Mendes

Listen first. A dry wind moves across the mound, and somewhere beyond the edge of the site a tractor hums through green fields. Underfoot, the ground is uneven and crumbly, a mix of dark mudbrick dust and pale broken pottery. Bend down and you will see the shards everywhere. Each small piece was once part of a jar, a bowl, a lamp. You are standing on the remains of a city that people lived in for thousands of years.

This place is called Mendes. Today the mound carries the Arabic name Tell el-Ruba, and it sits in the farmland of Dakahlia, in the eastern Nile Delta. A "tell" is simply a hill made by people — layer upon layer of houses, temples and rubbish, built up over centuries. The ancient Egyptians called the town Djedet. The Greeks later gave it the name Mendes, and that is the name most historians use today.

The Delta can feel flat and endless. Fields of rice, cotton and clover stretch in every direction, cut by irrigation canals. In ancient times a branch of the Nile flowed near here, and classical writers named it the Mendesian branch after this city. That river gave Mendes its power. Boats carried grain, cloth and goods up and down the water. A town on a major river branch in the Delta was a town that mattered.

Mendes was the chief city of its province, or nome — one of the administrative districts of ancient Egypt. Its great god was a ram. The Egyptians called him Banebdjedet, a name that means something like "the ram, lord of Djedet". Rams were linked with fertility and with the soul of the gods. Here, living rams were kept and honoured as sacred animals, cared for during their lives and buried with ceremony when they died.

Now for the first surprise. When the Greek traveller Herodotus wrote about Egypt in the fifth century before Christ, he described the sacred animal of Mendes as a goat, not a ram. For a long time that version stuck in European books. So the "goat of Mendes" passed into later Western legend and imagination, far from this quiet field. The animal that Egyptians actually honoured here was the ram. Archaeologists have found the burials of sacred rams on this site to confirm it.

Look toward the largest standing object on the mound. Rising out of the ground is a tall granite shrine, called a naos. A naos is the inner box where the statue of a god was kept, deep inside a temple. This one was set up under the pharaoh Amasis, in the sixth century before Christ. It is carved from a single block of stone, and it is among the largest shrines of its kind known from Egypt.

Think about what that means. A single block of hard granite had to be cut far to the south and moved hundreds of kilometres down the Nile. Then workers raised it upright here, in the soft Delta soil. Originally there were several of these shrines standing in the temple. Most have fallen or broken. This survivor stands almost alone now, with sky all around it, instead of hidden in the darkness of a sanctuary.

Here is the second surprise. For a short period, Mendes was the home of the kings of Egypt. In the early fourth century before Christ, a ruler named Nepherites the First came from this city and founded the Twenty-ninth Dynasty. Mendes became a royal centre. Excavators found remains connected with his burial on this site. It is rare in the Delta to find traces of a royal tomb at all, because the wet ground destroys so much.

The history here goes much deeper than the late pharaohs. The lowest layers of the mound reach back to the earliest centuries of Egyptian civilisation. Archaeologists have found tombs from the Old Kingdom, the age of the great pyramids. They have also found evidence of a troubled time after it, when the central state broke down. Some burials from that period appear hurried, which suggests the town passed through violence or crisis.

Mendes was also known for a product. Classical writers praised a perfume called the Mendesian, an oil-based scent made in this region. In the Greek and Roman world, people paid well for good perfume. A fragrance named after a city meant the city had a reputation. So picture workshops here, with oils, resins and plant extracts, and the smell carried into the streets.

Over time, power moved away. Just to the south lies another mound, Tell el-Timai, the site of a town the Greeks called Thmuis. In the Greek and Roman periods, Thmuis grew and became the more important centre. Rivers shifted, trade routes changed, and Mendes slowly emptied. The town did not disappear in one dramatic moment. It faded, the way many Delta cities did.

Modern excavation teams, including American and Canadian expeditions, have worked here for decades. Their work is slow. Mudbrick is hard to read, because it melts back into earth. The researchers trace walls by changes in soil colour and texture. As you walk, you may see trenches, spoil heaps and cut sections in the mound. Each one is a page that the archaeologists opened and recorded with care.

Stand still for a moment near the granite shrine. Notice how the light changes on the stone as clouds pass. Notice the sounds of the village around you — a dog, a voice, a passing cart. Very few visitors come here. That quiet is part of the experience. You are not inside a museum. You are on the ground itself, with the fields that fed this city still growing on every side.

As you walk back toward the road, look down once more at the pottery underfoot. Leave the pieces where they lie — they belong to the record of the site. Then look up at the naos, standing alone above the mound. Kings ruled from here. Sacred rams were honoured here. A perfume carried this city's name across the sea. And now, a farmer's field begins just a few steps from where you stand.