Merimde Beni Salama
settlement in Ancient Egypt
Merimde Beni Salama is a Neolithic settlement in Egypt, in the West delta of the Nile, 45 km northwest of Cairo. It is the typesite of Merimde culture. The settlement was occupied for about 800 years, from around 5000 to 4200 BC. The population may have reached as many as 16,000. The site represents the earliest evidence for a fully sedentary settlement in the Nile valley.
History of research
The site was discovered by Hermann Junker during his West Delta Expedition. He excavated the site from 1923 to 1939. In 1976, excavations were continued by the Egyptian Antiquities Organisation.
In 1977-1982, excavations were conducted by the German Institute of Archaeology in Cairo under the direction of Josef Eiwanger.
Description
Lithic assemblages
Merimde is located near the terraces at the Wadi el-Gamal. A wide variety of Paleolithic lithic assemblages have been discovered in the area.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Merimde Beni Salama” as settlement in Ancient Egypt. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q111948182. Authority coordinates are 30.316, 30.850. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1923, 1939, 1976 and 1977.
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This entry incorporates text from “Merimde Beni Salama” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.