We are privileged to offer a summary of the massive campaign of excavation and survey conducted by the author and his team from Japan in northern Egypt and the neighbouring coast of Sinai. Over the last few years they have excavated a large sector of al-Fustat (the early Islamic settlement on the outskirts of modern Cairo), mapped the early Christian monastery at Wadi al-Tur (sixth-twelfth century AD), recorded early Islamic rock inscriptions on Mt Naqus eighthtwentieth century AD), mapped the port and mosque at Raya (originating in the sixth-twelfth or thirteenth century AD) and investigated on a large scale the fourteenth-twentieth-century sequence at al-Kilani (al-Tur). Among the objects unearthed at al-Kilani were 4000 fragments of manuscripts. The work is throwing new light on early Islam, its development of social and commercial networks, and its relation with Christian, Coptic and Byzantine cultures.
Abstract:The contents in a glass kohl bottle excavated from the stratum of the 14th-15th centuries, al-Tur in South Sinai, Egypt were analyzed to find their characteristics and provenances. The contents of the bottle were found to be mainly phosgenite and laurionite by X-ray diffraction and X-ray fluorescence analysis.As a reference, a black pigment used for a modern kohl in Egypt was also analyzed and the results were discussed.
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