By mid week, Ayman was turning up some of the clearest and most beautifully laid bricks we have ever encountered. Even when first uncovered, two distinct parallel walls that occupy the full width of the square are clearly visible, with two shorter stubs of brick running off the southern wall. The block of stone between the rows is a door socket, but it seems to be displaced.

Ayman’s square at the end of the work, seen from the southwest. The two shorter walls were later additions built on dirt that had accumulated against the southern wall; they were removed. In the center of the square is a shallow, irregularly shaped pit that was filled with ash and pottery, mostly Ptolemaic. Unfortunately, we found no trace of sphinx bases.

We extended Abdel Aziz’s square to the south to try to find the south face of the theoretical wall/pylon, and to the west to confirm that we do actually have the west face. The west face is real, but on the south the brick continued into the baulk, although it is broken by a later baked brick feature (a well?). The pottery associated with the well (?) is Ptolemaic.

Before we back-filled the squares, they had to be mapped, and that is what I spent much of this week doing. It is very finicky work, particularly when dealing with mud brick. Since a heat wave hit Luxor this week, it was also very hot work.

Once each square was mapped, we laid down plastic matting over the excavated surfaces then began back-filling the squares. Back-filling protects the features from erosion, and the plastic matting will let the next team to excavate here know when they have reached the limits of our work.

On Sunday the two blocks from the north face of Mut’s second pylon were put back into position, a delicate task as the blocks are different heights and neither has a flat lower surface. On the left, Jaap and the masons make sure the alignment is right as the eastern block is lowered into position. By the end of the week both blocks were in place and secure. All that remains now is to cover the new base with a coating tinted to blend in with the ancient stone.

We are building up the inner face of the enclosure wall west of the Propylon to keep brick debris from falling down onto the area below. The construction is of mud brick on top of baked brick, mimicking the ancient construction. On the left, the bricklayer studies the wall before he begins work as he will build it with the same batter as the face of the propylon. By mid-week he was almost finished (right).

To get the bricks from the spot where they were delivered to the building sites, a procession of pairs of men carry baskets containing 3 or 4 bricks. This season’s work consumed over 4,000 baked bricks, which is a lot to move!

The first of the Chapel D ceiling blocks went up on its mastaba early in the week. While not as large as the huge block moved last week (the siba can handle it), it is still a sizable piece of stone that must be handled with care.

The ceiling blocks in their new home, with Chapel D behind them. The blocks on the mastaba in front of them are also from Chapel D.

By the end of work on Thursday we were almost finished building the mastabas. The ones that will hold the Taharqa ram (center) and a group of decorated blocks just inside the precinct entrance (right) received their finishing coats today. We will spend the rest of our time here getting the various sculptures, reliefs and decorated blocks onto their new bases. Preservation is an important component of any archaeological work.

I realized when I typed the last caption that you may not know what the “Taharqa ram” is or its significance. In 1979, at the north end of the Mut Temple’s East Porch we found the head of a ram with a king below its chin (left), along with fragments of the king’s body. The ram’s body was found nearby but had deteriorated to a shapeless mass of granite. Richard dated the head stylistically to the reign of Taharqa. In 2001, at the north end of the West Porch, we found the body (but not the head) of a second ram with the names of Taharqa on its base, thus confirming the dating of the head found in 1979. These two sculptures are among the very few rams of Taharqa found in Egypt. The ram’s head was taken to Cairo for the Museum of Egyptian Civilization.

The new paving has acquired another graffito, probably by the same artist. This time he has chosen to show a queen or goddess, carved with the same skill as the first graffito.

When she takes a break from pottery, Julia photographs the birds that feed in the sacred lake. She took this superb picture of a kingfisher poised to dive on Thursday.

According to the late French scholar, Agnes Cabrol, these 3 badly damaged sphinxes sitting east of Chapel D date stylistically to the reign of Ramesses III and probably had originally been part of a sphinx avenue leading north from that king’s temple at the southwest corner of the Isheru. We decided to test that theory this year.

