I know I already posted today...but I just want to say that spending the day by the pool at the hotel, reading was definitely the break I needed....I intend to spend every Friday at that hotel. It's a good thing I saw mostly everything, in terms of sites in Cairo the last time I was here, so I wont much be missing out!
Also, Richard left today and in doing so gave me his voda phone to use....so in the event of an emergency you can get a hold of me!
016-106-7301
It's a pay as you go phone though so don't count on me making frequent calls home or anything. I can get text messages though for the occasional check in. I consider it awesome mostly in case I get stranded somewhere downtown away from the Villa.
That's it.
Cheers!
Friday, March 7, 2008
Friday March 7th 2008 a Day off!
So i dont know why pictures may not be showing up...grr, My guess is as good as yours, I will try and figure it out.
Today is our day off. I slept in until a whopping 7:00 am. Last night I went out for drinks and dinner with Richard and Mary Ann. We drank red wine, which I managed to not cringe at, and ate at a restaurant at the Meridian down the street. Richard and Maryann tried desperately to get me to try cheese. It started with an H I think and it looked like roasted marshmellows on top of grilled vegetables. I told them that if I came to my blog and wrote that I tried cheese and liked it, that a huge part of my identity would be lost…that no one back home would know who I am anymore. Well, I didn’t need to try it, there were little pieces of cheese in my food and within one bite I realized it, and wanted to vomit. For me, cheese is more than just a food that I don’t like the taste of…if I can taste any hint of it (and I will be the first to admit that there are probably times when it is in my food and I can’t taste it…but if you are preparing my food and you miscalculate the point at which I will detect cheese, I’m sorry I can’t finish it)- in the event that I can taste it, it is like having an instant gag reflex. My stomach ties itself in knots…it is like dining turbulance. Boo Cheese.
Okay back to more interesting things…. Richard is going back to the states today and wont be back until close to when I am leaving. It is really amusing this year…there are a lot of new people on board, especially girls who live in the apartments with me, and so suddenly I am the person to which questions are directed. This was really something I did not foresee happening, and for a few reasons. First of all I didn’t realize how many different specialists there were going to be here, though it makes sense since half of the team is down in Luxor this season. Also, I didn’t realize that I actually knew that much about living in Egypt. I was only here for 5 weeks last season, but it turns out I learned quite a bit about the ins and outs of this project, navigation through the city, and the standard do’s and don’ts. One girl said that she didn’t think her arabic would ever be is good as mine…this too is laughable. While I have gotten better and picked up more arabic, I am pretty sure that she just keeps hearing me say the same 3 or 4 phrases to everyone and with that, I am cleverishly letting on that I know much more than I do! My cousin Melanie I think would really like working on an international team like this. Perhaps not an archaeological one, but the amount of languages being thrown around is head spinning. In addition to arabic, I’ve started learning Japanese. Polish and Swedish are other languages that you can hear bouncing off the mosquito laden walls.
Speaking of mosquitos….I’m conviced that my blood type is either B or AB. If you have a B in your blood (I just had the mental image of a bumble bee drowning in a river of blood)…anyway, if there is a B in your bloodTYPE (there we go) apparently bugs, particularly mosquitos, choose you last for a fix. In the mornings when I ask how everyone slept, they all chime in about restless nights fending off mosquitos. I haven’t gotten bit at all yet…at least not mosquitos. A little bit by bed bugs ( I know gross right?) I need to get some euclyptus to spray on my bed to fend off those suckers.
Yesterday on the field we finally have all area leaders (Ana, Mark Lehner, Peter, and Amelia). This finally meant organization! Me and this other Egyptian girl who had completed the field school last year, Noha, went with the four of them to talk more about the site, the goals of season and how it ties to the Workers Town settlement where they have been excavating the part 20 years. Me being the over-achiever that I am, had already read everything I could get my hands on for Khentkawes (reports from 2005 and 2007 excavations by Mark, as well as the 1930s excavation reports by Salim Hassan, and the early excavation reports by Reisner of Menkenre’s Valley Temple and Temple Town). Since I had done so, I knew everything that Mark was saying (in addition to knowing that a majority of his information was taken straight from the intro of the Hassan Report). So if he blanked on a date, or a piece of information, I was first to interject and answer….I tried to balance coming across as obnoxious with coming across as prepared…prepared was what I was going for…but no one likes a know it all. I don’t really care though…as Richard said at dinner last night…the one with all of the knowledge wins.
I am not sure who I will be working under for the next few weeks. So far, my job is to work on the areas that were mapped in 2005. Unorganization seems to be the common denominator for digs, at least here…and seeing as though this is the second most funded project next to Catal Hyuk, that is a bit unnerving. But apparently in the 2005 season the areas built along the the causeway of Khenkawes Pyramid (typically pyramids have associated with them either towns that housed the mortuary cults that would carry out daily purification and offering rituals for the deceased tomb owner, settlements associated with the construction of the tomb and pyramid, or any combination of this depending on when building was occuring and when it finished). No one really knows what was going on at Khentkawes (KKT), but its stratigraphic link to the Workers Town site associated with Menkenre, and the settlement site along Menkenre’s valley temple is really important to resconstructing the ways in which these sub communities came together and functioned together within a state level operation under a pharaoh…this is about as well as I can sum it up on the surface, though I assure you its very complicated…I mean I spent a year and a half researching the Worker’s Town site alone, for my thesis…so to summarize when there is so much detail seems nearly impossible and a waste of time….it basically boils down to identifying relationships between different settlement sites on the Giza Plateau….chronological and functional relationships. Were the communities kept separate? Was there interaction? Did KKT reign as a Pharoah? How can we tell? Plus there is just a lot of other weird stuff going on that needs explaining. Here is a plan for the site overall, from a birds eye view.
Anyway…so back to my job for the next week or so…We unbackfilled some squares (about 4-6 10mx10m squares), beginning at the western edge of KKT’s causeway and extended south. Now these squares have only been mapped (so drawn to scale from a birds eye view). Nothing has been excavated, so we don’t have any sketches in profile, or revealing layers. However, what happened in the 2005 season was that they tried to map as much as possible and in doing so failed to assign all proper feature numbers and to fill out all the information on feature forms. I've started basically at where the town turns south.
Archaeological feature or context: any single action whether it leaves a positive or negative record within a stratigraphic sequence is known as a context or feature. Can consist of a deposit, cut, coffin, structures, artifacts, timbers, walls, etc.
For every feature or context, a form needs to be filled out. They are super detailed, asking about material, color, composition, measurements, extent of feature, measurement of bricks if applicable, orientation..anything that you see you basically have to write down and then you have to link it to all other associated contexts, for example if a wall abutts another wall, you have to lay it out in a sequential matrix. And of course, you have to draw everything.
Many people hate feature forms…who wants to be doing paperwork when you could be digging more right? Well, I guess I don’t mind paper work…but I also know that I am learning a lot by completing these forms. I had no idea how to figure out which wall was built first, and how bricks were laid before doing this. Also, I feel like I am getting a much more thorough understanding of the site and what’s going on more than everyone else who is just trying to piece together information based on sketching more and more squares. Like I said though, it should take me about a week to catch up on the 2005 paperwork…and then we will move to new squares. I may get to map out some squares by myself I was told, but I don’t really want to do that because I feel like I am terrible at drawing…and no one should rely on me to do that very well. I think a lot of my responsibilities will entail following other people around as they map, assigning feature numbers, and documenting them and cleaning them….it doesn’t sound all to thrilling but so far I don’t mind it….I walk around in my socks (can’t wear shoes or else you willl destroy what little is left) carrying large maps, pencils and pens sticking our of my hair in every which direction, and I write and draw and think….even if the work gets boring after a while, I still get to be off in my own little world at least.
