Deir el-Ballas 2019-2020, Week 5: 12/28-1/2

We started off the New Year continuing the cleaning off of the North Palace’s impressive enclosure wall on the south side of the palace. Much of it is only a single course or traces of the massive bricks used to make it. Like the bricks used in the palace itself, they average around 53 centimeters long, equal to the royal cubit measure. We also have found the North-South
boundaries of the wall and a line of the whitewash used on the wall that was preserved when the wall was expanded to the west.

Nick continued cleaning House E and re-exposed the textile workshop that had been found in the 1980s. And we returned to restoring the collapsed brickwork in the ‘South Palace.’ Amr Shahat from UCLA joined us to study the pant remains from the site and constructed his own floatation device.