ASP '23 Week 5: The only real archaeology "curse"
There are a lot of popular stories about "curses" in Egyptology and archaeology. A popular one is that the individual who opens the tomb of a mummy will meet a foul end (shout out to an 8-year-old Claire who wrote a story about exactly this - and shout out to current Claire for sharing the gem of a literary piece with me this week). I could go on and on about how the only real "curse" in ancient Egypt was the threat of taking an individual to court in the afterlife - but there is one curse that is very real to the archaeologist (and no it's not getting Giardia from letting Egypt puppies lick your face, that's just my curse): it's the curse of the final week.
A headline from the post-Tutankhamun era.
This was, indeed, our last week of excavation before beginning the long and tedious process of recording anything we hadn't gotten around to yet, which meant a combination of prioritization and begging the director for just a few more excavators to get everything done (even the non-priorities). But, the curse... The curse is that, in your last week, and often on your last day, you will make some gigantic discovery, or uncover a massive tomb, and you simply don't have the time or resources to do anything with it. So, you record what you can, and cover it up to come back to next time. Oh boy, did that curse hit hard.
An overview of my Southern Ops.
The week started out slowly enough, I prioritized the step-shaft, excited to see what the rest of the structure looked like, and decided to open the adjoining Op (henceforth, 36) to chase the surface architecture we saw in Op 22. Chase it we did. I know surface architecture isn't as thrilling as tombs for many of you, but as I have nailed home in past newsletters, this is a huge discovery for New Kingdom Abydos, which was believed to have almost no surface architecture. It also helps that it is quite pretty and gives the perfect look - like an archaeological site plucked out of a textbook. What we found was a hefty extension of the wall we saw in 22, as well as a number of mud surfaces, pottery deposits, cuts for burials, and mudbricks galore. What makes this even more interesting is that right smack in the middle of it all is the Dog Hypogeum discovered by Penn last summer.
An overview of Op 36.
Some pots and mud surface from Op 22. Look how perfect they are!
Forgive me if I already addressed this strange structure earlier, but it deserves repeating if I did. We tend to associate the burial of a large number of (often mummified) animals with the Late Period or the Greco-Roman period in Egypt. Penn, however, discovered a large, brick-lined shaft, with three chambers - two of which contained in excess of 58 dogs, and one with an expected burial of a few people. What was weird was that everything from the shaft dated to the early New Kingdom - a good 1000+ years earlier than the usual hypogeum date. Penn is still working on the data, but working so close to this burial, I have to consider what it means for the things around it, as surely there was an awareness of the massive dog burial in the middle of an elite cemetery. Being so, the presence of all this surface architecture around/behind this tomb, suggests a very busy landscape at the time of burial, and possibly continued cult activity (seen in the pottery deposits).
Some of the pottery appears from the sand in Op 36.
This piqued our interest enough that we decided we had time to chase the architecture just a little bit further and opened the remaining 10x5m half of Op 21 that had fallen by the wayside. By the end of the week, surprise! We had another chapel, at least two more walls, some ashy pits, two previously uncovered but unaddressed small pits, and at least one additional large burial pit cut. Is this site setting unrealistic expectations for me for digging in Egypt? Absolutely. Then again, I plan to keep excavating here as long as I can, so maybe I can keep those expectations of beautiful finds 5x a day fulfilled.
A new wall in Op 21!
An ash lens in Op 21.
An overview of Op 21.
The two small pits in 21.
Back to the shaft! Those strange little steps continued down seven levels, before petering out completely. We still aren't really sure how they were used, as the floor of the shaft continued for another 1.5m at least, making it inaccessible without some gymnastics routine. We did, however, find TWO burial chambers at the bottom! They were both disturbed in antiquity. The eastern one was significantly larger and contained approximately 10 people, while the western one contained the remains of only one. It is possible that the East was the family chamber, and the West was the original burial, but I need to do some work to decide this for certain.
Excavating the chambers.
The steps from below.
Contemplating life from the bottom of the shaft.