Okay..it's Friday and 91 degrees here...I think I am going to walk down to the meridian and see about getting in the pool. Hope you are all enjoying the snow in Michigan :)
Today is our day off. I slept in until a whopping 7:00 am. Last night I went out for drinks and dinner with Richard and Mary Ann. We drank red wine, which I managed to not cringe at, and ate at a restaurant at the Meridian down the street. Richard and Maryann tried desperately to get me to try cheese. It started with an H I think and it looked like roasted marshmellows on top of grilled vegetables. I told them that if I came to my blog and wrote that I tried cheese and liked it, that a huge part of my identity would be lost…that no one back home would know who I am anymore. Well, I didn’t need to try it, there were little pieces of cheese in my food and within one bite I realized it, and wanted to vomit. For me, cheese is more than just a food that I don’t like the taste of…if I can taste any hint of it (and I will be the first to admit that there are probably times when it is in my food and I can’t taste it…but if you are preparing my food and you miscalculate the point at which I will detect cheese, I’m sorry I can’t finish it)- in the event that I can taste it, it is like having an instant gag reflex. My stomach ties itself in knots…it is like dining turbulance. Boo Cheese.
Okay back to more interesting things…. Richard is going back to the states today and wont be back until close to when I am leaving. It is really amusing this year…there are a lot of new people on board, especially girls who live in the apartments with me, and so suddenly I am the person to which questions are directed. This was really something I did not foresee happening, and for a few reasons. First of all I didn’t realize how many different specialists there were going to be here, though it makes sense since half of the team is down in Luxor this season. Also, I didn’t realize that I actually knew that much about living in Egypt. I was only here for 5 weeks last season, but it turns out I learned quite a bit about the ins and outs of this project, navigation through the city, and the standard do’s and don’ts. One girl said that she didn’t think her arabic would ever be is good as mine…this too is laughable. While I have gotten better and picked up more arabic, I am pretty sure that she just keeps hearing me say the same 3 or 4 phrases to everyone and with that, I am cleverishly letting on that I know much more than I do! My cousin Melanie I think would really like working on an international team like this. Perhaps not an archaeological one, but the amount of languages being thrown around is head spinning. In addition to arabic, I’ve started learning Japanese. Polish and Swedish are other languages that you can hear bouncing off the mosquito laden walls.
Speaking of mosquitos….I’m conviced that my blood type is either B or AB. If you have a B in your blood (I just had the mental image of a bumble bee drowning in a river of blood)…anyway, if there is a B in your bloodTYPE (there we go) apparently bugs, particularly mosquitos, choose you last for a fix. In the mornings when I ask how everyone slept, they all chime in about restless nights fending off mosquitos. I haven’t gotten bit at all yet…at least not mosquitos. A little bit by bed bugs ( I know gross right?) I need to get some euclyptus to spray on my bed to fend off those suckers.
Yesterday on the field we finally have all area leaders (Ana, Mark Lehner, Peter, and Amelia). This finally meant organization! Me and this other Egyptian girl who had completed the field school last year, Noha, went with the four of them to talk more about the site, the goals of season and how it ties to the Workers Town settlement where they have been excavating the part 20 years. Me being the over-achiever that I am, had already read everything I could get my hands on for Khentkawes (reports from 2005 and 2007 excavations by Mark, as well as the 1930s excavation reports by Salim Hassan, and the early excavation reports by Reisner of Menkenre’s Valley Temple and Temple Town). Since I had done so, I knew everything that Mark was saying (in addition to knowing that a majority of his information was taken straight from the intro of the Hassan Report). So if he blanked on a date, or a piece of information, I was first to interject and answer….I tried to balance coming across as obnoxious with coming across as prepared…prepared was what I was going for…but no one likes a know it all. I don’t really care though…as Richard said at dinner last night…the one with all of the knowledge wins.
I am not sure who I will be working under for the next few weeks. So far, my job is to work on the areas that were mapped in 2005. Unorganization seems to be the common denominator for digs, at least here…and seeing as though this is the second most funded project next to Catal Hyuk, that is a bit unnerving. But apparently in the 2005 season the areas built along the the causeway of Khenkawes Pyramid (typically pyramids have associated with them either towns that housed the mortuary cults that would carry out daily purification and offering rituals for the deceased tomb owner, settlements associated with the construction of the tomb and pyramid, or any combination of this depending on when building was occuring and when it finished). No one really knows what was going on at Khentkawes (KKT), but its stratigraphic link to the Workers Town site associated with Menkenre, and the settlement site along Menkenre’s valley temple is really important to resconstructing the ways in which these sub communities came together and functioned together within a state level operation under a pharaoh…this is about as well as I can sum it up on the surface, though I assure you its very complicated…I mean I spent a year and a half researching the Worker’s Town site alone, for my thesis…so to summarize when there is so much detail seems nearly impossible and a waste of time….it basically boils down to identifying relationships between different settlement sites on the Giza Plateau….chronological and functional relationships. Were the communities kept separate? Was there interaction? Did KKT reign as a Pharoah? How can we tell? Plus there is just a lot of other weird stuff going on that needs explaining. Here is a plan for the site overall, from a birds eye view.
Anyway…so back to my job for the next week or so…We unbackfilled some squares (about 4-6 10mx10m squares), beginning at the western edge of KKT’s causeway and extended south. Now these squares have only been mapped (so drawn to scale from a birds eye view). Nothing has been excavated, so we don’t have any sketches in profile, or revealing layers. However, what happened in the 2005 season was that they tried to map as much as possible and in doing so failed to assign all proper feature numbers and to fill out all the information on feature forms. I've started basically at where the town turns south.
Archaeological feature or context: any single action whether it leaves a positive or negative record within a stratigraphic sequence is known as a context or feature. Can consist of a deposit, cut, coffin, structures, artifacts, timbers, walls, etc.
For every feature or context, a form needs to be filled out. They are super detailed, asking about material, color, composition, measurements, extent of feature, measurement of bricks if applicable, orientation..anything that you see you basically have to write down and then you have to link it to all other associated contexts, for example if a wall abutts another wall, you have to lay it out in a sequential matrix. And of course, you have to draw everything.
Many people hate feature forms…who wants to be doing paperwork when you could be digging more right? Well, I guess I don’t mind paper work…but I also know that I am learning a lot by completing these forms. I had no idea how to figure out which wall was built first, and how bricks were laid before doing this. Also, I feel like I am getting a much more thorough understanding of the site and what’s going on more than everyone else who is just trying to piece together information based on sketching more and more squares. Like I said though, it should take me about a week to catch up on the 2005 paperwork…and then we will move to new squares. I may get to map out some squares by myself I was told, but I don’t really want to do that because I feel like I am terrible at drawing…and no one should rely on me to do that very well. I think a lot of my responsibilities will entail following other people around as they map, assigning feature numbers, and documenting them and cleaning them….it doesn’t sound all to thrilling but so far I don’t mind it….I walk around in my socks (can’t wear shoes or else you willl destroy what little is left) carrying large maps, pencils and pens sticking our of my hair in every which direction, and I write and draw and think….even if the work gets boring after a while, I still get to be off in my own little world at least.
Okay..it's Friday and 91 degrees here...I think I am going to walk down to the meridian and see about getting in the pool. Hope you are all enjoying the snow in Michigan :)
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
I’m supposed to be working on database stuff but the internet is not working so I am just typing a blog entry on microsoft word. The days are going by quicker…I am learning more about methodology and things like how to use the camera equipment, how to use all the different logs we have etc. There is a lot of paperwork in archaeology. So far, I like working in the lab more than I like working in the field, which is not the standard amongst archaeologist from what I understand. The work in the field is still pretty early on though and our team isn’t even all here yet. Hopefully by Saturday or Sunday we will break off into groups, dividing the Khentkawes site into 4 parts and work on recording as we re-backfill. It is important to cover the squares as soon as possible so that the information can be as preserved as possible. Any amount of of rain or wind can do a lot of damage to a site, especially one like this that has been reduced to centimeters after decades of trampling humans, horses and camels. The destruction of the site comes after exposure from a 1930s excavation done by the University of Cairo.
Like I said, hopefully once we are more organized, I will be able to enjoy and appreciate everything that I do a bit more. As it stands, I’m given very little instruction and then left alone on the site…when I do finish whatever it was that I was told to do, I usually return to sketching until someone shows back up to tell me something else to do. The problem with this project is that it has gotten so big that the administrators, who are supposed to be working in the field, are constantly doing other operations…whether it be accomodating the chaotic schedules of everyone here, setting up the house, taking potential donors on tours, working out any type of legal issue, and I’m sure I’m only scratching the surface here. But like I said…a lot of time, especially because I’m alone, I have no idea what I am supposed to do next. Usually I just reread the London Manual of Archaeology or some of the previous reqports on excavations at Khentkawes.
