Permits: Achieved; Tickets: Acquired

Permits are (unofficially) in and I just purchased tickets! I'll be leaving on Oct 4 (the countdown has been updated) and going straight to Luxor (so no dealing with the craziness in Cairo at the moment), where we'll stay a few days to get acclimated, get our visa extensions, and stock up on cell phone credit.

Are you excited for the season? Cause I am! My suitcase is already half packed and we've just got some organizational stuff left (like buying epigraphic supplies and doing a last-minute review of the blocks). Oh, yeah, and my pesky proposal defense... Here's the timeline:

Oct 1: proposal defense
Oct 4: leave for Egypt
Oct 5: after a 27 hour day, arrive in Luxor super late (like, almost Oct 6th)
Oct 8: drive to Edfu (about a 2 hour drive)
Oct 9: start excavations!
Nov 27: last day of excavations, leave for Luxor
Nov 28: leave for Cairo
Dec 4: after staying a few days in Cairo, leave for home

Can't wait to share this season with you all again!

Deja vu

If you read my posts last year, you'll remember The Wait. It appears that we'll be having a repeat of last year, as we have yet to get our permits. The bad news is that they've restructured the SCA, an organization which appears to be run like an elaborate shell game combined with leap frog. The good news is that for the moment, the man we really like is in charge, so we're hopeful we'll be getting word soon. In fact, I'm hoping this post helps, since I have just the type of luck where I tell you we're still waiting, only to get the "we have permits!" email moments later.

Here's hoping.

In the meantime, I finally got my proposal draft accepted, so now I'm enjoying a little bit of last-minute vacations, followed by prepping for my proposal defense. The defense consists of me giving a 20-min presentation where I cut said proposal in half to make it fit in the allotted time, while somehow still giving all the relavent information to the committee. Once I'm done, the committee gets to ask me all sorts of "fun" questions that I can hopefully talk my way out of. Provided all of that goes well, I'll be officially ABD (all but dissertation) and PhD candidate!

Jonathan and I also have been working to figure out how we want our mastaba benches to look and where we want to place our blocks, but without being in the field where we can see exactly what we have and how big everything is, it's terribly frustrating. We're also already writing up abstracts for conferences to present findings we have no idea if we'll actually find. :) Welcome to the world of academia, where everything's made up and the points don't matter.

The countdown will stay as-is, but given that my proposal defense is scheduled for Oct 1, I'm doubting we'll actually leave that day.

Won't You Please, Please Help Me? (Help Me, Help Meee, oooh)

Did you know that you can help me with this project? Yes, YOU! My project currently isn't really funded- no! Don't stop reading. Here's the deal, my project doesn't have official funding yet, but it's a fairly cheap project, all things considered. Here's how:

We're making our benches out of bricks, which only cost about $.25/each in Egypt. Which means a donation of almost ANYTHING can help me! Don't you want to help me instead of some random charity where most of your money gets put towards advertising? This is an actual project with an actual person you know. Sounds good, right? And donating is easy, just go here. Make sure you select "Tell Edfu Excavation" so that it doesn't just go in the general Oriental Institute fund. If you want it to go specifically to me, type something in the "special instructions" box that mentions my name (like "for Janelle's block yard project").

BUT WAIT! Act now, and I'll throw in a "Janelle In Egypt" special deal!! If you donate to my project specifically and then let me know how much you donated, either in the comments or privately through email/facebook, I'll send you a picture with exactly what your donation bought. Or of me doing something silly. Or of me doing something silly with what you bought. If you donate enough for an entire bench, I'll even see if I can send along a picture of the completed thing! Pretty cool, huh?

Even that random pocket change can buy several bricks, so why not donate it to a good cause and help me look super awesome to my advisor?

Thanks, everyone!! I know you won't let me down!! Remember, if I don't get funded, I don't get to go, and you don't get to read my blog posts and live vicariously through me as an Egyptian archaeologist. So really, this is an altruistic post- I'm just thinking of you and your future happiness!

P.S. You might want to click to opt out of donor recognition mailings. You *might* get stuff from us, but you'll more than likely just get a bunch of crap asking for more money.

P.P.S. Want more information about donating? I'm happy to answer any questions you might have via comments or emails! Or, for larger donations, I can pass you along to Nadine.

All Your Database Are Belong To Us

I promised to keep you updated, so here's what I'm currently working on. We don't yet have a database set up for the blocks (there's a meeting to create it next week), but I've made do with a wonderful invention called Google Docs. If you have not used it for a group project, I highly recommend it! For us, I set up what is essentially a Powerpoint presentation, with each slide containing a different block:

Sorry, for publication reasons you can't have one of the inscribed blocks, but here's one with Kiri on it!

To set up this database, I had to go through 5 years of photos, finding the best photo of each block from each year, then comparing it to the other years, seeing if the block still exists throughout time, or if something might have happened to it. Of course, the photographers each year had their own numbering system, so I had to re-number and organize everything completely anew. It wasn't too hard, but man I wish I had a computer screen that was bigger than 15"!

Now that all the photos have been organized and put into our makeshift Google database, I'm slowly going through each block and filling in the information we want, some of which you can see in the photo. Unfortunately, none of the blocks have full texts, so it's a lot of sentences that could go multiple ways. Imagine if English didn't use spaces and you got a sentence like this: [...]hthe[...]. Is it "that he", "what he", "[...]h the"? There's just no context to tell. And the fact that some of the photos aren't very clear doesn't help.