On Monday we opened a square north of the Ramesses III temple, where we hope to find remains of sphinx bases. Abdel Aziz is supervising the work.

Jaap van Dijk, who arrived on Friday, discusses the new square with Farouk and Hassan. Welcome back, Jaap! As you can see, Abdel Aziz found sandstone almost immediately below the surface. The roll of white material you see on the right is the geo-textile laid down by the ARCE team to inhibit reed growth. When we have finished work here we will back-fill the excavation and put the material back in place.

To our regret, Monday’s stone proved to be nothing but a shallow layer of badly decayed broken blocks, possibly dumped here by French archaeologist Maurice Pillet, who excavated the Ramesses III temple in the 1920s. Aside from one remaining cluster of stone, the square has produced nothing but clean dirt. If we don’t find anything of interest in a day or so, we’ll close this square and open another to its north.

Ayman is almost finished excavating his area west of the Taharqa Gate. All the gaps in the mud brick are the result of pitting. He should be down to the Dynasty 25 paving of the approach to the gate by Saturday. Once he finishes here, we’ll start another square further to the west to see if we can trace the paving further.

As part of the preparations to open the site to visitors, we will be helping the ARCE team relocate several blocks of temple decoration. This week we started building a new mastaba (Arabic for “bench”) on which to store the blocks. The mastabas are of baked brick with an impermeable layer between courses to prevent water infiltration. The final step is a finishing layer of cement. The work goes quickly with many willing hands.

To build our second mastaba we had to move a large block several meters. Some stout beams, a few metal rollers and a lot of hard work and the task was accomplished.

We’re also clearing out an accumulation of broken stone just inside the precinct entrance. Since the stones are relatively small we use a sturdy cart that allows several to be moved at once. The work still requires a lot of effort, but more stones can be moved in fairly short order.

These brightly colored birds are a delight to watch as they snatch insects from the air. The underside of their wings is a coppery brown, so that when they fly you see flashes of green and copper.

Can you spot the bee-catcher? Despite its brilliant green plumage, this small bird (on the lower wire) can be very hard to make out against the foliage.

After a hard day’s work in the sun and dust, it is very restful to look out over the Nile at sunset.

We were able to finish the short study season as scheduled and never felt at risk while in Luxor. By February 1, though, the options for getting a flight out of Luxor were becoming rather limited as most tourists had left and few planes were flying into or out of the city. We decided to cut down our post-season “leisure time” and leave for home a few days early. Although the internet was back up by about February 2, the need to complete reports and last-minute details before our February 4 departure left us no time for dig diary postings before we left.

We thank everyone for their expressions of concern and their good wishes. This is a very difficult time for the Egyptians and for anyone who knows and loves Egypt. We can only hope for the best.

For those interested in what is happening with the monuments, Dr. Zahi Hawass, now the Minister for Antiquities, has been posting regular updates on the situation on his website, www.drhawass.com.

It’s hard to believe that our study season is almost over; our last day of digging will be Saturday, January 29 followed (we hope) by a week of mapping, photography and study. It has been a successful, if short, season. We now know that the wall along the south side of the new square is, indeed, part of the south boundary wall of the approach to the Taharqa Gate. It was built in 2 sections; the join is just to the right of the narrow baulk between the 2 parts of our excavation.  The western section (right) goes one course deeper than the eastern section in order to accommodate an unevenness in the ground on which the wall was built.

It has been an interesting week (at least to us) in what is a relatively small excavation area. On Sunday morning we came on this pale grey rectangle abutting the boundary wall in the SE corner of the area, which contained a great deal of pottery.

The rectangle proved to be a shallow enclosure bordered with compact grey clay-like earth that reminded us forcibly of the very similar feature from last season in which we found a number of oyster shells.  This year’s feature, like the one in 2010 was not only full of pottery but was built on a layer with many pieces of baked brick and sherds, including much of a large storage jar (behind the meter stick). Unlike last year, however, we found no oyster shells.