If I continue to feel this uninspired about this kind of work, at least excavations only last until mid april and then I can turn to writing, something I actually enjoy doing….and if finish up writing earlier enough, I supposed I can either come home earlier, work in the lab, or just travel briefly…something who knows. I will still want to see what its like to work on another project before making other decisions about the direction I’m going with my career…though really, I think the discipline needs more people to shack up in labs and actually analyze more material as opposed to more people digging around…so much stuff has been dug up that has never been looked at.
I think uninspired was the word I used earlier…it pretty much sums me up right now. I’m tired, I’m frustrated…I’m someone passionate about information, knowledge, facts, data….but a majority of what I seem to be picking up is “fake it ‘til you make it.” I was told that I’m being thrown into this head first to see if I will sink or swim….seeing as though I am demanding more responsibilities (hence why I now work on the database in addition to survey, mapping and excavation), and the fact that I’m organizing the smaller tasks and being asked questions by students who already completed the field school when I’ve never been to a field school ever, and that I’m the first to voice exactly what I think is and is not time efficient, I would probably say that I am swimming just fine….one thing I was asked to do today though was to create labels and log any new features I saw on site…a new feature is just basically anything that changes or is different within a certain context…if it sounds kind of vague or abstract, that’s how I feel about it too. I was told to do this, and per usual all individuals in charge disappear. So I’m staring at squares, which already have some features labeled from previous seasons….and I have no idea what is and isn’t a distinguishable feature…for example if you are looking at a wall, and this is the with a few centimeters of sand removed from the surface, we aren’t talking deep levels here…how am I supposed to know whether or not a mudbrick wall, as I am seeing it, is one continuous feature, or if it is broken up by different rooms and buttressed by different installations? Are there ways to determine this? You betcha! Have I been taught…no…Is it obvious…in some areas yes, in some areas its really ambiguous…I’m a conservative archaeologist…I do things with certainty…when I explained that I don’t know, but that I want to know and I want to know how, I was told that archaeology is like poker…true analogy…that if I say it’s a new feature, keep my bluffing face on, and chances are, most people will agree with me. This is very UNSATISFYING information to me….and if I ever run a project or a field school, such things will never be uttered.
Oh well. I do get to spend every day at a place most people never even get to see. I think one of the things that is really just offsetting to me is the underlying anxiety that when I leave here, on paper it should appear as though I have all of the excavation experience in the world given the reputation of the project and the reputation of the excavators on board, but if things continue the way they have been, and I still walk away feeling this aimless, I fear I will wind up on a project with high expectations but really having no idea what I’m dong or what I’m talking about. Fortunately enough, each project kind of does things their own way so any fumble I make, to an extent, could probably just be chalked up to that kind of difference…but hopefully my fears are unfounded and I will leave here a pro…and hopefully a happy one….who doesn’t write in run on sentences. In shala (if god wills it). But I suppose the earliest archaeologists didn't have any direction either and they just relied on a common sense, and accute detail....so yes, here's to common sense and anal retentiveness.
Ah I was able to upload some photos:
Here is a shot I took after climbing some huge formation. Obviously the more well known pyramids can be seen, but Khentkawes (not neraly as well preserved, nor massive) is in there too, on the left.
Here's a close up:
And here are pictures of the workers unbackfilling.
Thats probably the extent of what I can post from the site without getting into trouble.
Like I said, hopefully once we are more organized, I will be able to enjoy and appreciate everything that I do a bit more. As it stands, I’m given very little instruction and then left alone on the site…when I do finish whatever it was that I was told to do, I usually return to sketching until someone shows back up to tell me something else to do. The problem with this project is that it has gotten so big that the administrators, who are supposed to be working in the field, are constantly doing other operations…whether it be accomodating the chaotic schedules of everyone here, setting up the house, taking potential donors on tours, working out any type of legal issue, and I’m sure I’m only scratching the surface here. But like I said…a lot of time, especially because I’m alone, I have no idea what I am supposed to do next. Usually I just reread the London Manual of Archaeology or some of the previous reqports on excavations at Khentkawes.
If I continue to feel this uninspired about this kind of work, at least excavations only last until mid april and then I can turn to writing, something I actually enjoy doing….and if finish up writing earlier enough, I supposed I can either come home earlier, work in the lab, or just travel briefly…something who knows. I will still want to see what its like to work on another project before making other decisions about the direction I’m going with my career…though really, I think the discipline needs more people to shack up in labs and actually analyze more material as opposed to more people digging around…so much stuff has been dug up that has never been looked at.
I think uninspired was the word I used earlier…it pretty much sums me up right now. I’m tired, I’m frustrated…I’m someone passionate about information, knowledge, facts, data….but a majority of what I seem to be picking up is “fake it ‘til you make it.” I was told that I’m being thrown into this head first to see if I will sink or swim….seeing as though I am demanding more responsibilities (hence why I now work on the database in addition to survey, mapping and excavation), and the fact that I’m organizing the smaller tasks and being asked questions by students who already completed the field school when I’ve never been to a field school ever, and that I’m the first to voice exactly what I think is and is not time efficient, I would probably say that I am swimming just fine….one thing I was asked to do today though was to create labels and log any new features I saw on site…a new feature is just basically anything that changes or is different within a certain context…if it sounds kind of vague or abstract, that’s how I feel about it too. I was told to do this, and per usual all individuals in charge disappear. So I’m staring at squares, which already have some features labeled from previous seasons….and I have no idea what is and isn’t a distinguishable feature…for example if you are looking at a wall, and this is the with a few centimeters of sand removed from the surface, we aren’t talking deep levels here…how am I supposed to know whether or not a mudbrick wall, as I am seeing it, is one continuous feature, or if it is broken up by different rooms and buttressed by different installations? Are there ways to determine this? You betcha! Have I been taught…no…Is it obvious…in some areas yes, in some areas its really ambiguous…I’m a conservative archaeologist…I do things with certainty…when I explained that I don’t know, but that I want to know and I want to know how, I was told that archaeology is like poker…true analogy…that if I say it’s a new feature, keep my bluffing face on, and chances are, most people will agree with me. This is very UNSATISFYING information to me….and if I ever run a project or a field school, such things will never be uttered.
Oh well. I do get to spend every day at a place most people never even get to see. I think one of the things that is really just offsetting to me is the underlying anxiety that when I leave here, on paper it should appear as though I have all of the excavation experience in the world given the reputation of the project and the reputation of the excavators on board, but if things continue the way they have been, and I still walk away feeling this aimless, I fear I will wind up on a project with high expectations but really having no idea what I’m dong or what I’m talking about. Fortunately enough, each project kind of does things their own way so any fumble I make, to an extent, could probably just be chalked up to that kind of difference…but hopefully my fears are unfounded and I will leave here a pro…and hopefully a happy one….who doesn’t write in run on sentences. In shala (if god wills it). But I suppose the earliest archaeologists didn't have any direction either and they just relied on a common sense, and accute detail....so yes, here's to common sense and anal retentiveness.
Ah I was able to upload some photos:
Here is a shot I took after climbing some huge formation. Obviously the more well known pyramids can be seen, but Khentkawes (not neraly as well preserved, nor massive) is in there too, on the left.
Here's a close up:
And here are pictures of the workers unbackfilling.
Thats probably the extent of what I can post from the site without getting into trouble.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Monday 3/3/08
Until I get internet in the apartments, I probably will not post every day. It's just really inconvenient.
In happy happy news, I'm finally back to my babysleepingschedule. Went to bed at 9:20 pm last night, and slept straight until 5:00 this morning.
I'm quickly catching on to things and even started taking over some of the minute work that needs to be done before we can really make other progress...things like labeling all of the grid pegs on site. This morning when I woke up I had no idea how one went out mapping and establishing coordinates for a site, especially one like the Giza plateau where there are various settlements and areas that both have and have not yet been surveyed. By the end of the day, I had mapped out where all of the pegs were, beginning at the Khentkawes Pyramid, and moving east, I made all of the labels with coordinate numbers and the North and East measurements.
