Blog

Deir el-Ballas 2025, Week 2: 1/11 – 1/16

Conservation and consolidation work is progressing on the North Palace. The capping of the western face of the casemate core is nearly complete and work is continuing on building up the southern enclosure wall. In the North Suburb, Hassan Elzawy is continuing the excavations in Houses G and F and...

Deir el-Ballas 2025, Week 1: 1/4 – 1/10

The Deir el-Ballas Expedition started up work at the site on January 4 with a large contingent of archaeology students from the American University in Cairo, UCLA, and Yale University. This season we are concentrating our efforts on three locations, the North Wadi Settlement, where there are a number of...

Deir el-Ballas 2023, Week 4: 1/21-1/26 and 1/28-1/30

We finished up this season by completing our on-site documentation, which was followed by back-filling our excavated trenches with sand and laying mud bricks on top of the exposed walls to protect them for the next season. We are also continuing to make new mud bricks for the future as...

Deir el-Ballas 2023, Week 3: 1/14-1/19

This week, excavation work continued at the site as we further explored House E and House F, as well as the North Wadi Settlement. We were joined this week by Sara Ahmed Aziz, who was a great help to us with work in the North Wadi Settlement excavations as well...

Deir el-Ballas 2023, Week 2: 1/6-1/12

This week we were joined by two Egyptology students from the American University In Cairo; Victoria Shakespeare and Ana Oliveira Asuncion have already done an amazing job. Ana has taken over the work in House F, clearing an extension north of the house in order to discover if there are...

Deir el-Ballas 2023, Week 1: 1/3-1/5

The Deir el-Ballas Expedition started up work again on January 3 with a large, international crew. This season and are concentrating our efforts on the northern part of the site now that the restoration work on the “South Palace” is largely complete. This season we are continuing our archaeological survey...

Deir el-Ballas 2022, Week 6: 2/12- 2/13

Our last days on site were occupied with finishing the recording, registration, and storage of finds from the season, taking final photographs and measurements on-site, packing up the excavation equipment, and backfilling Houses E and F in the North Suburb. An important part of the Expedition's excavation work includes backfilling...

Deir el-Ballas 2022, Week 5: 2/5- 2/10

In our final week of excavation, Nicholas Brown finished his excavations of House E covering Room 4, the W2 "Corridor", Room 5, and Rooms S1-S3 (the ancillary spaces south of the textile workshop). The work at the North Suburb not only includes discovering domestic artifacts and collecting samples for future...

Deir el-Ballas, 2022 Week 4: 1/28 – 2/3

Excavations continued in the North Suburb, with Nicholas Brown and Hassan Elzawy in House E, concentrating on Room 5 (the Textile Workshop) and Room 4, an unexplored area of House E. Work progressed nicely in both rooms, and we are learning more about the architectural elements of these two rooms...

Deir el-Ballas, 2022 Week 3: 1/22 – 1/27

At the end of Week 3, we are now halfway through our excavation season for 2022. Alhumdu-lilah our excavation work and conservation efforts at the site are progressing quite nicely and we are enjoying our work with our Egyptian colleagues from Qena and our local Egyptian teammates from Luxor and...