The narrower western section of the excavation wasn’t dull either. The photo on the left shows a solid grey surface with a narrow wall across it, cut at its west end by a fairly large pit. This surface was continuous across both the east and west parts of the excavation at the level of the bottom of the boundary wall. At first it seemed that the pottery-filled pit was fairly shallow. In fact, we thought we had emptied it on Tuesday, but found yet more pottery on Wednesday (right, looking north). This time we were even more certain we’d reached the bottom. Not so. More pots early on Thursday (not shown)!

It wasn’t until we hit this large sandstone block sticking out from the west baulk late on Thursday that we were sure that we had, at last, reached the bottom of a pit that ended up being 60 cm deep. If you look closely you can see a pot sitting on top of the block right at the baulk. The block of stone really piques our curiosity.

On Thursday we finally hit the 25^th Dynasty paving about 110 cm below the bottom of the boundary wall. It continues the curve toward the south that we discovered in 2010. We still don’t know the reason for the southward turn, but we now know that it is intentional rather than an illusion caused by a few oddly laid blocks. We hope to reach the paving in the rest of the area, east and west, on Saturday and to find out if the block in the west trench is actually a displaced paving slab.

I thought I’d end this week with this picture of Temple A, taken early Wednesday morning when the light was particularly clear. You are looking directly west along the temple’s main axis and can just make out the Taharqa Gate in the background.

We began what will be mainly a study season on January 11 with the traditional cutting of the camel thorn. Fortunately there isn’t much as we had arranged with the SCA and Reis Farouk to have our part of the site cleared in October. It took the whole day to clear this area and more camel thorn remains elsewhere.

Our inspector this year is Amer Hassan Hanafy, shown here with Reis Farouk. We first met Amer about 10 years ago when he was part of a team of SCA inspectors who carried out excavations in the Mut Precinct and worked on the sphinx avenue north of the Mut Precinct. It’s good to see him again and to have Reis Farouk with us once more.

Our Qufti this season are Abdel Aziz Sharid (right) and Mamdouh Kamil, both of whom have worked for us for many years. To their left is the south wall of the approach to the Taharqa Gate. The wall’s east end is obscured by the remains of one of last year’s baulks. We want to remove the baulk this season to find out what is left of the wall below it.

Here’s the area at the end of work on Thursday (left), with most of the baulk stub gone. As you can see in the photo on the left, the east end of this section was destroyed, by the pitting that characterized this whole area. Only parts of the 3 northern rows of the wall remain at a lower level (right) and even they are disturbed. The big hole in the wall is part of an animal den that tunneled through the area.

At the end of 2010 we thought that we might have found the point at which the mud brick running north-south along the full length of the west side of the excavation area made a corner with the east-wall at the south end of the excavation.  As is evident in this photo taken then, the brick was very friable, its excavation requiring more time than we had left. Clearing up this question is one of this season’s goals.

We extended the excavation further to the south and by mid-morning on Thursday (our 2^nd actual day of digging) knew that last year’s theory was wrong: not only does the long wall keep on going, but it gets wider. The meter stick is on the newly-found brick of the long wall, and the north arrow sits on another wall that meets the long wall’s west face. We do have a corner, but it is an inner corner where the east face of the long wall meets the south face of the large east-west wall mentioned above.

The newly-exposed brick was cut by a pit whose edge is visible on the left. Below it the brick continues. In the newly-revealed angle of the walls we have come upon an ashy layer with a considerable amount of pottery, including a Hellenistic black-glazed bowl that is clearly visible in this photograph. This area is proving more interesting (and complicated – what a surprise!) than expected.

Our first small find of the season: the head and shoulders of a terracotta female figure wearing an elaborate (if crudely executed) wig. It came from the loose earth over the long brick wall on Wednesday. We have found several similar figures over the years, all broken in roughly the same place.

