MOUSTAPHA PASHA TOMBS, SHATBY TOMBS AND THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA

Leigh gave us a tour of the Moustapha Pasha Tombs this morning, where I saw what I originally assumed would be comparable to the Tombs of the Kings at Paphos, Cyprus when Leigh gave her presentation: square, sunken-in rock-cut tombs lined with Doric columns and small rooms for burials and rituals.

The site of the Moustapha Pasha Tombs is presented in a very interesting way: there are four separate tombs, each decreasing in quality of preservation with regards to the one numbered before it (the keepers of the site or the SCA have numbered them in this way, probably to give the appearance that they’re all well-preserved to those who visit only the first two). The first has surviving paint and weathered yet recognizable sphinxes atop platforms at the entrance to the main chamber; the last is just a pile of pillars in the middle of a yard at the back of the site.

I enjoyed visiting the Moustapha Pasha Tombs because of the contrast they (or at least Tomb One) present to the tomb at Kom el-Shoqafa, my assignment: the former show a cruder display of craftsmanship in the wall paintings and reliefs, but a very sophisticated design plan in terms of the actual rock-cut structure; this is not executed more skillfully than at Kom el-Shoqafa, but offers a new style of craftsmanship in its own class.

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Before heading to the new Library of Alexandria, we stopped at the Shatby Tombs, which offer the oldest example of Alexandrian-style burials cut into rock. Though weathered a great deal and overcome with mold, these tombs are charming amid the surrounding modern city separated from them by a thin metal rail circumference.

The Shatby Tombs also look somewhat like a mini-museum, with sarcophagi and statues from the ancient Egyptians through the Roman Period surrounding the sunken tomb area. I do wish that these were labeled, as I had no idea what I was looking at when I examined them—in addition, I always wish that pieces could be displayed at the sites at which they were found (a lot of these pieces clearly do not belong at the location of the Shatby Tombs).

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Finishing up with a stop at the new Library of Alexandria seems like a fitting end to our journey. The place is like a huge glass container holding a very-condensed version of our whole travel saga, represented by samples from the art of Egypt’s long history and a modern testament to the importance of literature in Egypt.

THE SERAPEUM AND KOM EL-SHOQAFA

I hadn’t realized we’d arrived at the Serapeum in Alexandria when the van stopped short on a street lined with stores closed for the Friday holiday. It’s an unlikely place for an enormous ancient monument, amid the noise of the taxis and the filth of wrappers and plastics covering the ground.

The site is smaller than I had expected, elevated a few feet above street level and enclosed by a beige gate made of stucco. In the center is Diocletian’s Column, described to us a few days ago by Adam during his presentation. Walking along the edge of the enormous working pit at the Serapeum, one can see bits of round limestone architecture jutting out from beneath the dirt. At the end closest to the guards’ table near the entrance, a large semicircular limestone structure protrudes from the side of the dig area.

The column is indeed gigantic, so much so that I had to back up about 100 feet in order to get Adam and the whole pillar in one picture. It is made of red granite, and the bottom blocks are reused from ancient Egyptian monuments (I didn’t expect this, as it was never mentioned to us before; it was funny, then, to see glyphs lining the underside of this colossal Roman-era structure). I asked Asharaff if there had been a statue on top (as I remember Monika saying something about Trajan’s Column and others in Rome having statues on top), and he said that he believes the simple capital would have been enough to cap it off.

There were also some glyphs inside the base of the column, which we were able to examine thanks to a Page-size hole left by a missing granite block at the back. These images were quite strange, most of them geometric and without comparison to those we’ve seen before.

Next to the column is a labyrinth cut into the limestone underground, which seems to be part of a tunnel system stretching to the edges of the site underneath all of the structures on the surface. Numerous cylindrical shafts dug through to the ground level above let light into the otherwise dark system. I thought about what this could be, and I’ve decided that it may have been part of a network of priests’ and servants’ passages to get from place to place without being seen for whatever reason (no doubt the priests’ would have had something to do with the smooth running of rituals and ceremonies).

