well, first of all, we are really sorry for the lapse in blogs. The internet connection here is a little shaky at best, and it has been down for a while now. That being said, we have certainly been keeping busy! Last weekend we went to Alexandria, which Nikki will write about later on. This week is our last full week of excavation, as we leave to come home the beginning of next week! I can’t believe how fast the time went here. The work has really been exciting, and the architecture in our units becomes more defined everyday. Right now, Nikki and I are hoping to finish our excavation experience with hitting floor level in our rooms. We are very close, hopefully the next few days will seal the deal and we can have finished the complete excavation of the rooms in the time we were here. That is the goal at least!
So the last few weeks our schedule and routine has stayed the same, but now that the end of our work is approaching, there are more steps to be taken. In addition to our weekly report, we will also write a final report about what happened in our units over the last month. We will also work on 1:20 top plans of what our units look like, which are much more detailed than the 1:50 plans we do on a daily basis. The final plans take a lot of time and precision, and require us to use drawing squares that make sure we have as many details as possible in our drawings. We also will clean and prepare our units for photography. All in all, the last week of work is always the busiest!
Last night, we attended a lecture by Stephen Davis, our project director, who was speaking in Cairo about our work. It was really interesting to hear what we are doing put in a new light. When you are working in a small 8 x 5 meter unit every day, it is easy to get caught up in the little details of your finds, or your daily agenda, or your end of day photographs, and to lose sight of the larger picture. As he spoke about why EDMAP was formed and what our purpose is, it really hit us that we are part of a huge project. One reason that our work is so important is that the site we are excavating is endangered by encroaching Delta area farms. We need to excavate, record, and preserve this area so that it will continue to be protected from the people who live and work on areas of land around our site. Already we can see parts of the site that have fallen prey to farmers seeking to extend their land. It is sad that these areas may never be properly excavated. It also became apparent to us why it is so important to learn about the way these monasteries would have looked and been used several hundred years ago. In the surrounding area of lower Egypt, there are many modern monastaries that have ties to the ancient one we are studying. It is important to these churches to learn about their own history and to preserve parts of their past that have been covered for centuries. We are helping to provide a greater body of knowledge about this aspect of Egyptian history. It was amazing to re-learn these things during our last week especially, because, as I’ve already said, it can get pretty hectic. Putting things in perspective really helped give us that push to get us through the week!
Look for an entry soon on Alexandria!
Erin and Nikki