Blocks, rocks, and kittens, oh my!

Edfu Temple shortly after dawn. 

First off- if you have no idea of what I do, here's a primer. On the right is where I work.  In the background is the temple of Edfu, dating to the Ptolematic period (basically the same period as ancient Greece).  In the foreground is the "tell", which is an Arabic word for hill.  Tells are formed by centuries and millenia of human habitation- in this case, Edfu was occupied continuously for at least 3000 years in this area.  We excavate the tell area to understand more about how the ancient Egyptians lived their lives.  It's an awesome, awesome job, and my dig director is awesome.  

Aaron, Ahmed, and I braved the bats to
 locate a box for Tasha.

On to the update.  Today was our first full day on site.  Yesterday we had a short day on site to get our equipment in order, as well as to remove boxes of pottery from the pylon for Tasha, our ceramicist, to document and draw for her dissertation.   I, along with Aaron, our new Australian team member, braved the pylon bats along with some of our Luxor workers to remove the boxes.  A bat hit me in the face.  Bats are cute, but not in your face.  

Moving blocks.

Today, Janelle and Jonathan’s block yard project went into full swing.  What they are working on is pretty cool- there are a lot of stone blocks from various buildings that were located on the site at some point in its history, but were torn down and reused in other buildings.  These have over time been piled up near our work area, and this year Nadine decided something needed to be done about them.  Janelle and Jon will be organizing them, drawing them, and then our workers will build pedestals for them so that they can be displayed as part of the open-air museum.   They had their workers move 312 blocks today! 

Tasha Town!

I helped Tasha up in “Tasha Town” for a while this morning.  Tasha Town is where we store the pottery from large contexts (a context is a single layer of archaeological material) during and after the season.  Much of her dissertation is dependent upon this material.   Tasha was also training her new assistant, Aaron. 

On Saturday I’ll start work excavating in my area- I’ll be working in the enclosure wall area to the north.  This was the town wall of Edfu at around 2100 BC.  We’ll be investigating the different phases as well as the silo installations adjacent.  It should be interesting, though it is in an area that has absolutely no shade at all, unlike where the ceramicists and epigraphers will be working.  They got their own tents this year!

One last thing- look what we found today:

Hopefully she is still there in the morning.  Patches, Kiri, and Afrit from last year are also all back.  We think this one is Patches' kitten- she looks like she might have had a litter relatively recently.