Saturday, February 23, 2013

Backfilling at the palace.

North Village building “T” covered with sand.

 

 

We finished filling in the exposed stone and brickwork on the site and have handed in our report to the Ministry of Antiquities, but our work will continue as we carry on with our research and prepare for next season and begin the all-important task of fund raising for our work at Malqata.

 

More soon.

 

Diana Patch

Peter Lacovara

Catharine Roehrig

Joel Paulson

Annie Shanley

Katie Etre

Saturday, February 24, 2013

Balloons over Malqata

Last year during the 2012 field season, several members of the team went up in a hot-air balloon to try to take aerial photographs of the site using a digital infrared camera, but fate, and the winds, were against us and we were blown eastward towards the river, rather than southward towards Malqata.  Our pilot tried to adjust the altitude of the balloon to catch a layer of wind going in the right direction, but his attempts were in vain.  Once a hot-air balloon is airborne, the winds determine all possible navigation routes, so there was nothing to be done.

Photograph of the Palace without infrared filter

But, being determined (or stubborn, as the case may be) another attempt was made this year to do the same in hopes of more favorable winds.  As has been mentioned in previous blogs, the hot-air balloon rides are a popular, but problematic, tourist attraction on the west bank of Luxor.  It is a beautiful way to see the hills and monuments of the Theban necropolis, but the balloons frequently land near, and sometimes within the site of Malqata, especially between the Birket Habu mounds and on the fragile remains of the South Village.  We hope that our concerted efforts to explain the site to the pilots and balloon owners will persuade them to avoid the archaeological zone and land farther out in the desert as they are supposed to do.

Photograph of the Palace with infrared filter

So, it is with mixed feelings, that we use the services of a balloon company, but the birds-eye position that gives spectacular views to tourists can also provide a beneficial platform for the study of the site.  This year, I volunteered to be the one to give it another try and this year, for a change, the winds cooperated.  We departed before the sun even rose, and I was a little concerned about the light since we seemed to be moving very quickly southward from the take-off  location towards Malqata.  But as we moved along, the sun rose in the east, and as we progressed southward, the light strengthened.  By the time we were over Malqata, there was plenty of light for photography and I was able to collect a number of images, both in color and in infrared, of the various locales at the site. I also took some of the desert that, while appearing to be void, may yet contain archaeological features.  The purpose of the infrared photography is for remote sensing to try to “see” beneath the surface of sand and rocks to find additional architectural features or concentrations of archaeological material.  This work will be conducted by a specialist and, hopefully, we will have some results to present in the future.

Joel Paulson

Friday, February 22, 2013

 

While much of the equipment we use on site is purchased locally, brooms, brushes, shovels, string, nails and baskets, the more specialized equipment can sometimes be difficult to find, even back home. This season we have been using some tools generously donated to the expedition by Arcaios Tools.  This company, which supplies hard to find archaeological tools, was co-founded by Maria Mayo, an Emory Candler Theology student in 1999-2000.  Mayo came up with the idea for Arcaios during a field season in 2010, when her partner was working with his own tools and thinking about how to share them with other archaeologists.  They e-mailed ideas back and forth between her house in Nashville and his lab in Guatemala and figured out what tools we could offer. Many of their tools are produced in Guatemala by indigenous Maya people, and provide employment for these skilled traditional craftsmen.

You can visit their website at:
http://arcaios.com/Arcaios/About_Us.html

They have also been inspired to create “archaeological Legos,” little scenes from excavation life in the toy plastic blocks.

 

Peter Lacovara

High Definition Surveying (HDS) at Malqata

Thursday, February 21, 2013

This year, I was able to show the Malqata team the results of a survey I did last field season at the King’s palace at Malqata using a laser scanner.  HDS scanning is a relatively new tool in surveying. As a survey tool, the HDS scanner gathers point data in the same way as traditional survey equipment, that is by measuring angles and distances from known points.  The difference is that the scanner does it at an extremely fast rate, gathering up to 50,000 points per second; most surveyors just cannot move fast enough to do that with traditional equipment. At this rate of collection, millions of points can be gathered quickly to create a 3D computer model of the original features in a cloud of points (called, infact, a “pointcloud”). Because of constraints of the cost of the scanners, along with the computers and software needed to manipulate the extremely large files that are created for the scans, HDS scanning has been slow to enter the world of archaeological documentation although it has been around for about a decade. Still, the potential of the system for recording sites is tremendous.  Scanning provides an accurate record in 3D of a structure at a given point in time and can also be used for additional architectural studies as well as the basis for virtual reconstruction of a monument.

Portion of scanned walls at Malqata. The dark area in the foreground shows a position of the scanner. This will be filled in with points from other scan locations.

