The Amarna Royal Tombs Project
- Dig diary 2002
by Paul Sussman
The Amarna Royal Tombs Project
I've just returned from a long, end-of-week walk over the Theban Hills - the week ends on Thursday here in Egypt, not Friday like in England. I am hot, sunburned and tired, so I'm going to keep this diary entry relatively short. (I also need to rush off to make a Valentine's day call to my wife Alicky - failure to do so would, I suspect, have severe and deeply unpleasant repercussions.)
It's been a different and altogether more sedate sort of day from what I've become used to this season. Normally I arrive on site and immediately disappear down into KV56 ("the Gold Tomb") or the Site B trench, there to remain for the rest of the day brushing and trowelling, finally emerging knackered, sweaty and plastered with dust.
Today, however, after a couple of hours moving rocks around down in the Gold Tomb, I was seconded to help Ed in the main magazine, where he is photographing and logging objects.
I should perhaps interpolate a brief explanation of how things work here in Egypt.
While we are excavating in the Valley we have a temporary magazine on site where we examine and store all our finds from that season, as well as all our equipment.
At the end of the season, however, all the finds are stored in boxes and transferred to a larger magazine just behind Howard Carter's old house, near the village of Dra Abu el-Naga, just outside the Valley.
This is where Ed and I went today to log and record the objects from the 2000 season. It was my job to look at each of the finds, describe them, note precisely where and when they had been found, and allocate them an object number - or at least the ones that didn't already have a number.
After a slight initial frustration at the cleanliness and lack of physical activity - I simply love getting filthy! - I really started to enjoy myself. Imagine it, sitting there handling pieces that would normally be out of reach behind glass in a museum. It was great.
Of course all the really important finds had already been dealt with by Nick, but it was still nice to examine at close quarters some of the beautiful things we have dug up - faience beads, the remains of a wooden shabti figure, fragments of gorgeous coloured glass.
I'd seen most of them before, of course, yet it somehow felt different touching and looking at them in the relative tranquility of a storeroom, where I had more time to absorb and appreciate them. Normally I only get to see things as they come out of the ground, when I am frantically measuring and levelling and filling out finds sheets. Today, at the risk of sounding like a New Age psychoanalyst, I entered into a wholly new relationship with the objects. Very satisfying.
Back in the Valley Ana and Mohsen continued to record and examine our new worker's settlement on Site B, while up on Site A the workmen have been making huge inroads into the mound of rubble at the south end of the site - they have now lowered the latter by almost 5 metres (16.4 feet).
The final thing to report is the arrival of a film crew from the Japanese TV company Tokyo Broadcasting System, who are sponsoring the dig this year. They insisted on filming me down in KV56 where I made a bit of a prat of myself explaining my pet theory that the stepped-back wall of the chamber was cut thus to divide the chamber into three separate areas for three separate coffins. It all seemed perfectly logical in my head. Talking out loud, however, it sounded faintly ridiculous.
Anyway, I'd better log off now and go and tell my wife how much I love her. See you tomorrow.
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