---

This week I went to the town of el-Nazla, which is known for its handcrafted pottery. The Field School had a field trip there so Anne (our osteologist), Elaine (the terracotta specialist), Sonali, (the pottery specialist), and I all tagged along. As it turned out, one of the field school students, A.J., wore an R2D2 shirt. Anne wore her Boba Fett sweatshirt. So I was convinced to wear my Ewok shirt I received from Lucasfilm. We were clearly the coolest people there. The pottery village was really interesting because we were able to see all the different processes that went into making the various clay pots. A lot of the large vessels were constructed in parts. The body would be molded together by hand tools, while the foot and rim of the vessel would be spun on the wheel. We also got to see the kiln, which were huge structures made out of a conglomeration of mud plaster and various pieces of pottery. I have plenty of pictures for all to see. I bought one pot; you put coals on the bottom and a kettle on top to make tea. It’s very cute and looks sort of like a fish. This old woman from the village actually demonstrated to myself and 3 others how to properly make tea with the pottery. And by demonstrate I mean that she fished some water out of the scummy lake nearby and boiled some water. She then proceeded to make us all a cup of tea out of said water. Mmmm, tasty. I didn’t want to offend her or her family by refusing it but at the same time it was Nile water. I did end up drinking it because the water had clearly been boiled and they were calling it “Tea from the People of the Land”. They said it in Arabic but that’s the English translation. Anyways, none of us got sick so far so I think I dodged a bullet there.
Oh there was also a thunderstorm here. It was raining incredibly hard which was amazing since a government water pipe broke a few days before the storms. This meant we couldn’t shower for about 3 or 4 days so we were all desperate for some form of gravity-propelled water. So when the rain came down hard, about 7 of us ran out into the open and Elaine brought her shampoo with her. It was the most natural hair washing experience I’ve ever had! And there are pictures.
Early Wednesday morning Elaine left our excavation to go home to L.A. We were all very sad as she was a really wonderful and fun member of our team. We had a party for her the night before, where we served Flirtinis. We got the cocktail from a TV episode we watched out here. It’s basically sparkling wine and pineapple juice with a twist of lime. They were delicious. We all danced to Thriller and had a sing-a-long to Bohemian Rhapsody. It was a really good night.
On Thursday we had our Halloween party. I’ve posted pictures of the party so go ahead and take a look. I was Emo King Tut. A few of us here figure King Tutankhamun was just a whiny teenager so that’s where I got the idea for my costume. Of course this isn’t a published theory, so don’t go quoting me. Anyways, I made a t-shirt that said, “The Howard Carters”; Howard Carter being the man to discover King Tut’s tomb then combining that with the current trend of teenagers liking bands that start with “The”. I also drew Tutankhamun’s royal cartouche on the back, with big black bat wings extending from the left and right side. I then borrowed Christina’s (the photographer) skinny black jeans, used tons of black eye kohl, and had Emily (a trench supervisor) tease up my hair. Then to make my costume even more special, I painted my hair and face gold! GOLD! It was marvelous! I decided that in order to look like Tut I’d have to semi-mock the golden funerary mask. It worked out pretty well if I do say so myself. To make my costume even more Egyptiany, Karina (a trench supervisor and my tent-mate) and Dan (a trench supervisor) were my parents. Karina went as the Berlin bust of Nefertiti (complete with museum tag), and Dan was Akhenaten. So amazing. We went around yelling at each other at the beginning of the party. I told Karina she wasn’t my real mother, Dan told me to shape up or ship out. It was a blast. Deidre (the illustrator) went as Seal, so she built fake muscles and had a rose and a Hershey’s Kiss. Another fun group, or couple I suppose, costume was Anne (the osteologist) and Christina. They dressed as Hatshepsut (Anne), and the Queen of Punt (Christina). The Queen of Punt is depicted on one of Hatshepsut’s Temple walls. But she’s completely fat and deformed. She has like 4 rolls of fat and scoliosis. Christiana attached a pillow to her butt and went around shaking it to the music. Hilarious. Willeke (director of the program) was a candle. She drew a black line down her face, and then had a huge blue and orange thing coming out of her head. Bethany was Sophia Schliemann. Heinrich Schliemann was the German archaeologist who supposedly found Troy in 19th century. The reason he become sensational was not because he “found Troy” (which he actually didn’t) but because when they pulled out all the treasures of Troy, he put all the gold jewelry on his wife and took pictures. Everyone was shocked that an archaeologist would put ancient jewelry on his wife and take pictures. However, even the gold jewelry has turned out to be fake so whatever. Tash (GIS surveyor and New Zealander) was the Theodo Light. The GIS equipment comes in 2 parts: a prism on a poll that is hand held, and a large green colored machine on a yellow tripod that computes all the data the prism sends out. So Tash was the green and yellow part. She colored her whole face green except for one eye which was all black to represent the lens on the Theodo Light. I’m sure there’s a picture of this machine somewhere. Anyways, we clearly got nerdy with our costumes. But it was an extremely good night.
The next day I went to a Middle Kingdom temple and an archaeological site called Dimai. The Middle Kingdom temple was out in the middle of nowhere and the only inscriptions on the walls were modern graffiti. So no one knows why it was erected or what purpose it served during its active phase. It was still an amazing building. Everything around it was very quiet and still. Dimai is a Greco-Roman site similar to Karanis but better preserved. There are huge walls that once protected a temple, and a large granary whose rooms were still intact. Granaries are typically built like a multi-sectional basement so we all crawled underground essentially and explored the different rooms. The most exciting part of the trip was that the car that drove us to these sites got stuck multiple times in the sand. We all had to push the car out of ditches constantly. Again, there are pictures.
What else? Oh, I had to build a make-shift exhibition with Suzanne (the conservator) when visitors came to the site. We were very proud of what we managed to pull together with limited resources and time. Oh! It was Hans’ (the director’s husband) birthday and there was a “belly dancer”. I put that in quotation marks because there was more bare flesh than dancing. Her belly was jiggling but I think that was more of a natural roll than a controlled, learnt movement. There was also the fact that she looked like a lady of the night. She even had the 5 inch stiletto heels and Elvira inspired makeup. It was terrifying. But Hans seemed to have an enjoyable night; less because of the “belly dancer” and more because we rented rainbow lights that blinked. But whatever makes people happy. We also rented a gigantic speaker, and Hans blasted Wagner all afternoon. It was a bit distracting when I was trying to describe the shape of worked wood in the database but it was his birthday.
Next week is the last of the Greco-Roman phase and then we start the Neolithic phase. This is good for many reasons but the main one being that the Field School will leave! We’ve been having problems with some of them, both American and Egyptian students. Plus having 41 people in a terribly confined space is a recipe for disaster. When the Neolithic starts we will be getting some more Dutch people and some more New Zealanders. They’ll all be professionals though so it won’t be as stressful and intensive as it has with 21 undergraduates running around camp. That’s all for this week, hopefully I’ll be able to write more next weekend!

---