However, neither they nor any other visitors to KV5 realized its tremendous size. According to Weeks, who is a professor at the American University in Cairo, the tomb is probably the largest in the Valley of the Kings. Thus far the excavator has located at least sixty-seven (!) chambers, with the possibility of even more being found on a lower level.
According to the wall decoration, the tomb was probably the burial place of several of the offspring of Rameses II. Although severely flooded in antiquity, objects found in the cement-hard mud and rubble clogging much of the monument indicates that the tomb was, indeed, used for royal burials, although only fragmentary human-remains have been found by Weeks to date. The tomb was robbed and/or dismantled in antiquity, but the flood debris is rich in deposits of pottery, statue fragments, faience jewelry and pieces of wood furniture. The discovery of so many multiple chambers raises many questions about family burials and tomb plans of New Kingdom royalty. Weeks intends to continue working in KV5 during the summer and fall.
Other projects in the Valley of the Kings have also been flourishing. In late-winter Canadians Lyla Pinch Brock and Roberta Shaw (of the Royal Ontario Museum) spent a short season investigating tombs for possible future work. Then Lyla and her husband, Ted Brock, joined American excavator Otto Schaden in KV10, the Tomb of Amenmesse, which he has been clearing under the auspices of the University of Arizona. This spring was a study season for Schaden, who spent time reviewing recent flood-damage in KV10 and monitoring a crack in the tomb; although the monument suffered from the rains of last fall and lower chambers are still damp, the damage was not critical. Schaden also catalogued and drew artifacts found in his previous field-seasons clearing the Amenmesse site, and was joined by Roxie Walker and Sonia Guillen, who studied human remains found by the American in the Western Valley of the Kings a few seasons ago.
On the east bank at Luxor, Richard Fazzini (the Brooklyn Museum) and his team completed a four-week study-season this spring at their concession, the Temple of Mut precinct at Karnak. They worked on the final collation of the Ptolemaic texts at the gate and checked all of their previously completed drawings against the originals. A great deal of pottery has been drawn and should be ready for publication relatively soon. But this was not exclusively a study season, as the Brooklyn-Detroit team also conducted a minor excavation in the area of the porches at the front of the Mut temple.
The Supreme Council for Antiquities (formerly the Egyptian Antiquities Organization) was busy this past spring restoring and conserving monuments all over Egypt; but one of their most ambitious projects has been undertaken at Luxor Temple. There the SCA is collaborating with the Italian engineering firm of ORASCOM in consolidating the ground and firming up the foundations of the columns in the eastern half of the temple's Colonnaded Sun Court of Amenhotep III. This undertaking, once completed, will free the rows of columns from the scaffolding that has been disfiguring them for several years. Huge cranes currently dominate the Luxor skyline, as they are employed in the dismantling and stacking of the eastern colonnadeÕs lintels, capitals and column drums. The overall project is estimated to take eighteen months.
SCA restoration work progresses at the Giza Plateau as well, where Drs. Zahi Hawass and M. Mubrouk continue replacing damaged stones at the posterior of the Great Sphinx. Also at Giza, Mark Lehner (the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago) finished a spring field-season working in the so-called Workmen's Village, particularly excavating a brewery-bakery complex there. Using evidence from the site, and other experimental data on baking, Lehner and his team endeavored to bake bread in the manner of the Fourth Dynasty Egyptians.
This spring the American archaeologist found more of what appears to be a kitchen and refectory of the workmen's occupation site, when his excavations revealed a large area containing a series of low benches and troughs, with a liberal scattering of fish bones about the premises. Large ceramic jars with pig bones have also been found, leading Lehner to consider that this may have been a pickling center where salted fish and brined pork were produced.
The Fayyum was also the site of considerable excitement in recent months. The Pyramid of Seila there is currently being worked on by Wilfred Griggs and his staff from Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah), who recently completed their work on portions of the necropolis of Fagg el Gamoos, a site which was employed as a cemetery from the Middle Kingdom onward, with a concentration of use in the Middle Kingdom, and the Late and Ptolemaic periods. Griggs has a particular interest in the later periods of Egyptian dynastic history and has, therefore, concentrated on that part of the Fagg el Gamoos site. During an earlier season there, his team found in the Ptolemaic necropolis an intact mummy of a young woman in a beautiful gilded coffin - which is now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
In the Wadi Natrun Drs. Scott Carroll and Van Eldren have initiated an excavation of the Monastery of St. John the Little. Large parts of this monastic complex are still intact, albeit buried. The most exciting find of the past season was of a large fresco showing Christ with a hand raised in blessing. It is probable that more frescoes await discovery.
