Site characterization: The monastery, part of a larger Coptic Christian settlement near Saqqara in Egypt, dates from the end of the 5th to the mid 9th c. The site was home to a small self-sustaining Christian community, likely not just monks but women as well.
Background: The ceramic workshop was discovered in a test pit, and excavated in 1988–1989. The results were published by Holeil Ghaly in 1992 who called for further research of the area to clarify the chronology, but nothing has been published since.
Location: Southwest of the monastery, roughly "200 m from the Unas Valley Temple" (Ghaly 1992: 161).
Number of kilns: Eight kilns have been found at the workshop, but only six are described by Ghaly, the other two being “kilns of middle size…west of this area” (1992: 161).
Typology: The productions of individual kilns cannot currently be distinguished. Overall, the workshop produced coarse tablewares, including plates and shallow bowls; cooking pots; painted water jugs, featuring geometric and floral motifs; thick basins; and LRA1 Type B.
Period of activity: The workshop is “older than the 6th century,” and the associated ceramic assemblage (including LRD, and North African ‘sigillée claire D’) generally dates to the 5–7th centuries (Ghaly 1992: 161). It is unclear if all the workshop’s kilns are contemporaneous or not, and the chronology of each kiln cannot currently be distinguished. The close proximity of six of the kilns may suggest they were not all operating synchronously. The site was abandoned around 850 (Ghaly 1992: 171).
Local fabric: Alluvial clay, commonly known as Nile Silt, tempered with straw (see §4.6 for a petrographic description).
Distribution: Dime es-Seba near Fayyum (Caputo and Davoli 2023: 741), Kellia, and Baouît (Marchand and Dixneuf 2007: 316).
Kiln #114
Location: At the northwestern corner of the structure which enclosed the workshop, ca. 2 m northwest of kiln 118.
Description of facilities: The floor was dug into the ground, and walls were built from 'half bricks' but did not wrap around the entire kiln—the east side was open, presumably for loading fuel (Ghaly 1992: 161).
Kiln #116
Location: In the southwestern corner of the workshop, ca. 1.5 m southwest of kiln 117.
Description of facilities: Constructed with three round walls roughly 1.2 m in diameter, with no evidence for "distinction between the fuel room and the firing chamber" (Ghaly 1992: 161). The space between the second and third walls was filled with sand. There were two openings, one in the east and one in the west.
Kiln #117
Location: About 1.5 m northeast of kiln 116.
Description of facilities: This kiln is a "kind of hole dug in the ground but consolidated with mudbrick" (Ghaly 1992: 163). The structure was 1 m in diameter, and potentially used to create lime.
Kiln #118
Description of facilities: 1.2 m wide and constructed of bricks, this kiln is not described in detail by the author but seems to have been used as a refuse pit after it went out of use.
Kiln #121
Location: In the northeast corner of the workshop, ca. 4 m east of kiln 114.
Description of facilities: was built in an abandoned mudbrick room in which what had once been the door was repurposed to form the access hole to stoke the fuel chamber. The firing floor had many perforations in it, which were created by using the necks of vessels. In addition to these holes, trapezoidal shapes 'flues' (0.12 x 0.27 m at the base and 0.15 x 0.25 m at the top) allowed more hot air to travel between the fuel chamber and the firing room.
