In this last dig diary for 2010 I want to acknowledge the hard work, skill and patience of some of the most important members of our team: the Egyptian technicians without whom the work would not be possible. This year we were fortunate to have Abdel Aziz Farouk Sharid, Mahmoud Abbadi, our invaluable foreman Farouk Sharid Mohamed, Ayman Farouk Sharid and Abdullah Moussa, all of whom have worked with us for many years. Excavation ended on Monday, and here is some of what was accomplished this season.

Through dogged determination and skill, Mahmoud finally found the southeast corner of the Tuthmoside enclosure wall. Centuries of erosion have created the illusion that the wall slopes down fairly steeply to the east. At the north end of the east face we found a surface of packed earth and stone chips. As mentioned last week, the Tuthmoside wall may have been cut through at this point in the Ptolemaic Period to allow access from Chapel D to the sacred lake.

When the season started, we suspected there was a corridor west of the Taharqa Gate wall. Here it is, seen from the south (left) and north.

From the enclosure wall the relationship between Chapel D and the Taharqa Gate is very clear. The chapel was built against the gate’s north wall (right), uncovered by Ayman. From this vantage point you can also see the west end of the Mut Temple’s 1st Pylon, with its late extension (rear left), the Taharqa Gate and its south wall (right) and the sacred lake in the background.

The paving of the approach to the Taharqa Gate, seen from the southwest at the end of the season. The wall forming the south side of the approach (right foreground) is preserved to a greater height here than further east, where Ayman was working.

The wall just mentioned is still in place on the right in this photograph, but we have excavated the eastern section down to the level of the 25th Dynasty paving. A surface slopes up to the left (east); this was probably an early walking surface associated with the paving. Over it lies the thick build-up of stone-filled earth with the line of baked brick on top. This stony debris may be have been intentionally dumped to create an even surface for later buildings.

The north-south portion of the odd baked brick feature whose northwest corner we found under the baulk last week runs the full length of area where we have been working. In the process of excavating this portion we confirmed that all of the mud brick structures above it (upper left) were built on layers of earth and ash that at one point ran across the whole area.

At its south end the baked brick line is somewhat broken, as you can see here in this view to the south, but it continues almost to the baked brick building that sits on top of the remains of the Tuthmoside enclosure wall. Despite having found the walls’ full extent, we still don’t know what they were for. Only a few courses remain, but they are solid and so the feature is not a drain or water conduit.

Where Abdullah has been working we now have the west face of the wall that runs from the south limit of our excavations to the Taharqa Gate boundary wall. We have found more brick running west from this long wall, some of which is visible in this shot. We are obviously dealing with a large building or complex, but still do not have enough information to be able to say what the building is, although the pottery suggests it was built in the Roman Period. Archaeology can be frustrating.

The restoration of Horwedja’s healing magic chapel continued through the end of the week. On Tuesday morning, the east wall of the chapel (left) still lacked its last block and the finishing coating for the modern stone, tinted to match the ancient stone, had yet to be applied. On the right is the completed wall on Thursday morning.

Cleaning the ancient cement and dirt from the underside of the lintel produced a surprise: the original emplacements for the chapel’s double doors and the line against which the doors closed. It is unusual for such a small chapel to have 2 doors.

On Thursday morning Mary took advantage of the early light to photograph the chapel’s facade, which is only clearly lit until about 8 am at this time of year. Despite its diminutive size (currently the smallest chapel standing at Karnak), the chapel is an important monument of its period.

The front of the chapel with its walls complete and the lintel in place. We thank Khaled Mohamed Wassel, Mohamed Gharib and their team for their hard work on this project.

We didn’t forget the sphinx from whose base the lintel came. We filled the gap with new stone that Mohamed Gharib is tinting to match the rest of the base’s blocks. On the right the finished product.

Once the excavating was finished we had time to try to answer a few questions about other parts of the site. One was the name of the king whose badly eroded torso and cartouche are on a re-used block at the south end of the west wing of the Mut Temple’s 1st Pylon. I was fairly certain it was a Tuthmosis, but we had never been able to get a legible picture of the cartouche: the block is awkwardly placed for photography and only gets direct light in the afternoon. Balancing rather precariously on the steep slope of the pylon, Jaap and Mary were able to use a mirror to cast a raking light that finally made the remains visible and I was finally able to get a picture. The cartouche clearly shows an ibis on a standard (right), which means “Djehuty”, the first element in the name Tuthmosis (Djehuty-mes).

Strong winds on Friday wreaked havoc on our workspace, knocking down both shelters. We put them back up Saturday, but the weather remained windy, threatening to bring them down on our heads. Blue cord and a couple of strategically placed stones solved the problem, and the tents survived to the end of the season.

