KHD April 2025 - DIG DIARY
Day 1
We have returned to Kafr Hassan Dawood for the 2025 season and are staying in a house full of loud cats, overlooking the site. There are also a lot of amorous frogs, a very loud donkey and a duck that 'laughs' in the middle of the night! The site, however, makes up for all these creature discomforts. We have already opened up two new trenches and are working from 7 am to 2 pm, with a half hour break for breakfast. The afternoon is spent analysing the remains and writing up the results. It's exhausting but I wouldn't be anywhere else.
Day 2
Hello and welcome to day two. It's our day off and so we were able to lie in bed for a luxurious extra hour, before having traditional Egyptian breakfast and shooting off to do all of the boring chores that somehow get overlooked when Indiana Jones is invading temples and carrying off gold statues!
Day 3
Full day in the trenches. Dropped down another 20cm over most of my square and assiduously avoiding Islamic graves dating to a century of two ago. Now we have hit the floodplain which dates back to a little over 5000 years ago, on which the inhabitants lived, worked, died and were buried. There are shadows in the sediments denoting disturbances and (if we are lucky) interments, complete with their possessions and cultural markers, which are going to shed light on this difficult and enigmatic period.
Day 4
Blisters! Had a fas (sort of a pickaxe) race with one of the workers. Even though I won, I don't have much skin left on my hands! Work continues apace and we are happy to announce the finding of a grave that was uncovered in the 2022 season and remains to be completed. It dates to around 2900BC and has previously yielded a large range of objects, including (oddly) a pig tooth! What was it doing there? Nobody knows. But maybe the grave will be able to tell us. I am the proud owner of tan marks for the first time in ages. I have missed fieldwork!
Day 5
Amorous frogs croaked all night and kept me awake, as did the muezzin squawking from a nearby mosque (a bad recording of a muezzin, actually). Trench two now has a large mud bank denoting the original floodplain, and a series of small roundish to rectangular cuts that represent graves! Used GIS to locate a further, larger grave (1183) that we found last time we were here, and which contained twenty-plus pots, and started to take it down. The pottery person tells us its early Old Kingdom, so maybe 2800-2900BC? Not too shabby. Abandoned my hard man excavation kick with the men and reverted to digging bones – this is after all what I do! I am about to turn in and its not even nine yet. Ridiculous.
Day 6
Squiffy after last night’s chicken dinner so Claudia and I lay about eating dry toast and looking pale and interesting all day long. The laughing duck and the amorous frogs and the high-volume donkey did their best to make the night impossible. So much for the daring archaeologists, laid low by the chicken of death! Indiana Jones and the Chicken of Death? Must have missed that one. Worked out that despite the seemingly low wages we are paying the men is about a third more than the usual wages they receive…
Day 7
Trench 3 starts to produce bones! I leave Claudia with the Old Kingdom grave and go to investigate;
The fragments were no big deal but nearby was a contracted burial of a tiny little person…I will work out her (?) height later…who was adorned with more jewellery than we have had at the site so far in my experience PLUS copper! The site was meant to be a copper production area but this is the first time I have seen any here (they found more in the 1990s). By its ankles are the remains of a pot, three stone bangles [and, it later transpired, the remains of 2-3 other ones made of ivory or bone], a metal strip and the remains of maybe 3-5 strings of beads made from shell, ?ostrich eggshell, carnelian and perhaps obsidian. Brought the Pottery Hobbit in to assist in the excavation – her first burial so slightly nervy. Nevertheless, did very well although she did point out that “pottery is more by cup of tea”. My iPhone blew up expensively…and it is only two weeks old. Strand iStore – I am coming for you.
Day 8
Phone still dead. Spent the entire day excavating layer after layer after layer of 5000 year old stone, shell and bone/ivory jewellery from the pile by Burial 1200’s feet. Scored as female on the basis of skull morphology…there is no pelvis left…and the teeth and cranial sutures (again, not ideal) say she is probably in her 30s. Femur was small at around 37cm, providing height estimates ranging from 140-151cm depending on what assumptions you make. So a pretty tiny person. But an important one – beads are now well over 100, and the amount of work needed to make them is spectacular. Seemingly healthy insofar as bones can tell us although 90%+ of all afflictions leave no bony trace. Further beads were found by the head, neck, in the chest area and in the sediments around it. Mohammed the carpenter turned up and told me that my name in Arabic registers as Hassa, which means handsome man. Modesty forbids…!
