Edfu

Edfu is one of the most famous Greco-Roman temples in Egypt. It is also very large. I like it a lot because it is dedicated to Horus, son of Osiris & Isis, and consort of my beloved Hathor. Hathor of Dendera (another beautiful and important temple) visited Horus of Edfu once a year in a huge festival called The Feast of the Joyous Union. It was pretty popular, apparently, and lasted about a month (they gave away free beer and bread!).

The huge pylon.



An interesting scene from inside the temple. This is a depiction of the epic battle between Horus and Seth, Horus being Osiris' child, and Seth being Osiris' murderer and brother. They are struggling over who deserves to be the ruler of Egypt/the world, and they fight for many years. In this photo, however, the formidable god Seth is depicted as a tiny hippo. Isn't that odd? Considering how powerful he was supposed to have been? It does seem strange to me, with my American movie upbringing - villains are supposed to be very powerful and frightening, and to be destroyed only with extreme effort, strength, and skill.

But for the Ancient Egyptians, depictions, and words, were just as real as the real thing - in fact, they could bring these things into being. So it was too dangerous to depict a huge, vicious hippo as the god Seth, because then maybe it would come into existence that way, and Horus wouldn't be able to defeat it. Better to depict him as a harmless little guy, with Horus huge and powerful, just to be safe.

Isn't he cute, though? Poor guy...

Another one - he's on his back here!

Oh, Seth. (Interestingly, Seth was extremely popular in the Oases, especially in Dakhla, even after he'd fallen out of favor in the Valley. He was popular, they presume, because he was so dangerous - the idea is that you appease a dangerous god so he'll come protect you from other dangerous things, of which there were presumably perceived to be more in the vast mysterious desert around the oases...)

Nile Cruise

The sunset from our cruise boat, with a little bit of curtain to prove I'm on a boat...

Kom Ombo

Remember that morning that I woke up at 3:00am? And it was worth it, because I got to see Abu Simbel? Later that day - around 11:30am - we boarded a Nile Valley Cruise boat. And then that same evening, we visited another site - Kom Ombo, dedicated to the crocodile god Sobek - at night.

It was a big day.







Here's a crocodile on an offering table with some bread. Look, he even has a sun disk on his head (no, that one's not a piece of bread, unfortunately...). Isn't he cute?

Abu Simbel

Once upon a time, I woke up at 3:00am. Why would anyone do that? For Abu Simbel...







It was worth it.

Kalabsha & Beit el-Wali

I'm following two things through the valley tour - bread (mainly bread) and Hathor, a cow goddess associated with love, sex, fertility, drunkenness, and about twelve hundred other things.

Here is a nice little Hathor shrine - see her head on the tops of the columns? You might not be able to tell, but she has cow ears...


A good example of an offering scene featuring bread. This is from the Greco-Roman period, so the bread has lots of contour lines, and is in the shape of circles, ovals, and those strange pillowy-things between the circles

Valley Schedule

Tomorrow we set off on the Valley Tour!! It begins, as all adventures in Egypt do, with a bus ride. A seven hour bus ride, from Dakhla to Luxor. AND then the adventure really begins!

Our schedule, so you can imagine me wherever I am, even if I'm a few days late with my blog posts (Ha! As if that ever happens!):