We had a number of welcome visitors early in the week. Ahmed Araby (to Richard’s left in the photo on the left) dropped by to say hello. He was our inspector in 2001 and is responsible for much of the work on the sphinx avenues outside the precinct. Later in the morning, François Larché, former Director of the Centre Franco-Egyptien d’Etude des Temples de Karnak; and Nicholas Grimal, former Director of the IFAO came by as well. I took this picture from the roof of our equipment storeroom where I was photographing the sphinx avenues.

The work on the sphinx avenues built by Nectanebo II is of considerable interest to us. They formed part of a complex of processional ways linking the Luxor Temple, the Mut Precinct and the Amun Precinct. The SCA archaeologists discovered recently that the avenue running north from the Luxor Temple and along the west side of the Mut Precinct (left) forms a T-junction with the avenue that runs along the north side of our site. This latter avenue continues west toward the Nile instead of simply ending at a corner.

What is fascinating is that a little-known plan by French explorer Nestor L’Hôte, drawn in the late 1830s and called a “reconstruction drawing” (right), seems to show just this combination of sphinx avenues, including the New Kingdom avenue from Amun to Mut  (left) and the avenue leading to a Ptolemaic gateway in the Amun Precinct’s south wall (lower left). While his proportions are not exact (the Mut Precinct is too square and too short), the major monuments are all there and in roughly the correct relationship to one another.  By the late 1800s, the Nectanebo II sphinx avenues and other building remains were no longer visible, including the small gateway in the Mut Precinct (arrow). We re-discovered it in 1983, precisely where L’Hôte said it should be and it proved to have been built by Tuthmosis III and Hatshepsut.

The base of this sphinx east of the precinct entrance is made up mainly of re-used blocks dating to Dynasties 25-26. The one under the sphinx’s paws, for instance, is half of a lintel from a chapel of Montuemhat. Of more interest to us, however, is the rear block, which is an upside down lintel. This re-use is ancient; all modern archaeologists have done is repair damaged blocks.

As Richard realized some years ago, the lintel is inscribed for Horwedja, Chief Seer of Re at Heliopolis near ancient Memphis and an important official in early Dynasty 26; with Jaap holding a mirror to reflect sunlight on the inscription you can make out his name at the near end of the block. Horwedja is known from several monuments in Lower Egypt, but none in Upper Egypt – until now. Even better, French Egyptologist Claude Traunecker agreed with Richard that the lintel must originally have come from the magical healing chapel we are restoring this year as it fits perfectly with the dimensions he theorized in his 1983 article on the chapel.

Fortunately the sphinx itself is solid and in good condition. On Sunday morning Khaled and his crew were able to raise its rear a few centimeters to take the weight off the lintel block; you can see one of the wooden wedges in this photo. Two heavy crow bars balanced on the sphinx base and dug into the mud brick of the enclosure wall (which we had reconstructed in the 1980s) support the rigging that holds the rock as it is pried loose. We filled the resulting gap in the base with new stone.

It took a few days to clean and consolidate the lintel, but here it is on Thursday morning, ready to be installed.

The chapel, Thursday at dawn. The masons had to put baulks of wood under the winch’s support to allow the lintel to be raised to the proper height.

And up it goes, slowly and carefully. Khaled and Farouk supervise, holding the extra lengths of chain to keep them from bumping against the chapel’s blocks.

The lintel had to be in precisely the right position before it could be lowered the last few centimeters onto the jambs of the chapel. Manoeuvering a block this size while it’s hanging in the air is not easy.

Khaled and crew in front of the chapel at noon on Thursday, with the lintel in place. They will put the finishing touches on the chapel next week.

On Saturday morning we reached the bottom of the wall forming the south boundary of the approach to the Taharqa Gate – the same wall that Ayman is excavating further to the east; the lowest rows of brick are clear in this picture. At this level we found a shallow pit lined with a dense, grey clay-like earth that yielded a large number of shells (right). It will take some research to find out what they are (none of us are biologists), but Nile oysters have been found at many sites.

Below the “oyster pit,” under yet more debris, we finally reached paving, seen here looking to the west. As happens so often at the Mut Precinct, the sandstone paving stones are badly deteriorated in this area, although more solid further to the east.