Behind the column is the most confusing part of the Serapeum area: the underground tunnel system thought by some to have been an auxiliary space for the Great Library. The passages smell quite dank, and the humidity is unbearable—if it’s so wet, how could scrolls have survived here?

In the main hall that begins at the entrance there are two shallow circular depressions in the ceiling, which run on roughly the same axis as the door and the staircase ahead. One of these is a bit off-center in a roughly-cut low dome. We were unsure as to what these were, but the general consensus is that they were probably part of an unfinished light source. They wouldn’t have been niches for columns, because they’d stand in the way of the staircase and the long hall branching off to the right after the entrance if this was so.

In one room, strange lowercase “r”-shaped niches were carved in alternating top-and-bottom rows along the walls. In the other rooms, rectangular niches are scattered from place to place, seemingly without a base plan. No one seem to have any idea what these were for, but it’s pretty clear that they were not intended for the storage of scrolls.

Someone mentioned animal burials, but that wouldn’t explain their size (too big for a bird, to small for a bull). And if they were cut upon need, as William suggested, then their unorganized, asymmetrical orientation doesn’t make sense. These may be one of the great inexplicable wonders of Egypt, like the mystery of the building of the pyramids (and at least that one has some plausible theories attached to it).

All in all, I enjoyed our visit to the Serapeum not just because it has so many inexplicable features, but also because of the freedom we were given to roam around and explore its underground tunnels. I didn’t feel like my attention was being diverted from the physical remains by a lecture, since Adam gave us the background information we needed on one of our seminar days. And I truly enjoyed venturing off on my own, albeit with the others close behind.

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After our visit to the Serapeum, we went to Kom el-Shoqafa, the site I focused on for my presentation a few days ago. The catacomb looked just as I had expected, since I became rather well-versed in the area of Marjorie Venit’s Monumental Tombs of Ancient Alexandria while doing my research. I must admit, though, that I imagined everything on a much larger scale. The only exception was the triclinium, which in reality has benches so much larger than those I had expected that I gasped out of shock when I entered the room.

I attempted to give the group a tour of the tomb (I’m a Barnard tour guide—it’s in my blood), but certain students decided to wander off and pay me no respect. After a short while, I set off to explore the loculi, which were not described in detail or photographed by Venit.

The loculi run in two rows on top of each other on the second level. The bottom row was flooded as recently as two years ago according to William, and today the ground is still wet (in fact, there were a few sunken-in loculi that were filled with ground water). Nick stuck his hand in the water. Ew.

Though I read through all of Venit’s work, I hadn’t understood her explanation of the placement of the bodies in the Main Tomb until today: the entrances to the coffins are at the back of the naos, making them inaccessible from the chamber.

The rest of the site was just as I’d expected, with the exception of pieces of the Stagni and Tigrane Tombs outside the catacomb. The Tigrane Tomb got its own little house, but a cut from the upper half of the Stagni Tomb sits exposed behind the Tigrane Tomb house, amid broken columns and sarcophagi, perhaps even from other sites. I was frustrated at this, and turned a blind eye when the tourists began to use the statue fragments as benches.

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I was going to add “and some rants about my experiences in Alexandria” to the end of this blog title, because today was the first time I really felt threatened and uncomfortable as a woman in Egypt.

I tried to rationalize the noise level of the city in comparison to Cairo after last night’s Call to Prayer nearly blew out my eardrums. But it’s not because it was Mohammad’s birthday yesterday, nor is it because today is Friday that it happened again. It’s because Alexandria is a much more religious (and fanatical, if I’m allowed to say that,) city than anywhere else we’ve been in this country.

The culture of Alexandria is one of restriction—not just for the women, but for tourists, non-Muslims, and even the men (if you think about the suppression of their sexuality).

We were lied to when we were told that this city is more European, more open, and more modern. As Page put it, the Alexandria of today matured too fast for its own good. It is stuck in the 1950s, with technology from the 1990s and the mindset of an incredibly chauvinist movement. The people seem to have taken for granted the inventions and ideas of other countries, while still perpetuating the hatred and antiquated ideas that set radical sects of Islam off from the mainstream. None of this spells anything good for their image.

