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Wednesday, June 20, 2007


Will and Keli.
Today is the last day that we will have Will and Keli on the website. They will be leaving Luxor this weekend, and I want to thank them most profusely for their enormous contribution to the work. I look forward to the next time they are both with us, and we have some interesting shots to show the variety of things that artists, in this case Will, routinely do here.

 


 

Will discusses pottery drawings with Jonathon.
Will examines pottery drawings.
Since tomorrow the rest of us are going to Aswan for an overnight look at monuments, Will checks all the pottery drawings that have been done recently. Talking to Jonathan and Jessica about their drawings, Will asks questions about how the stance and rim size of a vessel were determined. As they respond, Will takes the same pottery pieces and attempts to find the proper position and size himself, then helps them decide whether the drawn outcome was the best or not. The corrections have been minor, a tribute both to the students and to Will’s teaching.
Will and Jessica discuss pottery drawings.

 


 

Will in a tight spot.
Will cleaning debris from the relief.

 

Today Will has drawn a small area of raised relief of the 18th Dynasty reused as part of a limestone chapel wall in the Ptolemaic period, more than twelve hundred years after it was originally carved. The location of the chapel against the front enclosure of the Mut enclosure is a tight fit between the rear of the shrine and the mud brick wall. This first shot resembling “where’s Will” gives you the idea of how he must fit himself into the space. The side views showing him first brushing light debris from the relief and then tracing over acetate are good examples of his normal work conditions.

Will tracing over acetate.

 


 

Emily taking photographs of pottery.

Back at the house, Emily and Jim continue to produce excellent photographs of our (seemingly never ending) pottery. They place the diagnostic sherds (largely rims, bases, and handles) in an arrangement to fit the camera field, place a label and scale, and use the set up that Jay devised for the work. Today was, however, a bit frustrating, because the electricity at Karnak was down all morning, and since the photo stations are designed to use lighting as you see here, Emily and Jim had to work on registering finds until the lights came on. But the work is still going on!

Display of pottery sherds.

 


 

Violaine and Adam at work.
Adam's trench.
Excavation continues.

Adam and Violaine are putting their heads together to discuss identifying his areas of work at the temple. Adam’s long search for mud brick along the front of the temple’s porch resulted in good brick across his trench, and has allowed us to see the manner in which lower and upper walls joined. This is important information about the formative era of the temple – before it was built in stone, and now that we have a clearer view, we see a substantial feature whose track must be followed further. In the interim as the brick was drying out, Adam has moved to a small area in the central aisle of the porch where brick was found in 2006. He has now dug down beneath the brick walls and reached pre-temple environment.

 


 

Violaine mapping the temple.
Violaine and Sarah confer.


Violaine continues to work on the preparation of a more precise map of the temple, particularly as details are now visible that were not so earlier. The work that we are doing at present in excavating the porch has revealed subflooring and foundation indications that were not seen earlier and will disappear again as soon as we refill the porch. With Sarah, Violaine discusses the approach to planning the areas excavated.

 


 

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