Days 4 & 5

Cleopatra comin' atcha!

Day 4 (Jan 5) was another day at the site and was freezing. I made myself useful setting up the units since I fear I won't be doing much on site. Luckily my experience in Peru came in handy! Throughout the day, not suprisingly, we found LOTS of pottery. It's so funny for me because finding anything at all was exciting in my past digs. Pottery is one of the most ubiquitous materials found at a site, so many archaeologists find it annoying considering how much time it takes to document. I never understood that until now. Here, a few scratches of the earth with the trowel unearths more finds than what we found during all 5 weeks we were in Peru.  I learned what slag looks like and am trying to learn words of artifacts (mostly materials) in arabic.

I was a little upset today because it's hard to watch other people do work. Feeling useless is not the best feeling in the world, especially after getting to do ALL the work in Colorado and Peru. Now I don't even get to take notes or even step in the trench! I live to feel the dirt in my hands and the excitement of finding things for myself, but Egyptian soil reveals amazing finds. Luckily one of the grad students actually let me do a few things. Definitely something to think about for the future. I would love to tell all of you what finds we are discovering over the blog, but I don't want to break any rules. You'll all just have to wait until I see you.

the Streets of Luxor

I woke up extremely happy day 5 (Jan 6) and the day got better as it progressed. Today at the site some amazing artifacts were found and features of the units started to really be visible. I also learned how to use the level machine which I've never known how to do. I've also learned a lot by watching and asking lots of questions. The grad students know a lot and I'm lucky that they're willing to help me learn. I've continued my bone finding skills in Egypt without even being in the trench! I pointed a few out to the gufti who missed them and he smiled and gave me a thumbs up. He's such a cute old Egyptian man with an amazing grey Ali Baba moustache.

After we got back, most grad students took a nap, but considering (in my opinion) we don't do much of anything on site AND the fact that we're in Egypt I decided to go to Luxor temple again. Exploring a site never gets old to me and why wouldn't I try to become as familiar as possible while we have free all access passes to places we live right next to?! Theres so much to take in between architecture, art, and writing, among other things. I love how Luxor temple reminds me of the Coricancha. A mosque was built on top of the temple just as a Spanish church was built on top of the Inca temple. There are some obvious and major differences, but I always love a good palimpsest. One of the grad students, Marina, came with us and it really is amazing how much she knows all from reading books. She buys books to feed her mind like she buys food to feed her body. It's extremely motivational.

Horus flying over Luxor Temple

For dinner we were invited to ARCE (American Research Center in Egypt)'s holiday dinner. It was basically another shmooze fest with a lot of important people and I got to see one of my Middle Egyptian (hieroglyph) professors, Dr. Jasnow. A French team who is also working at Karnak was also there, and it was interesting to talk to them because they are excavating for 6 months, not 1. The dinner was on top of ARCE's roof which overlooks another part of the Avenue of Sphinxes, which at the time were lit up. I got to try a nice array of Egyptian food and I must say I really enjoy most Egyptian dishes. After, we went to a karaoke bar that has a small pool and live stork. While I enjoyed myself, I'm having a hard time adjusting to the amount of cigarette smoke I'm inhaling daily so I went home a little early. We are off from work tomorrow and are planning on going to the West Bank!