Closer to the Taharqa Gate, where Ayman is working, we have been learning more about the mud brick wall that continues into Abdel Aziz’s square. The last section of the earlier structure (center) was built on the level of the original paving. Over it accumulated a thick layer of earth with stone chips on which the first phase of the boundary wall was built. This phase was only one course thick. More earth, with larger pieces of broken stone, accumulated behind this wall and formed the base for the later phases of the wall, which eventually was about 1.5 m wide. The line of baked brick, which sits on a layer of fairly clean earth on top of the stone-filled strata, disappears into the west baulk.

To find out what happens to this wall, we dug a sounding in the northeast corner of the next square, where Abdullah has been working. As you can see in this photo looking northeast, we found no trace of baked brick. However we do now have the south face of the Taharqa Gate wall, with part of a wall running off it to the south. Where the baked brick should be is a layer of pottery-filled debris. So what happened to the baked brick?

One of the truisms in archaeology is that (a) the most interesting feature will be under the baulk; and (b) you will only come upon it in the last few days of the season, when you are running out of time. That is what has happened here. Since both sides of the baulk on the east side of Abdullah’s square were clearly debris, we had no qualms about cutting a section through it. Sure enough, we found the end of the baked brick line, which turns south and runs directly under the baulk. We will try to follow the brick further south in the few days left to us.

Richard has always theorized that the Tuthmoside enclosure was still functioning as the north limit of the precinct when Taharqa built his new gate, and that the wall running south from that gate abutted the Tuthmoside wall. With careful brushing, Mahmoud was able to confirm this theory. Although the demarcation is a bit difficult to see in this photograph, the distinction between the bricks of the two walls really is clear.

On top of the southern Taharqa Gate wall are two parallel walls, seen here from the north. The western wall (right) is primarily of baked brick and the eastern one mainly re-used blocks. We have now determined that these walls are built directly on the mud brick of the Taharqa Gate wall, as is the cross wall (north of the meter stick). The low height of the remaining Taharqa Gate wall suggests that this construction is considerably later than the building of the wall.

The construction atop the Taharqa Gate wall may be contemporary with the remodeling of the west end of the Mut Temple’s 1st Pylon, against which the workmen sit while I photograph the Taharqa Gate wall. The three westernmost sphinxes in front of the pylon were crammed together to allow a new structure to be built, mainly of re-used blocks, some dating to Ramesses II. Centuries of flooding by the sacred lake has eroded the space between this structure and the construction on top of the Taharqa Gate wall. It is possible, however, that they were built during the Ptolemaic Period to create direct access from Chapel D (just east of the Taharqa Gate) to the lake by cutting through the still-existing Tuthmoside enclosure wall.

Both Anna and Julia have been a big help this past week in sorting the large amount of pottery we have been finding this season. The setting is lovely, but it can get pretty hot on the pottery mats. Thank you both!

To the ancient Egyptians, magic (heqa in ancient Egyptian) was a potent force that could be used by deities and humans to influence the mortal world. These blocks come from a small (less than 2 meters square) 26th Dynasty magical healing chapel that once stood in the precinct. Visitors (or priests) would recite the spells written on its walls to cure illness. The building was eventually dismantled and its blocks re-used in a late Ptolemaic or early Roman Period building. Richard decided this year to re-erect the chapel, and work began this week.

Since we don’t know where the chapel originally stood, we are rebuilding it in front of the east wing of the Mut Temple’s 1st pylon, with the permission of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. To create a firm foundation we put down a bed of sand with a layer of gravel above it on which we poured a base of cement reinforced with rebar (left). Next came a water barrier of plastic sheeting and bitumen cloth before the final sandstone platform was built (right). Khaled is supervising the work, which is being carried out again this year by mason Mohamed Gharib (bending over) and a small crew.

Putting the bottom blocks of the right and rear walls in position on the new platform was relatively simple, but for the next course of the right wall we needed a tripod and winch (“siba” in Arabic). On the right, Jaap and Khaled make sure that the block is properly positioned before it is lowered the final few centimeters. It is painstaking work.

