Graduation 2017

As the sun began setting, we made our way across the Nile to the west for the last event of the field school – the graduation ceremony. We were joined on Abu Ghalan’s boat, Isis 2, by several members of the team: Hazem, Hassan, Yaser and his family, Owen, and Hilary, as well as the students living on the east, Peter, Nadia, Abd el Ghany, and Shaimaa and her family.

We were met at the ferry landing by our trusty driver Mohamed, this time needing a second car as we were so many. Arriving at Sheikh Ali, we found that a great central table had been set up for all of our guests near the lower terrace of the garden. This was ideal as it meant that we could take over this space as well for the purposes of handing out the certificates. Once everyone had arrived we began the official element of the evening, and alongside the certificates the students received a gift that Will and JJ had made for each of them, as well as the staff. From previous years’ experience we learned to do this portion of the evening first, to finish it before food and general chaos ensued. We invited Yaser to announce the names, with Hassan, Owen, and Hilary joining us to congratulate each individual student and Inspector. Though this may sound straightforward, it took a great deal of time organizing everyone to stand in the correct places and to agree as to what each individual needed to do. But once the first 2 or 3 recipients had passed the podium, so-to-speak, as with our field school it slipped into an effective and efficient process, though including a great deal of hilarity. At the end, JJ and Will presented Owen, Hilary, Hassan, and Yaser with a mug of their own, as a way of thanking them for their teaching, and Hassan was given a gift by the students, as a way of welcoming him back to his Luxor home.

Following one last group photo, the official business was concluded, so JJ shouted “let’s eat” and all and sundry returned to the central table where the food was beginning to appear. We were so many – 11 students, 6 teachers, 2 staff, 2 inspectors, 3 wives, 1 husband, 10 children – that they had to add an extra table for us! The restaurant staff coped with the numbers remarkably well, culminating in a delicious BBQ of superb chicken and spiced kofta with a mezza of salads, aish shams, rice, and potato tagine. The kofta in particular was so good that it was consumed en masse, leading to cries of “kofta tani, kofta tani,” though by the time more arrived the culprits had disappeared to smoke shisha in the lower terrace, away from the women and children. Not wanting her students to go hungry, JJ hand-delivered the plate down to them, where it was instantly devoured. By this point the group was breaking up and re-forming, babies being passed from one person to another, children running and playing, so that the family groups began to dissolve and it became harder to identify which baby belonged to which parent, a sure sign that the evening was a success and the students and families were relaxing and enjoying themselves in true Egyptian fashion, the love of children being the glue that holds Egypt together. Though still quite early, low-and-behold, we looked around and we had pretty much taken over the entire restaurant. The basbousa, Will’s favorite dessert, arrived and while the women enjoyed the dessert at the tables, the men were so preoccupied with shisha and laughter that they didn’t even realize it had appeared. JJ, knowing how disappointed Will would be if he missed out, hand-delivered a plate down into the shisha den. Abu el-Yazid, offering the plate to Will as guest of honor, was quite surprised to watch him began to disappear back up the stairs, thinking all 3 pieces were for him, and followed Will with cries of horror and outrage as he desperately tried to explain that it was the serving plate! In the end, Will only got one mouthful before Abu el-Yazid reclaimed the platter. The remainder of the evening is something of a blur, as people mixed, chatted, and laughed, and the children played at our feet, creating games and general havoc to their hearts content while their parents were otherwise occupied.

Before we knew it, the first of the students was needing to say good-bye, Sayed el-Rekaby, who would be leaving early the next morning to return home to his family in Aswan. Abu el-Yazid, needing to collect a new keyboard in Luxor, decided to accompany him. And that, as is so often the case at parties, set in motion the various departures. But as you will know by now, just as it is a time-consuming affair to say hello to our Egyptian students, it takes even longer to say good-bye. Amongst much hugging and kissing, and a few tears, Abu el Hagag rode away with his children on his motorcycle, and the rest of us loaded into the minibuses, with promises to keep in touch and see each other again next year, as cries of “sana gai, sana gai, sana gai” rang out from bus to bus. One bus went off into the villages of Qurna, while the other headed towards the river, dropping students off along the way, until all that remained was the same group that had come east earlier in the evening. Yaser and his family took one taxi, Shaimaa and her family walked, and Ayman collected the rest of us, and all were dropped off one-by-one, until only JJ, Will, and Hazem were left.