The last few weeks of digging produced a couple of interesting objects. On the left is a stamped amphora handle, probably from an amphora produced in Rhodes. Since goods were shipped all over the Mediterranean world in such amphorae, they are very useful for dating the contexts in which they are found. On the right is a fragment of a fine glazed pottery bowl decorated with a figure that is probably Nemesis, with her raised paw on the wheel of fate (of which only the top is preserved), which she controls. Nemesis is a deity important to archaeologists.

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!

A general view of the excavation area on Thursday around noon. What you can’t see is how hot it is: 100°F on the site every day this week, which unusual for February. The heat is hard on everyone, but the work has to go on.

Drawing pots. Dr. Ben Harer has once again spent a week with us drawing pots with his usual skill and good humor; he leaves Saturday and we are sorry to see him go. On Thursday he was joined in the drawing area by Dr. Julia Harvey, an Egyptologist who worked at Saqqara for several years – and is also Jaap’s wife. This is her first season at Mut and she will spend most of her time on pottery. Welcome Julia!

Our on-site headquarters. It is simple but provides all we need: shade, work space for drawing pots, treating objects, writing notes and discussing the work, and a clear view of the excavation area.

With the work north of the Taharqa Gate finished, we have begun excavating the wall forming the southern boundary of the gate’s approach. It and the wall forming the west side of the corridor south of the gate are a unit and post-date the Taharqa Gate, the boundary wall being built over the remains of an earlier mud brick building (foreground). By Thursday Ayman and his team had taken down the first few courses of the wall, in the process revealing that the unusual line of baked brick to the south is only 2 courses deep and is built on debris.

The boundary wall continues west into Abdel Aziz’s square, where its bricks are clearly visible in the background. Against this wall this week we have come down on a surface littered with pottery vessels, some nearly complete or broken. A selection is shown at the right. By the way, the line of brick and stone found last week turned out not to connect to anything and was removed.

As you can see in this view to the southwest, the confusion of brick in the next square south is finally beginning to resolve itself into a series of individual walls. A single, substantial wall runs the length of the west baulk.

In the Tuthmoside Period the Mut Precinct was much smaller than it is now. The baked brick building in the upper left corner of this photograph sits on the remains of its northern enclosure wall. This week we were able to trace the south face of the Tuthmoside wall further to the east, as you can see here. It is very eroded but the line of brick is quite visible in the foreground. The south end of the corridor, by the way, has been cut by a fall of baked brick (seen last week) and a pit full of Roman Period pottery to its south.

The restoration of the healing chapel is continuing apace. On Monday we installed the block forming the 3rd course of the chapel’s rear wall. This block was particularly tricky as its upper edge is very fragile. We only have two blocks (one broken) of the left wall, so need to cut new stone for most of this wall.

Watching skilled stone cutters turn large, rough pieces of sandstone into dressed blocks is fascinating. They use heavy picks to split the large block into two smaller pieces of roughly the right size (left), then make the initial cuts of the smaller block with an electric stone saw (right). This is one of the few times we’ve seen them use a tool more complicated than pick, hammer and chisel.

The fine detail work is all done by hand either with a heavy, toothed pick (left) or by hammer and chisel (right).

When it is carved to everyone’s satisfaction the new block is winched into place on the chapel wall, great care being taken not to damage the ancient rock below it (left). On the right, the chapel as of noon Thursday. We hope to finish getting the walls up next week.

A squacco heron flying across the lake in the early morning haze.

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).

A view south from the precinct’s north enclosure wall of the whole area where we are now working. At the left are Chapel D and the Taharqa Gate; in the center the paving of the approach to the gate; and in the upper right the two squares we have opened on the high ground west of the gate.

Before I get to the work, I want to welcome back William and Elsie Peck, who arrived this week. Bill has been with the Mut Expedition longer than anyone except me, while Elsie joined us in 1979, which was also Mary’s first year. Bill’s first job this season is to map the new paving west of the Taharqa Gate. Elsie once again has taken on keeping the digging records, beginning with what Mahmoud Abbadi is doing in the corridor south of the Taharqa Gate.

The corridor at the end of the week, looking south (left) and north. The limestone chip layer at the north end now extends almost the full length of the corridor and is mixed with pieces of sandstone and pottery. What we had thought might be two brick walls on the west side of the corridor (on the right in the left picture) turned out to be a single wall whose northern end had been robbed out. Behind the meter stick in the left picture is a more organized grouping of stone fragments that seems to be an intentional blocking of the corridor at the south end of this wall.

Mary photographing the corridor in the early morning. Photographing from the top of a ladder is not her favorite activity, but sometimes it is necessary. I thank Jaap for this picture.

