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.

Abydos: Intersecting Landscapes

One of the first things that struck me about the Abydos landscape is how surreal it is. It's basically an intersection of various landscapes: ancient, modern, village, desert, agricultural, spiritual, and some hints of the industrial. Imagine waking up in the morning at 4:30 AM and the sound of the villagers call to prayer is projected through the desert air via megaphone. To a non-Arabic speaker, it sounds like chanting and moaning and it drones on for over an hour. Then it happens 4 more times throughout the day.

Then, when the sun comes up on a dusty morning, it doesn't look like any sun you've ever seen before. It's small, but very bright, although covered in clouds, and actually looks more like the moon.  But I watched it throughout the day, I can assure you that this is the morning sun:
When we first went out to see the excavation sites, I had the chance to climb on top of one of the tall walls of the Shunet el-Zabib.  From that great height, I was able to see an amazing example of the intersection of the various landscapes.  First, I had a clear view of the Valley to the Underworld:

Then, while looking westward just to the right side of the valley, this panoramic view stretches across the horizon (click on the image to enlarge):

First, in the foreground you can see part of the mudbrick wall of the funerary enclosure on which I was standing when I was viewing the landscape. Panning to the right, there is lush green argicultural land, forcibly placed into the desert. There are cattle grazing and men working in the farms. The land was heavily irrigated, but it's still the desert and the land is destined to last no longer than a few years before the sand siphons out all the water and turns it into salt.  Sticking out among all this are electrical towers and power lines.

Then, continuing on towards the north, one sees a large Coptic cemetary:

At the edge of the cemetary, stands an ancient mudbrick ruin, behind which is the village of Abydos, just on the edge of the desert. In this next panoramic view, you can see the village along the horizon line, just beyond the desert. Once again, click to enlarge.

Here's a closer look at some of the village apartment buildings:

While walking around the desert, one is aware of the variety just by looking at the sand. Sherds of ancient pottery are broken and scattered about everywhere. Modern relics are left behind as well, usually accumulated in certain areas in the form of plastic bottles and other small pieces of garbage. And more than occasionally, animal bones and skulls appear as a reminder of the roughness of the desert and despite its beauty and nearby oases, in some ways it is still a dangerous place.

Abydos: Funerary Chapel & Temple of King Ramses II

Here's part two of my tour of the Abydos project's excavation site. I know significantly less about these monuments, so it will just be a few pictures and very brief explanations.

This is a mudbrick funerary chapel. The best explanation I can come up with is it's sort of like gravestones, but without the tombs. There were no people buried here, but rather monuments to specific dead people. None of the monuments are here -- they were all stolen -- so it's just a bunch of constructed holes in the ground.

As more and more important people started to have bigger and bigger monuments erected in their memory, eventually King Ramses II came along and trumped all their little mudbrick structures with his elaborate stone temple, right next door.

This is an engraved stone column from the temple. You might be able to see some of the gold detail still on the column, near the 2 triangular engravings, indicating that it was once painted.

Some heiroglyphics, which I believe spell out the name of King Ramses II, engraved in the stone. The animal figure in the center is a baboon.  Here are some details of the heiroglyphics:



And here's a panoramic view of the entire site, with the mudbrick funerary chapel on the left and the stone temple on the right. Click to view the image in closer detail.

Abydos: Funerary Enclosure of Khasekhemwhy

Upon arriving in Abydos, I went out for a tour of the project's various excavation sites. There was a lot to see, and everything made a lot of sense to me when it was being explained, but I'm not an Egyptologist and I wasn't taking notes, so I'm just going to post some pictures and give the simplest explanations I can recall, with no guarantee of 100% accuracy.

This is the full view of what the locals call Shunet el-Zabib. It was Pharoah Khasekhemwhy's funerary enclosure in the desert landscape, looking at the southeastern corner.

Egyptian pharoahs often had funerary enclosures erected at Abydos, separate from their tombs. There were at least 12 others nearby, but this is the only one still standing. It's over 5,000 years old and built entirely of mudbrick.  That is no small feat.