Day 9
Well over 200 beads – the Pottery Hobbit (a little hung over) and I took it down further but still no end in sight. As many as seven bangles, and at least two of these could be ivory. Hippo or elephant ivory? Remains to be seen! The day was perfect for digging – almost cold, in fact, with big banks of grey cloud rolling across the sun, shafts of light illuminating the eternal yellow darting dace of the bulbuls (birds) that roose and soar and dip from the telephone wires to the trees to the bug-rich dunes, flashes of brilliance that look like flickers of sunlight against the drear backgrounds. In the afternoon headed for Cairo and the Polish Centre and thence to Zamalek where I had a luxurious night on an actual bed for once. Found out that to fix my phone would cost about £350 (equivalet to avout half a year’s salary for the average Egyptian…) and went to the Khan el Khalili market, qhere I first went in 1993, and its as insane now as it was then. Went down Mosque Street to the silver shop where climbing the tiny stairs to the next floor and demanding to see “the box” beings you to an Aladdin’s cave of old silver, twinkling and clanking in the harsh light, picking through the bags with increasingly dirty fingers, a haze of cigarette smoke, the TV in the background, offers of tea... Koran canisters, big spiky beads, tiny anklets for teen brides…there is no better Egyptian souvenir. Got a cab from Bab Zuwayla and collapsed gracefully into bed.
Day 10
Slow start but I still woke up at 6am…one gets in the habit. A slow breakfast, a lot of tea for me and coffee for Claudia – who is powered by espresso – and went to the Nomad store in Zamalek (where we bought Pottery Hobbit a camel), we went to various trade and craft shops, we had lunch at a rather bizarre place called Café Bucharest, themed along the general appearance of John Lennon, or possibly Jimi Hendrix, or maybe Jim Morrison of the Doors. Ran across an expensive place called Loft that has excellent craft and decor items, includibg a lught I lusted after that cost 12000LE (about £200). Wedged ourselves into the truck and an hour and a half later were back in the boondocks…the laughing duck was happy to hear us…he seems to be sitting in an echo chamber…
Day 11
Brilliantly left the card out of my camera and took nonexistent photos all day. The heat seems to be getting to me. I returned to crazy bead lady – we are up in the hundreds now – and worked on my catalogue of Mohammeds as there are at least a dozen working on the project and it’s very hard to keep track of them all (they include Mohammed gums, Mohammed water-buffalo cheese, daft Mohammed, and Mohammed good-with-a-shovel). Distracted by incredible discovery of several mother of pearl diamond-shaped plaquettes among the beads. I’ve never seen anything like them before. They’re wafer thin and incredibly fragile; they have two holes in them so they were probably sewn to clothing. Took hours to expose and lift. Passed them to the palpitating Pottery Hobbit who was acting as my assistant. She and I went for galabiyehs and dresses from the local tailor in the evening – he’s terribly squeamish about money and simply won’t ask me for any – and met about a thousand kids who swarmed around PH like locusts. Being fat and old, I survived intact! Spent the evening discussing how many camels we are all worth (https://howmanycamels.org/) – turns out I am almost entirely worthless as my boobs are simply too small…
Day 12
The Arabic word for cold is brrrrd – onomatopoeic perfection! It was brrrrd this morning but by 8 the sun was up and roasting us properly. Ayman is my PA today – you have to keep an eye on him or else his sheer enthusiasm has him digging off in all sorts of erroneous directions. That said, we managed to FINALLY complete beads lady, with further clusters of little shell beads found among the bones and underneath the body as I lifted her tenderly and laid her in her new home. Even the mouth turned out to have contained beads. She must have been someone special. Burial 1203 was entirely fragmented but that didn’t stop yesterday’s digger giving him (I think) a pelvis and other body parts he didn’t actually have, simply by carving them into the sediment. The shape is lovely in the ground but the bones are completely shattered and will not do well once lifted, so I spent as long as I could observing his characteristics and position. Pot by the face and a few beads on the right shoulder: not as fancy as beads lady. Slid off to Tell el Kebir, which has changed considerably since my father was there in 1942. The roads are crowded with carts and cars and pedestrians and vendors jostling and shouting and blowing kazoos in your face, trying to get you to buy fruit, ice cream, vegetables and lumps of raw meat lying on chopping blocks among a forest of cow carcasses. Chickens resting obliviously in cages. Up and down the sideroads we went. The noise was indescribable. The smells wafting out of side streets. Motorbike food delivery drivers. Stalls of wilting vegetables. Cats everywhere, risking their nine lives beneath the wheels of passing cars. Shamefacedly bought a Samsung knock-off (which amused PH as I have been mocking hers all week) and drove back to the house in a chorus of English, Arabic and Polish swearing to dissuade the eight grinning kids who were hitching a lift on the back of the truck. Needless to say it didn’t work and they got a free ride all the way. Various scandalous news from home – yet it all seems a world away to me now.
