The Egyptian olive (Olea europaea subsp ... - ResearchGate

The Egyptian olive (Olea europaea 

subsp. europaea) in the later first 

millennium BC: origins and history 

using the morphometric analysis 

of olive stones 

Claire Newton ∗1 , Jean-Frédéric Terral ∗2 & Sarah Ivorra ∗3 

The authors examine a sample of olive stones from Egyptian contexts and show that from the first 

millennium BC, if not before, some of them relate to cultivars originating from the Levant. But 

equally prominent and just as early is another variety, of unknown origin and currently peculiar 

to Egypt. The method used is geometrical morphometric analysis – essentially classifying the olive 

stones by their shape. 

Keywords: Egypt, Persian period, Roman period, olive cultivation, irrigation, qanat 

Method 

Introduction 

Olives grow only in a typical Mediterranean climate (Durand & Flahault 1886; Baldy 1990) 

and remain today a staple food in the Mediterranean basin. The pickled fruit is used as food, 

and the oil extracted from its fleshy pulp has culinary uses, but is also used for cosmetics, 

lubricants, and as a source of light. In the Graeco-Roman civilisation, olive oil and wine 

were closely associated, because of similarities in their transformation processes and their 

importance in the economy, including daily life but also trade, religious rites and art. The 

olive tree has been of significant cultural importance in that region since prehistoric times, 

and still has symbolic and religious significance today. 

Egypt is divided climatically into two provinces: hyperarid and arid. The Mediterranean 

coast belongs to the latter, with mild winters, hot summers and an annual rainfall ranging 

from 20 to 200mm (Zahran & Willis 1992: 8), and in its flora, this coast has distinct 

Mediterranean affinities (Zahran & Willis 1992: xiii). However, the climate is unsuitable 

for dry cultivation of the olive tree and Egypt lies outside the ecological range of the wild 

olive, Olea europaea subsp. oleaster (Zohary & Hopf 2000: map 14). The olive must therefore 

∗ 

Centre de Bio-Archéologie et d’Écologie (CNRS UMR 5059/EPHE), Institut de Botanique (Université Montpellier 

2), 163 rue A. Broussonnet, 34090 Montpellier, France 

1 

As above and Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale (IFAO), 37 Al-Cheikh Ali Yussef Street, Qasr Al Ainy BP 

11562, Cairo, Egypt (Email: cnewton@univ-montp2.fr) 

2 

Email: terral@univ-montp2.fr 

3 

Email: ivorra@univ-montp2.fr 

Received: 25 October 2004; Accepted: 16 February 2005; Revised: 14 July 2005 

antiquity 80 (2006): 405–414 

405

Origins and history of the Egyptian olive 

Figure 1. Map of the localities and archaeological sites mentioned in the text. The main regions of olive production in historic 

and modern times in Egypt (after Meeks 1993) are also indicated. 

have been introduced from elsewhere, as is endorsed by etymology: its Egyptian name is 

borrowed from a Semitic language (Meeks 1993). Today, olives are cultivated on a small 

scale all over the country, and on a larger scale in a few restricted areas (Figure 1). In all 

cases, their cultivation requires irrigation. 

The date of the beginning of oleiculture in Egypt is subject to debate (Serpico & White 

2000: 398-9). Although there is evidence for the consumption of olives and possibly of 

olive oil at least since the New Kingdom (c. 1550-1070 BC), the products may have been 

imported. In neighbouring Levant, olive use and probably cultivation, if not domestication, 

are attested much earlier, during the Early Bronze Age (c . 3300-2200 BC) (Liphschitz 

et al. 1991; Zohary & Hopf 2000: 149). Its cultivation could have been introduced from 

406

Claire Newton, Jean-Frédéric Terral & Sarah Ivorra 

the Levant to Crete and Greece during the Early Bronze Age, then to southern Italy (Brun 

2003: 128). The spread of oleiculture to northern Africa and Spain probably followed the 

Phoenician expansion (Brun 2003). 

