Time flies when you’re having fun! We find ourselves at the end of the season and have closed the site and securely placed all finds in the storerooms. These include many fragments of “slipper coffins” and linen textile. Some interesting finds were made this week in the new tomb north of Maya, which is now better understood, and which we will continue to excavate next year. We are thankful to all team members and workmen for a very successful season, and to you for reading our Digging Diaries!

A box full of slipper coffin fragments excavated this season. Photo: Daniel Soliman.

Time flies when you’re having fun, and here we find ourselves at the end of the excavation season! Our last day of work was on Tuesday, while we spent Wednesday closing the site and ensuring that all objects are securely placed in the storerooms. All in all it was a shorter, but still rather hectic week. As usual, at the end of the season we wrap up everything, clean all of the excavation area for the final general photos and survey, process the last pottery and bone fragments, and document the last finds. In addition, and very importantly, we had to remove the huge dump of excavated sand we produced during these six weeks of work, to clear the area for future excavations. We also backfilled all the structures we unearthed in order to preserve everything in the best possible way for seasons to come.

The workmen are backfilling the newly excavated tomb to the north of Maya to preserve it for next season. Photo: Daniel Soliman.

Before doing that, however, we had three more days to continue with the excavation, and we didn’t want to waste a single minute. Therefore, Paolo decided to split our team of workmen in two groups. This allowed us to work simultaneously on the still rather high mound of debris overlooking the structures discovered in the past two years, as well as inside the large tomb found last year and further explored in the present season. We now know the total extension of the tomb and can tell that unfortunately it was heavily plundered, most likely in the 19^thcentury. We found the remains of three columns of the central courtyard, and we could determine that the floor of the main entrance is neatly paved with nice limestone slabs. We managed to better understand the relationship of this tomb with the surrounding area, but the excavation of its main funerary shaft and the exploration of its underground chambers must wait till next year. See you in a year, then, very interesting tomb!

A basket full of skeletal remains discovered during the excavations. Photo: Daniel Soliman.

We now know the total extension of the tomb and can tell that unfortunately it was heavily plundered, most likely in the 19^thcentury. We found the remains of three columns of the central courtyard, and we could determine that the floor of the main entrance is neatly paved with nice limestone slabs. The excavation of its main funerary shaft and the exploration of its underground chambers must wait till next year.

You might not expect it from the excavation of a dump, but the work brought to light various objects that demanded all of our attention. We found copious amounts of fragments from wood coffins, some with their original paint preserved. But the sands also revealed other material that was used for burials. There were many fragments of linen textile that may have accompanied buried individuals from the Late Antique period. Egyptian linen is famous for its extraordinary quality, and we experienced this first hand as many fragments from shawls, hats and tunics were large and well preserved. This experience serves us very well, because the curators of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden are preparing an exhibition on Egyptian textiles that will be opened in 2020.

Reorganised skeletal remains now stored in the subterranean rooms in the tomb of Horemheb. Photo: Daniel Soliman.

One category of objects that has occupied us this season fragments of a type of coffin that Egyptologists funnily enough call “slipper coffins”. These are anthropoid ceramic coffins, usually of Nile silt, that completely enveloped the mummified body. The fragments that we discovered date to the Late Period and are often rather crudely modelled. On occasion, however, we documented fragments with nice decoration and traces of paint.

Meanwhile, on the site, we are regaled by the stories of our Egyptian team members. The older ones among them have been working at Saqqara excavations for many years, and they remember the many discoveries made. During an idle moment while reorganising our storerooms in the subterranean chambers of the tomb of Meryneith, Assam Azmi told us about the famous moment when he discovered the statue of Meryneith together with Maarten Raven and René van Walsem. The statue has since found a new home in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Daniel and Nicola leave the site. Photo: Ali Jelene Scheers.

The team has now packed up and said their goodbyes to our wonderful staff who took good care of us at the dig house. After a long day’s work in the sun, we used to come home to Atef, Mahmoud and Fahim who welcomed us with a cold glass of home-made lemonade. Together with them we have celebrated the birthdays of some of the team members, and we were happy to return the favour by cooking gnocchi for Atef’s birthday. The team members, tired but content with the work, are now on their way home, where the results of this season will be processed further. We look forward to telling you more soon, first at this year’s Saqqara Day on 15 June 2019!