Day 13
Occasionally I doubt the sanity of my career, but compared to the fisherman wearing a wetsuit (and plastic bags on feet and hands) and standing in the canal with a hand-net this morning...I may be all right after all. It occurred to me that it was odd that one would eat fish that has lived in water that one doesn’t want touching one's skin? Heavenly sunny, warm day with a breeze rustling the trees - went bouncing off to the site, running the gauntlet of kids shouting “what’s your name?” at me (they will ask it 100 times without pausing…the more ridiculous version is “What’s your name, Carolina?”). The bulbuls were in a torrent, the sparrows were squabbling in the trees, a manky dog barked at me and gave up mid yap, dozing off in a heap of piebald fur. Poor Grzegorz had to waste half the day taking some of the men to Ismailia for some insurance thing, leaving me truffling about in the trench trying to work out what on earth happened to B1202 - possible suggestions: walked on a bomb, fell into a blender, run over by JCB. A horrid mess of fragments and pottery and assorted piffle. Shouting match breaks out among the men as someone who has to go to Ismailia doesn't want to. Lots of ranting and shouting later ("he don't respecting me, Larry!)" I poured some firm oil on troubled eaters, the issue was resolved, and they headed off in a triumphant cloud of black exhaust smoke. Mohammed "Mr Musk Ox Cheese" even shaved and put on a clean shirt for the occasion. The site guardian insists we all cram into his tiny hut rather than having fatour (breakfast) under the trees...but on the good side he is superb at making taamiyeh (falafel). Seems to be our day for visitors: two chaps approached, watched me for a while, said "English number one language" ("aywa", I said, gravely) followed by a museum curator who watched us digging and bagging things then brightly asked "you archaeologist?". The temptation to say that no, I was a tax consultant, was almost overpowering; after offering me a daughter and a job in his museum, he wandered off to smoke a shisha with Musa and left me to the dubious pleasures of the rubbish burial. G returned in a grumpy mood because the day was entirely wasted; three of the five men had expired IDs, thus they couldn’t even prove who they were, thus nothing could be done. Did battle with the ants who would, I think, carry me off if they could - the akrabs (scorpions) have at least so far kept their distance, as have the appalling monster camel spiders that would have arachnophobes climbing trees and pulling them up after them! Dig Baby cooked shakshuka for dinner. No news fron the laughing duck for a while - perhaps he's on holiday?
Day 14
Call to prayer awoke me at 4am and that was it, so stumbling around the house trying to make tea and not wake up everyone else. Looked out over the Delta as the sun dragged itself reluctantly up - I never fail to be astonished that this lush triangle which fed the world's greatest ancient civilisation was all attributable to one unassuming sludge-coloured trickle that’s still with us. The same land that was farmed then is farmed now, the ancestors of these dogs, these sheep, these cows, these cats were here, living in the same streets, immortalised in tomb reliefs. And if that weren’t enough, thse same animals became gpds: Anubis, Khnum, Hathor and Bast. The tombs we find contain the 150x great grandparents of the local Egyptians who work with us. And they wrote all about it - they started doing it in about 3200BC; England didn't write for another 3000 years...! I am as fond of Pudding Island as the next Brit, but I gave to admit that we do lag behind a little at times…! I kidnapped the Hobbit from her pottery duties (much to Mariusz' polite annoyance) to help Claudia with B1203 and off I went to Trench 2 where I found a pot that looks for all the world like Monty Python's Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, returning to the girls who had made a beautiful job of the burial. Served a lot of hyper-sweet black tea by Musa. Wasted two hours trying to find the base of B1183 before concluding that it doesn't have one. Decided I would delve deeper into the worker's names and I kid you not - these are five of them:
Mohammed Ayman Mohammed Mahmoud
Ahmed Mahmoud Mohammed Mahmoud
Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed Abd-el Kader
Mohammed Momin Mohammed Mahmoud
Mahmoud Mohammed Mahmoud
I’m trying to imagine this many Jesuses in Europe; it would make life a little difficult I feel. Tho I knew a few Jesuses (with a hard J) in Spain. Apropos of nothing, the village is called Daouide (Da-oo-EE-da) by the villagers…which sounds nicer than the ‘Dawood” we use.Towards the evening the muezzin's tone suddenly changed; the death (last night) of one of the worker's great uncle (aged 60) triggered a long, low lament...enumerating the deceased's virtues, announcing the body’s return from the hospital, and appealing for all able-bodied men go to the cemetery immediately to dig a grave as the funeral is to be carried out today (it must always take place within 24 hours). As I walked home, I could see a spire of dust arising from behind the white grave markers, the men oddly muted as they dug and shovelled in smooth rhythm. I am not particularly a fan of the muezzin (especially not at 4am) and I can't say I entirely 'get' Islam (or any other faith, come to that), but on this occasion it seemed entirely fitting as dusk fell, the lights twinkling in the growing darkness of the night, and the wailing tones booming their laments for the dead out over the empty streets.
