Excavations in the Valley - the tombs

http://www.algomhuria.net.eg/gazette/5/
The Egyptian Gazette website, which was last updated on Wednesday appears to be back up and running. They are running part 1 of a piece by Zahi Hawass, in his usual slot. As usual, the whole item is reproduced here:

"In 1999 I took my team to Bahariya Oasis, for our first season of excavation. We were to stay for three weeks, until it was too hot to work in desert. We settled into the El Bashmo Lodge, a cottage-style hotel with a family feeling.

The first day we walked the site collecting artifacts, such as pottery shards, bones and old glass which were littered across a three hundred yards to the south of the Temple of Alexander the Great. From this survey I estimated that the cemetery could be four miles square. The next step was to dig a trench and establish boundaries of the site. The architects mapped out a grid of the entire site into ten metre squares. Each of the six hundred identical squares was then assigned a number and an archeologist. One square contained Tomb 54, to which Mansour Boriak was assigned. During this season, Tomb 54 proved to contain forty-three mummies in two burial chambers. The mummies were stacked in niches cut into the wall on mastaba (bench-like) platforms. We concluded that this tomb was used by one family over many generations.

For three weeks we had the same routine. We got up at 5:00a.m., had breakfast, and left for the site at 6:00a.m. so that we began digging at 7:00. During the day, the local workers created a cheerful atmosphere by signing and singing with each bucket of sand they carried from the tomb. The work was intense, and my team worked diligently. We had no idea what the next shovel of sand might revel.Soon the rim of sloping shafts emerged, and then a few stairs leading down about ten feet, then flat earth. We had reached the floor of another tomb and staring out at us was a beautiful golden face. It was amazing! It was as if we were seeing the mummies being reborn to life. What other discoveries did these sands".