Those of you who have been following the blog may have
noticed that there has been a slight interruption in publishing the events of
the 5th, and last, week of the field school. We apologize! But as you can image
with JJ’s family arriving events overwhelmed us, and Friday was the last
opportunity to keep up-to-date, so that reporting on the subsequent week and
graduation has been delayed until now.
JJ spent the remainder of Friday with her family at Hazem’s,
and Will spent the morning working at Chicago House and then partook of the
lunch, having to eat JJ’s share of the koshari, as well as his own! Will spent
the afternoon with Marco going over the RTI photographs that Marco had taken
and discussing the remaining plan for the photographic work. In the early
evening we re-joined and JJ and Will played tour guides for the family and
Marco at the Luxor Museum. After the museum, all that culture demanded that we
de-camp to an ice cream place with a magnificent view of Luxor Temple so that
everyone could indulge in shakes, coffees, and colas. The hit of the evening
was the strawberry frappe, which the adults were amazed was actually made of
strawberries, and not syrup! After drinks were had, we headed over to visit the
illuminated Luxor Temple after dark, where, for whatever reason, Hazem, Sayed
and Marco obsessed about who was the tallest, and demanded a photo be taken in
order to document the event. Though in fact Marco cheated a bit by standing on
his tip-toes, so the result was invalidated! This gives you some idea of the
silliness that had begun to overtake the project.
View of Luxor Temple from Aboudy Cafe
On Saturday, while Hassan resumed teaching at the lab, Will
went with Marco and Hazem to TT110 to continue photographing in the tomb, and
JJ took her family on a trip to Aswan for 3 days. With that day’s completed
work, Will and Marco were free to join JJ and her family in Aswan a day later, for
an end-of-season trip to Abu Simbel. The afternoon was spent at Hazem’s with a
meal provided by his mother for all the boys: Will, Marco, Hassan, Sayed, and
Hazem. It was a lovely opportunity for them all to get together over a working
meal before Marco and Will left the next morning on the train to Aswan.
The TT110 Team heading west, minus Mudira
On Sunday, Will and Marco broke their journey in Kom Ombo on
the way to Aswan which allowed them to meet Will’s old friend Ana Tavares, but
also our former student Sayed el-Rekaby who has been working on the de-watering
project and currently is the inspector for the Austrian mission working at the
Kom Ombo tell. Sayed did us a proud by giving an excellent and insightful tour
of his work as well as the temple’s archaeological history.
Over the next several days Hassan carried on teaching the
students digital epigraphy, with Yaser joining forces on Monday to provide a
session on digitizing object and pottery drawings. Hassan was also able to
bring the students out of the lab for a really useful exercise in the
blockyard, showing them something of the epigraphic problems they would
encounter when trying to digitally draw from photographs. It allowed the
students to truly appreciate the difficulties of working directly from photos
of large-scale relief blocks.
On Monday the Aswan group spent several hours touring the
fabulous temples of Abu Simbel, leaving just enough time after our return to
Aswan for the guys to see the Old Kingdom town and Ptolemaic temple on
Elephantine, whereas Marco and Will slipped into the Nubian Museum, and JJ and
the little ones relaxed poolside, before needing to head to the train station
to catch the train back to Luxor. Various and sundry adventures were had in
order not to miss the return train, which included convoluted taxi rides,
joining the parade for the prophet Mohammed’s birthday, and commandeering a
horse carriage. Unbelievably all three parties met in the tumult which was the
Aswan railway station with 10 minutes to spare in order to find the correct
carriage on the correct train going the correct direction!
In the midst of the parade
Safely back in Luxor, on Tuesday Marco, Will, and Hazem
resumed photography in the tomb, awaiting JJ and her family. Arriving just before
breakfast, in classic Egyptian fashion, JJ took the opportunity to give her
family a tour of the work in TT 110, after which we could all take a break and
introduce the family to the joys of tamayya, fuul, eggs, potatoes, aubergine,
and karkaday tea. A delicious meal, and our last on the west, was had by all!
While Marco and Will went back to work, Hazem, JJ, and her family were last
seen making their way over the ridge heading down into the valley of Deir
el-Bahari, madly coating themselves with sunscreen, since visiting Deir el-Bahari in the afternoon is not recommended! It has to be one of the hottest
places on earth, or at least it feels like it. Marco magically finished the
last photographic detail for JJ literally with minutes to spare so that he and
Will were able to call it a wrap at exactly 1pm! Marco admitted that now that
he’s taken on American punctuality, he might not be allowed back in Italy, or
at least his friends will tease him for always being on time.
Later in the afternoon, at 4pm, everyone re-grouped at the
ferry for a planned sunset boat ride on the Nile as a kind of thank you on
behalf of JJ to the staff and their families, giving them an opportunity to
meet her family. Sayed and his family, Yaser and his family, Hassan, Hazem, JJ
and her family, as well as Will and Marco all crowded onto the boat to enjoy
pastries and beverages, and we all settled in for a lovely cruise up to the
infamous “Banana Island”, turning to make our journey back as dusk fell. The
kids all had a riot, playing games, and eventually ending up on the roof of the
boat, nearly giving all the parents heart failure. But, fortunately, the gods
were smiling and all of the children returned safely to their parents’ arms by
the end of the evening. In fact, the evening had been so pleasurable and the
children had all had so much fun, the grown-ups decided why call it a night.
So, although Sayed and his family had to return home, Yaser and his family were
able to join us for dinner at Pizza Roma. Piling into several taxis, when we reached
Pizza Roma we virtually took over the entire restaurant! But, Pizza Roma rose
to the challenge and we all were able to sit between 2 tables, though this did
not stop the children from roaming about, playing, and sharing their pizzas. As
became clear, all children everywhere love pizza!
Although Tuesday evening felt celebratory, it was not actually the end of the field school – we still had one more day! On Wednesday Hassan provided the individual evaluations of each of the students at Karnak Lab, where Will and Marco joined him. Meanwhile JJ and her family toured through Karnak for the morning, re-joining the field school for, you guessed it, second breakfast! This time instead of the usual fare we had a special final breakfast of fatir with sugar cane molasses, tahina, honey, and gibna abyad spread out over the table so that all could share. Yet another Egyptian delicacy and tradition JJ was able to introduce to her family – tearing off pieces of the flaky bread and dipping them into the various condiments, and finding that it was almost impossible to stop eating! Meanwhile, unbeknownst to JJ, her youngest son Declan had begun to excavate underneath the table, removing his shoes (but for some reason not his socks!) in order to get a better feel of the Egyptian earth, thus showing himself to be a budding “dirt” archaeologist. A real chip off the old block You will not be surprised to hear that after breakfast group photos were required, so the students and teachers posed outside the Lab for some final shots. Once this was done, JJ’s family was invited to join in for a few more photos.
Hassan having, amazingly, kept strictly to schedule, after
the breakfast and photos there was plenty of time for the students to return to
their homes to get ready for the graduation celebration which was scheduled for
the same evening at Sheikh Ali / Marsam.
Seeing as the graduation ceremony involves so many photos,
we will provide an additional blog entry to document this event, so stay tuned
for the graduation ceremony celebrations!
