Thursday, May 31, 2007

Karnak excavation returns to Web for second time in 2007

http://www.jhu.edu/~gazette/2007/29may07/29briefs.html
"For the second time this year, Egyptologist Betsy Bryan and her crew will be sharing their work with the world via their popular online diary, a digital window into day-to-day life on an archaeological dig. Starting about Friday, June 1, and running through early July, visitors to Hopkins in Egypt Today at: www.jhu.edu/neareast/egypttoday.html will find photos of Bryan's group working on the second, shorter portion of Johns Hopkins' 12th annual expedition in Luxor.
Bryan will continue to explore the Egyptian New Kingdom (1567 to 1085 B.C.E.), known as the "golden age" of Egyptian temple building. This time, the team will include two graduate and three undergraduate students from Johns Hopkins, as well as several stone conservators. All the work will be taking place inside the temple with the graduate students conducting test excavations to study the sub-foundations. Major dismantling of temple walls in order to correct the effects of groundwater is to be accompanied by the removal of architectural elements in the name of Queen Hatshepsut that are buried under the present temple. This material was discovered in 2006 but must await the work to restore the temple walls before it can be retrieved. The undergraduates will draw pottery and small finds in an effort to ready the last six years of work for publication.
The exploration is made possible by an American Research Center in Egypt sub-grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The Web site typically garners more than 50,000 hits when the dig is active, most recently in January."
This is the complete item on the JHU Gazette web page. Good luck to the team - it must be very hard work at this time of the year, when most of the other missions have packed up and gone home due to the heat.


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