Extreme Puzzling

Yesterday I gave you a peek of what Uhu glue can do (yes, Ellie, the same stuff you have lying around your house). Today, I got to use it ALL DAY! Lindsey and I got to sit all day with a bunch of sherds and see if anything could go together. Want to see some of what we ended up with?

This is Lindsey with her pot. There's actually one side that I was working on separately, then I looked at her pot and realized I was actually working on the other half. The colors looked completely different.

While I wasn't able to get the whole profile of a pot like she did, I made up for it by going bananas on not 1, not 2, but 3 pots! The one I'm holding in my right hand is the one I'm most proud of.

These were the prettiest things we were able to make, but we found several more joins between 2 or 3 pieces. All of the pots are 18th Dynasty beer jars, which were really crappily made: the rims aren't very circular, there are the potter's fingerprints all over the place, they have a ton of chaff in them, and don't even think about surface decoration. Unfortunately, while the Uhu is a good strong glue, it's not really made for the super porous surfaces that are these beer jars and we usually had to put on 2 or 3 layers of glue before the sherds would stick together. And now that they are beautiful, I'm sure I'm going to have to draw them.

In other news, today was the last day of excavation. Oh, don't worry, I'm not coming home any time soon, we still have 3 weeks of work left! But today was the last day that we are hiring local men to dig in the Old Kingdom area. Starting Saturday, our guys from Luxor, Greg, Aurelie, and Nadine will move to the Old Kingdom Edfu pyramid to clean it and get it protected so they can really excavate next season. Even though we'll have Lindsey joining us to draw, it's still going to be really quite with just Tasha, Lindsey, Valerie and myself on site every day drawing. We've got a lot to get through and not a whole lot of time, so we'll be staying late most days.

Since everyone is starting to feel the effects of little sleep and the temperature changing, we're all getting a little sick. Hopefully, my sore throat and runny nose are the worst of it, but we'll see. Tomorrow is our day off, so I'll get lots of rest and hopefully be recuperated by Saturday. Insha'allah.

- Puzzle solver and pot putter back togetherer

The Wheels on the Box Go Round and Round- Until They Pop

It was another drawing day with nothing really exciting to say, so how about some more info on how we live here. Curious about how we get to work? Forget stretch limos, we have something called a “box”:

Basically, it’s a pick-up truck with the back end covered. It holds about 10 people in the back, then several of our workers hang from the step on the rear. The seats are just planks covered in a very thin pillow, and seated, my head just barely clears the roof. But it’s cheap and effective and is essentially the local taxi service. It gets us, our stuff, and the workers that live with us to the site about 5 minutes away each morning and home in the afternoon, so there’s no complaining from me.

Tasha in the box.

Tasha and I had an interesting experience the first day we stayed late to the tell. We are supposed to have hired the box for us and us alone, even though many of the boxes you just hop on and off of at your leisure, and you’re often in the box with several other people going any number of places. When our box came to pick us up in the afternoon, the local boys saw two pretty young foreign girls (caked in dirt and completely covered with long sleeves, pants, head coverings and sunglasses- sexy, huh?) and they had to come say hello. Several boys hopped on the back until our driver kicked them off. Then, as we were only a few doors from our apartment, we got a flat tire! I thought someone had fired a gun, it was so loud. Naturally, everyone on the block came running out of their houses. Hello Edfu, if you didn’t know we lived near you before, you do now!

- Box rider and tire popper

PS. The box really isn’t that bad. We don’t look dumb like all the tourists who ride a “kadesh” onto the site (Dan and I took a stylish motor coach, which gets far fewer laughs). The kadeshes all line up near the entrance and thankfully, all the horses get some shade for a while.

Back In Edfu

After our 3 mile hike on Saturday, we decided to take it a bit easy on Sunday by sleeping in (well, until 6:30, which is about the latest any of us could sleep). We then had leisurly shower, breakfast, and TV watching time (we watched both Déjà Vu and Birth since they were on the only English station, and an episode of Pokemon in German).

Once we were packed and checked out of the hotel, we had lunch, then Lindsey, Susan, and I headed to the Luxor Museum. The stuff there is GORGEOUS, and I got to see the mummy that might be Ramses II! After the museum we hit Snack Time again from some more cinnamon rolls and crappy Arab-pop music videos. I got a cinnamon rolls so that I could compare them to Toby’s in northern MN. It was a very tough call, but I’m going to say Toby’s were slightly better.

Then it was back to Edfu, where we had dinner, unpacked, and basically crashed. We were up again at 5am to start work once again. I’m back to being a rasama, which is fine by me. Getting dirty was fun, but I’m glad I only had to do it for a few days. One of our men did the rest of my section for me, and even though it was slightly larger, it still only took him a few hours to do, instead of the 3 days it took me. It’s probably best left to the experts.

Due to a slight miscommunication with our workers, work ended at noon today since it’s still the Eid holiday. But that still left me enough time to see some British tourists that had eaten breakfast by us at our hotel in Luxor (and who we’d seen at KV)! They were really excited to talk to Lindsey and me, since most tourists don’t get to. Now I might start digitizing my profile from the other day, or I might read all afternoon- it depends on whether or not my drawing gets scanned.

That’s all for today- sorry this one isn’t as exciting as my previous posts. How about a few more pictures from our hike?

The smiley face we found. The pyramid shape in the background is what the pharaohs used to mark the Valley of the Kings.

Oh tiny Bahri- I shall step on you!

- Rasama Once Again

Time to Start Drawing

I finished my little area today. Wanna see? The left side will get excavated at some later date by someone else.

Notice the little ledge on the right? That's probably a shoring-up of the bottom of the wall in ancient times when it started to bow.