We expanded the square north of the Taharqa Gate and now have the full width of the gate wall from the first room of Chapel D (left) to the wall’s west face.

On the east side of the expanded enclosure wall square we found this curious baked brick feature set into the east side of the wall. Of the south and north walls only a few bricks remain, so we will never know what it was. Its presence, though, suggests there may have been a corridor (or at least a space) between the rear rooms of Chapel D and the Taharqa Gate wall.

The square on the high ground west of the gate, where Abdel Aziz found a mud brick wall last week, has produced no architectural remains since then, which doesn’t surprise us. The area is part of the same mass of debris we found last season, filling the space between the north and south boundary walls of the approach to the Taharqa Gate to a depth of almost 3 meters. We hope that the debris isn’t that deep in this square, which abuts an area of Ptolemaic and early Roman Period habitations.

On Saturday we opened a new square just south of Abdel Aziz to try to find more of the mud brick buildings discovered last year. You can see some of them in the upper right corner of this photograph. Abdullah struck mud brick almost immediately, only about 10 cm below the modern surface.

The same area at the end of work on Thursday, looking east. We already have at least 2 phases of brick walls (foreground), an area of confused brick in the southeast corner (under the meter stick) and in the northeast corner a patch that so far is just loose earth. Have I mentioned that mud brick is complicated?

Our most interesting find of the week was this mould for a figure of Osiris. Even though the figure is only about 2 inches tall, it is very finely carved with a great deal of detail. The only problem is that it did not turn up in the areas we are excavating: I found it on the ground behind a gate in the Mut Temple’s first pylon one day this week while checking inscriptions.

In 2007, local artists created a mosaic-decorated wall along the road to Karnak in front of a rundown cemetery for foreigners who died in Luxor; here it is in progress. During last year the city government decided to move the residents to a new cemetery and create a lovely public park on the grounds (right).

Among the park’s most charming features are groups of whimsical sculptures, my favorite being this cluster of mushrooms.

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.

On Sunday, Abdel Aziz began looking for more of the mud brick found last week. He had no luck, as the northern part had been completely destroyed by the Roman pit and extensive animal burrow we found in 2008. In the pit, however, Abdel Aziz did turn up a large piece of what would once have been a very nice diorite statue; he was quite proud of his find.

Here it is a few days later, somewhat cleaned up. When complete, it depicted a kneeling man holding an offering bowl bigger than he was. The text around the bowl would have named him and included an offering formula to a god (or goddess). Unfortunately all we have left is the tail end of the inscription. Even though his face is gone, the high quality of the carving of the wig, kilt and hieroglyphs is evident.

The right side of the “bowl man”; on the right a cowrie shell (about 2 cm long) whose back has been carefully sawn off to make it lie flat. It immediately put me in mind of the symbolism in Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party. According to our inspector, Hassan, cowrie shells are still used by fortune-tellers who throw shells on the ground and read the future in the patterns they form.

Here is the area north of Mut’s 1st Pylon at the end of the week. Our goal was to make as much sense of the brick as we could, which we have done, although the purpose of the foundations is not yet clear.

On the 18th we were happy to welcome Jacobus van Dijk back for another season. Jaap has an eagle eye for inscriptions, even climbing on top of awkward sphinx bases to have a good look.

Qufti Ayman Farouk Sharid is now working north of the Taharqa Gate trying to trace the wall that ran north from the gate, of which only a stub remains visible. We also want to figure out how that wall relates to the northern boundary wall of the approach to the gate. So far no answers to those questions, but Ayman has turned up yet another stub of wall, behind the meter stick, that is made up of unusually large bricks.

Mahmoud finished clearing the SW corner of the approach to the gate this week, revealing more paving running into the west baulk (left). To our surprise, he also found fragmentary remains of a mud brick structure (under the meter stick) built on the same level as the paving. Is it contemporary with the Taharqa Gate? We may never know as the rest of it lies under the later southern boundary wall of the the gate’s approach. Meanwhile, Abdullah Mousa, in the green galabiya, is now working in the NW corner of this square (right), taking down the strata of debris and walls left at the end of last season.

For the rest of the season we will be concentrating our efforts on the Taharqa Gate and the area to its west and south. Here you are looking south at the whole area at the end of work on Thursday. We have opened a new square on the high ground west of the gate (right), where Abdel Aziz will be working now that he’s finished with the brick in front of Mut’s 1st pylon.

Our first bird photos of the season. On Thursday Jaap caught this black kite soaring over the precinct (left) then swooping down on some unlucky creature who was about to become lunch. We’re glad you’re back, Jaap.

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.