Leigh, Page, Adam and I went to the beach this afternoon. We three women were fully-clothed, no bathing suits, with long skirts and sleeves. But the minute we set foot on the beach, we were badgered by young adults and by small children who have (already) been taught to hate.

I cannot imagine being a mother and teaching my child to disrespect women. I cannot imagine telling a child that it is okay to spit on women (as one did with Leigh), to shout at them and to alienate or make spectacles of them by staring incessantly. I will never tell my child to try and make other people feel uncomfortable in their own skin. I cannot imagine teaching my child to clap and shout after a group of women attempting to respect my country while simply wanting to use a public beach leaves the scene because of the torment they elected not to have to endure.

This is not the way Islam is practiced in the U.S., in Cairo or in Jerusalem. This is a product of the religious atmosphere of Alexandria, which is severely different from the others I’ve mentioned. I would love to work in Dakhleh again, to visit Kharga, and to spend a few days mixed up in the hustle and bustle of Cairo. But I will never set foot in Alexandria again. Ever.

GIZA AND SAQQARA

I’m sitting on the roof of Happy City Hotel, smoking a coconut hookah and reflecting on our day at Giza and Saqqara. I’m emailing everyone to let them know that I finally made it to the pyramids, but I still can’t believe it myself.

The pyramids are weathered, their choppy limestone skeletons exposed almost entirely (with the exception of the top of Khafre’s pyramid, where one can still see the high-quality limestone casing that used to cover the whole of these structures). I found it impossible to capture an entire pyramid in one picture, so I had to take several of each to show all of the sides and rows of blocks.

Standing in front of the Great Pyramid gave me a funny feeling: it’s so big and so impressive for its time (2500 BCE), something to marvel at—but I just didn’t know what to do with myself once I was there. Most of the other students bought tickets to go inside and crawl up to the burial chamber, but I stayed behind with Monika and William.

The three of us walked around the structure as we debated whether or not it was ever painted (the answer is of course no, if only because the Egyptians would never have wasted their time adding color to something outside that would fade in mere decades). Monika and I found ourselves at the museum housing Khiops’ solar boat, where we were asked to wear cloth slippers over our shoes; they probably wanted to save money on floor polish, so we did them a favor and slid around the place like we were wearing ice skates.

The solar boat is extremely large–probably too large to have been merely a symbolic grave good. My guess is that the boat was used at some point and then buried with the king for use in the afterlife, though William suggested that it might have been constructed for real use in the afterlife without having been used before. The display is fantastic: three floors of photographs and relics like rope and wood, as well as posters showing the conservation of materials and restoration of the structure. Above hangs the solar boat itself, raised off of the second floor by t-shaped metal posts. The conservators clearly went through a lot of trouble to make the boat look like it was when it was built, probably using images from tombs and other buildings contemporary with the vessel. Though new wood had to be used to reconstruct some of the more delicate parts of the boat, the bottom is made from the original pieces. Amazingly, it is held together only by rope and the pressure of expanding wood after it’s been exposed to moisture.

Our trip to the Sphinx, which we saw next, was surprisingly short. Asharaff took us through the gates to the inner court, which is made of granite and constructed in the same way as the Osireion at Abydos (his theory is that they are linked, though built fifteen dynasties apart). We split up and walked up a stone ramp to the viewing area closest to the monument, where I thought I could get a good photo; instead, I was pushed and shoved by scantily-clad tourists trying to funnel in through the small surrounding walkways. (And what a display of poor taste! Their were shirtless men and women with shorts riding up their rears. No respect, I say!)