I don't feel like writing anymore. I'm pretty bored at work with this kind of stuff. Hopefully it gets better.
Also, I'm not sure where the misconception came from that food is scarce out here...There is Breakfast at 6:00: eggs, yogurt, beans, bread etc , Second breakfast at 10:00, bean or falafel sandwhiches , Lunch at 1:30, and dinner at 7:00. Coffee and Tea in between and plenty of other biscotti-ish like foods available.
In happy happy news, I'm finally back to my babysleepingschedule. Went to bed at 9:20 pm last night, and slept straight until 5:00 this morning.
I'm quickly catching on to things and even started taking over some of the minute work that needs to be done before we can really make other progress...things like labeling all of the grid pegs on site. This morning when I woke up I had no idea how one went out mapping and establishing coordinates for a site, especially one like the Giza plateau where there are various settlements and areas that both have and have not yet been surveyed. By the end of the day, I had mapped out where all of the pegs were, beginning at the Khentkawes Pyramid, and moving east, I made all of the labels with coordinate numbers and the North and East measurements.
I don't feel like writing anymore. I'm pretty bored at work with this kind of stuff. Hopefully it gets better.
Also, I'm not sure where the misconception came from that food is scarce out here...There is Breakfast at 6:00: eggs, yogurt, beans, bread etc , Second breakfast at 10:00, bean or falafel sandwhiches , Lunch at 1:30, and dinner at 7:00. Coffee and Tea in between and plenty of other biscotti-ish like foods available.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Sunday March 2nd 2008
Where do I start? Ugh.
So if you had not deduced already, knowing me to be the avid blogger that I am, I have been without access to the internet the past few days (amongst other doses of chaos- where’s a Pharaoh when you need one?)
My last two days in Luxor weren’t anything too amazing. Thursday I never even left my hotel, though I did do a lot of research on graduate programs and other things I should probably know more about. I worked on posting pictures, which still proved to be a pain in my ass. I suppose it is better to pace myself on posting pictures anyways since I probably wont be doing too much more site seeing, which means less pictures overall. Perhaps it will work out better if I can divide up the areas I went to and devote a detailed blog entry to each and post that about once a week….I’ll think of something. Either way, I’ve taken over 400 pictures, so fret not, this trip is documented.
In general, the last you heard from me, you read of my very public love affair with Luxor. Well let me assure you, the honeymoon is over. Friday, my last day in Luxor, began great and slowly deteriorated. In the morning I ate breakfast with Mohson, and later met with Richard to head back to Luxor Temple. Even though I had already been to Luxor, I knew Richard would point out things that had not originally caught my attention, and that he would know information that wasn’t presented in my guide book. Sure enough the day was completely different than the time I had spent there Tiuesday. We actually, privy to our specialization, went through the relief scenes and focused on the animals portrayed. Anthropological Archaeologists who study in Egypt are different from Egyptologists and one of the ways in which they are different is that Anthro Archarologists are not as focused on the texts. To be an Egyptologist you are required to know Egyptian texts, to be able to decipher hieroglyphs and various other aspects of Egyptian wrtiting systems and language throughout Egyptian history. Even though anthropological archaeologists don’t approach research questions with that avenue of knowledge, we still look at the texts nonetheless. For example, one way we can double check some of the taxa present in our samples would be by seeing if they appear in the text reliefs. Its just an additional piece of evidence to provide a context to evaluate some of our results. We can double check certain species of fish, like the catfish, because we see catfish depicted in Egyptian carvings…in other words we have collaborative evidence to suggest that they consumed fish in some sort of context whether dietary, or ritual etc. Additionally we can see how animals were used, how they were prepared, what ways they were butchered etc.
That’s all a little bit tangent, remember the point was, Friday started off good. Well 5:00 p.m. rolled around and I was getting ready to leave for the airport when Richard met me to tell me some news about my living arrangements. Originally, before I left I was under the impression that I would be staying in the Villa again, which although a little run down, I was happy about since it’s the main hub for everyone and its where the meals are, and where our transportation to the site leaves. At some point while I was in Luxor, I was told I would be staying in the large apartments, which is where I stayed last year for the final 2 weeks. If you read my blog last year, you know that I enjoyed the apartments very much since it was air conditioned, but also, those last two weeks, no one else was around. Since it was just Richard and I, we went out to eat every night, and the transportation still picked us up there. In other words, all the reasons why I prefer the Villa, applied to the large apartments as well. Regardless, I was not displeased with having to stay in the large apartments. I was told I would have two sweedish roommates (any guys out there reading this can keep their sick little fantasies to themselves!). I was pretty content with all of this, especially after I heard about all this drama going on with the living arrangements and everyone else having problems. One problem is that, a crew member this year is bringing her new born baby, and no one wants to be shacked up in an apartment living with her and her baby. The problem eventually seemed taken care of because they were going to put the woman and her baby in the small apartment complex, by themselves, and everyone else would be in the Villa, the large apartments, or in a hotel. Well before I go to leave Richard says he has some news for me. First he tells me that I am going to be here before any one else and so I will be all by myself my first night in the apartment. This isn’t that big of a deal to me either. I’m not going to get in until late, I have Saturday off to sleep in and Richard comes in early in the morning on Saturday and we were planing to go into town to pick up some stuff at the market…I was looking forward to it all. The next thing Richard tells me is this, “Also there’s been another change…you are no longer staying in the large apartments. You will be in the small apartments, and beginning April 1st..dum dum dum (he actually said dum dum dum)…you will have to be with Ferra and the baby.” I could feel my blood rise to my cheeks and heat my face with my lividness. I did not know what to say….this was not something I signed on for…Earlier in the week though, Richard said that if I really wanted, I could use his tent after he leaves Giza (he’s leaving the 14th of March). Richard stays in his own tent in the yard of the villa. It has an air mattress and electricity. Initially when he offered, I considered it for a second, thinking it would just be neat to say that I stayed in a tent, but then said I didn’t want to be antisocial and opted for the apartment and the swedes.
Recalling this I say….”Okay, well then I am going to have to take you up on your offer to stay in your tent….remember how Jessica was complaining about originally having to live with the baby, and her feelings on it were that she likes babies some of the time, she just doesn’t want to live with them…..well, that is not me…I don’t like babies ANY time.”
Richard said that it was not a problem and that I could move into his tent as soon as he left…and you bet your ass that is where I will spend the next two months…yes I would rather live in a tent, outside, in Egypt, instead of in the same apartment as a baby.…I don’t say aww when I see a baby…I don’t want to hold it, I don’t want to touch its “itty bitty hands” or its “itty bitty feet”….I don’t want to make faces at it, and most importantly, I don’t want to hear it crying in the middle of the night when I have to get up at 5:00 am.
Oh well though…I’ll live in the tent, be closer to the villa, and everything will be fine. I am calmed back down and I get on my flight for Giza. Again, after calming myself down, I realize I have it great, I am excited about my job, I’m excited to spend the day in town and to just relax before I begin work and learning on Sunday.
I get into Cairo airport at about 8:00 pm. For whatever reason I don’t get my lugguage until almost 9:00 and I don’t make it back to my apartment until almost 11:00. At this point, I’m pretty exhausted to say the least. I’m given a key to my apartment and a note which reads:
“Kelly, we are actually opening the site tomorrow. Morning meeting is at 6:45. See you soon.”
Really?
Wait….
REALLY?
This was the EARLIEST I could be informed that we were working…not to mention this didn’t even make sense….I was the first person here, who else was going to be working?! The whole point of me being here was that I was paired with someone to teach me everything…I have absolutely no idea what I am doing.
At this point I’m too tired to care….I just wanted to walk into the apartment, make some hot tea and get into bed…I walk into the apartment, and it is absolutely barren. I mean empty. Last year it had furniture, the kitchen was stocked, the internet was on…it wasn’t the most lavishly decorated place, but it felt liveable. This was just big empty open space. The stove didn’t work so I couldn’t heat water for tea…I was such a sadface Kelly…haha I literally felt like it was similar to being sentenced to a night in Jail. It was freezing and the blankets here smell like gasoline (which I guess is what mothballs smell like to me?) the only good thing was that I ransacked the apartment and stole the most comfortable pillows.
