Just as a reminder, this photo and the next show the area west of the main roadway just as work was starting. This photograph was taken from atop the Mut Temple’s 1st Pylon and looks northwest.

The same area looking southwest from the enclosure wall east of the Precinct entrance. In both photos you can see that we had just completed the first of several mastabas.

This photo and the one that follows were taken at the very end of the season and show the kind of progress that can be made in just a few weeks when expeditions are able to co-operate to achieve common goals. Again, you are looking north from Mut’s 1st Pylon.

The whole area is now much more organized and easy to get around than it was at the beginning of the season. Here is what was accomplished in the last week of work.

The Taharqa ram going onto its new base (left) and in its final position. Now this important sculpture has an appropriate setting and can be seen clearly by visitors.

This long mastaba runs along the south side of the main group of mastabas and has been built to hold blocks from temple walls that cannot be put back in place but demonstrate the scale of work undertaken by the ancient Egyptians with minimal technology. Temperatures at the site neared 100° F for most of the last week, making the work even more difficult. Keeping hydrated is important as Mahmoud and his team know. The final blocks were put in place after we left Luxor.

Three Sakhmet statues found between the ram-sphinxes that stand before the west wing of Mut’s 1st Pylon now rest on new bases.

Building the final mastaba, at the west end of the 1st pylon, was still underway when we left the site. When complete and dry, it will hold several fragmentary Sakhmet statues and the beautiful and well-preserved head one of the ram-sphinxes that line this wing of the pylon. It was found by SCA excavators some years ago; unfortunately the sculpture from which it came is too badly deteriorated to allow the head to be put back in its original position.

We also finished the restoration of the west wing of the gate in the Mut Temple’s 2nd Pylon. This started as a small project to put two inscribed blocks back in their original position, but the rest of the blocks of this part of the gate were in such poor condition that we ended up consolidating and restoring the whole north end of the structure.

Excavation and restoration are only part of the Expedition’s work. We are also preparing to publish the Ptolemaic religious texts on the gateway in the Mut Temple’s 1st Pylon. To do so, we need good photographs of the inscriptions and reliefs. Sometimes the Egyptian sun provides perfect lighting, as on the reliefs in the background. Other reliefs, though, need reflected light to bring them out. On one of the last days at the site, Jaap and Mary used a large mirror to try to get just the right light on the inscriptions on the north face of the pylon’s west wing.

The area just outside the site has become a dumping ground for all sorts of trash. One of our last tasks this season was to arrange to have this trash removed early one morning.

This grove of palm trees is just above the southeast corner of the sacred lake, and is where the pottery is sorted and photographed. It is the only shady area in the whole 22-acre site.

And finally, one last bird shot: a flock of stilts wheeling over Mut’s Sacred Lake. It is hard to leave a place that has such beauty.

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.

Jaap’s wife, Egyptologist Julia Harvey, arrived on February 15, completing this season’s small team. Julia has agreed to take on the pottery, with which she has considerable experience. She already has the first batches sorted and organized.

We finished work on the paving west of the Taharqa Gate early in the week and Mary got up on a ladder to photograph the results. As expected, some of the newly-exposed stone was badly decayed, but enough survives to show the course of the roadway.

Abdel Aziz’s square north of the Ramesses III temple is no longer boring. After about 1.2 m of clean earth, we began to encounter mud brick. By the end of the week, aside from a few shallow pits with stone, mud brick covered almost the whole square and we had found a line of baked brick along the west side. We are fairly certain that what we have now are the foundations either of the temple’s north enclosure wall or perhaps its pylon. Ramesses’ temple stood within its own mud-brick enclosure (remember, it was outside the precinct until the 4^th century BC), of which only the west and south walls survive. The eastern wall seems to have been completely eaten away by centuries of flooding.

With the Taharqa Gate finished, we opened a new square north of Abdel Aziz to continue our search for sphinx bases. Ayman has encountered the same thick layer of wind-blown earth over broken stone. By the end of the week he was about 90 cm below the modern surface. At least some of the stone in this square seems to be larger and in better condition than in Abdel Aziz’s square.

Several years ago we rebuilt the west wing of the Mut Temple’s mud brick 2^nd Pylon to a height of about 3 m to give visitors some idea of its appearance. Of the pylon’s sandstone gateway very little is left, as you can see. We have determined, however, that the two remaining inscribed blocks actually join, the lower one fitting to the left of the upper, although both are somewhat out of position now. We decided this season to put these two blocks back in place and started work on Tuesday.