February 23
Travel to Luxor (7 hour bus ride!). Night in Luxor.
February 24
Travel to Aswan. Visit El Kab and Gebel Silsilla. Night in Aswan.
February 25
Visit Qubbet el-Hawa and Elephantine. Night in Aswan.
February 26
Visit Philae, Kalabsha, Beit el-Wali. Night in Aswan.
February 27
Visit Abu Simbel (optional). Afternoon: board a boat for our Nile cruise! Visit Kom Ombo in the evening. Night on boat!
February 28
Visit Edfu. Night on boat.
March 1
Visit Luxor and Karnak. Night in Luxor.
March 2
Visit Medinet Habu & Deir el-Bahari. Night in Luxor.
March 3
Visit Luxor Museum (optional). Night in Luxor.
March 4
Visit Deir el-Medina and Valley of the Nobles. Night in Luxor.
March 5
Visit Dendera (my site!). Night in Luxor.
March 6
Visit Abydos. Night in Sohag.
March 7
Visit White & Red Monasteries. Night in Sohag.
March 8
Visit Beni Hasan. Night in Minya.
March 9
Visit Amarna and Tuna el-Gebel. Night in Minya.
March 10
Travel to Cairo. Night in Cairo.
March 11
Day off. Night in Cairo.
March 12
Visit Fayyum and Karanis. Night in Cairo.
March 13
Visit Saqqara. Night in Cairo.
March 14
Visit Egyptian Museum. Night in Cairo.
March 15
Visit Roman fortress of Babylon, Coptic churches, Ben Ezra Synagogue, and Mosque of 'Amr. Night in Cairo.
March 16
Visit Islamic Cairo (Gayer-Anderson, Ibn Tulun, Sultan Hasan). Night in Cairo.
March 17
Visit Bayn al-Qasryn. Night in Cairo.
March 18
Visit Kom el-Dikka. Night in Alexandria.
March 19
Visit Kom el-Shugafa, Serapeum, and National or Library Museum. Night in Alexandria.
March 20
Visit Abu Mina, Marea, and Huwariyya. Night in Alexandria.
March 21
Visit Mustafa Pasha & Chatby tombs and Syrian Monastery in the Wadi al-Natrun. Night in Cairo.
March 22
Visit Giza (optional! Ha!). Night in Cairo.
March 23
Travel! (Most people go Cairo-New York, I'm going Cairo to DAHAB! Yay!)

The Tallest Escarpment

We have been talking about climbing the escarpment, which dominates the Oasis landscape, since the first day we arrived. Everyone who's done it brags about it, with a mixture of pride and horror at their climb. This, somehow, didn't phase me. I just figured it was a steep hike. (And when I compare it to our nearly vertical trip up the volcano on the island of Ometepe in Nicaragua, it certainly pales. Then again, I hiked up that mountain wearing shorts and a tank-top, not long-sleeves and pants. The point, though, is that I was unprepared for the scarp!)

It started slow - we looked at the scarp before us, and scoffed. We wouldn't need two or three hours to climb this thing! It was puny! But after about an hour, we hadn't even begun climbing, just traipsing through the foothills. And then we really started to climb.

I, in a fit of enthusiasm, followed after one of the archaeologists' assistants, who is much taller than I am (and everyone on the program!) and has incredibly long legs. We scrambled up a rocky slope, which I expected would end in our sliding down the other side to join the rest of the group. Well, I was wrong. I had just joined the fast group, led by the long-legged Sander, and we would soon be choosing the most difficult way and moving as fast as possible for the entire trip. (The photo above is of the view from a resting place after the first short leg of the journey.)

So here I am, fresh-faced and unassuming, right before I discovered I would be continuing to follow Team Fast for the entire trip. Look how proud I look! I have no idea what I'm getting myself into...

But we continued upward. It was hot. I'd only brought 1 liter of water, because I only have one Nalgene. I was worried about getting dehydrated. So was everyone else around me. As we continued up, we slowed our pace (IE I did, which had an effect on the rest of the group!). We experimented with zig-zagging across the sand, which was an effective strategy, and huddled behind rocks to find small patches of shade. And we were exhausted. But it was so exciting! I couldn't wait to get to the top...

An example of some of the sandy patches of the escarpment, with its edge poking out in the distance.

Rocks we had to scramble up.

When we finally got to the top, we had to take a break before setting out to meet up with the other group of climbers, who'd taken the (easier?) alternative route. It took me a few minutes before I could enjoy the view. But quite quickly, I could do little else.

American Dinner

While still at the Dig House, we planned American Dinner. Professor Bagnall brought me brown sugar and chocolate chips from New York, so I made chocolate chip cookies, and we cobbled together a version of Mark Bittman's basic chili recipe. There were also deviled eggs, green beans, mashed potatoes, and sweet iced tea. It only took four hours and 14 people!


Here's Jessica boiling tomatoes to get their skins off.


I'm peeling garlic, Jessica's gutting tomatoes.

Stirring up the chili (We had to make it in three pots to fit it all! Two were vegetarian, one had little chunks of beef - we didn't have a meat grinder...)


Our beautiful cookies!


The beautifully set table. Doesn't it look nice?

Villa Update

The following post will take the form of a hypothetical interview between me and my mom, because she was once a journalist, and her last e-mail was full of questions about the villa.