A wonderful end to a successful season.

Field School Week 3

Somehow Saturday morning we managed to arise, mostly ready for the work day. When we were picked up we discovered we weren’t the only ones still recovering – Saad had overslept and managed to arrive at Karnak only later in the morning. But somehow the rest of our students made it, on time, to the Karnak Lab to begin their final week of training with Hassan. Leaving them in his capable hands, JJ, Will, and Marco headed back to TT 110, picking up Hilary from Chicago House, and Owen from the west bank, along the way. It is a photography day at TT110, with Hilary and Marco working in the tomb while Owen worked under the tent. Hilary was experimenting with her newly developed RTI technique, catching details of cartouches, while Marco was taking photos for creating his 3D model of the tomb. Meanwhile Owen was creating screen-shot instructions as a teaching aid for the students so that they could work up and revise the models that they had begun to create on Thursday. The work was somewhat delayed by the arrival of Dr. Tamás Bács and one of his graduate students, whom we had initially seen walking up the gebel in such a deliberate manner we realized that they could not be tourists. Tamás had accepted JJ’s invitation to come and visit before beginning his own work at the tomb of Hatshepsut’s high priest of Amun Hapuseneb (TT67) and the adjacent TT65 of Hatshepsut’s overseer of the granary Nebamun, but usurped in the Late Ramesside Period. These tombs are just up the cliffside from TT110, and it was delightful to see Tamás again, and talk a bit about his work, and the work we are doing in TT110. Because of the late start, we stayed on site until 2:30, tired but having accomplished a great deal in terms of the photography.

 A view from TT110 up the cliffs towards TT65 and TT67

Marco at work inside and outside TT110

In many ways Sunday was a repeat of Saturday, but with just Hilary and Marco, as Owen had completed the instruction sheets. Hilary spent the morning finishing the detailed shots she was taking, while Marco carried on photographing for the 3D model of TT110, including the external courtyard and façade to put the tomb in its proper topographic context within the landscape of the gebel. Will walked him through the court, explaining what was modern, and what original so that Marco could better visualize what the facade looked like in antiquity based on the surviving architectural clues. Seeing as TT110 is a relatively small tomb, JJ and Will introduced Marco to TT41, where the students had spent time the initial week preparing their epigraphy plans, so that Marco could get a better sense of what was possible in a subterranean Egyptian tomb. Marco was yet again amazed as to what often lies hidden behind the rock-cut tomb facades that he had been observing around and above TT 110. Yet another example of the potential ancient Egyptian architecture offers for 3D modeling. By the end of the workday, Hilary had finished her work, and Marco realized he had just the rear room of TT110 remaining, but preferred to come back the following day to give him time to check what he had already done in case more photos needed to be taken. Also, our student Alaa had asked if Marco could look and see if it might be possible to create a 3D model of his tomb. TT108, which Alaa had begun to record at the end of our last field season, and completed between then and now. The tomb is small and unfinished, and literally under the tent where we have been having second breakfast, so it couldn’t be more convenient!

We had incorporated Owen, Hilary, and Marco into our working lunches at Oasis, which has been splendid as they have been able to brief us on their work in the tomb. They had not needed our help, expect occasionally to hold mirrors or block out the sunlight, clearly putting us into our place as props and accessories to the real photographic tomb action! The working day done and dusted, we had a particular treat in store for Sunday evening, knowing the Will’s good friend Liam McNamara, currently the Keeper of the Egyptian Department at the Ashmolean and Director of the Griffith Institute in Oxford, had completed a brief season at Hierakonpolis with Renee Friedman (see 2016 fieldtrip) and was passing through Luxor for one night only in order to catch the direct Luxor-London Egypt Air flight Monday morning (the same flight we will be taking in just a week!). The timing was so tight that he arrived at his hotel at 6pm, just long enough to get cleaned up before we whisked him away thanks to Ayman and his taxi, to our favorite Italian watering hole, Pizza Roma, where we could offer him dinner and a cold beer. It was marvelous catching up as well as comparing notes about our respective field seasons. Before we knew it, 2 hours had elapsed and it was time to deposit Liam back at his hotel, only to find that he was planning to meet another Hierakonpolis colleague for a drink – Xavier Droux, who was in Luxor leading a tour from the UK. Xavier left his glass of beer being guarded at the King’s Head Pub, an old Egyptological watering hole, to rush across the street and meet us in front of the Sonesta/St. George hotel for a brief reunion. JJ and Will called it a night, leaving the boys to it.