Once the two blocks were removed we had to clean up the accumulated dirt, plant remains and deteriorated stone behind them (left). By the end of work Wednesday the debris had been removed, a new support for the blocks was well underway, the new construction conforming to the shape of the remaining ancient blocks. The 2 main pieces of the larger block are ready to be re-joined (right), with stainless steel rods ensuring that the join is secure.

Once the mastaba we built last week was dry, we began moving decorated blocks onto it. Some were relatively easy: large, but able to be moved by a few men using a wooden stretcher and stout straps. Hassan supervises the careful placement of such a block.

The beautifully carved block in the center of this picture was another matter entirely. Not only is it huge, but its lower surface has been both cut away and worn by time, making it difficult to balance. While it could be moved to the edge of the mastaba with a combination of siba (tripod and winch) and levers, it was too heavy for the siba to raise it to the top of the mastaba.

On Thursday morning Mahmoud Farouk, foreman of the work at Karnak (center) and an expert at moving large blocks, used a hydraulic jack, levers and baulks of wood to raise the block gradually to the level of the mastaba.

Once the block was on the mastaba, the siba came back into use to support the block so the wood could be removed and the block gradually tipped into position. This took all morning.

By noon the block was in its final position it’s shallowest end supported by a block of sandstone. Hassan, Mahmoud and the crew are justly proud of the work!

We have also built a second mastaba to hold the several inscribed and decorated ceiling blocks from Chapel D, like this one,  that cannot be put back in place as not enough is left of the chapel (visible in the background). This will not only protect them from water infiltration but will also improve the appearance of the approach to the chapel and the Taharqa Gate.

In the meantime, I have found time to start work in the Montuemhat Crypt, comparing Charles Edwin Wilbour’s corrections to Mariette’s copy of the texts  with what is still on the walls. A small mirror is essential to direct light on shadowed areas of the wall. From what I have seen so far, many of Wilbour’s corrections are accurate.

Adding graffiti to temples is an ancient tradition that seems to be continuing today. The new paving in the gateway of the Mut Temple’s 1^st pylon is only a few months old and already it has acquired its first graffito. The figure has a cobra on its forehead and what looks like a crudely carved beak (Horus?). It wears an elaborate crown with sun disk and a very fancy robe with checkered shoulder straps and diagonal lines on the sleeves. Pity the artist wasn’t more talented.

Jaap took this terrific photograph of two small lizards locked in combat.

And Julia contributed this photograph of a crow diving after a kite. Life is never dull at Mut!

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.

In February 2012 the American Research Center in Egypt, with funding from USAID and in co-operation with the Ministry of State for Antiquities, began a project to prepare the Mut Precinct to open to visitors. They are not excavating but rather attempting to control the rampant growth of grasses and reeds at the site and making cosmetic improvements that will make the precinct more accessible to visitors. Under the direction of John Shearman, ARCE’s Associate Director in Luxor, there has been considerable progress.

As always, the view from the plane on the trip from Cairo to Luxor was spectacular. This year we flew down the west side of the Nile, over rugged and desolate mountains.

First, I’d like to introduce you to the Egyptian colleagues with whom we’ll be working this season. Our MSA inspector this year is Hassan El-Tawab. He and I took a tour of the site on Thursday. Once again, our foreman is Farouk Sharid Mohamed, a friend and colleague of more than 30 years.

Farouk’s two sons Ayman (left) and Abdel Aziz will be the Quftis working with us in 2013. They, too, have many years of experience excavating at Mut and other sites and are a delight to work with.

Expeditions at the Mut Precinct have always worked together whenever possible. When the ARCE team asked if we could excavate part of the mound of earth east of the gate in the Mut Temple’s first court (left) so that they could remove a number of large, undecorated blocks from the court, we were glad to oblige. We are hoping to find more of the paving that links the first court to the chapel on the rise of ground to the east.

One of the things we want to do this year (a small project) is clear the remaining earth in the square west of the Taharqa Gate where we uncovered paving in 2010. First, though, we need to remove the loose earth along the west baulk to prevent an unwary walker from falling.

Now to the changes the ARCE has made. To make it easier to get into the site and and into the Mut Temple they have been laying new paving along the precinct’s main axis. What remains of the ancient paving of the approach to the Mut Temple was badly deteriorated so it was carefully covered with protective material and the new paving laid on a bed of clean sand. Where the paving is in better condition, new blocks are laid around the ancient stones. The new signs for the temple are Egyptian alabaster etched with the images and temple name.

