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


The Amarna Royal Tombs Project

Day 30, Sunday 21 November 1999

Bit of stress out in the trench this morning. We were extending our sondage (trench) eastwards down the face of the gebel, and for a while the workmen were beavering away in three different grid squares at the same time, going through feature numbers like a dose of salts, leaving me and Yumiko struggling to keep up with what was happening where, and which finds were coming out of which particular levels. At one point, finding myself with four different things to do all at the same time - measure the position and elevation of a new ostracon, write out new feature slips for finds boxes, keep things recorded in my diary, fill in feature sheets - I lost my cool and shouted: 'For God's sake!' 

Anyway, things improved during the latter part of the morning when the workmen concentrated their efforts solely to the south of the central site grid line, and we moved downwards through a clear succession of layered feature numbers. Three ostraca were found. The first had just a few lines on it, tapering towards a point. The second was a small round ball of chert, bearing a name, in hieratic: Amenemope. This means 'The God Amun is in Opet', which is appropriate because today and tomorrow is the Feast of Abu Hagag in Luxor, which is directly derived from the ancient Egyptian Opet festival. The last ostracon, and the one that made the day for everyone, was a wonderful cartoon depicting a skeletal figure with an enormous penis. It was incredibly clear, if simply drawn, and was, according to Nick, absolutely unique. All the workmen stood around looking at it, giggling.

Mohsen wasn't at all well today. He seems to have some sort of flu, and spent most of the morning sitting on top of a rock staring at the site as though in a sort of trance. I've never seen him ill before. Only a couple of weeks ago he was telling us that he hadn't had an illness for over six years. It's the Curse of the Pharaohs!

Work finished at 1 p.m. again. After we'd packed up Ian and I walked back over the hills towards Deir el-Medina. En route we stopped off at KV 39, which I had visited a couple of weeks ago but had not dared enter on my own. Accompanied by Ian, however, I felt a lot braver (although I was still a bit concerned about there being snakes down there) and, using a small torch to light our way, we plunged inside. It was really exciting. No-one ever goes in there, and there is no lighting or anything - at one point we turned off the torch and were encased in a velvety, impenetrable blackness, thicker than any blackness I have ever known. A long, steep, rubble filled corridor leads downwards into the bowels of the earth. After a descent of some two to three hundred feet we came to the burial chamber, which was so full of silt and flash-flood wash that you could only enter it on your hands and knees - again, I was rather worried of putting my hand on a snake or scorpion. It was a small room, undecorated, with a huge crack across the ceiling - Ian was slightly concerned the whole thing might cave in on us. We stayed in there a few minutes, studying the stone-work and taking pictures of each other, and then ascended again. I felt invigorated by the adventure, like Indiana Jones. There was something really evocative and exciting about descending into an abandoned pharaonic tomb, crawling through pitch blackness into a small burial chamber half filled with rubble, always at the back of your mind the possibility that the roof might cave in, or there be cobras down there. When I emerged I felt quite heroic.

As I mentioned before, it is the feast, or 'moulid' of Abu Hagag in Luxor today (and tomorrow). This is a wonderfully colourful occasion commemorating Yusuf Abu el-Hagag, a 12th century Moslem sheikh and holy man who was born in Damascus and eventually settled in Luxor. For several days now people have been erecting sweet stalls along the roadsides, and little carts have begun trundling round laden down with shiny tinsel-covered hats. Tonight there were huge crowds in town, not seeming to do very much, just wandering around, looking at the brightly-lit roadside stalls, eating sweets and nuts, drinking coke, laughing. Outside the mosque were a group of zikr dancers - two lines of men swaying back and forth, dancing themselves into a religious trance, whilst in front of them a man sings religious verses to a backing of pipes and drums. A large crowd was gathered watching them as their sweat-drenched bodies swung to and fro, their faces frozen into smiles of religious ecstasy.

'This goes back to the very beginning,' said Ray Johnson, the director of Chicago House, who we bumped into beside them. He was right. There was something about their fervour, something ancient, something that harked back to, and recaptured, the mysterious, dark, mystical nature of original faith.

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