Day 15
A mess of bones and fragments is turning up - great big disarrayed Naqada III pots heralding disturbed burials nearby. Bewildering mass of remains that Claudia expertly negotiated, leaving me with a stack of seemingly disconnected bone fragments in the middle of which I hit something with my trowel that made a CLONK sound...and, remembering what I would have made of such a thing when I was in my 20s, I called the Pottery Hobbit over and she was the one to unearth that beautiful 5000 year old makeup palette. A stunning piece of understatement, although truth be known I'd rather have had a fully decorated one with a hitherto unknown king on it...! When still in the ground I showed it to Grzegorz who sniffed and made some derogatory comment about pottery then suddenly realised what it was almost knocked me out of the way in his haste (he specialises in ground stone). He blew me a kiss and thumped me repeatedly on the shoulder…seems I am the lucky bunny of the season. Did a spot of social anthropology and asked Ayman about death and burial in the village: Seems that when someone dies women go to their house and the men (and the body) go to the large building linked to the mosque. The sexes don’t mix. The body is put in a coffin, and wears white only, tied here and there with cotton cords. No grave goods in the coffin or at the grave. The body is positioned with the right hand under the body and rolled slightly on the right side. The orientation is to the east. The grave is usually about 120-150cm deep and is made by male volunteers who also contribute to the “Imam fund”. The grave is filled to a background of Imam chanting – then they all go back to the building. Women can visit the grave later, and there are no other limits on them in that respect. The grave is usually marked with a line of white bricks around the perimeter. Apparently women and men and children are buried the same way, although suicides may be different (opinions vary). The money raised is used to buy food and such for the mourners, who are often numerous.
Slightly less depressingly, this is the correct way to order tea: "Ays wahad chai fi hamsina"
Something like "wanting one tea of half" (i.e. small). This separates the men from the boys apparently, in Arabic tea ordering contexts anyway.
Off to Tel el Kebir, as a certain Charles Owens did 83 years ago (I mean, what are the chances?) to sort the saga of the wretched dig t-shirt that I wish I had never started. It is also my turn to cook, so acquired the makings of a truly shambolic bolognese that would bring about a fainting fit in the most shameless undergraduate...got my sheath knife sharpened for about 30 cents, and had to physically restrain Ayman who takes the Islamic hospitality thing to an entirely ludicrous degree and keeps trying to pay for everything. The market buzzed - probably a bad place to buy a slab of meat from a suspended cow carcasse surrounded at a respectful distance by some very alert dogs. Reduced it to min ce using a machine that looked entirely prehistoric. Ordered twelve more t-shirts (if it goes wrong again I quit) and wandered over to the only green bit of Tel el Kebir, the Commonwealth war cemetery. God knows I have little enough reason to be proud of being English but the cemetery was well tended, the sprinklers were on, the grass was green, a fat man offered us tea and told his kids to not walk on the graves…it was almost magical. I remember my father talking about friends who had died when they were stationed here in 1942-3...and they must be here. Made me feel a little odd...yet also calm, in a way. Amusingly, the box containing the register was empty save for a notice telling you rather primly to contact a place in Maidenhead, Berks for fuller details. Made me laugh. The main river stream was just outside the gates. This one is “not toilet” according to Ayman, which is just as well as I saw a small boy rowing his dad as fast as he could, while the dad carelessly dumped netting over the stern. Presumably he was after Blinky the three eyed fish from the Simpsons…! Hungry Polish fingers tearing apart a tilapia last night made me feel quite queasy so I am off fish! I spent the evening throwing everything I could think of into the sauce (sugar, carrots, tomatoes, tomato puree, cumin, pepper, salt, onions, garlic[ish], beef stock) and a bucket of pasta over the seriously inadequate gas rings. A quick word about Arab generosity – Nada gave Karolina a dress and the boys on the site give us sweets and food every day…and Ayman gave me gamusa (musk ox: seriously) ice cream today. We could all learn a lesson from this.