On the left is the road between the precinct entrance and the Mut Temple as it was in January 2011; on the right, the same area today. Quite a difference.

The first court (left) and second court have been leveled and laid with fine gravel so people can get to the Sakhmet statues. The new paving continues through the second court to the entrance to the rear part of the temple (foreground).

One of the project’s biggest challenges has been to control the growth of reeds around Mut’s Sacred Lake without the use of herbicides. In 2008-2009 the lake was drained so that the Johns Hopkins University expedition, directed by Dr. Betsy Bryan, could excavate along its shores. Once the lake was allowed to refill, the reeds grew back almost as thickly as ever; the photo on the left was taken in January 2011. The method ARCE has used seems to be working (right) without making the Isheru inhospitable to the many types of birds who feed there. In the background on the right is the pathway the ARCE team has built around the lake to allow visitors to enjoy its beauty.

To make it easier to get to the pathway on the east side of the Mut Temple (still under construction), the ARCE team has built shallow stairs leading south from the junction of Mut’s First Pylon (right) and Temple A (left). We appreciate the stairs, too, as we are doing some work in this area. All in all, navigating the site’s monuments is much less of a challenge than it was before.

Because of potential unrest, no foreign missions were allowed to work in the field on Saturday, January 29, so we weren’t able to get back to the paving until Sunday. By late morning Abdel Aziz and Mamdouh had taken down the southern half of the small baulk between their 2 areas and had reached the paving across much of the area.

And here is the square at noon on Sunday. Although a few blocks are somewhat decayed, the paving is generally in pretty good condition.  We had to cut steps into the baulk between the two sections of the square to allow the workers – and Mary – to get into and out of a square that is over 2 meters deep.

To get even lighting on the paving on a windy day, at noon, when shadows are narrow, took a complicated arrangement of sheets, galabiyas and scarves. Our workmen, as always, showed great good humor and willingness to cooperate with our odd requests.

It was much easier to take this south-looking photo of the paving early on Monday morning, when the sides of the square itself provided sufficient shadow. The angle of the Dynasty 25 paving to the later Ptolemaic wall is very evident, as is a narrow drainage channel cut diagonally across the paving, a feature not found in the areas closer to the gate.

As we suspected, the displaced block projecting from the west baulk of the square and forming the bottom of the large pit is, indeed, a displaced paving stone. Its original position was probably the now-empty space under the right end of the meter stick.

In this January 27 photograph taken from the enclosure wall, the continuity between the eastern section of the boundary wall of the approach to the Taharqa Gate (left) and the part excavated this season (right) is clear. In the foreground are the remains of the late Ptolemaic/Roman Period houses.

Although our excavations this year were intentionally limited, we did find some interesting pottery and objects. Here are the shallow, black-glazed Hellenistic bowl with impressed decoration and the slightly larger stone bowl mentioned in the posting of our first week’s work. The bowl appears to be serpentine, not diorite as we had first thought.

From the unexpected pottery cache found during our 2^nd week came this rather elegant, highly burnished juglet with blue decoration; and a Ptolemaic colander (right). Like modern colanders it even had 2 horizontal handles (one shown here) by which you could hold it while shaking the water out of your lettuce.

Mary’s favorite piece of pottery is this carinated bowl, found at the bottom of the large pit in the square west of the Taharqa Gate. While its shape is simple and the pottery fairly coarse, the potter took the time to press a subtle pattern of radiating lines into the underside, making it rather special.

We only found 2 faience objects this season. The small amulet of a falcon-headed god (left) came from the southern excavation area. The musician was found in the square west of the Taharqa Gate. When complete, the harp would most likely have rested on an oversized phallus; such erotic figures, in faience or stone, were quite common in ancient Egypt.

Last year’s “mystery” object was the item on the left. We had no idea what it was, or even which way it stood. This year we were at least able to answer the second question: it is the rear end of a hollow terracotta animal (possibly a dog). We still don’t know its purpose.

Once the paving was fully exposed and photographed on January 31, we were able to spend our last few days at the site on other matters. I had a chance once again to examine the so-called “Montuemhat crypt”: a small chapel within the Mut Temple built by and dedicated to Montuemhat. Such chapels are extremely rare. Auguste Mariette, one of the founding fathers of Egyptology, published drawings of the chapel’s texts and scenes in 1875.

