Dig Diaries updated

Saqqara Online

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Leiden University's work at Saqqara continues to be documented on the team's dedicated page, with ongoing work examining the tomb of Ptahemwia. The site was updated again on the 15th February 2008, and it continues to look very exciting:

Our fourth week of work around the tomb of Ptahemwia has been surprising and rewarding. Although last week we had thought that a pair of rooms leading south from Ptahemwia's subterranean antechamber belonged to a later shaft, we are no longer so sure. When most of this shaft's 8 meters had been cleared from below, we saw that it must pre-date Ptahemwia: its real aperture is about a meter below the level of Ptahemwia's courtyard. The cascade of mostly clean sand which poured down from it has flooded the rooms below, and so a few more days will pass before all pertinent details emerge. But from what can be seen of these other rooms now, they may have originally belonged to an earlier period as well. To complicate matters, we noted that the shaft in question had been reused up above our own level to lead to a Late Period burial complex. This complex had anciently broken through to yet another late complex, which in turn had broken through to yet two more complexes, one late and one (probably) from a New Kingdom neighbor of Ptahemwia still buried beneath the sand. By flashlight, our ceramicist Barbara instantly recognized a painted travertine sherd as New Kingdom in date—a singular fragment of beauty in a maze of rooms choked with bones, mummy dust, bits of wood, and pottery two and a half millennia old.

See the above page for lots more, with photographs.


Hopkins in Egypt Today

Don't forget that Betsy Bryan's team from John Hopkins University is back in action at Luxor, and their Dig Diary, complete with photographs, is available online with details for January and February so far. Here's an extract from the 15th Febraury:

The wall is coming down slowly but surely. Franck oversees the movement of each block as it is lifted by the winch. Blocks that are decorated and had been reused in the Twenty-fifth dynasty wall are placed on the cart to be moved to a mastaba. Those that are strong enough to be returned to the rebuilt wall are stacked next to the wall on the existing mastaba. Those that have no decoration and are disintegrated will fill subfloor areas within the temple. With the rapid removal of the wall by courses, new scale drawings must be made every couple of days. Chuck works to complete the drawing of Level 4 before its stones are lifted, and each block is numbered to facilitate Franck’s reconstruction of the wall. After the blocks are lifted, if there is decoration, an additional D-number is assigned to it, and Betsy keeps a description of any inscriptions and sculpted elements along with a list of the Decorated block numbers.