Day 16
The day revolved around the continued excavation of what I thought was a fairly rubbish, smashed partial burial, and which turned out to be intact, and a very small, unassuming potsherd to the south of that same trench turned out to be a series of massive jars which took us most of the rest of the day to recover. The biggest one was maybe 3 feet tall, and in a terrible state, but we managed to stabilise it, and beside it found another one, this time wearing a kind of a hat made of a ceramic bowl. Looks something like some sort of diabolical mushroom field. This made the pottery hobbit very happy, who came steaming down to play with them. The deceased looks like being a tall chap as the burial itself is about 81cam long, and in addition to his palette he also had a nice Naqada 3 jar and 2 other vessels plus about 25 red beads all from the thoracic area and the ventral aspect of the body. Yet we had to leave them - its Cairo day. After a week in the countryside, and almost hungers for the built-up nature of Cairo. In our tiny van, wedged in like sardines, we watched the roadside pass from green to slightly barren to pure sand to the first and second toll gates and suddenly Cairo is spreading its smudgy fingers out towards you. The Polish House was our first port of call, then us decadent western types headed south to Zamalek, which is the most Mediterranean-looking part of Cairo. We all met up after a collapsing siesta, went mad at the joy of salad and cheese and meats at Teta Suzanne (too much chicken and carbs at the site) and headed off into the gathering dark for the delights of the Khan el Khalili.
Trying to describe the place is just about impossible. It Is an attack on all the senses, and all of them I turned up to 11. The Khan is split by a busy road and stretches out on both sides. One side (the Tentmakers Bazaar) is more oriented towards textiles and all things fabric. On the other side of the road, there is everything else, notably a large tourist section towards the top, full of terrible T-shirts and stuffed camels, then passages and alleys increasing smallness and darkness, where you can find just about anything you could possibly want, and a lot of things that you really don’t. Nobody in their right mind goes before about 7 o’clock. But this time it’s basically dark and the hooting of cars, the shouting of cab drivers, a crowd of beggars, traders and their children schlepping vast bundles of merchandise...its chaos. The upper end of the market contains a lot of stuff he wouldn’t want to wish on your worst enemy like brass camels and T-shirts with Cleopatra on them, along with renowned cafes (and shisha bars) notably including Al Fishawy’s (royally patronised and a legend in its time) and others such as Umm Culthoun (a mythologised Egyptian singer), and another named for Naguib Mafouz (Nobel Prize winning author). When you tire of the terrible tat, look up; nothing can obscure the sheer majesty of the setting…the shops are set in arches that are part of narrow strips that were laid out in the 1300s and haven’t changed a lot since the place was redone in the 1600s. Doorways open into little stable-yards, arched colonnades, private houses, abandoned alleys full of snoozing cats…and out of nowhere there will be a mediaeval mosque, a city defensive wall, a thousand year old civic building…with dark blocks of hieroglyph-inscribed stone loote from ancient ruins and reused as lintels. Everywhere the throb of humanity packed into tiny places, shouting, drinking tea, smoking shishas, eating tiny dishes of taamiyeh and eggplant, shopping, gossiping and being amazed/deafened – if a tourist – by incredibly loud entertainments, singers, jugglers and (most bizarrely) a man in a duck costume dancing like MC Hammer. It is a deeply jarring yet fascinating place.
The evening was a blur of bargaining, shouting, ostentatious huffing and lots of counting vast wodges of Egyptian notes (there are about 75 to the pound, and there are all denominations down to 1 LE!)...we left the market with camels, dresses, a silver flip flop (and why not?!), numerous scarves, beads, sheep, scarab beetles... and i spent LE1200 (not as much as it sounds) on antique Berber silver, a rare understatement in this often overdone aesthetic world...and by the time we left I was slightly out of my mind and collapsed like a balloon the minute I got in the door...!
