Although we had a trimmed staff and a short week for Christmas, we managed to get quite a lot accomplished. Piet finished clearing the ‘egg’ deposit in House F, and amongst the many jar sealings, found a lovely red burnished wine jar. Hassaan was able to find a clear a...
This week we sadly said goodbye to Tony Crosby who returned to Texas after finishing the reconstruction of House D. Nick Brown and Vicky Jensen continued clearing House E finding several intact deposits of fallen roofing in the structure proper and evidence of chipped stone working to the immediate east...
This week, we continued cleaning House D, and Tony Crosby began reconstructing the walls of the structure with modern unbaked mud brick made to match the original and set in a pattern that mimics the bonding pattern used in the original construction. In cleaning we found more confirmation that this...
We started back at the site this week. First, we checked the ‘South Palace’ with Tony Crosby to go over last year’s restoration and plan for future work and then we moved to the houses to the West of the North Palace. These were threatened by the expansion of the...
Side view of the partially restored façade of the ‘South Palace’ Our last week at the site was a busy one finishing up as much of the restoration of the ‘South Palace’ we could for this year and then backfilling and covering up the exposed ancient brickwork to protect it until...
We had hoped to get an extension on our permission in order to work through January, but that did not come through so we had to finish up our work for this season. In the final cleaning of the staircase, we found a series of ship timbers that had been used...
Merry Christmas, our week was broken up by the holiday. We worked Christmas Day but took off Boxing Day to buy supplies and run errands in Luxor. Work proceeded on the construction of a guard house to keep watch on the ‘South Palace’ area. According to the Qena Inspectorate’s wishes the...
We made a lot of progress in our first full week at the site. The façade of the ‘South Palace’ is now almost completely cleaned and is looking very impressive. Piet Collet and Vicky Jensen and Tom Hardwick are now busy planning the brickwork prior to Tony Crosby’s arrival and...
Piet Collet and I arrived in Luxor on December 10 on the night train from Cairo. Hassaan Mohamed Ali, our incomparable foreman met us at Luxor station and brought us to the Wilkinson House where we will be staying for December thanks to the generosity of Pearce Paul Creasman, Associate...
Preparations have begun for our upcoming 2018-19 season at Deir el-Ballas. Already Hassaan Mohamed Ali has supervised the production of 5000 new mud bricks for the restoration of the façade of the “South Palace” which had been perilously undermined by looters. We will also survey the South Wadi and the...
