Deir el-Ballas 2021, Week 1: 5/3 – 5/8

Having been delayed by the pandemic, we are back for a brief season to continue the restoration work in the North Palace and the ‘South Palace’ as well as exploring what we think was the administrative area for the settlement in the mouth of the South Wadi. Given the excessive heat – 112 F and Ramadan we are working on-site from 5:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., it is just too hot to work after that. But we are busy in the afternoons working on reports and proposals.

The masons are continuing where we left off, working to stabilize and reconstruct the collapsed façade of the ‘South Palace.’ We were very grateful to the American University in Cairo for providing the funds to make 5,000 mud bricks to use in the restoration.

We have also begun clearing debris from the South Wadi that was surveyed by Peter Lacovara And Mark Lehner in 1983. In this area that had not been excavated before by the Hearst Expedition, we found a dense cluster of buildings resembling somewhat the Central City at Tell el-Amarna.

In just cleaning away the ask and broken pottery from the kilns in the village the outlines of a very large building have begun to emerge.