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Saqqara was originally supposed to be the subject of my site report, so I found myself adding little tidbits to William’s and Asharaff’s spiels. First we visited the Teti Pyramid, which is covered in neat rows of uncolored glyphs. The ceiling shows signs of earthquake damage and quick restoration to stop it from collapsing, in the form of plaster buffers between the stones. The king’s name is everywhere, filling in all of the blank spaces between the spells! Perhaps they should’ve thought of a more exciting space-filler…

I was particularly impressed by the reliefs in the 6th-dynasty tombs, which focused a great deal on daily life (like Petosiris’ tomb at Tuna el-Gebel and the Old Kingdom tombs), and are so detailed that the rope looks like rope, the fish look like fish and the force-feeding of piglets looks like the force-feeding of piglets (those were quite disturbing, I have to say). Other images included butterflies, dancers and, er, man parts. These images are important no doubt because they can help scholars understand how the people carried out everyday tasks in this area, in conjunction with surviving texts.

Each tomb had one or more false doors with cylindrical lintels, which reminded me of the one on display in the Met’s Egyptian Wing. Whereas the wall art was in raised relief, the decoration on the doors was in sunken relief (except in Mere-Ruka’s tomb, where the door was decorated in paint alone).

In the tomb of Ka-Gmni, two figures were defaced; I have a feeling that these were of the same person, someone who committed some crime or disrespected the ruling party at the time of this act. Other than that, the walls of each of these structures were in great condition, save the missing paint on top of the reliefs. On one wall, Mere-Ruka’s wife is helped to stand by a group of professional mourners, wearing wigs in contrast with her bald head. What a powerful scene!

I really wish we had designated a separate day for Saqqara, because I was exhausted by the time we arrived at Djoser’s complex. It would have been nice to walk around with some energy left in me, since the site contains the earliest known stone structures (exciting!) and is quite well-preserved for its date. Here are the results of the restoration of the world’s first colonnade, and the step pyramid that developed out of a mere mastaba. Instead of exploring the area, I found myself bending my knees around one of the foundation blocks of Djoser’s pyramid to get comfortable as the group nodded with the rhythm of William’s voice.

TINIS (AKORIS)

Tinis (or Akoris, if you’re Greek) has inspired me to seek out more fieldwork opportunities in Egypt. The site is currently being excavated by a Japanese mission—when I heard those words leave William’s mouth, I did what Page did when she first saw the Valley of the Kings: I squeaked with joy, complete with that hands-covering-mouth motion Page whips out at only the most exciting moments.

Apparently (so says Dr. Bagnall’s book, according to William), the site is home to Old Kingdom tombs and a rock-cut Ptolemaic Temple, as well as some architecture dating to Nero’s time. What we saw appears to be Ancient History Stew: a temple gate with inscriptions that point to a Judeo-Claudian origin, an unfinished room with one capital (bearing Hathor’s head) as its only decoration, a shrine on the second level with high reliefs of Egyptian gods, and a long hall with a series of rectangular doorways and two strange, blocky, roughly crocodile-shaped niches carved opposite each other. The site is a mix of strange architecture and earthquake collapse debris; there is a gated room filled with crocodile carcasses, and in front of each doorway (and elsewhere) are shafts so deep they probably end in China. Foot-wide circular imprints dot the floors of the courtyard. Hilly with the remains of mudbrick architecture, white millstones and pot sherds, Tinis is a mess. I love a good mess.

The Japanese team has found several mummies at Tinis, all of which belong to women. Not only does this tickle my inner necrophiliac, but also my inner sociologist: if the women are in the tombs, are the men in the shafts? Are there crocodiles in those shafts?

The Japanese mission digs each July. I have already looked them up, and am currently composing an email to the director in Japanglish.

BENI HASSAN

The ascent to the tombs at Beni Hassan reminded me much of the walk to the necropolis at Tel el-Amarna, only the staircase at Beni Hassan is much better cared for (and it overlooks a cozy guest house at the base of the site). Beni Hassan is home to several tombs from the First Intermediate and early Middle Periods, when fragmentary regional states were ruled by independent kings or nomarchs (the “feudal period” of ancient Egypt, according to William). It is on the east bank of the Nile—strange because a city’s dead were usually laid to rest on the west bank, where the sun sets.