By the end of the week the first 3 blocks are in place, with the columns of text on the right wall perfectly aligned; Khaled and his team are proud of their work.

Ayman continues to work on the expanded square north of the Taharqa Gate. On Tuesday he called us over to see something odd: an apparently empty jar (only the rim is visible) set into the ground. Usually buried vessels are full of dirt. When he began to clear around the jar neck, he found a couple of coins, visible behind his trowel (right).

Fortunately conservator Anna Serotta joined us this week. Anna is a Mellon Conservation Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum and was a conservation intern in Brooklyn last year. Of most importance to us right now, her work at the Turkish site of Aphrodiasis has given her lots experience with ancient coins, which she immediately put to use.

Anna brushed loose dirt off the coins so they could be photographed (left). There turned out to be not 2 but 5 coins in this group (right).

Just before the breakfast break Anna was able to take out the coins and put them in a muffin pan (left), which we have found very useful for transporting small objects (archaeology requires the ability to adapt). Imagine our surprise when we got back from breakfast and found yet more coins against the side of the pot (right). We ended up with a total of 13.

On the left, the coins as they came out of the ground. There really are 13: the one on the lower right is actually 2 stuck together. The surface encrustations are very hard, but by Thursday Anna had managed to remove enough from 4 of the coins to give us some idea of their original appearance (right). We sent these pictures to Dr. Penelope Weadock Slough, retired Curator of Ancient Art at the Detroit Institute of Art and an expert in ancient coins. According to her, the obverse of 2 coins shows Zeus wearing the ram’s horn of Amun, while the reverse of 3 has a pair of eagles looking left. She has tentatively dated the coins to Ptolemy IX Soter II who ruled twice: 116-107 BC and 88-80 BC (after the death of Ptolemy X, his successor who left no heir). Thank you, Penny.

Yet another surprise: from what we could see we expected the coin pot to be a fairly small, rounded vessel. Instead we got a tall, elegant jar with a flat bottom (right) that had been set upright on the ground. Its mouth had been covered by a small finely-made bowl that kept it from filling entirely with dirt; the bowl is in several pieces and Anna is working to repair it.

Ayman’s area keeps getting more interesting. In the west half the Dynasty 25 enclosure wall now runs all the way to the south face of the present enclosure wall, although it is cut by pitting. To the east there seemed nothing left of the ancient wall, but we decided to dig a little deeper. Our persistence (and Ayman’s) was rewarded by the discovery not only of more brick (center of the photo) but of a layer of sand at the south end of the area. This may be the sand foundation bed of the wall.

When we removed the layer of broken stone and pottery in the corridor south of the Taharqa Gate, we found a layer of stone rubble that ran up to the Taharqa Gate wall. It is clearly the base on which the northern part of the corridor’s west wall (right) and the brick against it were built.

At the south end, however, the wall continues to a greater depth, as you can see here, suggesting it was partially built to fit the contours of the land. A narrow row of baked brick runs across the south end of the corridor, with mud brick to its south, although somewhat cut up. The heap of baked brick probably fell from the well above that we excavated in an earlier season.

After 2 weeks of digging through more than 1.5 m of dump, Abdel Aziz finally has a new feature in his square on the high ground west of the Taharqa Gate: a row of baked brick and stone, including a piece of fleece from a large granite ram sphinx. It doesn’t yet connect to anything but it’s better than nothing.

Before we can remove the upper courses of brick in Abdullah’s square south of Abdel Aziz Bill needs to map them (left). In the meantime, Abdullah and his team have moved south to the area just west of the complex of brick found in 2009. To no one’s surprise he has found more brick (right).

Tracing mud brick takes skill, patience and lots of scraping and brushing. It is paying off for Ayman and his team, though. By Tuesday, they had already uncovered quite a bit of brick in the center of the square north of the Taharqa Gate. This is surely the enclosure wall into which the Taharqa Gate was set, but we can’t yet connect it to the gate directly.

