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Monday, June 25, 2007


The entire area of columns was emptied of them today, and the work has begun to clean the area of the sand and find the stone pavement beneath. In all the areas between the front wall of the porch and the back of this area we have found large stone blocks forming a subpavement to this “column foundation”, and we expect to find it continuing. The gufti Abdullah, with Reis Farouk assisting, begins to scrape at the hard packed surface under the sand that the columns rested upon. Quickly Abdullah find that there is a thick surface of mud plaster or “mouna” that was spread over the underlying stone. Jay comes to photograph this plaster, and you see the well documented result here.

Exposing the stone pavement in area where column drums were removed.
Abdullalah and Reis Farouk discover surface of mud plaster.
Documenting the plaster surface.
 

 


 

Smoothing the path to the open air display.
Moving a pillar piece into position.
Moving a pillar piece into position.

The path to our open air display area has been smoothed and cleaned further, as Lotfi oversees the transport and arrangement of blocks in the “museum”. I have attempted to lay out the areas to suggest parts of the temple of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III, and now we are beginning to stack blocks that derive from pillars. You see Lotfi moving a pillar part with the head of a goddess into place above its base.

 


 

This lower part of a face with the distinct features of Amenhotep III was found today while gaps beneath the temple platform were cleaned out. This is a beautiful fragment of sculpture, but whether it came from a royal, divine, or elite facial image is unknown. Amenhotep III’s face was used to fashion all the anthropomorphic representations, with variation in only a few special cases.
Fragment of a sculpture discovered.

 


 

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