detect the conductivity anomalies over the study area. These anomalies are useful to show the different and distinctive places which can be focused, on small scalar, by GPR to identify it more clearly in the study area. According to the HEM data, it was noticed that there are distinctive geometric shape with very low resistivity or very high conductivity values in the northeastern part of the study area. These data have been supported by GPR survey focused on this part. It was suggested that these anomalies may be due to old man-made mud bricks that was customary used in the building in ancient times. The subsequently archaeological excavations, which are based on these interpreted data as a guide and proof, revealed that the remains belong to the citadel of pharaoh “Psamtik I” (664-610 BC). This result confirms that the incorporated geophysical methods can be efficiently supplied in the archaeological prospection in Egypt.