The site was discovered by Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie in 1886; it was then known by natives as Qasr Bint al-Yahudi, the "Castle of the Jew's Daughter".[8] There is a massive fort and enclosure; the chief discovery was a large number of fragments of pottery, which are of great importance for the chronology of vase-painting, since they must belong to the time between Psammetichus and Amasis, i.e. the end of the 7th or the beginning of the 6th century BC. They show the characteristics of Ionian art, but their shapes and other details testify to their local manufacture.[9]