This is a panoramic view of the interior of the enclosure, as seen from on top of the 11 meter high northern wall.  Click on the image to see it full-size.

I don't know exactly what the purpose of these enclosures was, but being located at Abydos was very significant. Abydos is associated with the Egyptian god of creation, Osiris. Osiris was an early king of ancient Egypt, and when he died, he became a god, and his son Horus, the new king, was seen as his incarnation. Since then, all living pharoahs were considered to be Horus, until their death when they would become Osiris and have to travel west into the underworld. It just so happens that right here, in Abydos, there is a valley that goes all the way into the deep western reaches of the desert.
This is the Valley to the Underworld, in the center of the above image, as seen from the funerary enclosure.

The funerary enclosure is a tall structure with a shorter, outer wall surrounding it, both walls broken by narrow entrances which would have had their doors shut closed.

View of the passageway between the eastern inner and outer walls.

Architectural detail on exterior of inner wall.

Whitewash paint on the inner wall below the excavation line.

Restored entrance through the inner eastern wall.

Much of this building is suffering from serious structural damage due to erosion and infestation by mud wasps. Also, there was a time period when Coptic Christian monks lived in the enclosure, and they created bedrooms and kitchens by hollowing out large sections of the thick walls. As a result, some parts of the structure are in immediate danger of collapse. The project team has been conserving these walls by making identical mudbricks (but they are marked to indicate that they are not original) and filling in the structurally damaged areas.

The damage is so severe in some parts, that there are holes straight through the wall.

The cavities in this wall have already been patched. You can tell by the 2 areas of lighter brown mudbrick.

Finally, here is the missing corner of the northern and eastern walls. You can see from the new bricks on the wall to the left that it is in the process of being rebuilt. Also, notice the piles of sandbags near the center of the image. They are forming temporary supports for weakened sections of wall, until excavation and rebuilding can be completed.

That is all for the funerary enclosure of Khasekhemwhy. I will continue my posts of the Abydos excavation sites with images of a funerary chapel and a stone temple for King Ramses II.

The house at Abydos, Egypt

We arrived at our house in Abydos on Thursday night after an 8 hour train ride from Cairo (2 days ago, I'm a little behind). I'm kind of glad to be out of Cairo, which is easily the most chaotic and most polluted place I have ever been in my life.  The house here in Abydos is right on the edge of the desert, so it's the complete opposite of the city. Here's some pictures of the house:

This is the full view of the front of the house in the desert landscape.

This is a 180° panoramic view of the front courtyard as seen from the entrance gate.  Click on the picture to get a closer look.

Once you enter the house, through the courtyard, the dining room is on the left...

...and the "internet lounge" is on the right.

This is Obama.  He is a new addition to the house, recently found wandering the desert.  He's still a very young kitten, but once he gets older he will earn his keep with the other cats by keeping the house rodent free.

If you continue through the house, you enter the interior courtyard.  That middle door at the back of the courtyard is my room.  Notice the domed roof.  That does an amazing job of distributing the air so that the room feels air conditioned during the hot desert days, while still keeping it nice and warm during the cold nights (temperatures often fall into the 30s here during the winter).

This is the inside of my room.  My roommate's bed is on the opposite wall. The beds are hell to sleep on and my entire body is totally aching.  Otherwise, the room is comfortable enough.  It's about 12' square with a 17' height at the center of the domed ceiling.

Here's the lab, where I spend my mornings and evenings working.  We have free time after lunch until 4:30. The guys in the front are mapping out the morning's excavation.  That's me in the back preparing the database for the day's photographs. 

And this is our "backyard."  I don't know what the grid structure is on the sand, but just beyond that are piles of baskets filled with pottery sherds.

These baskets are full of sherds which have been tagged and need to be examined.  You have to be careful when walking around here.  The very deadly horned viper likes to hang out among the baskets because that's where the rodents dwell.

Here's a pile of loose sherds which have been discarded.

This is a clay cup that I found while digging around in the pile of discarded sherds.

That's basically it for the house. Yesterday, we were given an orientation tour of the project's various excavation sites, so that will be the subject of another picture heavy post soon.