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Coulson and Leonard’s excavations in the 1970s and 1980s encountered significant difficulties in trying to provide a more nuanced view of the finds from Naucratis, since by that time the larger part of the site had been submerged under a lake. Hogarth, from the British School at Athens, excavated the site in 18, concentrating on the Hellenion and Great Temenos. So once the excavations of Petrie and Gardner, both with the Egypt Exploration Fund (EEF), had been completed, the sanctuaries of Apollo, Hera, Aphrodite, and the Dioscouroi had come to light, as well as the Great Temenos and a scarab factory. Petrie’s work was continued by Gardner in 1886, who correctly identified what Petrie had thought to be the palaestra as the Heraion and further discovered the sanctuary of Aphrodite. 12 So Naucratis’s position was firmly established to have been on the Canopic branch of the Nile delta (the westernmost branch, now defunct 13), a fact that was soon confirmed by the finds.
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Once he managed to discover the real position of the city, with the help of Ptolemy 9 and the Peutinger map, 10 even the misinterpretations in Herodotus and Strabo could be set straight: Herodotus names the wrong position but assumes the correct one in his description of the route for sailing to and from there, 11 and Strabo seems to have confused the river with a navigable branch. One must keep in mind that when Petrie started out, not even the exact position of Naucratis was known, since the descriptions of Herodotus and Strabo were easy to misinterpret-and had indeed been misinterpreted.
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So the earliest history of Naucratis in the archaic period, and its main role as a trade port, are not well documented, although some of the sanctuaries excavated, and also mentioned by Herodotus, date back to the time of Psammetichus. His finds have to do mostly with the Greco-Roman period and, because of the nature of the site, in which sanctuaries are most prominent, the focus is on religion. 8 About one-third of the area had already been dug up for sebakh before the archaeologists got to it, but still Petrie managed to excavate five Greek sanctuaries and some of the adjoining settlement. 7 Coulson and Leonard found the main parts of the city under the water of a lake formed by the rising water table, so there have been no more recent excavations, but with the help of new technology significant headway has been made in consolidating the layout and development of the area. The city was excavated by Petrie in 1884–1885, Gardner in 1886, Hogarth in 18, and Coulson and Leonard in 1977–19–1982. 5 Allowing mercenaries some sort of settlement may not have been a singular occurrence under Amasis, but rather a common practice in the rule of early Saite pharaohs, but too little is known about their reigns, as well as the beginnings of Greek mercenary activity, to say with any degree of certainty. It is likely that it was at first only a military settlement that he granted to his Greek mercenaries, a mutation of the stratopeda in which Herodotus tells us the pharaoh retained his mercenaries. 4 It could well be that under Psammetichus the arrangement was rather informal, and Naucratis did not develop into a flourishing commercial center and polis until later. 3 This is also supported by the reference in a poem by Sappho to a famous courtesan of Naucratis, who was admired by Sappho’s brother, which also suggests that Naucratis existed before Amasis. Herodotus suggests it was founded by Amasis II (570–526 BC), but both the account of Strabo and Athenaeus, as well as material evidence, suggest an earlier date, probably, but not before, the reign of Psammetichus I. The exact date of its foundation is unknown, since the literary sources provide conflicting accounts. Naucratis represents the first instance of organized Greek presence recorded in Egypt. The cultural effects of this contact can be seen on both sides of the Mediterranean: in Memphis there is evidence of intermarriage, as well as adoption of Greek names and Greek burial customs, while Egyptian goods made their way into the Mediterranean world, brought back by seamen or as gifts sent from the pharaohs to eastern Greek sanctuaries. About the same time, the Twenty-sixth Dynasty pharaoh Psammetichus I (664–610 BC) employed eastern Greek and Carian mercenaries for the Egyptian army. After a hiatus due to disturbances in the eastern Mediterranean around 1200 BC, 1 commercial contact resumed, and then continued without interruption from the seventh century BC onward. Contact between Egypt and the Greek world, broadly understood, goes back to the Minoans.