The only good thing I could say about it all, was that I was exhausted and I fell asleep pretty quickly.
Then I woke up and went to the meeting…my premonitions were correct, I was the only person going to work at the site, anyone else that was here was working at the lab (which is actually really far away from the site, so it means that I will not be in the vincinity of any one I know). At 7:00 I went down to the site with Ana. She is an excavator who holds some other important position for the project because she is constantly on her cell phone and seems to be who a lot of people answer to or go to when things go awry. She shows me the site and then a team of Egyptians, entirely non english speaking Egyptians, start removing the backfill on the site (at the end of a season, a site is covered up with sand to protect everything = backfill). Ana tells me to go grab a brush, and join the men in removing backfill….which seems like an easy enough thing to do right? Well, it’s a fucking desert…that’s a shitton of sand…and if I wasn’t doing something right, or I wasn’t removing enough, I couldn’t be spoken too, I was just tugged on and yapped at in arabic…always they tried to tell me things in arabic…apparently my looks of utter confusion and bewilderment were of no indication that I had absolutely no idea whats going on…mind you at this point, Ana has left me there. So there I am, with a brush, removing sand from some mudbrick structures amidst a group of 40 or so arabic strangers. I didn’t know where the bathroom was, I didn’t know where water was, I didn’t know anything and I didn’t know any one.
When Ana returned after a few hours she gave me a notebook and pencil and told me to start sketching the layout of the site…didn’t give me any sort of standard or convention on how to do it, and I certainly don’t know what they are, so again, I’m left alone teaching myself archaeology apparently. But I wasn’t complaining at that point…I would draw for the rest of the day if it meant not returning to the stupid brushing.
Finally Ana comes back to the site with Richard and another student, whose English is also not good. Ana brings the site plans and goes over a lot of information for the site and what the general plan and goals are for the project this season. Finally. Information. She gives me and the other student two things of measuring tape and tells us to go map the features to scale 1:100….if you think I knew what that meant when I was told, you’re wrong…I had no idea. The student and I tried to work together on it, since she had actually done it before, but not being able to communicate really prolonged my ability to grasp what was going on, but I think I got it eventually.
We ended at 1:30, which made me happy. We had lunch and Richard and I went to town as planned. This was especially a relief since there was no food or anything in the apartment. So we picked up some things after a long long taxi drive there. The ride there was long and pretty standard chaotic Egyptian driving…but the ride back…I really thought I was going to die this time. It took me a few times before I was adjusted to the recklessness of Egyptian driving last year…I thought this time I wouldn’t even be phased….but that was until I got into the car to return home from town. This guy was terrible...I felt like I should have been praying in the backseat. I seriously questioned whether or not I was going to survive that ride home, and sure enough….we got hit by a bus….A BUS! A bus. Side swiped by a bus, along my door no less.
It wasn’t really that bad, because luckily, traffic is so bad in Cairo you’re never really going that fast.
That brings us up to today. Finally internet! Today was a basic repeat of yesterday...again I'm pretty much on my own a lot at site and try to figure things out. I've done a lot of background reading on Khentkawes so that I can approach the archaeological material with as much knowledge as possible.
Well there are a lot of things that are wrong with the apartment I'm living in (no internet, only 2 minutes of hot water, no shower head, toilet doesn't flush etc) and we are going to go attempt to take care of said issues now.
Sorry for the delay in postings, I am safe and making it through, and per usual working on the picture posting situation.
So if you had not deduced already, knowing me to be the avid blogger that I am, I have been without access to the internet the past few days (amongst other doses of chaos- where’s a Pharaoh when you need one?)
My last two days in Luxor weren’t anything too amazing. Thursday I never even left my hotel, though I did do a lot of research on graduate programs and other things I should probably know more about. I worked on posting pictures, which still proved to be a pain in my ass. I suppose it is better to pace myself on posting pictures anyways since I probably wont be doing too much more site seeing, which means less pictures overall. Perhaps it will work out better if I can divide up the areas I went to and devote a detailed blog entry to each and post that about once a week….I’ll think of something. Either way, I’ve taken over 400 pictures, so fret not, this trip is documented.
In general, the last you heard from me, you read of my very public love affair with Luxor. Well let me assure you, the honeymoon is over. Friday, my last day in Luxor, began great and slowly deteriorated. In the morning I ate breakfast with Mohson, and later met with Richard to head back to Luxor Temple. Even though I had already been to Luxor, I knew Richard would point out things that had not originally caught my attention, and that he would know information that wasn’t presented in my guide book. Sure enough the day was completely different than the time I had spent there Tiuesday. We actually, privy to our specialization, went through the relief scenes and focused on the animals portrayed. Anthropological Archaeologists who study in Egypt are different from Egyptologists and one of the ways in which they are different is that Anthro Archarologists are not as focused on the texts. To be an Egyptologist you are required to know Egyptian texts, to be able to decipher hieroglyphs and various other aspects of Egyptian wrtiting systems and language throughout Egyptian history. Even though anthropological archaeologists don’t approach research questions with that avenue of knowledge, we still look at the texts nonetheless. For example, one way we can double check some of the taxa present in our samples would be by seeing if they appear in the text reliefs. Its just an additional piece of evidence to provide a context to evaluate some of our results. We can double check certain species of fish, like the catfish, because we see catfish depicted in Egyptian carvings…in other words we have collaborative evidence to suggest that they consumed fish in some sort of context whether dietary, or ritual etc. Additionally we can see how animals were used, how they were prepared, what ways they were butchered etc.
That’s all a little bit tangent, remember the point was, Friday started off good. Well 5:00 p.m. rolled around and I was getting ready to leave for the airport when Richard met me to tell me some news about my living arrangements. Originally, before I left I was under the impression that I would be staying in the Villa again, which although a little run down, I was happy about since it’s the main hub for everyone and its where the meals are, and where our transportation to the site leaves. At some point while I was in Luxor, I was told I would be staying in the large apartments, which is where I stayed last year for the final 2 weeks. If you read my blog last year, you know that I enjoyed the apartments very much since it was air conditioned, but also, those last two weeks, no one else was around. Since it was just Richard and I, we went out to eat every night, and the transportation still picked us up there. In other words, all the reasons why I prefer the Villa, applied to the large apartments as well. Regardless, I was not displeased with having to stay in the large apartments. I was told I would have two sweedish roommates (any guys out there reading this can keep their sick little fantasies to themselves!). I was pretty content with all of this, especially after I heard about all this drama going on with the living arrangements and everyone else having problems. One problem is that, a crew member this year is bringing her new born baby, and no one wants to be shacked up in an apartment living with her and her baby. The problem eventually seemed taken care of because they were going to put the woman and her baby in the small apartment complex, by themselves, and everyone else would be in the Villa, the large apartments, or in a hotel. Well before I go to leave Richard says he has some news for me. First he tells me that I am going to be here before any one else and so I will be all by myself my first night in the apartment. This isn’t that big of a deal to me either. I’m not going to get in until late, I have Saturday off to sleep in and Richard comes in early in the morning on Saturday and we were planing to go into town to pick up some stuff at the market…I was looking forward to it all. The next thing Richard tells me is this, “Also there’s been another change…you are no longer staying in the large apartments. You will be in the small apartments, and beginning April 1st..dum dum dum (he actually said dum dum dum)…you will have to be with Ferra and the baby.” I could feel my blood rise to my cheeks and heat my face with my lividness. I did not know what to say….this was not something I signed on for…Earlier in the week though, Richard said that if I really wanted, I could use his tent after he leaves Giza (he’s leaving the 14th of March). Richard stays in his own tent in the yard of the villa. It has an air mattress and electricity. Initially when he offered, I considered it for a second, thinking it would just be neat to say that I stayed in a tent, but then said I didn’t want to be antisocial and opted for the apartment and the swedes.
Recalling this I say….”Okay, well then I am going to have to take you up on your offer to stay in your tent….remember how Jessica was complaining about originally having to live with the baby, and her feelings on it were that she likes babies some of the time, she just doesn’t want to live with them…..well, that is not me…I don’t like babies ANY time.”
