5/7/07

I managed to sleep through the call to prayer again last night. My professor says that I am therefore pre-adapted to Middle Eastern Archaeology. However, after the massive heat today, I am fairly certain that the Middle East and Egypt will be of no interest for me in terms of dissertation work. It was 96 degrees today. My professor took me on a 2 and a half hour hike through the site and the quarries. The quarries were the areas where the pyramid builders extracted the rock used to form the pyramids. He explained to me how they carved them in order to use posts to move them. He also showed me how they were able to form the 90 degree angles at the base. He explained a lot about the geological formations about the rock layers in the quarries and how they related to the sphinx construction, but i've never taken any geology so it was a little over my head. My pictures today are pretty much just the pyramids from more elevated viewpoints as I climbed atop some massive sand hills.





Here are the quarries and following those are some tombs.






This is a photo capturing my walk down the causeway leading to Menkaure's Pyramid. it's 608 m long. The funerary procession for Menkuare would have traveled down this causeway into the pyramid.



This may all be exciting stuff for you guys (or maybe not since you have seen these pictures in my blog, as well as everywhere else). But the following was the most exciting for me:



This is a reconstruction of a cattle calcanium that I found and pieced together all by myself. It is HUGE. Today, my professor had to meet with the AERA (acient egypt research associates) lawyer, and he has to meet with potential donors throughout the rest of the week. This means he has officially cut me off from help. He no longer double checks all of my work before I weigh it and enter it as data. From now on, this is my research, decided at my discretion, using my methods. In fact a lot of times when he does correct how I sort, he does mention that it's a matter of preference, and that everyone chooses to sort things differently (for example when to decide something is unidentifiable limb or just downright unidentifiable). So long as I am consistent, my numbers will still proportionally make sense. The only things he will still check is how I sort fish since I am still learning that, but even now I am getting pretty good at it since it is freshest in my head.

Me doing this on my own now has already made me 10 times better at all of this. It really forces me to commit everything to memory and check things to the utmost cerntainty since I know he wont be over my shoulder anymore.

I think that is going to do it for today. Friday we are going on an all day excursion down to the Fayum and back around visiting various sites. Thursday i should be going to the market with Professor Redding for the first time to pick up lunch stuff for the trip. It should be interesting!

Night everyone!