The Amarna Royal Tombs Project
- Dig diary 1999
by Paul Sussman
The Amarna Royal Tombs Project
I'm back in Egypt again! I can't believe that almost a year has gone by since the end of last season. Flying into Luxor this morning at 3 a.m. it felt as if I'd never really been away and the intervening ten months had simply been a dream, from which I was now waking up. God it's good to be back.
Nick (Dr. Nicholas Reeves), Geoffrey (Professor Geoffrey Martin), Peter (Dr. Peter Lacovara) and Yumiko (Yumiko Ueno, a New Kingdom glass specialist) flew in a couple of days ago to organize all the dig permits, the workmen etc. I arrived with Tony Poulston, who will be setting up the team's computers and databases; Tom Blackmore, who has helped organize the dig, and William Quarshie, who will be videoing this season's work (the brother, incidentally, of Hugh Quarshie - who, as any self-respecting Star Wars fan will know, played Captain Pernaka in 'The Phantom Menace').
We're all staying in the New Winter Palace again - oh the hardships of archaeology! - and having got our rooms organized the three of us sat out on my balcony watching the light come up over the Theban Hills. There was a deafening twitter of birds in the trees, and the distant wail of an imam calling the faithful to prayer. Directly beneath us the Nile slid slowly past, black and mysterious in the half-light of dawn. I felt an overwhelming sense of contentment and expectation.
We met up with Nick, Geoffrey, Peter and Yumiko at breakfast, and then, without further ado, all crossed to the West Bank to begin our first day of excavating in the Valley of the Kings.
The team is slightly different from last year. Jiro Kondo can't be with us due to commitments in Japan, so his place has been taken by another Japanese archaeologist, Shin Nishiyama. He is due to arrive in a week's time, as is Mohsen Kamel, who is excavating up at Giza. We have a new inspector, Ezz, who seems like a really nice guy, and also a new reis, Ahmed Abd el-Bassat, the younger brother of Nubi and Shahhat, who were with us last year. Again, he seems like a really good man, with the distinctively strong, handsome features of a typical 'Saidi' (native of Upper Egypt).
The season, which this year will last for six weeks, promises to be a really fascinating one. If you read last year's diary you will know that we discovered a row of what appeared to be ancient workmen's huts lined up along the face of the gebel between the tomb of Ramesses Vl (KV 9) and 'The Gold Tomb' (KV 56). This year we will be able to explore these in more detail, gaining vital information about the men who worked in the Valley more than three millennia ago. We also have permission to re-excavate KV 56, a shaft tomb discovered and cleared by English archaeologist Edward Ayrton in 1908, but which may still have important clues to yield about the Valley and its history (no-one actually knows who KV 56 was originally dug for). We will be looking to gain more information about the stratigraphy of the Valley (i.e., the various different layers of which it is made up), about how the Valley might have looked in ancient times, and about how our site ties in with other tombs in the area, And of course there's always the possibility - remote, as Nick never fails to stress, but a possibility nonetheless - of discovering a new tomb of our own. That of Nefertiti, perhaps? Or Kiya, the supposed mother of Tutankhamun? Who knows what might be down there. One thing's for sure - it's going to be a wonderful six weeks.
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