Richard said that it was not a problem and that I could move into his tent as soon as he left…and you bet your ass that is where I will spend the next two months…yes I would rather live in a tent, outside, in Egypt, instead of in the same apartment as a baby.…I don’t say aww when I see a baby…I don’t want to hold it, I don’t want to touch its “itty bitty hands” or its “itty bitty feet”….I don’t want to make faces at it, and most importantly, I don’t want to hear it crying in the middle of the night when I have to get up at 5:00 am.
Oh well though…I’ll live in the tent, be closer to the villa, and everything will be fine. I am calmed back down and I get on my flight for Giza. Again, after calming myself down, I realize I have it great, I am excited about my job, I’m excited to spend the day in town and to just relax before I begin work and learning on Sunday.
I get into Cairo airport at about 8:00 pm. For whatever reason I don’t get my lugguage until almost 9:00 and I don’t make it back to my apartment until almost 11:00. At this point, I’m pretty exhausted to say the least. I’m given a key to my apartment and a note which reads:
“Kelly, we are actually opening the site tomorrow. Morning meeting is at 6:45. See you soon.”
Really?
Wait….
REALLY?
This was the EARLIEST I could be informed that we were working…not to mention this didn’t even make sense….I was the first person here, who else was going to be working?! The whole point of me being here was that I was paired with someone to teach me everything…I have absolutely no idea what I am doing.
At this point I’m too tired to care….I just wanted to walk into the apartment, make some hot tea and get into bed…I walk into the apartment, and it is absolutely barren. I mean empty. Last year it had furniture, the kitchen was stocked, the internet was on…it wasn’t the most lavishly decorated place, but it felt liveable. This was just big empty open space. The stove didn’t work so I couldn’t heat water for tea…I was such a sadface Kelly…haha I literally felt like it was similar to being sentenced to a night in Jail. It was freezing and the blankets here smell like gasoline (which I guess is what mothballs smell like to me?) the only good thing was that I ransacked the apartment and stole the most comfortable pillows.
The only good thing I could say about it all, was that I was exhausted and I fell asleep pretty quickly.
Then I woke up and went to the meeting…my premonitions were correct, I was the only person going to work at the site, anyone else that was here was working at the lab (which is actually really far away from the site, so it means that I will not be in the vincinity of any one I know). At 7:00 I went down to the site with Ana. She is an excavator who holds some other important position for the project because she is constantly on her cell phone and seems to be who a lot of people answer to or go to when things go awry. She shows me the site and then a team of Egyptians, entirely non english speaking Egyptians, start removing the backfill on the site (at the end of a season, a site is covered up with sand to protect everything = backfill). Ana tells me to go grab a brush, and join the men in removing backfill….which seems like an easy enough thing to do right? Well, it’s a fucking desert…that’s a shitton of sand…and if I wasn’t doing something right, or I wasn’t removing enough, I couldn’t be spoken too, I was just tugged on and yapped at in arabic…always they tried to tell me things in arabic…apparently my looks of utter confusion and bewilderment were of no indication that I had absolutely no idea whats going on…mind you at this point, Ana has left me there. So there I am, with a brush, removing sand from some mudbrick structures amidst a group of 40 or so arabic strangers. I didn’t know where the bathroom was, I didn’t know where water was, I didn’t know anything and I didn’t know any one.
When Ana returned after a few hours she gave me a notebook and pencil and told me to start sketching the layout of the site…didn’t give me any sort of standard or convention on how to do it, and I certainly don’t know what they are, so again, I’m left alone teaching myself archaeology apparently. But I wasn’t complaining at that point…I would draw for the rest of the day if it meant not returning to the stupid brushing.
Finally Ana comes back to the site with Richard and another student, whose English is also not good. Ana brings the site plans and goes over a lot of information for the site and what the general plan and goals are for the project this season. Finally. Information. She gives me and the other student two things of measuring tape and tells us to go map the features to scale 1:100….if you think I knew what that meant when I was told, you’re wrong…I had no idea. The student and I tried to work together on it, since she had actually done it before, but not being able to communicate really prolonged my ability to grasp what was going on, but I think I got it eventually.
We ended at 1:30, which made me happy. We had lunch and Richard and I went to town as planned. This was especially a relief since there was no food or anything in the apartment. So we picked up some things after a long long taxi drive there. The ride there was long and pretty standard chaotic Egyptian driving…but the ride back…I really thought I was going to die this time. It took me a few times before I was adjusted to the recklessness of Egyptian driving last year…I thought this time I wouldn’t even be phased….but that was until I got into the car to return home from town. This guy was terrible...I felt like I should have been praying in the backseat. I seriously questioned whether or not I was going to survive that ride home, and sure enough….we got hit by a bus….A BUS! A bus. Side swiped by a bus, along my door no less.
It wasn’t really that bad, because luckily, traffic is so bad in Cairo you’re never really going that fast.
That brings us up to today. Finally internet! Today was a basic repeat of yesterday...again I'm pretty much on my own a lot at site and try to figure things out. I've done a lot of background reading on Khentkawes so that I can approach the archaeological material with as much knowledge as possible.
Well there are a lot of things that are wrong with the apartment I'm living in (no internet, only 2 minutes of hot water, no shower head, toilet doesn't flush etc) and we are going to go attempt to take care of said issues now.
Sorry for the delay in postings, I am safe and making it through, and per usual working on the picture posting situation.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Wednesday 2/27/08
Last night marked another sleepless one for myself, which was most unfortunate because I feel like it really did take away from how much I could have really absorbed and enjoyed my day at the West Bank. However, as I mentioned to Dan this morning, at least with the West Bank being the land of the dead, I seemed to fit in well with my zombie like state of mind. Again I took a lot of pictures, but the internet/blogspot is being really touchy about uploading my photos right now. I have a full description of the Luxor trip documented, and about half of Karnak written up, so as soon as I can attach the images those entries will be available. I really put a lot of time into editting all of my photos and writing out descriptions of them...even to the point that I used in text citations! Seriously, they are like mini reports so I hope everyone enjoys them, not that I expect you to read everything, just scope out what you think looks cool.
Back to what I was saying....so I only slept for about an hour last night, and then I got up to have breakfast and head down to the site where I was introduced to Kaneawi, my driver for the day. His english was pretty good and he asked me a lot of questions. We went to the ferry and sailed across the Nile. There were about 5 or 6 hot air balloons scattered across the skyline. Kaneawi said that he used to work on the hot air balloons...at least I think that is what he said. The trip across the Nile is really short, only about 10 minutes. Once we docked he drove me back into the high cliffs, the same place where I visited the Valley of the Kings. I really wasn't sure what his duties to me were for that day, but a lot of the sites are really spread out across the landscape. Usually people travel in huge tour busses. He was quite sweet and had already planned out, what seemed to me a pretty good agenda. He would drop me off at a site, park, and wait for me to come back before driving me elsewhere. We started at Deir el Bahri, home of Queen Hatepshut's Mortuary Temple. Recall that Queen Hatepshut is one of the more well known instances where a woman held the throne over Egypt. Though famous for this title, she was probably not the only woman that assumed the role of pharaoh in Egypt. It is really amusing...when walking around temples and sites, Egyptians will always approach women with information about Hatepshut...they will show you where she is depicted in reliefs and hieroglyphs and really play on the hype of a dynastic feminism...not that I really mind or anything, I think Hatepshut was pretty badass too. However, I was kind of disappointed with her Mortuary Temple...I know a lot of it was destroyed and most of what you see is restoration, but I still had high hopes...again, lots of hype. The images against the high cliff backdrop though, are phenomenal. It was a completely alternative way to visually command and overpower the viewer that deterred from the previous trends in pyramid construction. I was really excited to see the birth collonade (actually I have found that any room where there are birthing scenes throughout all temples and reliefs really intrigue me...which is ironic because i hate babies). The Birth Collonade for Hatepshut was particularly important in representing her justified royal and divine right to rule. Since women were not allowed rule as Pharaohs, Hatepshut had to prove divine origin to legitimize her position. Additionally in her reliefs, she is depicted as male. As I said, i was really excited to see these images, but they were just really difficult to make out and I really just couldn't connect with the story and history the way i wanted to.