Not only did we find two burial chambers, but in these chambers we found, not one, not two, but three, but FOUR funerary masks from wooden coffins. They were all in different levels of deterioration, but they are all incredible. We also found a mud seal, which we are hoping will allow us to establish some names or connections for these individuals.
The tiny mud stamp impression.
The mask in-situ
The first funerary mask!
Post discovery.
The chambers also included bricks stamped with the name of the king in the blocking walls - which raises interesting questions about royal involvement in this burial - and some gilded pieces of a coffin! That's right, I found gold after all. Who knew that gold would be the least interesting thing about this burial though?!
One of the (broken) stamped bricks. The half stamp can be seen in the top right portion of the brick. It looks a bit like a jellyfish.
A gilded piece of plaster with an incised eye!
While fantastic things are going on in the other Ops as well (almost everyone moved towards me to help me find the edges of the cemetery), the most interesting find actually wasn't all that ancient at all. In Hazem's new Op, the excavators quickly came down on a number of plastic bags. They found that they were all filled with small artifacts - ushabti, beads, amulets, spindle whorls, and more. What seems to have happened is that in 1999 (there was a newspaper in the bag used as cushioning!), someone collected these items, a mix of real and fake artifacts, and buried them in this field used for animals, likely planning to come back for them at a later date and sell them. This is such a great/horrifying snapshot of the afterlives of many artifacts that aren't scientifically excavated. While we now have these in a small cachette, we have no idea where they originally came from or what their context was. They'll remain a small mystery.
Hazem's cachette.
So, back to the curse. The last day rolls around. I am feeling a touch sad (and more than a little nauseous), and running around trying to highlight the last few things that need to be done. I suggest cleaning 36 and 21 a bit more, maybe pulling down another level in one or two places, and tackling the small two pits in front of the new chapel in 21. Easy! We have six hours.
Almost immediately, we get distracted. The first pit has nothing in it. I mean nothing. This is very very weird, as even the most robbed pit tombs usually have an excess of bones, but okay, fine, it's still great [and fascinating] data. In the meantime, Ashraf suggests also going down in the new larger pit in Op 21 since only one or two people can clean around the architecture, so I agree to that and a small team gets started. Three pits are totally doable in six hours, so I was feeling confident. The second small pit is started and we come down on some in-situ legs. I cannot overstate how beautiful they are. They're just slightly crossed at the ankle, and fit perfectly inside the thin outline of a (now frass) wooden coffin - gorgeous. This slows things down a bit because in situ bones are fiddly, and you do not want to accidentally knock one slightly out of place. The top of the body is not in the same state. Clearly, someone broke the coffin around the head, yanked the body up, and fussed around in the torso until they found what they wanted. They did, however, accidentally leave a bronze needle in place next to the head (a very common grave good, almost always found in situ next to the head), and lucky for us, the skull still had a number of (real) braids intact. Unreal. This slowed us down a little more (hair + wind = nightmare). Over in the larger pit, the excavators were quickly disappearing underground, suggesting it was a lot deeper than we expected - but that was fine, we still had time.
The reeds leading from the pit into the chapel space.
By the end of the day, we were taking out the small pit burial and (hopefully) almost at the bottom of the larger pit. Then...under the small burial, were a series of reeds leading under the chapel. So cool! But we have no idea where they lead and we have 20 minutes to wrap up. Crap. Then I hear my name from the large pit. It wasn't a pit, it was a shaft, and we had just hit the fully blocked burial chamber. FULLY BLOCKED. Does this mean intact? Absolutely not, especially because we found hair in the shaft but it does mean it could be somewhat more intact than the others we had opened. Double crap.
The shaft - much skinnier than the others!
I am very happy to say that, this week's newsletter ends with some good news though. Drumroll, please.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I convinced Debbie to let me excavate on Saturday with a full crew. We WILL get to open the burial chamber AND see where the reeds lead! The curse has been broken! Or I'll find something even better on Saturday and be even more heartbroken. Only time will tell!
Stay tuned! Emily
A sa sign (meaning son of...)