The JHU team return to the Temple of Mut

Hopkins in Egypt Today

JHU are back in Egypt at the Temple of Mut and are blogging as reliably as ever, with lots of photos.

In January 2011 Dr. Betsy Bryan returned to the Temple of Mut precinct in Luxor, Egypt with nine Johns Hopkins students. For the past four years excavation has focused within the temple itself and around the perimeter of the sacred lake, called the Isheru. This year Dr. Bryan and her team returns to the area behind (south of) the lake where between 2002 and 2006 industrial areas for baking, brewing, faience and ceramic production, were discovered. The area behind the lake contains a large open area without standing buildings. At the far south where the mud brick temenos wall separated the precinct from the secular city of ancient Thebes an area was investigated in 2004-05. In 2005 Dr. Elaine Sullivan identified a 25th Dynasty storage building of mud brick in the vicinity. This year work continues to the east of this area, beginning where a slight rise in ground level exists. Likewise excavation squares are placed directly south of the industrial area excavated earlier.