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During this past week I continued to treat small finds excavated from the west side of the Taharqa gate, and to watch the progress of the stabilization and rebuilding of the south wing of the gate. In his last blog entry, Richard wrote about the processing of the hundreds of pottery sherds dug up over the course of the season. Occasionally there are enough sherds from a single vessel to reconstruct it, and for me there is a certain zen-like satisfaction in assembling these 3-D puzzles. In the picture on the left, I’m sorting through pieces looking for possible joins, and I’m using the sand-filled tubs to prop up the pieces that I’ve already glued together. The adhesive of choice in this case is the ever-useful Paraloid B-72 acrylic resin. Pictured on the right is part of a large, double-handled vessel with white slip decoration that I put together.

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I’ve been back on site for a week now and am happy to rejoin the team for my second season. It’s great to see Richard, Mary, Bill, Elsie, Jaap and Ben again, and there are many familiar faces among our Egyptian colleagues this year including the conservator Khaled Mohamed Wassel, and the head mason Mohamed Gharib and his crew. I also had the pleasure of meeting for the first time our SCA inspector Osama Saadalla Hamdoun and Herman te Velde, a specialist in Ptolemaic religious texts.

My first few days here were spent recovering from the two day journey and seven hour time change, as well as organizing the conservation supplies and hunting down a few things in the souq (the market) that I didn’t bring with me. I also walked around the site to view a month’s worth of excavations, and then staked my claim to one of the tables under the tent shown in the photo on the left where I began to treat small finds (coins, ceramic sherds, and faience objects). Shown in the photo on the right is a small faience object broken into three pieces that I repaired with Paraloid B-72, an acrylic resin widely used in conservation because of it’s stability and reversibility. The object is actually a crouching male figure holding a rather large appendage between his legs that extends over his shoulder. Yes, the ancient Egyptians did have a sense of humor!

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The final week on site was spent finishing up various small projects, catching up on treatment notes, and packing up the tools and supplies for next year. It was also satisfying to watch the progress on the west wall of Chapel D, pictured here, where Mohammed Gharib and Khaled did the final filling of losses between the original carved blocks with a mortar that closely matches the color of the stone when it dries.

My three weeks here at Mut have gone by fast and it’s been fascinating dealing with some of the problems conservators face in the field where the challenges range from preserving large scale stone and architectural elements to treating small excavated objects like coins and pottery. I’ve also made a lot of new friends and had the chance to see beautiful vistas everyday, like this one looking up the Avenue of Sphinxes toward the south entrance to the Karnak Temple complex. A special thanks to everyone who made it all possible!

After my second week on site I feel a bit less dazed and confused by the layout, the routine, and the scope and direction of the project, and more able to focus on the conservation issues at hand. A good thing considering I have less than a week remaining to finish out the season! I continued with the projects I described in my last entry including the removal of the cotton gauze facing from the badly deteriorated limestone block with Montuemhat’s name on it now that it’s been moved to a nearby mastaba for permanent display.

I continued to treat and clean coins as well but also had the pleasure of cleaning this small bronze lion, about five centimeters in length, with crossed forepaws. Pictured on the right, I’m cleaning the recently discovered relief fragment with an image of Khonsu on it to help make the incised lines more legible. (more…)

My first day on site was Saturday, February 9th and I’m amazed at how quickly the week flew by. One of the things I did right away was walk around the entire precinct with Mary, who explained the layout and history of the excavation. It was great to actually walk around and locate features that I’ve only read about or seen in pictures. Richard, Bill, Elsie, Jaap and Ben have also been bringing me up to speed on various aspects of the site and sharing stories and anecdotes of seasons past.

In addition, I met my Egyptian colleagues for the first time including Khaled Mohamed Wassel, the Egyptian conservator on site who has been doing an admirable job of consolidating the carved sandstone blocks in the west wall of Chapel D, and supervising the master mason, Mohahamed Gharib and his team in rebuilding the wall. They’ve all been attempting to teach me a few words of Arabic with often humorous results.

I set about surveying my conservation supplies, and examined the small finds from this season, including a group of about forty coins. Pictured above is one of the first coins I cleaned mechanically with brushes and dental tools that shows the head of a Roman emperor yet to be identified. In the other picture I’m cleaning another coin with the pointed end of a wooden skewer after softening the outer layers of corrosion in a chemical solution of 10% EDTA (ethylene diamine tetra acetic acid) in water made basic with ammonia. Uncovering legible details on heavily corroded coins requires a steady hand and a lot of patience but if successful can aid in dating the area the coins were found in. (more…)