Imsheer Winds

In the southern part of the square west of the Taharqa Gate we have been digging mostly through earth with a heavy concentration of pottery, mostly large cooking pots and storage jars. While it is probably the remains of an ancient dump, it may also have been intentionally deposited as landfill to level up the area. To give you some idea of how deep we have dug from the modern surface, Qufti Abdel Aziz (arrow) is about 6 ft. tall.

And finally Abdel Aziz and his team are getting some reward for their work. They have uncovered a substantial mud brick wall running across the entire south end of the square (rear of photo) with a narrower wall to its north. The large wall meets a north-south wall uncovered some years ago; it is just to the left of the man with the wheelbarrow.

In the south square, we continue to find mud brick walls that continue to be somewhat confusing. In this photo, for instance, the bricks labeled 1-3 are all part of the same wall (cut by later pitting) that runs under the course of bricks labeled 4, so 1-3 are earlier. Wall 5 is not part of wall 4 but was built against it. It is a shallow wall, only a couple of courses deep, so was probably the latest part of this construction. The pottery at the lower left lies against wall 1 on a surface that is associated with the wall. Confusing isn’t it?

We did make one interesting discovery in this area this week: at least the north wall of the baked brick building has a sand foundation trench, just visible behind the meter stick, and 2 small walls run up to its face. By the way, the rather dramatic curve to the building’s foundations is the result of a subsidence of the land on which it was built; it is not intentional.

Here are a couple of the small finds from the season so far. On the left is a very detailed mould for making wadjet-eye amulets. On the right is the upper part of an odd terracotta figure that seems to be a bearded man with what we think is a heavy wig that is broken off on the proper left side.

On Thursday we saw our first cattle egret of the season wandering among fallen mud bricks and camel thorn in the area of the houses west of the Taharqa Gate. We wonder if it’s the same bold bird that we saw last year as he allowed us to get quite close before flying off.

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