The first two tombs we visited were of Khety and Baget II (tombs 17 and 15, respectively); both have a layout I consider strange, even though I probably say so partially because my recent memories of Egyptian architecture are from dates far later than the 11th dynasty. Each tomb consisted of a single open room with a few columns (four in Khety’s tomb and two in Baget’s, all of which had been robbed so that only their imprints in the floor remain). On the floor, the outlines of several shafts can be seen; on the ceiling, an obtuse pitched roof of sorts hangs down about six inches, covered in colorful hieroglyphs. Baget’s tomb has a small niche in the far right corner, in which the remains of a stone statue sit.

Here the decorations are all in plain paint, a cost-effective measure. Though there are no reliefs to be found, the striking shapes and colors make for an impressive display. The east (far) wall of both tombs is decorated with rows of wrestling figures, which William explained are men carrying out army exercises, so as to be ready for combat in defense of the deceased if need be.

Other images include very detailed depictions of farm animals and moderately-toned servants presenting items to the west wall of the tomb, symbolic of the inner or recipient (I snuck in a few pictures—I’m sure the guard didn’t notice). Most of the art is typical of the Old Kingdom style.

What I like most about these tombs is how powerful their architecture and décor seem despite their simple design. Such was not the case with the next two tombs, also formed as if they were a two-item set, belonging to Khnemhotpe II (tomb 3) and Amenemhat Ameni (tomb 2): these are adorned on the outside with proto-Doric columns and rectangular pylons, and inside boast three-domed ceilings, painted with a yellow and black pattern of Xs in boxes (obscured in some places by the names of 19th-century adventurers, written in smoke). At first glance, the anterooms look more like they belong in a Greek Orthodox church than carved into the side of a scarp.

A second pylon stands at the exit of the anteroom. It was about the time when I reached the exit of this room in Khnemhotpe’s tomb that I discovered that the pylons bore inscribed glyphs painted sea-green. I had never seen anything like this monotone painting style before, and I was quite surprised when I found it again after a closer look at the bottom register of imagery in the anteroom (it bordered the whole place!). The rest of the tomb is decorated with both painted and inscribed images, all in neat rows. These tombs are no doubt more structured and linear than the first two, but I prefer the way tombs 15 and 17 are organized (simple yet quaint). When I walked outside I found Page itching to explain something wondrous to someone, and I of course declined…

…just kidding! Page realized that on the entrance pylon was the only mention of a king we had seen yet: one cartouche, several lines in length, listing all of the king’s names.

TEL EL-AMARNA, HERMOPOLIS MAGNA AND TUNA EL-GEBEL

This morning was our earliest wake-up (excluding the day we went to Abu Simbel), and rightfully so: not only did we have to drive several hours to get to Tel el-Amarna, but we also had to take our van on a ferry to the east bank of the Nile before traveling on a road made strictly for the purpose of visiting the site. Both of these facts point to the seclusion and separation of Akhenaten’s city, clearly a reflection of the outcasting by following dynasties and self-separation of his religion.

The walk up to the necropolis is the only reminder I needed of the “tel” in this site’s name: a long chain of staircases winds up the rock for hundreds of yards. This stuff is up in the hills, away from everything. We visited three tombs at Tel el-Amarna, which to the best of my knowledge have not been documented: that which is believed to have belonged to Akhenaten himself (no body was found—it may have been moved or destroyed), that of Ahmosa and that of Meri-Re.

Akhenaten’s tomb was in poor condition, with sloping walls and ceilings, unfinished areas and glyphs where no paint remains. Mauve plaster, probably chosen by conservators because it makes the place look a little lighter, covers every blank space (and there are lots of them). Outlines of the sun disk can still be seen at the tops of the crumbling walls, likely defaced at some point. The ceilings are cavernous and make for a lovely bat cave of sorts, especially when combined with the small unfinished rooms and shafts cut at eye level into the rock.

At the front of Ahmosa’s tomb is a strange lintel that looks unfinished: it is a series of raised rectangles, likely where reliefs were meant to sink in. The walls bear painted scenes of horses and chariots, and the center chamber holds a statue of a scribe (the fat rolls don’t lie). This tomb was wholly unexciting, but had a nice overlook outside.