The lighter area in the center of the photo is the brick as it was on Wednesday. The row of 5 bricks visible here against the center of Chapel D confirms that this chapel was built against the east face of the Taharqa Gate enclosure wall as we’d always assumed. There is more brick in the gap to the north but at a lower level.

Even when you can see bricks clearly, the faint color differences between brick, mortar and surrounding earth can make them hard to photograph, particularly in strong sunlight. A large bedsheet makes a good shade cloth, providing even, subdued light where needed.

And here’s what’s in the shade. By Thursday at noon, Ayman had found brick in the corner where the Taharqa Gate (right) and Chapel D meet, although at a lower level than the brick in the center of the square. This is definitely the Taharqa Gate enclosure wall, beautifully built of large bricks laid in even rows.

After slogging through more than 50 cm of loose earth, Abdel Aziz, too, found brick on the south side of his square on the rise west of the Taharqa Gate. Here the problem was the dryness of the soil, which makes the brick extremely friable. Despite the distinctive white mortar this brick was a bit tricky to define as it was almost as dry (and soft) as the earth around it.

South of the Taharqa Gate, in a probable corridor between the Taharqa Gate wall and the wall to its west, we have come on a narrow diagonal brick wall running almost 4 meters along the space, its purpose unknown. It sits on a layer of earth with lots of limestone chips and at its south end the brick is extended by a rough row of small pieces of limestone (to the left of the meter stick).

The same area at the end of the week. Below the limestone blocks was another row of brick (under the meter stick) built against the corridor’s west wall. Just visible to its north and at a lower level is another patch of brick that was built on the same layer of limestone chips as the diagonal wall to the north.

Conservator Khaled Mohamed Wassel is back with us for another season. He has spent most of the past week reconstructing some thoroughly broken pottery, a task he is doing with patience and good will. We hope to have more interesting work for him in the coming weeks.

Another treat this week was seeing Dr. Betsy Bryan, director of the Johns Hopkins University excavation, who is out for a short time this winter. She, Richard and Jaap catch up on news about work at the site.

And here are our most regular visitors, who stop by every day to see what is going on. I suspect, however, that they are more interested in the camel thorn and reeds than in the temples.

To end the week, here are two more terrific bird photographs from Jaap. On the left, a female kestrel soars overhead. On the right, a family of black-winged stilts that lives on the shore of the sacred lake. The two in the center are juveniles, the other two adults.

As always, the flight from Cairo to Luxor was fascinating. This year’s route took us closer to the Gulf of Suez and the Red Sea than usual. Imagine how this would have looked when the ancient rivers were full and fed into the now-long-gone lake. The Red Sea is a blue haze in the background.

I thought my eyes were playing tricks when I saw this sweep of orange, but it was real.

I’m a sucker for ancient waterways, particularly when the streams feeding the rivers look like veins on some strange leaf.

Our first day of work, Wednesday, January 13 was devoted to cutting back the vegetation that had grown over the past several months. Much to our relief there was very little this year, mostly camel thorn rather than thickets of tall grass.

Once the thorn-cutting was underway, Richard had a chance to sit with our inspector, Hassan Mahmoud Hussein, and our foreman, Reis Farouk Sharid Mohammed and discuss plans for the season. We are pleased to be working with both of them this year.

Thursday we started to work while the thorn-cutting continued. Qufti Abdel Aziz Farouk Sharid (left) was back tackling the confusing mud brick north of the Mut Temple’s 1st Pylon, while Qufti Mahmoud Abbadi, a superb excavator, is working in the area west of the Taharqa Gate. We are glad to have both of them with us, along with Qufti Ayman Farouk Sharid and Abdullah Mousa, who are supervising other areas today.

Hassan and Mahmoud discuss the work underway.

On the left is the kiln area north of the Mut Temple’s 1st Pylon at dawn on Thursday. We finally had to remove the square, baked brick feature from a later phase that we’ve been using as a mapping reference for several years. Once it was gone, Abdel Aziz almost immediately found mud brick – what a surprise! As you can see on the right, the brick isn’t terrifically clear yet, but we are hoping it will make sense in a couple of days.