Day 17
Well, I may have two nights of sleep, but I really didn’t use this one very much as I woke up at about 5 am absolutely dying of thirst, realised I had no water, and didn’t want to risk the tapwater. Dozed until 8 and the search for coffee...then a shamelessly western experience at La Poire at Tahrir Square (which has changed quite a lot since the revolution in 2012...) eating French pastries and drinking lattes with cute birds picked out in the foam, as ragged kids and women in hijabs walk by the windows. The clientele Is almost entirely American, English (rare), Italian, French and Spanish. There's something a bit Raj-ish about it. It has the benefit of being near the Egyptian Museum...perhaps one day eclipsed by the Grand Egyptian Museum but for me the genuine article. The place itself is amess – a massive chaotic barn of a place with snaking staircases and open spaces and atria and little cul de sacs filled with treasures that would make lesser museums drool, entire cases and indeed rooms without a single label, objects separated by a thousand miles and three thousand years right next door to each other, dazed holidaymakers with enterprising though cheerfully uninformed guides (“This is the treasure of the pharaohs...maybe it is cursed? Haha no it is not cursed. Maybe?”), packs of schoolchildren rigid with boredom or – defeated – lying up against the cases and playing with their phones, guides reaching over signs saying “do not touch” to rub pharaonic feet…don’t get me wrong I am no Egyptologist, but I have enough headway to make a vague narrative here. What I would do as a novice, god only knows. Narmer’s palette of course is something we have to look at every single time, even though we have to push our way through a collection of Chinese tourists who the faintest idea what they’re looking at. Akhenaten – that weird and wonderfully bizarre iconoclast who then himself fell victim to historical sanitisation, his massive butt and man boobs weirdly contrasting with his freakishly elongated face, and the startling beauty of the female figurines, clad in rippling dresses so fine that it seems possible that they are carved in stone. Massive queue to see King Tut – who I am bored with anyway – so went to see the Tanis treasure instead (which is not too shabby), and ended up expensively in the gift shop which cost us dear. Sauntered across to Talaat Harb where we ate at the Café Riche (where I am semi convinced my father ate in 1942) then a trip to Zamalek in search of antiques and art, with limited success. Back to the hotel to collapse in graceful heaps, arising as the sun plopped into the Nile, mustering on the top floor of the hotel for G and Ts which only took half an hour of shouting ("no they are on the menu but we cannot serve them here"). Enough snacks to keep us alive then back to the KEK...found an epic bead shop on a side street with the ancient gateway...the saleswoman was a lawyer who had given it up as tourism was more profitable and “in Egypt you don’t want a woman, you want a man to represent you”. Made me very indignant. Bought $100 worth of beads including some "peridiots" (!) then managed to find some smoked paprika (“luvly jubbly’ said the seller, cheerfully…) and found an uber to take us back to the sleeker surroundings of Zamalek for late dinner.
Day 18
Claudia's lust for French pastries led us to the pains du roi (the kings pains…?!) following a major oops-I-went-to-the-market-and-went-nuts incident. In my defence I am pretty well streamlined, as my ruinous bead habit at least has the benefit of being small-scale and easy to pack! Left my sunscreen at KHD so plastered myself with factor a million cement-like cream that made me look like I was wearing crap war paint, scooped up the others, and headed off to the Grand Egyptian Museum. This is the unofficial official opening…the army wants to make a LOT of money off it as soon as possible…and I mean a lot – 1200LE each (less for students and Egyptians and the elderly and children). Still pretty ouch when one is used to standard Egypt prices. The whole place is cartouche-covered and pyramid-ish, with the triangular shape worked into every single angle of the building…which is so tall you would think they intended to stick an actual pyramid inside. It actually dwarfs the mighty Ramses II (I think) – with his massive cankles – who stands by a pool of water in the atrium, surrounded by bored kids ‘gramming their museum visit.
The floor organisation is a little incoherent…well I say floor but “incoherent mezzanine linked to a series of other ones with no obvious stylistic or chronological layout” might be better. The top floor is early and the bottom of the sort of staircase is the Roman…but in between there are side rooms opening off with bewildering displays and statues and other nonsense, with very little I the way of explanation or hieroglyph reading, or background, or the changes to the Nile Valley and N Africa, or the livestock, flooding, the way that early settlements actually looked…it is basically a shiny version of the old Egyptian museum, without the charm. If I hadn’t known what I was looking at I think I would have been entirely lost, and indeed a lot of befuddled looking individuals and groups did go by, usually with guides who stretched descriptions to breaking point or seemed to have read the Shire Guide in 1976 and left their research there.
