Today’s panorama taken from just behind the pump located at the southeast part of the lake shows how little room the pump has  to draw from the bottom now. The lake has come down significantly and only placing the pump even lower into the lake bed could allow it to continue to draw out water. But tomorrow our excavation will stop in any event, so at this point further drying would not help us. Still the dewatering has shown a great deal about the environment to us all. Click here to see a larger image.

As I said yesterday, even a brief period of the sump pump’s failure brings water into Squares D, F and C. Here in C where the quay itself and the angled baked brick feature are located we found that the pump had lost power during the night and Shaina checks out the water.

Here’s a shot of the First Court of the Mut Temple – just for Richard and Mary Fazzini. They have been kind enough to allow us to utilize that space, which is in their concession, to house temporary mastabas for blocks we were treating. We are happy to now hand this space back to you. Thanks so much and we’re closing in on preparing the Temple for opening to the public!

Believe it or not Violaine and I are still drawing the quay and stone walls. But look, we are approaching the end! Good thing too, because Violaine leaves us tomorrow at 11 am, along with Hiroko. Thank you both so much!

Mr. Magdy, ARCE’s Engineer for the Lake project (second from right), introduces the survey team that ARCE has brought in to map the bottom of the lake. On his right is Mr. Saad, the SCA lake inspector.

With the sump pump having been turned back on at 7 am after Mr. Saad’s arrival on site, the water has nearly disappeared again, but you can only imagine how muddy it is down there. We cannot go down by the quay as we had hoped, so that will wait for the winter.

Dr. Khaled, the surveyor arrived and we took him and Mr. Magdy to find the permanent IGN control points established here by the French Karnak survey team several decades ago. Dr. Khaled has kindly agreed to add our squares to the original Autocad file for the precinct that Max Farrar established in 2004 (check out the archives for that one).

Here’s the no comment part. Take points in the lake.