I asked Asharaff why Meri-Re was buried at Akhetaten, since the inclusion of the name “Re” in this name seems contradictory to the king’s belief system. He explained that because Amun-Re is the personification of the sun disk, it can be worshipped in conjunction with the disk itself. Meri-Re’s tomb has a blue-painted pylon and a lintel formed out of a row of stones in front, which lead to a strange space perpendicular to the entrance. This room has columns on the right, and a large wall of glyphs on the left. It is probably unifinished (or was destroyed—no one seemed to like Akhenaten and his friends very much), judging by the roundabout staircase with no end, shaved into the rock in a dark corner.

When we exited the tomb, I was able to get a better idea of how the tombs were constructed by looking at the facades of this and others: the process started from the bottom up, where the stone was shaved flat and cut to form the bases of pillars. The work then moved inward and upward to completion.

We took a quick look at the palace at Tel el-Amarna, which is very clean and restored perfectly at its foundations. The pipes in the central pool are still visible, and look a lot like the qanats we saw in the oases. The conservators clearly did a good job, because what you see in front of you really looks like the plans in the books!

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The temple at Hermopolis was in shambles: at least one level of baked-brick city architecture was visible under part of the tri-lobed basilica structure, weathered and sloping from the weight of the limestone floor. The place is overgrown with grass. I could tell that some reconstruction work had been done, since the fragments of an enormous lintel bearing a Greek inscription were arranged on a stone platform, and two rows of long, thin pillars were in their original locations. As for physical supports, there were wooden ones for some of the columns and metal rings around others; neither of these showed any signs of an attempt to be hidden.

We wandered around for about twenty minutes, during which I discovered that the SCA uses Akhenaten’s favorite image of the sun disk stretching out its arms of tender loving care as their logo!

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Tuna el-Gebel (necropolis of Hermopolis Magna), contrary to what one might think from its name, does not smell like fish (haha). Rather, it stinks like rotting corpses!

Isadora, a woman who drowned during the second century CE, is on display in a glass case in her tomb. This is pretty interesting, considering the tendency of communities elsewhere to bury their drowned deceased separately from the rest; but Isadora was Greek, and the custom at the time seems to have been to consider her death uncorrupt enough to warrant an ordinary entombment.

Leigh and I love dead people, but we were rather taken aback when we realized that the display case was neither air-tight nor temperature-controlled. Her mummy is small and fragile, wrapped in a white shroud so one can only see her tiny feet and contorted face. For some reason, her hair has either disintegrated or been fused to her skull so that no remains are visible.

The tomb of Petosiris doesn’t stink, but it’s rather misleading for two reasons. Firstly, it is built to look like a Late Period temple, but the walls are covered with marvelous scenes of very Greek-looking people (their clothing is the most striking thing about them) carrying out everyday Egyptian practices. The scenes are painted in pale colors and are detailed to a degree we have not yet seen; the men boast a surprising amount of muscle tone, and women growing out of trees in bold yellows and blues are scattered here and there. A very small owl painted with thin black and blue stripes can be seen on one of the rows of glyphs.

Secondly, the sign in front of the structure claims that it dates to 350 BCE, though the tomb was probably constructed in about 150 CE (close to the time of Isadora’s death). As William pointed out, how can something influenced so much by Greek style and thought have been constructed just after Alexander’s conquest?

VALLEY OF THE KINGS, DEIR EL-MEDINA, MEDINET HABU AND THE COLOSSI OF MEMNON

We did a lot of running around today! We left the hotel at 8:00 (after a fabulous breakfast, might I add,) and went to the west bank of the Nile to explore the Valley of the Kings. We visited three tombs: those belonging to Tesert, Rameses IX, and Thutmoses III. Page was squealing with delight the entire time.

