Egyptian Cultural Heritage Organisation

INTRODUCTION to ECHO

The Egyptian Cultural Heritage Organisation (ECHO) is a charitable foundation dedicated to excavating, publishing and protecting Egypt’s valuable and threatened cultural heritage. Founded by archaeologists Prof Fekri Hassan and Dr Geoffrey Tassie in 1994, we are currently focused on the excavation, research and eventual publication of Kafr Hassan Dawood (KHD), a unique early site in the Delta region.

The project is run by Dr Lawrence Owens (ECHO; University of Brussels) and Dr Grzegorz Bąk-Pryc (Jagiellonian University, Poland),

and is dedicated to understanding the site’s role at the very birth of Egypt.

THE SITE

Kafr hassan dawood

KHD at first glance seems unremarkable, a sandy patch located near the town of Al Dawaida in the Wadi Tumilat, Northern Egypt. The area is crisscrossed with tributaries of the Nile, making it a fertile environment for early foragers, pastoralists and agriculturists, with the site of KHD appearing around 3100 BC. In those days you would have seen a cluster of wood, reed and wattle/daub huts clustered on the muddy foreshore, inhabited by farmers and hunters/fishers exploiting the fertile delta. We are still looking for the village, but one thing remains which speaks with startling clarity of these vanished lives: the KHD cemetery.

The populations at KHD buried their dead in plain pits, in mud-lined graves, and ceramic coffins, incorporating grave goods ranging from simple pots to exotic imported wares, metalwork and jewellery. Their remains can tell us everything from the illnesses they suffered to their physical appearance, their body weight and proportions, their biological origin and even their occupations. Cultural materials, meanwhile, are eloquent about trade, economic relationships, social status and hierarchical structures. This is an invaluable resource for a crucial and poorly understood period, and we need your help

URGENT PLEA TO SAVE KHD

Dr geoffrey tassie (1959-2019)

WHO ARE WE?

ECHO's support of the KHD project was initiated by ECHO's co-founders, noted Egyptologists Dr Geoffrey Tassie (1959-2019) and Prof Fekri Hassan.

Initially excavated in the 1990s onwards, the current project is run in his memory by members of ECHO and Jagiellonian University (Poland), assisted by a group of international specialists and Egyptian field archaeologists.

The site's inclusion on the Endangered Sites Register lends its excavation a certain urgency, and we are seeking the resources to save what we can. Please follow (this link) to the donations page to find out more.

Please follow the DONATE link below to the Donations page to find out more.

DONATE TO ECHO

HASSAN FATHY'S INITIATIVE

Hassan Fathy Center for Architecture & Sustainable Development

Hassan Fathy, an Egyptian architect, was ahead of his time. He designed in 1945 the new village of Gourna to be a model of human architecture and to demonstrate the role of architecture in community development.

Architects in the whole world, from China to Nigeria, have been alerted to his ideas, especially since the seventies of the twentieth century, and his name has been associated with environmental architecture, green architecture, native architecture, popular architecture, and currently with sustainable architecture and development. Despite this, Hassan Fathy’s Gourna did not receive enough attention, therefore , we present this initiative as a vehicle to the disseminate, implement and develop of Hassan Fathy’s ideas and methods toward the realization of the role of architecture in sustainable development.

HASSAN FATHY 1900-1989

Egyptian Cultural Heritage Organisation (ECHO)