Even though troubles in Middle Egypt caused cancellation of the Egypt Exploration Society expedition's annual spring season at El Amarna, there was still a good deal of activity there. EES Project-Director Barry Kemp arrived there to make certain his site was secure and intact, and to initiate the process of building an El Amarna museum-cum-visitor center near the bank of the Nile. The structure is being designed by Michael Mallison, the main architect for the EES expedition. It will have space for large-scale representations of the site as it was during its heyday, as well as replicas of Amarna period statues and reliefs, which will help visitors better envision the area in its original splendor. Reliefs of Akhenaten and Nefertiti are being carved on talataat-type blocks by Theodore Gayer-Anderson, and Simon Bradley is carving a copy of one of the Akhenaten colossi found at Karnak.
A long field-season was recently completed by the team working at Dakhla Oasis under the direction of Anthony Mills. The restoration and conservation of the Roman-period temple at Deir el Hagar there is now completed and the monument open to the public. Portions of the temple have been recorded by the team epigrapher, Olaf Kaper. Mills has also started the excavation and clearance of another Roman-period temple at Ain Bir Bieh. Also at the oasis, Colin Hope and his team concentrated on their continuing clearance of the Temple of Tutu and the surrounding area. A great deal of work has already been accomplished in reconstructing the mud-brick mammisi and in conserving the paintings on the templeÕs walls and ceiling. The cult of the god Tutu- depicted as a striding sphinx and only known from this area - was celebrated until at least 337 A.D., after which time it died out and the god's shrine was converted to a poultry yard!
Also at Dakhla, at Balat there, the IFAO is finishing work on several Old Kingdom mastaba-tombs, in anticipation of opening them to the public soon. The IFAO has also begun investigating a nearby area where an occupation-site related to the mastabas was located.
A British team, led by Dr. Mark Horton, has been working recently at the isolated Nubian site of Qasr Ibrim. The spring season was primarily devoted to study, with inscriptions being recorded from the Taharka temple, and the stratigraphy of the building being assessed by the clearing out of looters' holes. The site had been under ongoing excavation since 1961, and is one of the few Nubian sites that was not submerged as a consequence of the building of the High Dam at Aswan. However, this past spring the Qasr Ibrim team found that now there is a certain urgency to their work, as the water level of Lake Nasser has been rising and the site is potentially threatened. Additionally, the arrival of cruise-boat-borne tourists in the area has alerted local inhabitants to the fact that the site is something of value, thus leading to inevitable attempts at plundering the monument. These same tourists, regrettably, also have been trampling over Qasr Ibrim, leaving damage in their wakes!
The EES-Leiden team excavating at Sakkara spent a study-season there recently, clearing up a bit of their backlog. Also at Sakkara Janine Bourriau and Peter French, along with other ceramic specialists, have been working on the pottery recovered from the Anubeion. Sadly Sakkara has also been in the local news, due to reports of antiquities thefts that have been going on in recent months. The Egyptian police, the government and the SCA are valiantly battling against this fresh rash of site and magazine robberies, but given the number of antiquities in situ and in storage in Egypt, it is an uphill struggle.
The SCA has recently completed moving the Roman temple formerly located at Ras el Soda to a new site closer to Alexandria, and has opened it to tourism. It was necessary to dismantle and relocate the structure due to problems resulting from rising ground-water. The temple was dedicated to Isis and was primarily financed by a Roman soldier in the First or Second centuries A.D. It contains ruined masonry walls and a collection of Roman-period statues, including representations of Romanized Isis, Serapis and Canopus.
Although most archaeological sites in Egypt are relatively civilized, it seems that the harsh conditions experienced by early-Nineteenth Century archaeologists can still be found. Dr. David Peacock, directing an EES expedition, has been working at the remote site of Mons Porphyrites in the Eastern Desert, exploring the Roman quarries there to establish quarrying methods, the routes used to transport the stone, as well as settlement sites connected with the quarries. It is a very long hike from the archaeologists' base camp at Hurghada, situated at the bottom of the hill where the quarry is located, and all water had to be carried into the shadeless site. Despite the roughing it, Peacock and his team have had success and hope to resume their research at Mons Porphyrites in future seasons.