After Hatepshut's Temple at Deir el Bahri, I went to the Tombs of the Nobles. So the other day I had visited tombs of the New Kingdom Kings when I visite the Valley of the Kings. Visiting the Tombs of the Nobles was a superb way of comparing afterlife preparations between the royal kings and the elite who worked for them. I really enjoyed the Tombs of the Nobles, not only because they were just rich in color and structure, and all very different, but also, no other tourists were there. It was just me and who ever was overseeing the tomb at the time. Because it was just me (and because I had extra money) I was able to take pictures when normally people aren't allowed to...but that is not all i got to do. Allow me to backtrack. So this morning after breakfast Richard hands me something. It is a headband with a big ole light on it. A lot of times I just take things and figure out what I'm supposed to do with them later. So later comes, and I enter the Tomb of Userhet, scribe for Amenhotep II. By now this is the third tomb I've seen, and I'm kind of getting ADD about it, so I just kind of glance around. I peak around to the blocked off tomb shaft. Jokingly I ask if there's a mummy in there. Usually all mummies and such are removed, either having been looted some time in the past, or are on display at the Cairo Museum. So you can imagine my surprise when the guard tells me yes. I tell him I don't believe him and the next thing I know, he's removing the chain that blocks the entry. He asks me if I have a light...without missing a beat i bust out the headlight that richard had given me. The next thing I know, I am literally army crawling through the underground passage ways of Userhet's tomb. Heat hangs on me as I continue to inch over the dirt and rubble. The space is narrow, extremely narrow...think of it from this perspective. I love this stuff...haha i totally "dig" it...I'm not claustraphobic at all, and dead bodies don't bother me...and even I was seriously considering turning around and foregoing this experience. It was that difficult for even me to handle at the time, so if any of those things get to you, this could have been your nightmare turned reality. It was a good 3 minute journey into the underground, which as you can imagine seemed much longer and then there it was...the dismantled mummy of Userhet. The linen wrappings undone and charred black. The skull looking straight up at us and the pelvis to the right. The tomb of Userhet had been burned by the Coptics. All of the items were removed from the tomb, but because the mummy had been taken apart and burned, apparently the museums had no use or interest in it. Where the body was located was not the original resting place however, We moved further to where the sarcophagus would have been and there was the intact spine, sternum and vertebra. It was absolutely unreal. So yeah..that probably goes down as one of the most awesome things I've done.
After that, I really didn't know what could top it, and true probably nothing could, but I did continue to be impressed with everything else I saw today. I went and visited the site of Deir el Medina, which is a worker's town kind of similar in function and idea to the site at Giza that my thesis research was based on. Also here is temple, which from far away just does not seem very impressive, basically just ruin...but I actually adored it once I was inside. Kamil mentions that most visitors skip over it because it does not seem nearly as lavish or magnificent compared to Luxor and Karnak and others, but that such a choice is most unfortunate. I would have to agree and am very glad that I chose to go see it (I too almost passed when I saw the lil hike involved). Rich in history, this temple encompasses both trends in Egyptian and Greccoroman style. Again when the internet isn't being a pain, I will post images.
So even though I continue to be pleasantly surprised..(you know at some point you start thinking, you've seen one, you've seen them all, or that your brain simply does not have any more room to really appreciate any other ancient monument, image, or artifact) I am really thinking I want to just stop for the day. Had I been with other people I think I would have been even more antsy and counting down the time until we could leave. But since I was by myself, I was better able to self check and gather my patience...and boy is it a good thing I did, because the next thing I visited is probably my favorite that I have seen in Egypt so far. Seriously...I wish I could have photgraphed every inch of this place, and even then I could not even come close to giving you a glimpse that does it justice. I was in awe. If you are in Egypt, and you ask me what I think you absolutely must see, I will say, "Do not leave until you have seen the Mortuary Temple of Ramses II, or the Ramasseum." I will definitely detail, at length, all the images once i can post them...hell maybe I will even do an entire entry on it by itself. The place was just COVERED in inscriptions and large (LARGE) scale reliefs. I just tried to look for a virtual tour of it online, but couldn't find one, but if there was one I would post it. Haha sorry this entry must just seem like a big tease...
The Ramasseum was my last stop and then I went with Kaneawi to his village to see his house and his wife. He lived in a mudbrick house where some rooms had open roofs, while others were covered. It was along a small canal with a vast farm of the greenest land behind it. I don't see this kind of green in the United States ever...but I haven't really been to many farmlands throughout it either. He invited me in to have tea. He showed me around his home, showing me pictures from his wedding album. His wife had just finished making soup and it was offered to me. Now...this is where I started to go into a foreigner's dizzy. First of all, I'm a vegetarian...but I also know that turning down food would have been an extremely insulting gesture...or to even begin to complain or be picky about food in such a poor area of the world, and such a poor area of this country, would have been dispicable on my part, so meat or no meat, I was going to eat it. But, nonetheless, I do ask how its made...naturally, rural Egypt soup making is not done by purchasing stock at the store so the first answer I hear is, "Oh you boil the water...." Water Water, oh crap, I''m thinking. I remember earlier, kaneawi point out to me how they got their water, via a man and a donkey-pulled, wagon carrying a huge metal apparatus resembling a gas tank. Not to mention, there is not a single bottle of water in this home. At the dig site, all you see are boxes and boxes of bottled water...but of course, people cannot afford to use bottled water ( I probably couldn't either if the water wasn't safe for me in the U.S.!). And if you grew up on the local water, the bacteria is not a problem...however for me, and anyone else who doesn't live in Egypt, it would be, which is why when you travel to places like Egypt, or Mexico etc, you aren't supposed to drink the water. I had no idea what to do...do I turn down this soup, and the tea I know is to follow, because the water could make me really sick? Do I disrespect this man who has spent the entire day driving me around, talking with me, befriending me...Of course I know the answer...the answer is no. The answer is eat the soup, drink the tea, tell the story whether it turns out ugly or not. Well, I do try and leave as much of the water broth as I can, to which Kaneawi says, "Oh make sure you drink this part, it's the best." Bottoms up. I do it. I did it...and I'll let you know if I'm puking my brains out two days from now. Later when I came home and told Richard, he assured me that I would probably be fine and that I did the right thing.
Once we finished tea and talking, Kaneawi brought me back to the ferry and I sailed home. I took a shower, and then a much needed nap. Afterwards, i decided to walk to the store to get some pop/soda/coke. There were no cold ones, but the store merchant said he would get some, so i sat in the store and talked with some of the other men in there about my inability to speak arabic. I had them help me with pronounciation until he came back. At first he tried to scam me on the proper amount of change and I refused to leave the store until given what was owed to me. He finally did, and then I went back to the hotel and practiced more arabic with the hotel clerk.
Then i came up stairs and started writing! Now I am going to go get some dinner. Upon my return I will retry with the pictures.
A note to my family: not that I expect e-mails everyday or anything, but KEEP ME POSTED ON THINGS TOO. Ahem...me reading Janel's ambiguous away message about the hospital inspired an onslaught of fear and worry, and even though I know she's okay, that's not very fair! I want to know things that are happening there too...that goes with everyone. Let me know what is happening, AS IT HAPPENS, in your lives, back in the states.
(as always, i abstain from proofreading)
Back to what I was saying....so I only slept for about an hour last night, and then I got up to have breakfast and head down to the site where I was introduced to Kaneawi, my driver for the day. His english was pretty good and he asked me a lot of questions. We went to the ferry and sailed across the Nile. There were about 5 or 6 hot air balloons scattered across the skyline. Kaneawi said that he used to work on the hot air balloons...at least I think that is what he said. The trip across the Nile is really short, only about 10 minutes. Once we docked he drove me back into the high cliffs, the same place where I visited the Valley of the Kings. I really wasn't sure what his duties to me were for that day, but a lot of the sites are really spread out across the landscape. Usually people travel in huge tour busses. He was quite sweet and had already planned out, what seemed to me a pretty good agenda. He would drop me off at a site, park, and wait for me to come back before driving me elsewhere. We started at Deir el Bahri, home of Queen Hatepshut's Mortuary Temple. Recall that Queen Hatepshut is one of the more well known instances where a woman held the throne over Egypt. Though famous for this title, she was probably not the only woman that assumed the role of pharaoh in Egypt. It is really amusing...when walking around temples and sites, Egyptians will always approach women with information about Hatepshut...they will show you where she is depicted in reliefs and hieroglyphs and really play on the hype of a dynastic feminism...not that I really mind or anything, I think Hatepshut was pretty badass too. However, I was kind of disappointed with her Mortuary Temple...I know a lot of it was destroyed and most of what you see is restoration, but I still had high hopes...again, lots of hype. The images against the high cliff backdrop though, are phenomenal. It was a completely alternative way to visually command and overpower the viewer that deterred from the previous trends in pyramid construction. I was really excited to see the birth collonade (actually I have found that any room where there are birthing scenes throughout all temples and reliefs really intrigue me...which is ironic because i hate babies). The Birth Collonade for Hatepshut was particularly important in representing her justified royal and divine right to rule. Since women were not allowed rule as Pharaohs, Hatepshut had to prove divine origin to legitimize her position. Additionally in her reliefs, she is depicted as male. As I said, i was really excited to see these images, but they were just really difficult to make out and I really just couldn't connect with the story and history the way i wanted to.