Paolo Del Vesco, Daniel Soliman, and Lara Weiss

The Saqqara Team says thank you! Photo: Nicola Dell’Aquila.

This week was travel-intensive for the directors. There were many afternoon meetings in Cairo for our Transformation of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo project – in preparation of the upcoming big steering committee meeting by the end of the month. In addition, we visited the opening of the nice Tuna el-Gebel exhibition made by our German colleagues, and we celebrated Europe Day in the European embassy (a little earlier because of Ramadan). At the site we continued excavating the new tomb.

Hi everyone, Ali Jelene checking in for week 5. As with the previous two seasons, I’m responsible for the human remains at our site. From excavation to storage and everything in between! As we haven’t found any new burials yet, I’ve had some time to focus on other aspects of dealing with human remains from an archaeological context. You see, archaeology doesn’t stop once a burial (or an item, a find, an object…) is excavated. The act of excavating disturbs the materials that have been in a certain place for ages, and this shift in environment is often enough to disrupt the careful equilibrium that preserved the material in the state we excavate it in. In order to avoid further decay, we have to undertake adequate steps in the handling and storage of the materials we find. This sounds complicated, but if you know the materials you’re working with and what they require in terms of storage, it should be pretty straightforward.

In regards to human remains specifically, there is of course the ethical aspect. We are dealing with the remains of actual human beings, and while we don’t know any of their direct descendants currently alive today, we should still treat these remains with respect from the moment we excavated them all the way until we place them in the storage room.

This brings us to the topic of this week’s Digging Diary: storage. Once human remains have been analysed, they should be stored in a way that meets several goals. We want to treat them the way we ourselves would want to be treated, we don’t want them to decay further, all the while making sure that we keep them available for future research. Who knows what interesting new techniques might be discovered in the future, allowing us a better insight in the lives of ancient Egyptians. It is with this in mind that I’ve been spending the season optimising the storage situation on site. Let me give you a look into the process of how we’re currently doing it.

Once the analysis of a burial is finished, we first label every single bone by applying a thin layer of clear nail polish before writing the unique burial number on it. This is time-intensive labor, but should be done in case a bone is taken from the rest of the burial (for example for further analysis or the application of other techniques that we cannot do on site, like x-rays). With every bone labeled, it is easy to see at a glance which individual it belongs to.

Carefully labelling each bone. Photo: Nicola Dell’Aquila.

Labeled vertebrae. Photo: Ali Jelene Scheers.

Once labeled, we store the bones in clear plastic bags that have been perforated. In order to do so, we’ve constructed a scary-looking device that allows us to puncture through several bags at once. The reason we punch these holes is because bones are an organic material that needs to be able to breathe. Storing them in airtight conditions will lead to mold, rapid decay, accumulation of moisture, and other things we really don’t want to happen.

Construction of the hole-punching device. Photo: Ali Jelene Scheers.

The finished hole-punching device. It currently goes by the name “torture device” but no worries, no one has been tortured with it… yet ? Photo: Ali Jelene Scheers.

Each perforated bag is then labeled with the unique burial number, the date and the contents, and is put together with the other bags belonging to the individual in a crate. This crate, too, is labeled, and the location it is stored is noted down in the storage magazine inventory, so we can find it easily when we need it again.

There is light at the end of the tunnel… The new shelves in the Horemheb storage room. Photo: Ali Jelene Scheers.

As you can probably tell by now, it requires a lot of administrative work to get the storage sorted out. With the eye on possible future research, we’re also inventorying the bone assemblages from the previous seasons so that we have a clear image of what is stored where. We’ve been building shelves in the storage rooms and the crates that aren’t in tiptop shape have been replaced. It’s time-consuming and not really glamorous work, but it’s also part of an archaeological excavation.

Ali Jelene Scheers

Re-crating the broken crates down in the subterranean complex of Meryneith. Corinna, Christian and Luca helped me with this mammoth task – without them I would be re-crating until next season. Photo: Paolo Del Vesco.

Inventorying the labels. Photo: Nicola Dell’Aquila.

45 years of excavation yield a lot of material. Photo: Ali Jelene Scheers.