To date, the oldest olive remains found in Egypt are charred stones from Thirteenth 

Dynasty Memphis (Kom el-Rabi’a, c . 1802-1640 BC) (Murray 2000: 610) and from the 

late Second Intermediate period Avaris in the Nile delta (Tell el-Dab’a, Thanheiser 2004, 

in press). They probably represent imported fruit from the Eastern Mediterranean (Syro- 

Palestine), with which Egyptian trade was flourishing. The earliest olive wood identifications 

date to the New Kingdom (Asensi Amorós 2003). Stones, leaves and wood are found 

regularly from the New Kingdom onward (De Vartavan & Asensi Amorós 1997: 183-6). 

The leaves were used in garlands found in tombs from the New Kingdom, especially in the 

Theban area (Greiss 1966; Germer 1988, 1989), and the wood was used for the manufacture 

of coffins (Grosser et al. 1992). Finds from the workers’ villages of El-Amarna (Renfrew 

1985: 188) and Deir el-Medina (Bell 1982: 153) attest to their local consumption, although 

olives must have been an occasional and luxurious food item. 

Eastern Mediterranean trade in olives is demonstrated by the find of thousands of olives 

and olive stones from a Late Bronze Age (late fourteenth century BC) shipwreck at Ulu Burun 

off the southern coast of Turkey, including a single deposit of more than 2500 stones in a 

Canaanite jar (Haldane 1993: 352). The ship, which sank during the Eighteenth Dynasty 

of the New Kingdom, also transported terebinth resin, identified also at the Egyptian New 

Kingdom site of El-Amarna (Haldane 1993). Iconographic and textual evidence also point 

toward the cultivation of the olive tree in Egypt during the New Kingdom (Meeks 1993). 

The texts also indicate that the produce was delivered almost exclusively to the temples and 

to the royal house (Haldane 1993). 

In Graeco-Roman times, the two main regions of cultivation for the olive tree would have 

been around Memphis, the Fayum and around Thebes (Serpico & White 2000: 401). A 

document dating to 255 BC gives us an interesting clue concerning the varieties cultivated 

in Ptolemaic times; Apollonios, owner of an estate located in the Fayum, recommends 

grafting of olives to his employee Zenon, in order to introduce Greek varieties to replace 

the Egyptian ones (P. Cairo Zen. 59184; Brun 2003: 128). Other documents from the 

Zenon archives mention several varieties grown in Egypt, in particular one ‘from Chios’ 

(Brun 2003: 124). At the time that Pliny writes (first century AD), 15 varieties are recorded 

(Natural History XV: 15-7). Five of these bear large fruit suitable for pickling, including an 

Egyptian one. Finds of numerous olive presses at late Roman Akoris (third-fourth centuries 

AD), Middle Egypt, provide archaeological evidence for large-scale olive oil production at 

that time (Tsujimara 1995). 

Finds from Ptolemaic and Roman period sites include wood (Asensi Amorós 2001), and 

all types of remains from settlement contexts in the oases (Thanheiser 1999; Wuttmann 

et al. 1998). For the Roman period, olive remains are also found at sites where they could 

not have been grown, such as Berenike on the Red Sea coast (Cappers 1998) and praesidia 

(fortified stations) on the roads linking the Nile valley to the Red Sea ports (this study; 

Tengberg in prep). 

In spite of its social and economic importance, the history of olive cultivation in the 

eastern Mediterranean, and in Egypt in particular, is not known in any detail. Where and 

Method 

407


when were the olives introduced and adapted for cultivation, and which varieties were 

selected? The purpose of this paper is to present the results of recent research on the origins 

and uses of olive varieties in Egypt in later prehistory, and to examine the implications for 

political contact and trade. The method used is a morphometrical classification of the olive 

stones, both from ancient and modern contexts. 