On Monday we went back to TT110, this time just with Marco to finish off all of the photography in the tomb and so that he could also take pictures for Alaa in TT108 to create for him a 3D model. Marco had finished in TT110 by breakfast, leaving plenty of time for Alaa’s tomb, or so we thought! Our breakfasts have become so famous, that we were joined by Ramadan and Ezz, as well as Afaf and her Inspector, our 2015 Inspector Esmaa. It was a lovely reunion, but led to so much chatting that we forgot that we actually had to leave early in order to join the team at Karnak for lunch since Owen and Hilary had agreed to come back to finish their teaching in the afternoon. Lunch proved to be something of a special occasion in that Shaimaa and Nadia had prepared a feast for everyone: tahina, gibna abyad, salat, minced meat béchamel, and homemade kunifa (squares of shredded coconut and honey) for dessert. It was truly delicious! The day was long but productive, and the students came away with a good knowledge of the digital photography process. That evening JJ had arranged for a dinner at Hazem’s so that the parents of a close friend, who are in Egypt on a Nile River cruise, could experience a home cooked, traditional Egyptian meal hosted by Hazem. Over dinner we fielded many questions about archaeological life and work in Egypt, and shared some of our favorite places to visit. Everyone enjoyed the evening tremendously.

Tuesday, being one of Marco’s last days in Egypt, we thought we had better let him actually visit Karnak Temple, instead of just looking at it from the back gate! Also, Will, JJ, and Hassan had agreed to give a lecture for the Scientific Department Center of Karnak, led by Moamen Saad, another of Will’s former students who is currently working on recording the Ramesside inscriptions at Gebel Silsila and whose work we visited as part of our field trip in 2015. The talk was meant for inspectors based in Luxor, and many from Karnak and Luxor Temples, as well as the Sphinx Avenue project attended. At the end of the talk, while we were receiving congratulations, we noted that Hassan was actually being interviewed for local Luxor television. Being innately shy, very much against his will, a media star in the making. Duty done, we had a late breakfast of what Hazem managed to save for us from our scavenging, locust-like students, and returned to the temple, providing Marco with a potted history of Egypt as it related to the development of Karnak. This was particularly pleasurable as we were seated in the shade of the hypostyle hall, making it even more apropos. The timing proved perfect as we rounded out the day with the Festival Hall of Thutmose III. Thanks to the morning lecture and word spreading throughout the temple, we were giving special permission to visit parts of the structure normally closed to the public. Celebrity does have its perks! But our work day was not actually finished as we had an extended staff meeting over lunch to discuss with Hazem, Sayed, Hassan and Yasser plans for the February-March season and to finalize the decision selecting which students would attend the new field school. Marco participated and made useful contributions regarding the photographic and photogrammetry aspect, which he had helped Owen and Hilary teach, and it seemed an opportune moment not only to thank him, but also to ask if he were willing to join us again next year as an official member of the team to continue in that role. He accepted readily, and we were all well pleased to welcome him to the team. Our “Visiting Scholar” had become a full-fledged team member with the new title of “Photogrammetry and 3D Creator” (see field crew page). Marco was spared the remaining 2 hours of the meeting so that he could go back to the hotel for a much needed nap. Karnak has that effect upon people! Finally finishing up the meeting at 6, thanks to Ayman closing the dining room, even by our standards this was a bit ridiculous to sit down for lunch and not leave until dinner! However, by the end we were all pleased with the decisions we made in terms of our selections and expanding the field school from 5 to 10 students, as well as incorporating the photographic and digital element more firmly in the teaching structure.

