Ma-taf (a soft, open basket of woven palm-leaf fingers, used for moving earth, mud, and rocks)
The coiled weaving of rice straw and date palm leaves into baskets by women working at home across the villages of the Fayoum oasis, Egypt, a technique directly documented as present in Fayoum since the Neolithic period, long predating the pharaonic era. Fayoum's roughly 1.7 million date palm trees, spread across most of the region's villages, are periodically trimmed by farmers to support healthy growth; the trimmings from this process directly supply the raw material for the coiled basketry industry. Finished coiled baskets range widely in scale and function, from large laundry baskets to small, dainty trinket containers. A distinct, separately named basket type, the ma-taf, is a soft, open basket of woven palm-leaf fingers used by Egyptian laborers and farmers specifically for moving earth, mud, and rocks, documented in the village of al-Agamiyin, northwest of Fayoum on the road to Ibshaway; the ma-taf's use is directly corroborated by archaeological evidence -- a 2,000-year-old terracotta model of the basket, recovered from the nearby ruins of the Ptolemaic town of Karanis, is held in the collection of the Kom Oshim museum. The same village additionally produces multipurpose crates from palm-leaf spines, and rope and rope netting from palm fiber.
Risk level: Endangered · Not independently inscribed
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