Materials and method 

The stones selected for analysis come from two main sites; ’Ayn-Manâwir in the south of the 

Kharga Oasis and Al-Zarqâ’/Maximianon in the Eastern Desert (Figure 1). ’Ayn-Manâwir 

is a large site located at the southern tip of the Kharga depression in the Western desert. It 

comprises an elaborate complex of underground water-collecting galleries (qanâts) dug into 

the hill and used for irrigating the slopes and plain surrounding the hill. The provenances 

of the olive stones are: a Persian period settlement site (MMA) dated by pottery to the 

fifth century BC (Thiers 2000a), a settlement site (MMS) dating to the Roman Early and 

Middle Imperial periods, first and second centuries AD (Thiers 2000b), and contexts related 

to Roman qanâts, such as the orchards/gardens MQ5d (Thiers 1998) and MQ10 (Newton 

et al. 2006), both dated to the Roman period (Thiers 1998: 23). Two stones come from the 

Persian period settlement, 45 from the Roman contexts. 

Al-Zarqâ’/Maximianon, is a Roman praesidium (fortified station) on the road from Koptos 

(modern Qift) to Myos Hormos (modern Quseir) (Figure 1). The eight stones all come 

from the trash dump of that building. The strata in which they were found are dated 

archaeologically (ceramic material, coins and ostraca) to the second half of the first century 

AD until the last quarter of the second century AD – beginning of the third century AD 

(Brun & Reddé 2003). 

At the same time, fruit from three modern Egyptian varieties were collected in October 

2003: Baladi, a cultivated variety grown in the south of the Kharga Oasis, collected in Bâris, 

Azizi and Toffahi, two varieties grown in the Nile valley at Sahel Silim near Assiut (Figure 1). 

It seems that the Toffahi variety can be identified with another variety called Fayumi and 

grown in the Fayum. Toffahi is also known to be grown in Syria (NPGS 2003). Ninety 

specimens of these modern Egyptian olive stones were added to a reference collection of 

olive stones from various Mediterranean countries (Terral et al. 2004) that comprises 1500 

stones, 330 wild and 1170 cultivated. This reference collection is kept in Montpellier, at 

the Centre de Bio-Archéologie et d’Écologie. 

The size of fruit and seed varies according to its agricultural status (uncultivated or 

cultivated) and the taxonomical status of the plant (subspecies or botanical variety), but also 

on a number of other ecological, anthropogenic, pathological and developmental variables. 

Since the whole fruit is not usually available in archaeological contexts, the method of 

classification used was geometrical morphometry (Bookstein 1991; Marcus et al. 1996), 

which consists of characterising the geometry (shape) of a structure, independently from its 

dimension (size). Factors connected to the developmental and environmental parameters 

cause morphological variability, also called phenotypic plasticity. The variation in the shape 

of the olive stone (the ‘plasticity of its morphological character’) can be explained by three 

main components, genetic, environmental and ontogenetic (growth and development). 

408


Table 1. Allocation of archaeological stones to extant morphological groups defined by UPGMA 

Archaeological 

Probability of 

Site Cultural period context N Morphotype allocation 

AM Persian period 2 III 0.62 

Egyptian 0.70 

Roman period MMS3 11 III (n = 3) 0.64-0.80 

Egyptian (n = 5) 0.62 p 0.96 

unclassified (n = 3) 

MMS6 1 unclassified 

MMS19 9 III (n = 4) 0.62 p 0.74 



MMS23 5 III (n = 2) 0.71-0.85 

Egyptian (n = 1) 0.68 


MMS47 2 III 0.72 

unclassified 

MMS51 4 Egyptian (n = 1) 0.74 


MMS61 8 III (n = 1) 0.73 



MMS523 2 Egyptian 0.98 

unclassified 

MQ 3 Egyptian (n = 2) 0.85-0.98 

unclassified 

Z Roman period 8 Egyptian (n = 4) 0.87 p 1.00 

III-IV-V (n = 2) 0.62-0.66 


Method 

Stones of similar shape should have biogeographical or historical connections. The results 

should nevertheless be interpreted with caution, because morphology is currently considered 

as the expression of systems of genes that are often unknown. 

