Hayter-Sherraif workshop

This previously unpublished site is named after two individuals who were active at Amarna during the 1920s and 1930s: Angelo George Kirby Hayter (1863–1927), an English schoolmaster who worked at Amarna during the 1921 season, and Ali Sherraif from Quft (Upper Egypt), who served as an overseer during the Amarna excavations on behalf of the Egypt Exploration Society (EES).

The site is located just outside the northern corner of the house of Ranefer (N49.18) in Amarna’s Main City South—an area excavated under the supervision of Hayter and Sherraif in 1921. Unfortunately, due to geographic constraints (as Mr. Newton, the mission’s architect, did not extend his map of Amarna beyond the house of Ranefer), the site was never fully mapped. Only a sketch, preserved in Hayter’s notebook, survives. This notebook is held in the Lucy Gura archive of the EES. It was only in January 2023 that Stephanie Boonstra and Anna Hodgkinson discovered the sketch and accompanying notes while reviewing the archive of the 1921 and 1922 Amarna seasons. The site is not mentioned in The City of Akhenaten I, although quantities of faience and glass—some of which were related to production activity—are described as coming from the area outside the house of Ranefer, along “Street A.”

According to Hayter’s notes, the workshop, built from mud bricks, comprises several short stretches of walls and contains two potential furnace pits. It is believed to have produced glass (particularly rods), faience, vitrified debris, and agate. Some of these objects were registered during the initial excavation, including faience moulds and glass items. This workshop is part of a group of industrially active houses in Amarna’s Main City South. Other recently excavated sites in the area include Grid 12, M50.14–16, and N50.23, all of which produced similar materials. The hypothesis exists that these sites were part of an urban industrial network, where raw and semi-finished goods, as well as skills, were exchanged.

The Hayter-Sherraif Workshop will be re-excavated as part of the AHRC/DFG-funded project Craft Interactions in a New Kingdom Landscape (Egypt, 1550–1069 BCE) (directed by Anna K. Hodgkinson and Frederik W. Rademakers) in 2026.

Left: The approximate location of the Hayter-Sherraif Workshop in relation to the house of Ranefer. Right: Sketch plan of the Hayter-Sherraif Workshop, produced by A.G.K. in 1921. EES archive no. TA.002.06. Courtesy of the Egypt Exploration Society.

Anna Hodgkinson and Frederik Rademakers

Further reading

Boonstra, S.L. and A.K. Hodgkinson. 2023. Mr Hayter’s Notebook: Insights on the 1921 excavations at Amarna. Egyptian Archaeology 63: 49–53.

Hodgkinson, A.K. and S.L. Boonstra 2023. A.G.K. Hayter at Amarna: A detailed notebook and a ‘new’ glass workshop’. Horizon 23: 8–13.

Peet, T.E., and C.L. Woolley 1923. The City of Akhenaten. Part I: Excavations of 1921 and 1922 at El-Amarna. Excavation Memoir 38. London: The Egypt Exploration Society.