Hassan Ramadan giving his lecture on digital epigraphy  

By day’s end Tuesday Hassan had essentially finished his teaching, so on Wednesday Yaser came to the Karnak Lab to give the students some instruction in digitally inking pottery and object drawings. Leaving him to it, JJ, Will, and Marco headed west so that JJ could finish up business with the teftish, accompanied by Sayed and Hassan, while Will and Marco visited the Ramesseum. We re-grouped in time to visit Sayed’s tomb in Qurnet Murai, TT 362, an early Ramesside tomb that belonged to a high priest of Mont named Usermontu. It had been hidden under the local homes, and only exposed after the houses were removed and the debris cleared. As was often the case, the tomb had been robbed from the rear via passages from other tombs, but still contained mounds of intrusive bones and pottery from later occupation. Remarkably, the plaster painted walls, especially in the second chamber, are still extraordinarily well-preserved, and, by Ramesside standards, extremely beautiful. By now it was nearly noon, and being hot, dusty, and hungry we agreed to adjourn to Sheikh Ali for colds drinks and lunch. This was a treat for Marco, who had yet to experience the lovely garden environment of which the west bank archaeological community is so fond, and would not be at the graduation ceremony, which traditionally is held in the Sheikh Ali garden. Bidding a fond farewell we headed back to the east bank to have a rest before re-grouping for dinner. Since it was Marco’s last night, we thought it would be an opportunity to introduce him to Pizza Roma, which seemed an appropriate venue for saying goodbye to our Italian compatriot. Hazem, Sayed, Hassan, and Owen joined us, but Yaser and Hilary were unable to as they had previous engagements, so they said their goodbyes via telephone. We ended the evening by strolling through Luxor Temple, admiring the beautifully lit reliefs and statues, and giving Marco one last glimpse of ancient Egyptian architecture. Saying our goodbyes as we exited the temple, Marco was dragooned by Hazem and Sayed for one final stop for coffee and shisha at a local café. We will draw a veil over this and hope Marco made his flight in the morning …

Luxor By Night

Thursday marks the last day of the field school, and as is our custom the students were evaluated for their progress over the course of the school. This time, since Hassan did the digital epigraphy teaching, he also evaluated the students, taking the entire morning until just after breakfast. Once the evaluations were finished, we all returned to the lab so that Hassan could give the students some final points about digital drawing and inking. With final words of thanks and appreciation, a last group photo was taken in front of Khonsu Temple in memory of our time at the lab and the completion of the digital epigraphy course, and we walked out of the temple happy to have completed another field school, and sad to see our students go.

The graduation ceremony is tonight (Thursday evening) at the same site as in previous years – the garden of Sheikh Ali at dusk. Students, their families, and staff have all been invited for one last evening together, and inevitably more photos. Tune in next week for our last hurrah.

Abydos Field Trip

Friday dawned at the unusually early hour of 4:30am, earlier than even the call to prayer and the morning balloons. Will and JJ were picked up at 5:30 by Hazem and the large mini-bus he had organized for the trip, and the process began for retrieving each of the students from locations that Hazem had specified the night before. The students living on the east were collected initially, with the bus travelling in a very efficient manner to near enough their various homes so that we never had to turn round. Yaser was our last stop before making our way to the bridge leading across the river, which meant we could collect all the west bank students again closer to where they lived, picking up Abu el-Hagag last before setting off into the desert, only an hour later from when JJ and Will were initially collected. 