Our first task in the Taharqa Gate area is to finish the work on the approach we began last year, starting in the SW corner of the square. What looks like a projecting wall in front of Mahmoud (left) is really a single course of bricks sitting on debris. Its removal confirmed that the boundary wall that you can see behind Mahmoud continues into the baulk as expected. The stub of brick sticking out below the boundary wall in the picture on the left is now revealed as the remains of an earlier wall over whose remains the boundary wall was built (right). Mud brick is never easy!

The sacred lake (“isheru”) at Mut is once again full (the Johns Hopkins team had drained it in 2009 to explore the shoreline) and the water birds that we missed last year have returned. Unfortunately so have the reeds. The east side of the lake (left) is once again pretty well clogged although the west side is still fairly clear.

It’s hard to believe that the season is almost over: this was our last full week of work, and it has been hot. Still, we finally reached the level of the paving west of the Taharqa Gate. In the center and north the paving is fairly well-preserved. On the south, however, it has been widely robbed out. Directly above the paving lies about 50 cm of fairly compact soil (although still with considerable amounts of pottery) that built up over the years and was probably a walking surface. Built on this level is the mud brick wall mentioned last week that forms the southern boundary of the area.

To the north we have been excavating mud brick structures built on a higher level of accumulated debris or fill that included the concentration of broken blocks of stone and pottery visible by the meter sticks. The wall in the rear of this photo eventually meets the wall running north from the Taharqa Gate, but we don’t yet know how far down it extends or if it is contemporary with the gate. The odd-shaped hole in the center, by the way, is an ancient animal den dug into the wall.

The situation with the mud brick in the excavation north of the baked brick building remains complex, as you may be able to tell from this photo. The walls in the foreground, to the left of the meter stick sit on a level of black ash that is itself above a thicker level of fairly dense grey ash. These walls are all earlier than the walls in the left of the photo, which are clearly built over the south end of the long narrow wall in the foreground. Mud brick architecture can be complicated.

Now that the walls of Chapel D have been restored (you’ll see the finished results in next week’s blog) we can turn our attention to the paving. We cleaned what is left of the paving in the central room of Chapel D this week. As the last phase of our restoration of this building we will be replacing the missing or badly decayed blocks with new stone next week.

Just to refresh your memories, the photo on the left shows the back (south side) of the Taharqa Gate’s south wing early in the restoration process, with a long board holding the remaining blocks of the facade in place. On the right is the same area on Thursday. Following the footprint of the gate’s foundations, we have built a new core to support the blocks of the facade.

On the left is the east face of the south wing, with its single decorated block (the lower part of a kneeling fecundity figure) back in place. Originally two of these figures faced each other and supported the king and a deity, as on the west face (right). Here we have given the king and the goddess back their feet. The tilted block on the right is the last block, which will go back on the prepared area to the left on Saturday. All that will be left then is to cover the repairs with a final coating tinted to match the stone, as we did with the north wing.

We found a couple of nice fragments of sculpture this week. On the left is part of the belt and kilt of a king, whose name would have been written on the belt buckle – just where the break is. On the right is a sandstone fragment of an elaborate robe. We’re not quite sure what part of a statue it comes from. If only we had more of both!

Even we tend to take Sakhmet statues for granted, rarely looking closely at them. Richard, however, noticed these two busts, which are on view at the front of the precinct. At first glance, both seem equally beautifully carved, with detailed manes and wigs. But look at the eyes: the Sakhmet on the left has the usual well-proportioned, clearly-defined, somewhat sad eyes. The other statue has tiny, shallowly-carved eyes that are out of proportion to the rest of the face.

And finally, here is our on-site office: 3 metal tables under a pair of tented shelters. Here John can work on coins while Jaap registers objects, Ben draws a pot and Richard consults his notes. It’s the only shade on the site and is popular with us all, particularly on hot days like we’ve had this week.