Since I wasn't sure about the internet situation, I had this post (and tomorrow's) pre-planned. I promise you'll get an update with photos about our fun times here in Luxor on Saturday.
I’m going to put this right here on top: don’t read today’s post if you get queasy easily or have recently eaten. We’re going to talk about poo today. Not my poo, if you’re worried. The only person who probably actually cares about my poo is my husband, and only then because it’s a good indicator of whether or not I’m drinking enough water. He’s the son of a doctor, he can’t help it. I’m hydrated, by the way. But enough with this tangent, I told you this story is not about my poo and I mean it.
I’m going to put this right here on top: don’t read today’s post if you get queasy easily or have recently eaten. We’re going to talk about poo today. Not my poo, if you’re worried. The only person who probably actually cares about my poo is my husband, and only then because it’s a good indicator of whether or not I’m drinking enough water. He’s the son of a doctor, he can’t help it. I’m hydrated, by the way. But enough with this tangent, I told you this story is not about my poo and I mean it.
Let’s start our story from the beginning. Several years ago,
the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) built a mud brick wall around a
section of the tell that would otherwise have made the tell easily-accessible
to tourists. It’s not that we don’t like tourists (though seriously, why does
everyone seem to think that when they’re on vacation they can leave their
morals and common courtesy at the airport?), it’s just that they don’t know
what they can and can’t step on. Anyway, the SCA put up a wall and it kept
people out while we worked high up on the tell in the Second Intermediate
Period silos over the previous seasons. Well this year, now that the silos have
given up enough secrets, we shifted our focus to the Old Kingdom area. This was
the same area that I talked about last year when the guys cleaned over 5 feet
of rubbish dirt off the area. Last year was cleaning, this year is excavating.
But the Old Kingdom area just so happens to be the same area that was deemed
too easily-accessible for tourists.
So what do you do with a pesky wall that is just a bit too
close and you need a little breathing room to throw trowels around? You tear it
down, of course! But we can’t just leave it that way; I mean, if it was too
easy to access before, imagine what it’d be like now when there’s a good 7 feet
less height to the thing. Ok, so we tear down one wall and build a new one
(which utterly confused a British tourist, by the way. He was extremely
concerned that the guys were tearing down a wall, which he assumed was ancient,
and then putting a new one up literally 3 feet away. I explained with the story
above). So what do you need to build a wall in Egypt that doesn’t have to
support any weight? Mud bricks, made from dried mud (easier and cheaper than
the stronger fired red bricks used in buildings and houses) and some kind of
mortar, right? The mud bricks are easy, since we already had them from the old
wall. And for the mortar... well, I did warn you... it’s a sloppy mixture of
mud, straw, water, and you guessed it: poo.
We start off with our daily delivery of donkey dung
delivered by donkey driver:
This gets added to the pit. It is a stinking cesspool of
fermenting nastiness. There’s really no other way to put it. It’s been there
since the first real day of excavation and every day they use some and add some
to it. We’ve got a few names for it: the poo pile, poo pool, the ja-poo-zzi,
“it”, and some other names based on synonyms for poo (use your imaginations;
again, children read this).
If you haven’t lost your lunch yet, don’t think it’s over.
Remember, the poo just mixed with water. The key word being mixed. And a spoon
isn’t going to do it. The best thing is a dude, his arms, and his legs:
(By the way, this was just the leftover from yesterday- they
hadn’t added today’s shipment of water and poo. The pit is usually twice as
big. I really think the sign is unnecessary if you know what’s in there.)
He spends all day in that pit, churning the muck, filling up
buckets that another guy carts over to the wall, where they use it to stick the
bricks together. It does form a very nice wall, though, and looks good when it
dries:
I guess the moral of this story is: when in Egypt, don’t
touch the walls, they might give you pink eye.