Our destination, as the students now knew, was to be ABYDOS. There are strong connections between the field school and Abydos in that many of the staff and students are from Sohag, the inspectorate within which Abydos is located – Yaser, Sayed, and Abu el-Yazid are all originally Sohagis, and there is a sense of shared identity among them. So it was as if the field trip was commandeered by the men from Sohag, with Abu el-Yazid giving a greeting and welcome to the non-Sohagi students immediately upon entering the bus, and Yaser, once he’d discovered how the microphone worked, providing a running commentary of the sites and sounds of Sohag as we approached Abydos. Thanks to the fact that we were travelling with our Egyptian colleagues we were able to make our way on the western desert road, which easily took an hour off of the length of the journey had we travelled on the Nile road. By the time any civilized person would have been getting up for the day, we had reached Abydos, just in time for a traditional breakfast at 8:30 outside the temple at Yaser and Abu el-Yazid’s preferred place. A long trestle table was set up, and we were packed in boulevard style as if it were Paris (without paying extra for the view!). Food began to appear almost immediately, including individual aluminum bowls with portions of fuul with oil, salad, gibna abyad, aish balady, and even omelettes sizzling in their blackened earthenware terrines, and crowning it all was the much heralded arrival of “old cheese,” meaning mish – we just can’t escape it! Hassan sent his fuul back, requesting it be prepared with zibda (butter) and not zeit (oil). We were all rolling our eyes, but once we tasted the result, suddenly the regular portions of fuul were abandoned and poor Hassan was serving his share of “fuul wa zibna” with everyone, because it was distinctly better – smoother, creamier, richer than what was originally served. So much so that he had to order another bowl for himself. The food vanished so quickly, the bread supply could not keep up with the necessity of dipping, and cries of “aish, aish!” rang from each end of the table, as the server scrambled to find enough, eventually just bringing it direct from the bakery so that it was still warm from the oven. Several of our greedy students burnt their fingers and lips on the bread.

Breakfast finished, chaos ensued as we gathered inspectors and escorts to make our way into the desert to the Shunet el-Zebib, the 2nd Dynasty funerary enclosure of Khasekhemwy, deciding to undertake the bulk of our desert hiking in the early part of the day rather than at high noon. Yaser led the way, with explanation provided by the local inspector, and Will’s former student, Hazem Salah, and Abu el-Yazid gave an excellent overview in English and Arabic with Hazem Salah providing more detail about the actual excavations. Marco was amazed when he realized that this hulking structure of mudbrick was in fact over 5000 years old, and the oldest surviving mudbrick structure in the world! Suddenly he was looking at the bricks with far more interest and respect.

The group meandered in and around the Shunet, taking multiple photos, before heading east and re-grouping in the ruins of the Osiris Temple dating to Ramesses III, but called locally the “monkey temple” because of the carved images of the baboons paying homage to the setting sun and the god Osiris. As JJ and Will explored, looking at the remains of the Osiride statues we realized that the mudbrick remains behind the temple were in fact the Middle Kingdom “terrace” of chapels lining the processional route of the god Osiris and one of the most significant aspects of the archaeology and history of Abydos, evidence of how the original landscape was tailored around the god and the needs of his worship with individual structures being constructed for dedicatory stelae in the Middle Kingdom. Suddenly, like Marco, we were far more impressed with the nature of the temple which we had initially dismissed as more Late Ramesside kitsch.

Piling back into the bus and driving along the edge of the village, we stopped at another Ramesside Temple, that of the better known, and much more well-preserved, Ramesses II, which Hassan Ramadan had helped prepare as a digital epigraphy publication for Sameh Iskander and Ogden Goelet at NYU. This temple has both the advantage and disadvantage of having lost its upper walls and roofs, which though leaving the architecture somewhat denuded provided wonderful light for viewing the Ramesside relief, much of which still contains its original paint. The students spread out only to be gathered by Hassan as he gave an excellent explanation of his work in Arabic on one of the best preserved interior walls. Leaving Hassan to his task, JJ, Will, and Marco explored the temple, looking at a variety of different aspects of ancient Egyptian iconography, especially that pertaining to kingship, the Two Lands, and the cult of Osiris. Marco photographed the monumental grano-diorite door-jamb and lintel as an experiment for 3D modeling. Seeing as the temple was complete at ground level, at least from the front pylon all the way to the shrines at the back with columns and partial walls, he could see it was an ideal structure for 3D modeling, a positive indication that such similar structures in Egypt held a great deal of potential for his PhD research.