After Hatepshut's Temple at Deir el Bahri, I went to the Tombs of the Nobles. So the other day I had visited tombs of the New Kingdom Kings when I visite the Valley of the Kings. Visiting the Tombs of the Nobles was a superb way of comparing afterlife preparations between the royal kings and the elite who worked for them. I really enjoyed the Tombs of the Nobles, not only because they were just rich in color and structure, and all very different, but also, no other tourists were there. It was just me and who ever was overseeing the tomb at the time. Because it was just me (and because I had extra money) I was able to take pictures when normally people aren't allowed to...but that is not all i got to do. Allow me to backtrack. So this morning after breakfast Richard hands me something. It is a headband with a big ole light on it. A lot of times I just take things and figure out what I'm supposed to do with them later. So later comes, and I enter the Tomb of Userhet, scribe for Amenhotep II. By now this is the third tomb I've seen, and I'm kind of getting ADD about it, so I just kind of glance around. I peak around to the blocked off tomb shaft. Jokingly I ask if there's a mummy in there. Usually all mummies and such are removed, either having been looted some time in the past, or are on display at the Cairo Museum. So you can imagine my surprise when the guard tells me yes. I tell him I don't believe him and the next thing I know, he's removing the chain that blocks the entry. He asks me if I have a light...without missing a beat i bust out the headlight that richard had given me. The next thing I know, I am literally army crawling through the underground passage ways of Userhet's tomb. Heat hangs on me as I continue to inch over the dirt and rubble. The space is narrow, extremely narrow...think of it from this perspective. I love this stuff...haha i totally "dig" it...I'm not claustraphobic at all, and dead bodies don't bother me...and even I was seriously considering turning around and foregoing this experience. It was that difficult for even me to handle at the time, so if any of those things get to you, this could have been your nightmare turned reality. It was a good 3 minute journey into the underground, which as you can imagine seemed much longer and then there it was...the dismantled mummy of Userhet. The linen wrappings undone and charred black. The skull looking straight up at us and the pelvis to the right. The tomb of Userhet had been burned by the Coptics. All of the items were removed from the tomb, but because the mummy had been taken apart and burned, apparently the museums had no use or interest in it. Where the body was located was not the original resting place however, We moved further to where the sarcophagus would have been and there was the intact spine, sternum and vertebra. It was absolutely unreal. So yeah..that probably goes down as one of the most awesome things I've done.
After that, I really didn't know what could top it, and true probably nothing could, but I did continue to be impressed with everything else I saw today. I went and visited the site of Deir el Medina, which is a worker's town kind of similar in function and idea to the site at Giza that my thesis research was based on. Also here is temple, which from far away just does not seem very impressive, basically just ruin...but I actually adored it once I was inside. Kamil mentions that most visitors skip over it because it does not seem nearly as lavish or magnificent compared to Luxor and Karnak and others, but that such a choice is most unfortunate. I would have to agree and am very glad that I chose to go see it (I too almost passed when I saw the lil hike involved). Rich in history, this temple encompasses both trends in Egyptian and Greccoroman style. Again when the internet isn't being a pain, I will post images.
So even though I continue to be pleasantly surprised..(you know at some point you start thinking, you've seen one, you've seen them all, or that your brain simply does not have any more room to really appreciate any other ancient monument, image, or artifact) I am really thinking I want to just stop for the day. Had I been with other people I think I would have been even more antsy and counting down the time until we could leave. But since I was by myself, I was better able to self check and gather my patience...and boy is it a good thing I did, because the next thing I visited is probably my favorite that I have seen in Egypt so far. Seriously...I wish I could have photgraphed every inch of this place, and even then I could not even come close to giving you a glimpse that does it justice. I was in awe. If you are in Egypt, and you ask me what I think you absolutely must see, I will say, "Do not leave until you have seen the Mortuary Temple of Ramses II, or the Ramasseum." I will definitely detail, at length, all the images once i can post them...hell maybe I will even do an entire entry on it by itself. The place was just COVERED in inscriptions and large (LARGE) scale reliefs. I just tried to look for a virtual tour of it online, but couldn't find one, but if there was one I would post it. Haha sorry this entry must just seem like a big tease...
The Ramasseum was my last stop and then I went with Kaneawi to his village to see his house and his wife. He lived in a mudbrick house where some rooms had open roofs, while others were covered. It was along a small canal with a vast farm of the greenest land behind it. I don't see this kind of green in the United States ever...but I haven't really been to many farmlands throughout it either. He invited me in to have tea. He showed me around his home, showing me pictures from his wedding album. His wife had just finished making soup and it was offered to me. Now...this is where I started to go into a foreigner's dizzy. First of all, I'm a vegetarian...but I also know that turning down food would have been an extremely insulting gesture...or to even begin to complain or be picky about food in such a poor area of the world, and such a poor area of this country, would have been dispicable on my part, so meat or no meat, I was going to eat it. But, nonetheless, I do ask how its made...naturally, rural Egypt soup making is not done by purchasing stock at the store so the first answer I hear is, "Oh you boil the water...." Water Water, oh crap, I''m thinking. I remember earlier, kaneawi point out to me how they got their water, via a man and a donkey-pulled, wagon carrying a huge metal apparatus resembling a gas tank. Not to mention, there is not a single bottle of water in this home. At the dig site, all you see are boxes and boxes of bottled water...but of course, people cannot afford to use bottled water ( I probably couldn't either if the water wasn't safe for me in the U.S.!). And if you grew up on the local water, the bacteria is not a problem...however for me, and anyone else who doesn't live in Egypt, it would be, which is why when you travel to places like Egypt, or Mexico etc, you aren't supposed to drink the water. I had no idea what to do...do I turn down this soup, and the tea I know is to follow, because the water could make me really sick? Do I disrespect this man who has spent the entire day driving me around, talking with me, befriending me...Of course I know the answer...the answer is no. The answer is eat the soup, drink the tea, tell the story whether it turns out ugly or not. Well, I do try and leave as much of the water broth as I can, to which Kaneawi says, "Oh make sure you drink this part, it's the best." Bottoms up. I do it. I did it...and I'll let you know if I'm puking my brains out two days from now. Later when I came home and told Richard, he assured me that I would probably be fine and that I did the right thing.
Once we finished tea and talking, Kaneawi brought me back to the ferry and I sailed home. I took a shower, and then a much needed nap. Afterwards, i decided to walk to the store to get some pop/soda/coke. There were no cold ones, but the store merchant said he would get some, so i sat in the store and talked with some of the other men in there about my inability to speak arabic. I had them help me with pronounciation until he came back. At first he tried to scam me on the proper amount of change and I refused to leave the store until given what was owed to me. He finally did, and then I went back to the hotel and practiced more arabic with the hotel clerk.
Then i came up stairs and started writing! Now I am going to go get some dinner. Upon my return I will retry with the pictures.
A note to my family: not that I expect e-mails everyday or anything, but KEEP ME POSTED ON THINGS TOO. Ahem...me reading Janel's ambiguous away message about the hospital inspired an onslaught of fear and worry, and even though I know she's okay, that's not very fair! I want to know things that are happening there too...that goes with everyone. Let me know what is happening, AS IT HAPPENS, in your lives, back in the states.
(as always, i abstain from proofreading)
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