There were some superb early wooden figures (Old Kingdom), a spread of Amarna stuff (the priests really didn’t do a very good job of smashing it all), god knows how many funeral stelae showing how ropey they got by the end (a large placard showing the different gods and how to ID them would have been a real boon…), some fairly imposing Predynastic materials (like the gold figures with giant tinkles from Tell el Mura)...refuelled after three hours or so then had a battle with UBER who tried to extort money from us 5X over and above the registered cost (they know their value out here in the boondocks). To Oum el Dounia (Tahrir) at 3 Talaat Harb (named for a man who was, by the way, a famous Egyptian banker who founded the first Egyptian bank and actually encouraged the use of Arabic in it…until which time it had been English…). Two of the Polish staff were a bit off and looked pale and interesting on the eway home as we barrelled through the enclosing dusk. If one has the romantic notion of palm fringed oases and rippled sand-dunes where men are men and camels are terrified, then this isn’t it. The sand is a sort of goldenish dun to brown colour, enlivened by little eddies of plastic rubbish that dance alluringly then give up and become trash, with bleak developments, faceless buildings and derelict guard posts or wrecked cars banked up by sand dunelets. The surreality of the situation was enhanced when our driver picked up an armed police escort at the second main military checkpoint (as if it were the most natural thing in the world) and they relayed us (two more changeovers) with sirens blaring across the eastern delta right to the end of our road, to the perplexity of everyone we passed (“Who are they? No! Not archaeologists!”). People are dropping like flies at the moment – bought a aluminium coffee pot which I attached to the house keys as Grzegorz says he can’t be trusted to not lose the keys, so I think even he would have a hard time losing this one…!
Day 19
The Poles and I seem to be taking it in turns to be off colour - at least two are out of commission today and working in the finds room so I scrabbled around in the sun and discovered - to my perplexity - that 1201 had a pigs head buried by its feet. Somewhat unforeseen. Hisham was not overjoyed at dealing with such a haram thing but I did learn at least that the Arabic word for pig is khinzir. Very useful...! Cleared the burial complete with piggy and left it to GBP to 3D while I attacked a horrid mess of baby bones that made no stratigraphic sense at all...and which turned out to be roughly 2/3 of a 4-5 year old kid but it was so incredibly small that I initially thought it was closer to 1-2. Position was contracted on the left side, head to the WSW, and looking roughly northwest. Musa is on his third kilo of sugar in ten days - ...he is taking advantage of our bounty, but there again his teeth suggest it might not be far off. He also tried to overcharge us for wood he nicked for free from a dump and has been sulking ever since. He is the least reliable and trustworthy of our coworkers...I am quite convinced that the others would cheerfully walk into gunfire for us (as they in fact did when we were working at Quesna). Cats fighting in the hallway over the chicken I keep sneaking them (Nada made too much - and TBH its pretty foul anyway). Went back to the site to try and catch up on the work we didn’t do during the day – managed to get most of 1201 done and it was unexpectedly lovely as the breeze came up, the sun plopped down onto the horizon and hung there, tentatively, framing the bulbuls frolicking photogenically on the telephone wires and reminding me – once again – I am bloody lucky. Early night.