Geometrical morphometric analyses were carried out on olive stones following the 

protocols previously developed by Terral et al. (2004). Each record involved the image 

capture of the stone and its reduction to a standardised outline. The outlines were compared 

using multivariate statistical analyses: CVA (Canonical Variate Analysis) andUPGMA 

(Unweighed Pair Group Method with Arithmetic mean). The archaeological specimens were 

then statistically clustered with the newly augmented reference collection (see above). 

This analysis showed up morphological relationships between ancient and modern olive 

populations and cultivars, and situated the archaeological stones (N = 55) with those of 

nearest similarity (Table 1 and Figure 2). 

Results 

In comparison to the widely provenanced varieties in the reference collection, the 

three modern Egyptian cultivars constitute an original cluster. They are themselves 

409


Figure 2. Cluster analysis (UPGMA) based on the minimum Mahalanobis distances among each olive group including 

modern wild populations and cultivars. 

morphologically related, but very dissimilar to other groups (Figure 2). Within this ‘Egyptian 

group’, the morphological similitude between Azizi and Toffahi may indicate that these two 

cultivars correspond in fact to a single cultivated variety. This fact constitutes an example 

of synonymy common in the case of cultivated varieties, and related to distinct cultivation 

regions. 

The stones from archaeological contexts were identified as belonging either to the Egyptian 

group (23) or to Group III (14), composed of Israeli wild populations, one Israeli cultivar 

and three French cultivars (Table 1). The examples were from Persian or Roman period 

contexts. The remaining eighteen out of the 55 specimens could not be identified (Table 1). 

410


Discussion 

The olive stones found on both the archaeological sites, in both the Persian and the Roman 

periods, are related to two distinct modern groups (Table 1). One group is represented by 

the modern Egyptian cultivars, which themselves form a distinct group from the rest of the 

reference material (Figure 2). This shows that there has been continuity in the cultivation 

of this group of cultivars from at least the middle of the last millennium BC. In the present 

state of research, this could mean that these cultivars evolved and were selected in Egypt, 

or that the cultivar that was first introduced in Egypt has not yet entered the reference 

data base. Genetic data from Toffahi has shown the presence of a specific marker (ME2 

mitotype) (Besnard & Bervillé 2000; Besnard et al. 2002) common in some cultivars such 

as Amygdalolia (Greece), Zaity (Syria), probably originated from an ancestral domestication 

centre located in the Eastern Mediterranean Basin. However, the origin of this group 

currently remains unknown. 

The second group is related to wild types and cultivars that could have originated in the 

Levant region (Syro-Palestine), the region where the oldest traces of intensive olive use and 

perhaps cultivation have so far been found (Liphschitz et al. 1991). This implies that olives 

of this variety were perhaps first imported as fruit or oil into Egypt and later introduced as 

cultivars. Trade relations between the two regions are older than the Pharaonic period, and 

they have been under common rule several times during their history. 

The presence of olives from both areas of origin during the Persian period raises the 

question of whether they were introduced at that time. Briant (1997: 89) suggests that the 

Persian authorities could have given fiscal incentive to Egyptian farmers to settle and dig 

qanâts (underground water-collecting galleries) in the region, leaving them free to arrange 

the details of the irrigation regulations. That could also have been the case for the selection 

of crops to grow on the irrigated land. The choices would thus be in accordance with local 

constraints rather than with a distant central power. However, olive remains are still scarce 

for this period at ’Ayn-Manâwir (fragments, 3 complete stones), although that may be due 

to the mode of preservation, i.e. exclusively charred. No mention is made of any olive 

product or of olive cultivation on the Persian period ostraca (M. Chauveau pers. comm.), 

and up to now no olive charcoal has been identified. 

Between the Persian and Roman periods, there is evidence of occupation during the 

Ptolemaic period, but no olive remains were found in the few samples collected (Newton 

2002). However, it is possible that the trees introduced presumably under Persian rule were 

cultivated until the Roman time of expansion of the local settlements. Grafts and/or fruit 

from elsewhere could also have re-introduced oleiculture in the oasis. In the Roman period 

there is textual evidence for the presence of olive groves and olive oil in the area of the two 

sites examined (P. Jand. 142; Wagner 1987: 296). The cultivation of olive trees is described 

on field borders, and in association with barley, grapevine, and date palms (P. Jand. 142; 

Bousquet & Reddé 1994: 87-8). 