The most striking part of Tesert’s tomb was the relief of Knum with outspread wings on a large wall immediately inside. A strange green-checker pattern was painted on most of the clothing worn by servants in the reliefs; it may have been ceremonial garb. Most of the carvings towards the front of the tomb were painted, but as one walks further and further into the tomb (I’m making it sound endlessly long–well, it wasn’t–it was actually kind of short,) it becomes apparent that nearly everything else is unfinished. Some of the walls are covered in black and white sketches, where reliefs were meant to be sunk. It’s interesting to see these in obvious places, because it points to the importance of symbolic locations over those that would be more readily accessible to mortal viewers. In the burial chamber is a fully-restored sarcophagus in the shape of a cartouche (weird, right?) under a barrel-vaulted ceiling.

Tuthmoses III’s tomb was covered almost entirely with black and red “stick-figure” figures and grids of glyphs, as if most of it was never destined for paint. Judging by the layers of watery blue and green paint I was able to examine, it seems like the artists used black and red to make rough yet well-thought-out sketches, and then used other colors as overlays. I can sort of imagine a drawing school from the look of this art, where students learned to use simple shapes like triangles and S-shaped lines to make composite figures.

Rameses IX’s tomb, from the 20th dynasty, was in sharp contrast to the 18th dynasty tombs. At the end of a small, not-too-slopey dromos, I found myself staring up at a brilliant ceiling of blue and gold. The figures on the walls are immense in comparison with those in Tuthmoses’s tomb, and wearing varied fabrics painted in great detail. Several faces were depicted from the front, though not with much skill–clearly, there is a reason why the ancient Egyptians stuck to drawing people from the side.

Deep inside I found what looked like a shelf-tomb, with two levels of rectangular benches along the perimeter of the room. The tomb is at a much lower elevation than the rest, which may explain why everything had to be cut down into the rock, as opposed to up or straight across it. My guess is that the sarcophagus fit between these benches at one time.

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Page gave her presentation on Dier el-Medina, the workmen’s village for the Valley of the Kings. I have to say that it was very nice to hear about domestic architecture, and about the builders of the great structures we attribute to kings (“this temple was built by Rameses II…”). Based on students’ texts found at Dier el-Medina (like at Amheida), the town had its own school; this means that learning was localized, and that many of the activities carried out by the people of the village could be done right on this site.

Since the people living in the village were professional tomb artists and scribes, their own resting places proved to be incredibly detailed and painted with the utmost care. The people have curly hair and realistic noses. Bright, complex patterns cover their clothing. A couple frightening animals, one of which looks like the rabbit from Donnie Darko, are also depicted. The new scenes painted in these tombs show a reservation by the artisans of Dier el-Medina to give the men in power their best work; instead, they appear to have saved it for themselves. This shows an interesting hidden struggle between the workers and their bosses. (The only exception is the long, flowing cloak on Anubis at the local temple, which was very well-executed.)

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Medinet Habu, our next stop, is the mortuary temple of Rameses III. I was expecting a mammoth, elaborate structure, given the Rameses’ arrogant building practices. Needless to say, I was correct.

When I walked towards the gate, which is modeled after an Assyrian style and rests in place of a traditional pylon, a basalt (or dark-grey stone) statue of Sekmet (?) greeted me to my left. The gate ahead of me was used by the king to watch his army march forth into the distance (so like a Rameses).

Interesting motifs within the sanctuary include an ankh with arms, repeated in a linear pattern. Rows of three-dimensional captives’ heads sit on stone shelves at eye level, jutting out from the walls. There was also a scene showing the collection of the phalluses of the king’s enemies after a battle. How tasteful.

Several areas of this temple show evidence of occupation during the post-Pharonic period, which was common and occurred at most of the sites we’ve visited so far. For example, holes dug into the floor where people could tie down their animals dot the sanctuary. The ceilings are blackened with smoke from fires, to warm or perhaps to cook.

I was interrupted from my examination of the structure by a group of schoolboys visiting the temple. They were carrying a boom-box, blasting “Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely” by the Backstreet Boys. Ah, the spread of early-90s American pop culture through the modern Arab world…

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On the way back to Luxor, we stopped to see the Colossi of Memnon. They sure are large, but they didn’t look too pleasant covered in scaffolding.