The sounds of the mullahs reminded us of the call to prayer, and all of our male students adjourned to the nearby mosque with the understanding that they would rejoin us at the Seti I temple once their prayers had finished. What we hadn’t realized was that thanks to the fact that we had been gifted one of the inspectors from the temple of Seti, he could provide us with access into the normally closed Osireion. So before actually entering the temple, we (Will, JJ, Marco, Shaimaa, Nadia, and Peter) made our way down the perilous wooden steps to the subterranean reaches of the ancient Osireion, explaining all the while to Marco that we were actually entering the Underworld, as conceived in architectural form by the ancient Egyptians. By the time we had reached the bottom, we could see the advanced guard of our students appearing on the edge of the cliff-like surface above the Osirieon. Once they had made their way down the stairs, the combined group entered into the covered crypt-like chamber to the east of the Osirieon, the haunt of many bats leaving a distinctly slimy and squishy floor, in order to view the astronomical ceiling carved onto the triangular vault. Despite the ripe atmosphere underground, most of the group perservered and continued to explore the chamber, with the reward being glimpses of the more-than-lifesize figure of the sky goddess Nut on the ceiling and images of the sun’s travel across the sky. Eventually the fumes drove all and sundry back up to the surface and we staggered to the rear of the temple to enjoy the cool shade and fresh air while awaiting the remainder of our group to join us. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Shaimaa organized a very thorough group photo utilizing the sloping staircase at the back entrance to the Seti temple to place the students one-by-one as they staggered forth from the Osireion. 

Yaser joined us, just in time to be included in the photo, as well as to take some extra shots (Yaser took the one above), utterly disbelieving that we had only just arrived at the Seti temple and were not about to exit it. Lunch originally being scheduled for 1pm, and seeing as it was now 12:45, lunch was put back to 2pm to allow the students to explore the extraordinary chambers, chapels, and hypostyle halls of the Seti temple, one of the architectural masterpieces of ancient Egypt. We also took a moment to examine the famous “king list,” a list of royal names starting with first, King Menes, all the way to Seti I – 76 in total, leaving out some of those later considered anathema, like Hatshepsut and Akhenaten. It also provided the opportunity for a photo of the FS teachers, kindly taken by Marco. For the next hour the students wandered happily, marveling at the detailed carving, painted scenes, and cool, inviting interior of the temple. Marco continued utilizing the opportunity at Abydos to take additional shots from which to create 3d models to facilitate his research, as well as receiving an introduction into Egyptian architectural principles from Will and JJ.

Field School Crew in front of the King List

Gathered by Hazem and Yaser we were directed back to to the rear of the temple, retracing our steps to the Ramesses II temple, which was the shortest route to the adjacent house across the road where we were to have lunch. Upon passing through the door into the front room of the house, all was laid in readiness along two lengthy tables, a testament to Hazem’s organizational skills, As the students piled in and washed off the dust, the food, as if by magic, begin to appear from the kitchens, and all could sit down to a welcoming, traditional Egyptian meal of lentil soup, roasted chicken, rice, potato and aubergine tagine, and boiled potatoes in tomato sauce. Just what the doctor ordered after a long, hot, and dusty, though wonderful, morning of exploring Abydos. Only slightly behind schedule, we were able to relax over the meal and finish it off with tea, coffee, and soda, with a dessert of fresh fruit – according to Abu el-Yazid, the special “small, but effective,” Abydos bananas, which, we must say, were particularly delectable!

Our impatient bus driver, honking noisily from outside the door, reminded us that the day was coming to an end and we had to make our way back upon the road towards Luxor. Not being able to immediately take the desert road, we were provided with a military escort to the main river road. But fortunately, thanks to the opportune intervention of Yaser and the bus driver, we were able to back-track at first opportunity to the desert road and resume our journey south, only adding about 45 minutes to the trip. The return journey was raucous, to say the least, driving the girls out from the back to the front to get farther away from the noise, until eventually the batteries in the boys in the back of the bus ran down and an exhausted quietude took over for the rest of journey. Finally we recognized the Qurn looming over the desert and we realized we were home, though not yet back. The students were dropped off one-by-one in reverse order from how we had begun the day, until eventually, crossing the Nile to the east, JJ and Will were the last to be left on their stoop and Hazem retreated into the distance with the massive minibus. Although only 6:30pm and 11 hours since we had been picked up, it felt more like midnight, and while exhausted doesn’t even begin to describe it, we were also happy, well-fed, and pleased that the students had enjoyed such a wonderful day thanks to Hazem, Yaser, and Abu el-Yazid, as well as the inspectors at Abydos who had taken time on their day off to welcome us all with such generosity and kindness.

Bidding farewell to the west