The mountainous area was used as a stone quarry before the Late Antique period when a Christian settlement was established. The site includes three cemeteries, and the monastery of Apa Thomas. The Greek and Coptic papyri and ostraca recovered from the site reveal information about the social history of the settlement and the monastery.
Doresse, Jean 2000. Les anciens monastères coptes de Moyenne-Égypte (du Gebel-et-Teir à Kom-Ishgaou) d'après l'archéologie et l'hagiographie, 3 vols. Neges Ebrix 3, 4, 5. Yverdon-les-Bains: Institut d'Archéologie Yverdonnaise.
Faiers, Jane 2014. Wadi Sarga revisited: a preliminary study of the pottery excavated in 1913/14. In O'Connell, Elisabeth R. (ed.), Egypt in the first millennium AD: perspectives from new fieldwork, 177-189. Leuven: Peeters.