A (for Alison!): What is the goal in recreating the paint motif on the walls. Will people come visit this stuff?

C: Well, the villa is being reconstructed with the goal of turning it, into the visitor's center for Amheida. Someday a long time from now, tourists and school groups will be able to visit the site, and in the villa/visitor's center they will see a few exciting finds (I think), a room that is unfinished so that they can understand the layers of brick and plaster, etc, that go into building a Roman villa, and the repainted rooms, furnished in the Roman style, to give them a feel for what it would've been like to live in the villa!

A: Do you try to use the exact type of paint that was originally used so that it is as true to history as possible?

No. The Romans used egg tempera, which is apparently just egg yolk mixed with pigments. (Pigments, here, meaning crumbly deposits left over from ancient springs. These are very easy to find around Amheida - we went on an hour-long walk a few days ago, and came across beautiful yellows, oranges, pinks, and reds. There is also purple and black readily available, and probably other colors I'm unaware of.)

If we were to use egg tempera, though, we're pretty sure that a colony of flies would grow up in the villa, and cover/eat the walls. Which would mean that our work would be ruined, it would be hard to continue, and life would be difficult in the villa. I'm not really sure how the Romans dealt with this. I will ask Dorotea... Someday...

A: Will anyone care that two kids in 2010 painted their names underneath the final paint layers and will someone thousands of years from now find it and wonder where it came from?

I don't know! I don't think we're really thinking that far in advance... But it's also pretty difficult to tell. We painted over that part of the wall an extra time, so it's pretty hard to see. I don't know whether it's possible to tell at all anymore. But we'll have to wait for several thousand years and see!

Villa Painting

On what was to be my fourth day of excavation, something happened that was a little bit lucky for me, although I don't want to brag about benefiting from the misfortune of others. (If I'm being honest, though, that's what happened...) My buddy Halley overslept, because she wasn't feeling well. Which meant that she missed the bus to site, and they needed someone to fill in for her at the villa, assisting Dorotea with painting. And Ellen asked me!

So Sofia and I spent the next three days, as it turned out, helping to paint the villa. Now, two rooms are being painted in the villa right now - the green room, and the red room. (Both are so named because of the predominant color of their walls...) Dorotea started the green room first, and was working on the last wall of it when we arrived. She also wanted to start the red room, though, and now, with two assistants, she was ready to work on both rooms at once.

After experimenting with string line grids, (which are terribly authentic and Roman!) Dorotea sent me in to begin the red room, while Sofia assisted her in the green room.


This is a completed wall in the green room. Isn't it beautiful? Those pomegranates in the niche are real - Dorotea eats them every day, and they are delicious.



Here are Sofia and Dorotea working on the last wall of the green room, painting white hearts. Really, they are supposed to be rose petals, if we look with Roman eyes, but they look like hearts to me... Regardless, they are a lot of them. It takes a long time to paint them, especially since Dorotea painted them and then Sofia traced over each one to make the white more opaque.

So during all of this hard work, where was I?


In the red room, which was white at first. But I am dressed to match the future! As I paint white gesso on white walls, preparing them for red paint. I couldn't tell whether I had just painted an area or not! It felt very dangerous to move on from any one spot, but I made it somehow. And it turned out okay when I painted it red, so I guess I got most places!


Sofia visited to help me paint that huge wall red! (We kept quoting that old Doors song, remember? Paint it Black? But we said red. Obviously.) Don't we look like we're having so much fun? That's because we are.



After we painted the first wall red, Dorotea realized that the wall next to the door had to be sanded before it could be painted or gessoed, because the plaster was extremely rough. So we covered up our hair and got ourselves covered in very fine plaster dust. We had to sweep so much of it off the ground!


Then we painted it! And before we painted over it, we painted our names. Which we then covered up. But I was running out of paint, so I added a bit more water, and you can still read Sofia's name, and my "C," a bit too clearly. Soon I'll cover it up in another layer, I hope...


There it is with the new grid! That Sofia and I made with white paint and string. After Dorotea laid out the lines. You can also see the beautiful yellow line I started painting along the top of the wall!

I am so excited for the red room to begin to look more like the green room. (It has a similar design.) Hopefully I will get to be there again to help paint more of it!