 That little pot sticking out there came out eventually. I found lots of good things. Here are the best:

The top thing is a 6th Dynasty bread mould. The bottom left is a 5th Dynasty bowl, and the rim of the right one is a 4th dynasty bowl. So, you know, solidly Old Kingdom.

After I got done excavating, I had to start drawing the profile of the area that's not yet excavated (so not the nice flat wall in the back, but instead against the area that will be excavated later).

Don't I look studious? This wasn't a staged photo at all.

This is what my profile looks like so far:

That's pretty much all I have to say today. I found some things, now I'm drawing. I'll finish up tomorrow and then we'll head to Luxor. Next week it'll be back to pottery drawing.

- Rasama (remember your Arabic? It means "drawer")

Getting Dirty

Guys, today was AWESOME! The biggest reason was probably because I got 7 completely uninterrupted hours of sleep last night. Tasha actually had to shake me awake because I didn’t hear the alarm clock. I’m so glad I brought ear plugs to help drown out the noises of the city (prayer calls, dogs barking, random yelling, etc).

It was another fairly lazy day on site. I spent the morning writing up labels for Tasha’s “pottery town”. All of the labels from last year were eaten by dogs, so we needed to re-label all of the pottery mounds with their excavation position information. The great thing was that as we were writing labels, Susan whispers, “Turn around” and lo and behold, the same Edfu kitty that I got to pet at the temple last year had come to visit! I was able to coax her over and give her a handful of cat food, which she gladly inhaled. Of course, she wanted more, so cried and cried and cried, but I didn’t want to make her sick. Plus, there’s only 1 bag of cat food for the whole season. Because I gave her food, she eventually let me pet her. Well, I should say that she let me let her pet herself against me, if that makes any sense. I held out my hand and she rubbed against it for a while, which made me very happy.

After lunch Greg showed us around the site a little more. This was the best part. We have a place in the Old Kingdom area that has a whole door outline preserved! This may not sound very interesting, but you almost never get this kind of thing, and the fact that it’s Old Kingdom and in an area that’s easy to excavate means they might let me do it! We then went into the silo area and he showed us all of the stratigraphy layers in all the different places and where Susan would be excavating. The whole time we were standing on the ancient mud flooring. So cool. Plus, we got dirty! I’m sure I won’t be so excited about this fact in a few weeks, but the fact that I came home yesterday and only needed a shower because I was sweaty was a little disappointing.

I ended the day having Tasha show me the differences in some of the pottery I’ll be drawing. I’m not sure I completely understand it all yet, but I’ll get there.

Now that I’m clean, I’m going to do some laundry (by hand- this will also be another blog post in the future). I’ll probably skip the usual afternoon nap today since I want to be able to sleep tonight again. Last night we discovered the roof is actually pretty nice (aside from the owner’s dogs that live up there- I don’t want to talk about how depressing that is), so we might go up once the sun goes down.

We found out that Skype does work on our stick, though since the internet still isn’t great, Dan and I were kicked off after only about 10 mins. Sorry, babe. It was so nice to talk to him, but after no sleep and a long, tiring day on site, I got really home sick and started crying a bit. After today, I’m much better. I still miss Dan and the kitties a lot, but I am really loving it here... which appears to be a good thing, as Nadine mentioned today that I was now roped into coming back for the next few years... Interesting.

Well, that was today. Tomorrow is our free day, so I’ll probably post a theme blog. I’m thinking food. We start excavation for real on Saturday, so I’ll really be able to comment about excavations then.

- “Sleep makes a lot of things better” discoverer

PS. Since I spend most of my internet allotment checking email and posting blog posts, I don’t really get to keep up with the world, so PLEASE say hello occasionally on here or via email so that I know what you all are up to and what’s going on in the US (are the Cardinals winning?!?). Facebook and twitter posts are usually just quickly skimmed. And if there’s a theme blog you want me to do, let me know!

Assignments and Permits

Molasses. Turtles. Snails. Dial-up internet. The SAC (the Egyptian department in charge of excavations). All of these things are synonyms for one thing: slow. We still do not have our permits for Egypt, which means we can't book plane tickets. Sure, you and I know that the longer we wait, the higher airfare gets, but does the Egyptian gov't care? Not so much.

So we wait. I want to add a countdown clock over on the right of time until I leave, but I have no leave date. So that waits, too. Dear Patience, won't you be my neighbor?

In other news, Greg (married to my advisor Nadine, he's sort of co-owner of this site) sent out the tentative plan for who is doing what when. I thought I'd be drawing Second Intermediate Period (SIP) pottery for 9 weeks. But I'm not! I'll be mostly working on SIP pottery, but after the first 3 weeks, I also get to dig! Hello shovel, this is Patience, care to make this a trio?

For those of you curious folk who have been keeping up with the Tel Edfu excavations (and really, who hasn't been?), we'll be working on 3, count 'em THREE areas this season (along with drawing pottery and cataloging small finds). We'll be finishing up the Middle Kingdom columned hall and silo area that had Nadine all aflutter on the Tel Edfu excavation page in previous seasons. There's also a First Intermediate Period (FIP- comes between the Old and Middle Kingdoms) enclosure wall that they want to clean. And finally, they want to start excavating the (super massive) Old Kingdom layers! I'm thrilled because I love me some Old Kingdom.

But wait! If you keep reading now, I'll double your order and throw in this free Old Kingdom pyramid cleaning! There's a small pyramid at South Edfu that Greg will be heading up at the end of the season. I won't be doing much (if anything) on that, but I might get to go see it. Did I mention I love the Old Kingdom?