For the work at Malqata, the Expedition retained me through my surveying position with Nolte-NV5 of San Diego, CA.  The company was generous enough to let me bring a Leica C10 scanner as part of the survey work I was doing at Malqata, and the results are astounding.  From the combination of multiple days’ scans over about two weeks I was able to gather close to 800,000,000 survey points, each one of them with accurate coordinate and elevation values as established by survey control points done by a combination of conventional surveying and Global Positioning System (GPS).  After cleaning up the data and trimming it to the area of the king’s palace, the number of points on the ground and walls was reduced to only about 574,000,000 points with the points on the walls having an average spacing of approximately 5 millimeters.  This density of points allows for a model with enough detail that individual mud bricks are distinguishable.  Although the pointcloud may look like a photograph at this scale, it is comprised of the millions of points.  So, unlike a photograph, the pointcloud can be accurately used for measurements and can be rotated to be viewed from any angle.

Detail of a portion of the scan showing spacing of points.

Although the cleanup and photographic coloring of the HDS scan are on-going, we are fortunate to have accurate and complete documentation of the palace prior to the conservation work that is being done this season, and we have the basis for further studies at this fascinating site.

Joel Paulson

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

We were working in two areas of Malqata this season that are very different from one another.  The main palace is a vast, spacious structure with thick, solid walls and the North Village with its tiny, cramped, rather flimsily constructed buildings set along narrow, winding streets.

It is not just the architecture that gives a picture of the distinction between the workers and the nobility and high officials.  We can also see a difference in the pottery they used.  In the palace we see a great deal of elaborately painted ceramics (
http://imalqata.wordpress.com/2010/02/21/pots/
) that are sometimes called “palace ware” because of their abundance in the royal residences at Malqata and Amarna. While the blue painted ware occurs in other, non-royal, sites, it is not found in such quantities.

 It is not only this type of decorative pottery that is found in the palace, but also a fine, cream-colored polished marl clay used for a number of containers that imitate the look of alabaster vessels.  The marl clay requires greater preparation and fires at a higher temperature, so is more expensive to produce than ceramics made from Nile clay.  While some Nile clay, red wares are found in the palace corpus, they are less common than the finer marl pots.

Marl wares from the palace.

A strap-handled amphora in “Egyptian Alabaster” MCCM 2010.048.001

 

In the North Village the pottery looks very different and consists mostly of vessels made of Nile mud.  Many are bowls and some are finely finished with the polished red slip characteristic of a lot of 18^th Dynasty pottery, while others are less finely finished with a surface made by wetting the clay and smearing it to create a smoother surface.  There are a few random sherds from blue painted vessels and marl amphora, but these may be strays from the palace area.  Indeed, it looks like sherd debris had been taken from the palace area and laid down to make a level surface when the North Village expanded.  This probably occurred at some point between the Sed Festivals.

Nile silt wares from the North Village.

  

Peter Lacovara

Monday, February 18, 2013

Cleaning the north wall.

One of our goals this season was to try and find the northern end of the Palace of the King.  This part of the site had been trenched by Georges Daressey in 1888 and by the time that Robb de Peyster Tytus started worked there in 1901, any of the architecture that remained in this area was badly destroyed.  Annie had earlier brushed the northern perimeter of the site where some brickwork had been visible, but what she exposed seemed to be part of the underlayment of the floor paintings that Daressy had found and brought to Cairo for the Museum.

Some additional bricks were visible at the very edge of the palace area where it slopes down to meet a wadi or dry river-bed that runs perpendicular to the building. I asked Azab Ahmed Ibrihim, one of our most skilled workmen who has excavated with the German Archeological Institute for many years in Thebes and with the Metropolitan Museum Expedition at Dashur, to brush this area down and see if he could find a trace of the northern enclosure wall.

He was able to reveal about a 6 meter (20 foot) section of wall which appears to be a revetment at the end of the building.  In the North Village and elsewhere at the site, the builders worked with the local topography building terraces, retaining walls and adapting natural features into the design.

From the southern corner of the palace to the newly found northern wall, the western enclosure wall is now 155 meters long  (508 feet). The width of the palace still is to be determined; the southern enclosure wall runs off into the cultivation at 103 meters (338 feet) and probably continued east for a considerable distance.

This was truly a monumental structure. To put the vast size of the palace into perspective, it was far larger than either the White House or Buckingham Palace!

Peter Lacovara

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Melinda Hartwig and her inspector Mahmoud Mohamed El-Azib outside the tomb of Neferrenpet.

