The Amarna Royal Tombs Project - Dig diary 1999
by Paul Sussman


The Amarna Royal Tombs Project

Day 27, Thursday 18 November 1999

Another slow, fastidious, interesting, but not exactly drama-packed morning. Probably the most exciting thing that happened was that the shallow bowl that Yumiko excavated yesterday was carefully removed and taken up to the magazine for logging, cleaning and drawing. 

The south wall of the site has now been taken back another two feet, and the men were able to start digging down in the area of the 'sonar anomaly'. It has become clear that bedrock is at different depths in different areas of the site. Towards the back end a rock shelf juts out from the foot of the gebel. This stops abruptly about midway across the site, however, and the gebel plunges vertically down again, like a large step. Today we began digging down the front of this step. There was a brief moment of excitement when what looked like an opening started to appear in the gebel face. After further exploration, however, it proved to be just a natural feature.

'The gebel is playing games with us,' sighed Mahmoud, one of the workmen.

Shin has turned the magazine into his own little empire. He's one of the most organised people I've ever known, able to impose order on even the most determined state of chaos. The place has finds lying all over the floor, some washed, some waiting to be washed, all with little labels beside them so he knows exactly where they came from. He has plastic boxes full of ostraca and jar stoppers, piles of paper everywhere, and a large bowl full of muddy water in the middle of the room. He is mostly to be found behind his desk chain smoking, logging artefacts and applying preservative to the more delicate ones to stop them from disintegrating. Chiharu sits curled up on a bench like a cat, helping him.

The only notable finds today were a pair of small, bowl-shaped pits, side by side, with odd fragments of cloth, paint and organic matter inside them. What they once were is uncertain. I scraped out their contents and bagged them, recording all the while.

Worked stopped at 12.30pm so the men could be paid. I walked back from the Valley, over the hills to Deir el-Medina, and then along the road down to the ferry, stopping off briefly at the teftish to say hello to Mr el-Bialy.

Ahmed, our inspector from last year, has asked me to help him with his English lessons. He has a text book and wants me to read some of the passages in it into a tape recorder so that he can hear the correct pronunciation. I am more than happy to help, although the book he has given to me to read from is the most mind-numbingly dull thing I've ever come across. I suspect it's aimed at people who want to learn the art of technical translation rather than basic English since all the prose passages are taken from wholly obscure sources such as The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and Norman Schwarzkopf's Memoirs of the Gulf War (other fascinating topics include excerpts from The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade; Report of the Auditors of the Bank of Scotland; and a Draft Convention on The Law of the Sea). Ahmed has given me two 90-minute tapes to fill, which is going to be hard work. I started this evening and was bored senseless after just five minutes.

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