Although Persian-period olive stones are scarce, the results show that two different varieties 

were grown at that time, and that the same two were still grown five centuries later, during 

the Roman period. The more abundant Roman material also shows that one or several more 

varieties were produced at that time, but it cannot yet be demonstrated whether they were 

Method 

411


also produced in the previous period, for lack of archaeological stones. The cultivation of the 

same types during the two periods may indicate, either that the same trees were cultivated 

again with the new agricultural expansion of the region during the Roman period, and 

that they could have been tended to between the two periods, or that the same types were 

meanwhile still being cultivated in another area, perhaps even within the Kharga oasis, from 

which new individuals were introduced into the region of ’Ayn-Manâwir. 

The two identified morphotypes found at ’Ayn-Manâwir were also found at Al-Zarqâ’. 

Al-Zarqâ’/Maximianon is a fortified station on a road which was used as a relay for caravans 

transporting goods imported through a Red Sea port to the Nile valley, and other goods from 

the valley to the port and settlements along the road. Olives and olive oil are mentioned in 

the ostraca from the Roman stations along this road, as products imported from the valley 

(Bülow-Jacobsen 2003: 420). The olive stones found at the site probably represent varieties 

grown in the Nile valley. 

The two types therefore occur on either side of the valley, on a producer site and on a 

consumer site. If we consider that the olives were imported to Al-Zarqâ’ most probably from 

the Nile valley, it could mean that the varieties grown in Egypt during the early Roman 

times were the same in the valley and in the south of the Kharga oasis. The chronological 

and geographical origin of these morphotypes in Egypt remains to be elucidated, through 

the analysis of older material from the Nile valley. 

Conclusion and perspectives 

The results from the first geometrical morphometric analyses of modern and archaeological 

olive stones show, on the one hand, that the modern Egyptian cultivars are significantly 

distinct from the rest of the reference varieties, and on the other hand, that the cultivation 

of these varieties dates back at least to the middle of the last millennium BC, during the 

first Persian rule over Egypt. The archaeological material also reveals the cultivation of other 

varieties, one related to modern types probably originating from the Levant, the other(s) 

not yet identified. The identity of the first varieties introduced in Egypt, and the further 

evolution of oleiculture through Pharaonic, Classical and Islamic times, need to be assessed 

through the analysis of additional archaeological material from diverse periods, including 

the first attested remains (Middle and New Kingdom). 

To be determined more precisely is the identity of the variety or varieties represented by 

the olive stones that could not be linked to any group from the present reference collection. 

For that purpose, we are still lacking reference material, from wild types growing in Syria, 

and from cultivars grown in Egypt as well as in neighbouring countries in the Eastern 

Mediterranean region (Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Cyprus, Greece, Tunisia). We must 

therefore consider these first results as preliminary. 

Acknowledgements 

The authors would like to thank Michel Wuttmann, Hélène Cuvigny and the Ifao for allowing the study 

of plant macro-remains from the sites of ’Ayn-Manâwir and Al-Zarqâ’, and for providing the necessary 

equipment on the sites. Hamdi Hammâm Hassan, inspector for the Supreme Council of Antiquities and ’Abd 

El-Ghany Mohammed Ahmed from the village of Douch, are also thanked for their collaboration in collecting 

the reference material. Thierry Gonon helped with the processing of the photographs from ’Ayn-Manâwir. 

412


The Ifao and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs funded the archaeological missions. Michel Chauveau 

and Hélène Cuvigny kindly provided comments and references on textual evidence for olive in the studied 

sites. Dimitri Meeks kindly allowed us to use his map. This work was supported by the CNRS – GDR 2474 

«Morphométrie et Évolution des formes». 

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