Wonderful things

January 25^th

I started a special project for Dr. Bryan today that included moving the good pieces of the Sekhmet statues that were found in the temple to the magazine and burying the bad ones. I supervised a handful of workers telling them whether the granite was to be buried or shelved. I’ll admit I felt pretty special supervising something on my own, but I love being part of the excavation and I missed that.

The extent of the pictures we could take at the Valley of the Queens

With only two days left I still had a few important things left to see. Tuesday we were supposed to go for donkey rides through the desert, but a lot of the grad students weren’t up to sightseeing with us (for most of the trip surprisingly)! Instead Michael, Marina and I went to meet King Tut and see the Valley of the Queens.

Me and Marina in the Valley of the Queens

Pretty flowers in the desert

It didn’t hit me until I left his tomb what exactly I had just seen. When Howard Carter was asked what he saw when he looked into Tut’s tomb he replied by saying, “wonderful things”, and this, this is what I saw. The tomb contained only one sarcophagus, his body, and a fantastically decorated wall, which to most is pretty lame. But apparently I’m not most people. I saw the room with its chariots, statues and furniture and I got to see him! I had just been inside the tomb that had given me such huge inspiration to become an Egyptologist and met King Tut face to face. I didn’t know what to say to him. Looking back, it must have looked like a scene straight out of the Goonies when Sean Astin meets One-eyed Willie. I introduced myself and said thank you. It’s not like he did anything different than the other kings of Egypt. In fact, he probably did way less, but his existence and discovery inspired the future of my own life, and for that he deserves at least a thank you.  For as lame as it is to admit, my eyes welled up.  All the pages of the books I’ve read are coming to life and it’s so hard to comprehend that after decades of dreaming about these experiences, I’m now living them. It doesn’t feel real.

In front of the Colossi

The Valley of the Queens was cool, especially seeing the skeleton of a fetus they found in the tomb. We even stopped for a picture with the Colossi of Memnon, but I still couldn’t get over meeting Tut. I don’t think I’ll ever get over that nor do I want to. For dinner we went back to our favorite restaurant on the West Bank to eat duck and shawarma. They had a live band playing and some little boys danced while we ate our second to last meal together in Luxor.

Duck! Fa-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra

I wish this pictures wasn't so blurry