The copy of Mariette’s book in the Wilbour Library was annotated and corrected by Charles Edwin Wilbour when he visited the site in the late 1880s. Here is Mariette’s drawing (with Wilbour’s notations) of one of the most interesting scenes: the relief on the rear wall that may show an inventory of ritual objects and sculptures within the temple.  (In Mariette’s book the reliefs are reversed; they are shown here in their correct orientation) I am particularly interested in comparing what Mariette and Wilbour saw with what is preserved today.

Although these scenes are very poorly preserved and difficult to light, we were able to get usable photographs of them that will assist in their study.

Not a bad end for a study season.

With the work done, Mary and I headed home on February 4 by way of Doha and Paris – a somewhat roundabout but interesting itinerary. Our last Flickr posting to “Mut 2011: Sights at the Site and Beyond” includes a few photos taken on that trip.

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.

On January 15 we finished removing the baulk stub over the remains of the southern boundary wall of the Taharqa Gate approach. In this view to the northeast, you can now see that we have a single, wide wall that has been successively cut back. All that remains now is to map this new section of the wall.

The last of the pottery spill found in the angle of the walls at the south end of the excavation area. The sherds to the right of the meter stick sit in a corner formed by the north face of the Tuthmoside enclosure wall and the new wall found last week. With the pottery removed, we decided to explore slightly further south to see if the mud brick continues further south.

It doesn’t. Just south of our baulk line Abdel Aziz found that the mud brick gives way to loose soil containing a lot of pottery, including the broken round jars just in front of him.

One of the pieces of pottery was this storage container that projected from below the mud brick – or seemed to (left). Further cleaning revealed that the jar actually sits in front of the wall, which was built on top of the Tuthmoside enclosure wall. The jar is set in a square void in the enclosure wall, its south and west edges visible in the photo to the right. Once we’ve mapped the area we will remove the storage jar, the last part of the work here.

Having now answered two of the questions we set out to resolve in this short season, I decided on the 16^th to open a new square west of the Taharqa Gate to try to answer a third question: does the pavement running west from the Taharqa Gate continue the curve to the south that is apparent in the area excavated in 2010? Since our time is limited, the most sensible area for this square was an area we had last worked in 1978, seen here today looking east.

The same square is in the background in the photo taken from the enclosure wall at the end of the 1978 season. It is part of a group of late Ptolemaic and early Roman Period habitations we had found built north and west of the Taharqa Gate. The area we are re-opening is an open courtyard with a 3-step stairway in its southwest corner. We also want to find out this year if the wall along the south side of the court is a continuation of the south boundary wall of the approach to the Taharqa Gate.

On the left are the steps as they were in 1978, with a border of mud brick along the east side; on the right as they are today. In clearing them again we uncovered the mud brick border along the stairs’ west side, which had been buried under the 1978 baulk. By re-excavating the stairway and its associated surface we should be able to link the surface of the courtyard (and hence the houses to its north) to any structures or features uncovered this season.

In this view east, taken late Thursday morning, you can see that the courtyard’s wall runs the full length of the square with the stairway at its west end (foreground). The section across the wall (middle) revealed its south face, with another building abutting it directly. While the area of the stairs was being worked on, we temporarily divided the excavation area to make it easier for everyone to get around. In the deepest part reached so far (background), we have come on a surface with a heavy concentration of mostly small pot sherds. We’re curious to see how far this level extends.

Jaap van Dijk, of the State University of Groningen, was able to join us again, briefly, this season. It’s always good to have him back. Not only is he fun, but he’s a terrific object registrar. Here he is cleaning a rather nice juglet Abdel Aziz found among the pots atop the Tuthmoside wall.  On the table in front of him is what we have dubbed the mystery object.

This strange, hollow object came from the loose surface in the courtyard square. We have no idea what it is. We are assuming that the side with the double ring base (left) is the bottom as the object sits most securely on it. The small hole in the top (right) is intentional. What is left of the rim of the “top” and the shape of the painted band suggests the upper section may have been somewhat oval in shape.

The object is made up of 2 separate elements that were joined together before firing. Inside, the areas around the center point of both the top (shown here) and bottom have been carefully finished. As you can see in the profile (right), the rim or collar where the two sections join is almost as thick as each section. It might be a lamp, based on the possibly ovoid shape of the upper part that might have accommodated a spout, but the hole in the top is too small to be used to fill a lamp. Or perhaps it’s an incense burner, with the small hole being where the scented smoke escapes. The only problem is, there doesn’t seem to be any burning on the inside of the thing. It really is a mystery.

If anyone out there has ever seen anything like it, we’d love to hear from you!

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.