Once I've gotten all the information I can from the blocks and my co-worker Jonathan (who is currently studying for SIX comps, which is why I'm doing most of the work for now) has double checked my work, we'll start trying to figure out how we want to put these on mastabas (the order, not the method- apparently, we get a crane! If you remember how excited I was about the hand ax, you get an idea of how excited I am about power tools!)*. We're thinking that even the most meticulous planning on that part is just going to be shot to hell once we get to Egypt, though. We have no idea how many of these blocks will still exist once we get there, or how many new ones might show up! Plus, the previous photographers (myself included) were more interested in documenting the blocks with inscriptions or at least images, so there could be a ton of blocks that we didn't know have been there all along. We only get 4ish weeks to work on this, so we need to have a solid plan, but that could be quite difficult.

Anyway, that's what's happening at the moment.

*Can someone please explain to me how I went all last season and did not show you guys the picture of me with the hand ax? Probably because I look like a dude, but there really needs to be documentation of the fact that 1) I got to us the coolest tool in archaeology and 2) I hurt neither myself nor anyone else in the process:

P.S. If you don't get the title, it's reference to a real video game intro with a really bad Japanese-to-English translation. You can find it here.

P.P.S. No permits yet, but the plan is to arrive in very early October. The countdown on the side is approximate.

And We're Back

Many of you have been curious about the next Tell Edfu season, when/if I'll be heading back to Egypt, and what I'm doing now, so I thought I'd throw up an FAQ.

When are you going back?
We don't have exact dates yet, but I'll be leaving some time in early October and coming back early-mid December. We are going to have an overly-packed crew this year, so we'll have kind of a rotating group of people coming in for a few weeks at a time, but I'll be there the whole season.

What are you going to be doing this time?
I'm currently scheduled to work on 2 projects this fall. The first is to help out my fornana Natasha with drawing pottery. We're finally getting into the pottery she wants to study for her dissertation, so the goal will be to get as much drawn for her as possible this season.

The other project I'll be working on is the organization/publication of the block yard. This area has been a dumping ground for blocks found in and around the tell. Most of these blocks have never been studied and are currently in such a heap that tourists think it's ok to stand/sit/crawl/pose on them. So when my dear friend Jonathan (with whom I co-taught a class in 2011) arrives, we'll be looking at drawing the blocks and getting them set up in a better system.

Some of the blocks in our block yard.

What are you doing in the dig off-season?
This summer I have 3 projects that will be keeping me busy:
1) Dissertation proposal: We have this pesky thing called a "proposal" that we have to do before we can write our dissertation. Basically, I have to write and defend a paper convincing my committee that I should write and defend a dissertation on a given topic. My topic, as I mentioned last season, is bread in the economy. I've had a bit of trouble getting the whole thing done correctly, but I'm on track to defend my proposal literally days before we leave for the season.

2) Arabic: For Christmas last year, my in-laws got me an Arabic learning system. I've been holding off using it until it got closer to dig season so that I didn't forget everything, but my goal this summer is to go through the system and at least be able to give simple instructions to the workmen who will be helping us.

3) Block Prep: Since Jonathan and I will only have 4 weeks (at most) to catalogue and move the blocks, I'll be spending the summer doing some prep work. There are a lot of pictures of the blocks from previous seasons, so I'll be using those to start translating the blocks and putting them in some kind of order.

~~~
While I won't be publishing every day this summer like I did while in Egypt, I plan on keeping you all updated here on the blog throughout the summer about Egypt-related things that I'm doing (including the weddings of Kat and Lindsey, both of whom you met last season).

Going Home!

I think a Kathryn Calder song nicely sums up how I’ll be feeling as I fly home today:

“Home.

I wanna be home.

His eyes are bright, his head is clear, and he’s been waiting patiently

For me.

His head is clear, his eyes are bright, we’ll talk each other through the night.

It’s not so long.

If you only knew,

If you only knew.

Egypt is nice in the winter, it’s true.

But I’ll be coming home to you.”

It was nice sharing my travels with you all (even though this one is focused at a more specific person). I’ll post again once I get re-settled and get some more pictures uploaded somewhere. Thanks for following!

- Humble Blogger, Janelle Wade

PS. Ok, she actually says that San Francisco is nice in the summer, but I think I’ve changed it appropriately.

Back in Luxor

I got the internet for a second, so I just wanted to let all of you know that we arrived safely in Luxor about an hour ago. We then wolfed down some McDonald's (oh blessed cheeseburger that isn't made of water buffalo meat) and now we're showering (with showers that have LOTS of hot water and a real shower head)!!

I have to say, I'm quite sore from hauling all of those boxes yesterday, but the fact that when I put my pants on this morning (which fit when I came to Egypt) and there was almost 3 inches of space, I'm okay with the pain. :)

For sure won't have internet tomorrow, but we'll just be doing some shopping and thumb-twittling waiting for our 10pm flight anyway, so I wouldn't have much to say. Flight plans are something like:
9:55pm 12/9- Luxor to Cairo
3:00am 12/10- Cairo to Frankfurt
10:30am 12/10- Frankfurt to America (land around 1pm Central Time)- so a looong day

- No Longer Inhabitant of Edfu