DAY 20 - 21st April 2025
Lifting the miserable remains of the partial and shattered remains from Structure 10, which with the eye of faith resemble a fragmented crouched burial but is probably just isolated fragments…although it as accompanied by a pot that looked like a hand grenade (Pottery Hobbit informs me that it is Predynastic…). Another 45 beads from the face area of Burial 1201 who was probably male and oldish to judge from his teeth. Bones are in as good a state as one could expect – they seem a reasonably healthy lot, skeletally. Found that burial 1204…is almost as tall as me and built like a brick privy! Tallest person I have ever found – amusing that his immediate neighbour was under 5’ in height (and she had all the beads/money!). Social hierarchies have a deep history, evidently. Kids are off school today for Shamen asim…and came and stared steadily at Claudia and I until chased away. Tried and failed to get glasses for Hisham, as his prescription was so extreme that nobody can make it. May have to drag the lot of them down to Zagazig or somewhere to get their eyes sorted. I made egg fried rice a la Larry, enlivened by a power cut and gas running out…and then Basma appeared with a gas bottle balanced on her head. I don’t know how they survive without broken necks
DAY 21 - 22nd April 2025
1204 is turning into Gigantopithecus – it’s an absolutely astonishing specimen. It’s so tough that the fragile elements I have never really seen here – vertebrae and ribs and pelvis – have survived; Claudia made a really good job, and made our boy look like a total pin up. Had another argument about t-shirts with Musa – shouted at him (through Mostafa) that if he didn’t shut up and stop bothering me there would be no t-shirts for anyone else ever again under any circumstances. Let’s see if THAT works. Temperature was 43 (106F) and the wind battered our sunshade to smithereens…so we ended up lowering the remains so it was only about a foot and a half off the ground and I looked seriously absurd under it with my head sticking out one end and my feet the other…until Hisham turned up, rolled his eyes at Ahmed’s incompetence, and whipped up a support system that would have held the Queen Mary. Three cars full of officials and their retinues arrived and interrogated me as to what everything meant; we all ended up drinking warm Coke as Musa had run out of tea (earlier he gave us chai maramiya – which is Palestinian Sage flavour. Interestingly metallic taste but not a goforagain). Helped string the beads onto wires for photography and to be taken to the taftish…fending off Musa who said “can I have this” for everything from my RayBans to my tools and my camera. The sun went down with customary abruptness, the dull light kindly obscuring the dirt and garbage and leaving the pastel shades of Egypt as it’s been for thousands of years. It is the witching hour of murmuring trees, distant dogs, an indignant donkey and squealing kids…and…I am almost positive, a sardonic duck laugh.
DAY 22 - 23rd April 2025
Not as hot as yesterday but still 95 or so. A weird double burial is appearing - 1202 and 1206 – that look for all the world like father and child buried side by side but one deeper than the other, in the same position, looking the same direction and pieces of bread mould positioned on the same body parts. The Pottery Hobbits are happy as they were also surrounded by Predynastic IKEA of pots. Claudia doing a superb job and producing publication-standard results on the Yeti burial. Pottery Hobbit also shaping well and Ayman also, although he has a tendency towards over enthusiasm. Excavated for a couple of hours in the early evening, much besieged by Musa, a lot of randy bulbuls and Bob the Dog, although he is too shy to come and say hello (he was cheery enough in 2022…?). He ‘pointed’ to the field between the site and the village at a very small darkish tan dog scampering across the field. “Thaelab” said Musa, laconically, shielding his eyes and looking after it. Fox. My first Egyptian one ever! Invaded by more members of the Polish contingent, who have brought a lot of Polish sausage called cabanos that, apparently, isn’t sausage (?). Keep falling over the pregnant cat living in the apartment building which is twice the size it was last week as we have been feeding it vast amounts of inedible (by humans) chicken. Koshari for dinner.
DAY 24 - 25th April
The cat seems to have turned into a lion and is living in my duodenum. Not happy. Grzegorz threatening to send us (Clau and I) to Cairo on Sunday, but we can’t be having that so resolved to be alert no matter what. Ayman the one-man pharmacy called the unfortunately named Dr Shady who prescribed alarming drugs that Ayman went off to collect…returned with glass phials (what is Spasmofen?!) and a battery of hypodermics. Took some slightly more dependable (European) drugs when he wasn’t looking. G went to Cairo and returned with Mrs G! Floated off on a bed of narcotics.
DAY 25 - 26th April
Somewhat better albeit fragile. Elected to go to the site and see how I did as I am rattling with pills. Sara turned up unexpectedly – my original minion from 2012. Worked with her and the girls on the double burial (which is a real pain), took her back for lunch. PH burst into tears at the thought there might not be enough food, but all was resolved and peace restored. Sara’s plight at the hands of her other half who seems able to control her every move makes me so mad I might be4come a feminist at any moment. Still. Sara drives, wears jeans and shakes hands…so softly-softly revolutions are still revolutions. She helped me with utterly smashed and ruined burial 1207, which is just fragments but which originally contained some ground stone vessels…I don’t like to think of what we have missed. Turned out that she and Ayman had conspired and bought me a brass light fitting for the Spain house…the hospitality and generosity of Egyptians makes that of all others pale…once one is a friend in Egypt, there is nothing you will not do for one another.
