The temple dromos is the most likely location for marketplaces in Egypt in the first millennium BC. In the densely built-up settlements of Egypt, open spaces would have been limited and the dromos, often leading to water so with good transport links, would have been an ideal location.
The lack of comparable material complicates the interpretation of the function of this selection of containers and the reasons for their deposition in Thonis-Heracleion. Most containers were found in a context that was already underwater in antiquity. This is likely the result of depositional processes, in which the object disappeared underwater, making them unavailable for normal recycling and reuse. The context in Thonis-Heracleion also suggests a connection with ritual activity for the final deposition of the objects. This does not, however, preclude a more mundane purpose, onboard ship, for example, before they ended up on the bottom of the sea.
In this paper, we take a closer look at the process and contents of caching in the Sacred Animal Necropolis at North Saqqara. Most of the contents of the approximately 68 caches are unpublished, but we are using the information preserved in the excavation archive held at the Egypt Exploration Society in London.