The Amarna Royal Tombs Project
- Dig diary 2002
by Paul Sussman
The Amarna Royal Tombs Project
So, our fourth season in the Valley of the Kings begins. As I always do on the night before work gets under way, I lay in bed into the early hours fantasizing about what we might find over the next few weeks. And as always happens when I have lain in bed into the early hours fantasizing, I woke up this morning feeling groggy and grumpy, and wondering what on earth it is I enjoy so much about a job that involves getting up at 5 a.m. and spending all day up to my knees in dust and dirt.
Mohsen and I have already been in Luxor for a week preparing for the start of the season (and, in my case, trying to lose a bit of weight).
The rest of the team all arrived last night. As well as old hands such as Professor Geoffrey Martin, Yumiko Ueno and Tom Blackmore, we have three new faces on the dig - Anna Tavares, a Portuguese surveyor and archaeologist; Andrew Lewsey, a British field archaeologist; and Dave Morcom, a cameraman (we will be filming the whole dig this year). All look like they are going to fit in well - i.e. they have a good sense of humour, don't take themselves too seriously, and enjoy drinking malt whisky late at night. The fact that they are all expert at their jobs is an added bonus.
The one downer is that Nick Reeves, the linchpin of the whole dig - he is the one whose theories brought us to the Valley of the Kings in the first place, and whose hard work got us out here this season - has commitments back in England. It won't be the same without him - and (needless to say) he's none too pleased to be missing out either.
Anyway, we all crossed the Nile mid-morning and drove up to the Valley of the Kings in a rickety old service taxi driven by a young man called Taib. Even though I have done this journey at least a hundred times before I still find myself overawed by the fabulous scenery - the smooth green-brown ribbon of the Nile; the crumpled orange curtain of the Theban Hills; the shimmering green fields full of onions and molocchia and sugar-cane. I can think of few other landscapes as dramatic and stirring as that around Luxor.
All the workmen were already in the Valley, waiting with reis Ahmed for our arrival ("reis" is the Arabic word for foreman). It was great to see them all again - Azab, Said, Abdul-Rahman, Sha-aban, Mohammed the Strong, to name but a few. It is amazing how deep a friendship can be formed on the basis of shared cigarettes and a few words of pidgin Arabic and English.
The main - indeed only - event of the day was the arrival from Cairo of a huge lorry with what looked like a giant Meccano set on the back. In fact, this is a do-it-yourself, 20-metre (65.6-foot) bridge, loaned by Kajima Corporation of Japan, who have just completed the new Suez Canal bridge. We will be setting up this smaller version in the middle of the Valley, thus allowing us to excavate underneath the tourist path, something we have been wanting to do since we first started digging. It took most of the day just to unload it - hopefully, tomorrow we can start the job of actually putting it together.
We knocked off about 4 p.m. and, as I always do, I ended the day by walking back over the hills to the Nile plain, standing for a while on top of the cliffs gazing down at the Ramesseum and the Colossi of Memnon, from that height no bigger than children's toys.
Back at the hotel I tried to curb my fantasizing tendencies and get an early night. Had a very curious dream about the Tomb of Tutankhamun concealing a larger, more spectacular tomb beneath. An omen? Or just the product of an over-active imagination? We'll have to wait and see.
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