Tell el-Balamun

Tell el-Balamun is an ancient city and archaeological site in the Nile Delta of Egypt, with a history reaching back to about 2400 BC or earlier. It was first called Smabehdet or Behdet, and around 1200 BC, in the New Kingdom, it was known as Paiuenamun, "The Island of Amun", the ancient form of the name Balamun. In later antiquity it was called Diospolis Inferior or Diospolis Kato. The city began as a port on an estuary of the Nile, but the advance of the delta has left it about 15 kilometres from the Mediterranean Sea. It was the site of a complex of temples, within a Ramesside temple enclosure holding temples of the 26th and 30th dynasties, and a cemetery for elite citizens lay nearby. The settlement was occupied continuously until the 6th century AD. Today the site is a series of mounds up to 18 metres high, more than a kilometre across, with the remains of a fortress, mud structures and the trenches that outline temple walls. Howard Carter dug there in 1913, and British Museum excavations with Polish partners ran from 1991 to 2010.