A nice early morning shot of the area in front of the columned porch where Adam has been working.  He and his team have spent the past week and a half uncovering mudbrick architecture beneath the later (and much larger) masonry of the Mut Temple.  To the right you can see the curving wall, a close-up of which was posted yesterday.

The block we found last week with the red outline sketched on it has become coated with salt.  This often happens when an artifact has been buried and salty groundwater leaches into the porous stone.  When the artifact is removed from the ground and left to dry, the water evaporates leaving a coating of salt on the surface.  One of our conservators is carefully scraping the salt from the block’s surface and blowing it off with a squeeze bulb.

Will and Keli, our artists, contemplate the day’s work in the (relative) cool of the morning.

Lotfi, our conservator, oversees one of the decorated blocks on its journey around the Mut Temple to its new home in our rapidly filling open-air museum.

After having weathered three and a half millennia, we don’t want our blocks’ short trip around the temple and onto a mastaba (bench) to be their last.  To make sure they survive for several more millennia, Lotfi personally guides a block the last few inches onto the mastaba.

One of the most enduring tasks on an archaeological excavation is cleaning rocks.  There are always more rocks to clean.

And dirt to move.  There’s always more dirt to move, too.

Striking a commanding pose, Sarah prepares to take levels.

At such an early hour, it takes most of Adam’s brainpower to keep the stadia rod straight.  The rest of his brainpower is probably devoted to the contemplation of sleep.  Or beer.  Or possibly both.

A picture of Lotfi taking a picture of someone cleaning an ancient picture.