Panoramic views of Egypt

This will be my final post on my recent travels to Egypt. During my short stay, I visited Cairo, Abydos, Balyana, Luxor, Thebes, Karnak, Giza, & Sakkara. I shot many panoramic images on my digital camera, which I stitched together by hand in Photoshop (with the exception of one image that Photoshop automatically stitched). In my previous posts, I already published some of these images, but I've completed a few more that have not yet been published, so here they are, all in one place.

Click on any image to see it full-size for much better detail. The files are not that big, but they are larger than typical Internet files, so please be patient while they load.

The Village of Abydos along the edge of the desert.

The front courtyard of the Dig House at Abydos.

The Dig House's "backyard," where the mudbricks are made and pottery sherds are stored.

A view of the various intersecting landscapes on the desert horizon at Abydos.

A mudbrick funerary chapel alongside a stone temple for Ramses II.
(This is the image that was auto-stitched in Photoshop.)

A view of the interior of the Shunet el-Zabib from atop the Northern wall.

Work inside the Shuneh, from right to left: excavation, worksite photo documentation, transporting buckets of excavated sand, surveying the site, and men sifting excavated sand on top of the dune.

A full view of the Eastern side of the Luxor Temple.

Wide view of the Medinat Habu on the horizon in Thebes (West Luxor).

The Pyramids of Giza, from left to right: Khufu (Great Pyramid), Khafre, Menkaure and the smaller Pyramids of Queens.

Abydos: Excavation Progress

When we arrived in Abydos, the project team began a couple of excavations at the Shunet el-Zabib. Some substantial progress had been made by the time I left a week later. During my stay, I was able to get some pictures documenting one of the excavations.

Below is a close-up view of the inside of the Eastern interior wall of the Shuneh. These mudbrick walls were so thick that after the structure was abandoned, Coptic monks carved out cells in the walls to create various rooms (living quarters, kitchens, etc.). What you are looking at in the following picture is a small, partially exposed view inside one of these Coptic cells.

After a couple of days of digging, the majority of the cell is visible. The white plastered recess that the archaeologist is standing next to would be for displaying some sort of religious icon.

In the next picture, the excavation has not yet reached the floor, but most of the cell is exposed. You can see the top of a built-in bench running along the wall on the left, still mostly covered in sand.

On top of the unexcavated bench, there was a segment of some kind of potted vessel.

Here's a closer look at the recessed icon display area.

Finally, here's a shot of the completed excavation. The cell has been dug out all the way down to the floor. The bench on the left hand side is actually pretty low. There are a few other recessed cavities in the wall, and there is even a hole that goes all the way through to the other side in the lower right corner of the rear wall. I'm pretty sure that hole is the recent result of a fox burrowing in the wall.
I left shortly after this cell was completely excavated, but the work at this particular site was still far from done. The drawer has to hand draw plans and elevations of every detail and brick making up the cell and it's contents. The surveyors have to take points of the site so that it can be exactly located on the computerized map, and linked to the drawings and photographic documentation, as well as other geographic data. Finally, in order to preserve the structural integrity of the wall, the excavated cell needs to be filled back in. This process consists of covering the exposed cell with a thin layer of sterile sand and then rebuilding the wall using modern mudbricks made to imitate the original structure. The sand protects the cell from being cemented to the new mudbrick. Once the new mudbrick clears the height of the cell, the rebuilt wall is bonded directly to the original wall. In the meantime, the excavators move onto the next section of the wall to start the process all over again.

The Dig House at Abydos

Coincidental to my recent trip: Expedition, an archaeological journal from the University of Pennsylvania Museum has an article about the mudbrick dig house where I stayed in Abydos. The article focuses on the house and the various stages of construction and improvements it has undergone over the years. It includes some historical construction photos:
Download the PDF in order to read the full article.

Temples, Tombs, Museums & Pyramids

A panoramic view of the Giza Plateau. Click image for a closer look.

I'm back in NYC. Here's how I spent my last 3 days in Egypt:

Day 1 - Luxor, East Bank
- Karnak Temple
- Luxor Museum
- Luxor Temple
- Mummification Museum

Day 2 - Luxor, West Bank
Rented a bicycle and visited:
- Colossi of Memnon
- Medinat Habu
- Valley of the Kings
- Tombs of the Nobles

Day 3 - Cairo
- Pyramids of Giza
- The Great Sphinx
- Step Pyramid of Zoser

Everything was amazing, but the Mummification Museum was a waste of time and I should have skipped the Tombs of the Nobles because I was too burned out by the time I got there. Last week, when I was at the dig site at Abydos, I imagined I would post lots of pictures of all the sites I visited, but now that I'm going through my 1000+ pictures, I'm realizing that some serious editing is called for. It's already tedious enough to look at someone else's vacation photos.

There are simply too many pictures of the temples, and they are almost entirely details. If I posted any of those pictures, I wouldn't be able to adequately explain exactly what you're looking at. Both the Karnak and Luxor temples are too large to be captured on the ground with a point and shoot camera. I didn't take any photos inside any of the tombs or museums. That just leaves the pyramids, and everybody has already seen pictures of those. So here's a very small sample of some of my more interesting photographs of the Pyramids at Giza and Saqqara:

Details of the Great Pyramid of Khufu

Pyramid of Khafre
Detail of Khafre's original glistening limestone exterior which would have once covered the entire pyramid.

Pyramid of Mankaure

The Great Sphinx with the Pyramid of Khufu in the background.

Step Pyramid of Zoser, as seen during a violent dust storm in Saqqara.