We are happy to have an old friend from Atlanta working in Luxor at the same time we are here.  Melinda Hartwig, Associate Professor of Egyptian Art at Georgia State University, is studying the Tomb of Neferrenpet (TT43), located in the Sheikh Abd el-Qurna section of the Theban Necropolis. He was the “Overseer of the storeroom of the Lord of the Two Lands,” and served under Amenhotep II, Thutmosis IV and Amenhotep III.

A Scene from the Tomb of Neferrenpet (TT43).

It is a beautiful, small tomb that was never finished and is a fascinating study in the ancient Egyptian artist’s working techniques. Previously, Dr. Hartwig undertook the scientific examination and digital recording of the famous Tomb of Menna (TT 69). The project in the tomb of Neferrrenpet will also incorporate conservation and documentation including archaeometric examination, photographic recording and digital drawing techniques.

Peter Lacovara

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Although assessing the condition of the wall paintings in the Palace – especially in the King’s bedroom, was my primary role this season, the excavation in the south village provided opportunities to treat objects as well. There are very few objects discovered on-site – the village was abandoned once the festival was completed; however, a bowl and a bone disc were found among the ruins of the temporary homes of the palace workers.

Bowl fragments being reassembled

The bowl was associated with a section of collapsed ceiling. It was a large, shallow red-ware bowl. The surface was burnished and is in good condition. There are some losses in the surface of the ceramic; these losses may be due to wear or could be due to salt crystallization.

Bowl fragments being adhered

Salts, in solution, can travel through the pores in a pot. Once the water evaporates however, the salts begin to crystalize. These crystals are much larger than the pores that the salts entered while in solution and these newly formed crystals will create damage and loss as they form. There were square salt crystals on the surface of some of the sherds. As such salts donot appear to exist on all pottery at the site, it is likely that these salts are from whatever the bowl held originally!Pottery is fragile and will break into pieces (sherds) under the weight of a collapsed roof or even under the soil that has covered the site over time.  About two-thirds of our bowl is preserved, so reassembling it was like putting together a puzzle without the benefit of a photograph.

Bowl with all parts attached

To reassemble a pot, a conservator always uses an adhesive that is no stronger than the pot itself.  A strong adhesive can cause undue stress to the ceramic and if the it breaks again, the goal is for the bowl to re-break along the original lines and not create a new ‘sherd’ that is a thin section of ceramic on either side of adhesive.  It is also important that the adhesive be reversible; if more sherds are found, joins can be taken apart so the newly discovered sherds can be added.Once the positions of the sherds were found, reattaching them could begin. The sherds were slowly reassembled – starting from the base – allowing the adhesive to set before adding new pieces. If too many sherds are added at one time, the bowl may collapse from the weight. However, with patience, the shape of the bowl reemerges.  This makes photography and sketching of the true shape of the bowl much easier than when it is numerous pieces.

Bone disc in pieces

A bone disc was also found in the North Village. This disc is small and round with a hole pierced in the center. The disc had broken into four pieces, one of which was delaminating. (Think of the fragment as two pieces of paper stuck together. If the two sheets of paper come apart, they delaminated.)

Disc complete

However, like the bowl mentioned above, the disc could be repaired. The adhesive in this case, however, had to be weaker than the adhesive used for the bowl as the bone of the disc is weaker than the ceramic of the bowl. Once clean and reassembled, the disc begins to appear closer to what was when in use some 3300 years ago.

Katie Etre

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Azib excavating roof and pottery fragments in T8

The North Village is a complicated site because so little of the original buildings is preserved beyond the foundation bricks of the walls.  Often these bricks are not in good shape either, and the walls have gaps that leave one wondering whether the missing bricks indicate an entrance into the structure whose mud plastered sill is now gone or perhaps were simply eroded by the wind.

Occasionally however a room is discovered where the walls and floor are still relatively complete and have not been touched since the building was abandoned.  In such a case the potential for finding a bit of information that might shed a little light on the habits of ancient inhabitants increases.

Fragment of the roof of T8

This was the case in an area we call T8.  When our excavator began to remove the debris it was clearly hard-packed, an indication of an undisturbed stratum at this site.  If it was dug by an earlier archaeologist, the dirt would be loose and sandy.  As Azib removed the chunky material, I saw pieces with impressions of what looked like sticks and grass.  He was digging the remains of the house’s roof that had collapsed onto the floor of the room.

Impressions of rushes used to cover the roof of T8

Roofs in ancient Egyptian mud brick houses are made with several elements of architecture: wood poles, heavy reeds, rush cords, and mud.  The thick reed-like material is bound together with the cords and then laid across the tops of the walls.  The thicker poles are placed either over or under this material.  Then the mud is slathered across this structure to make a solid surface. The mud from T8 showed impressions of such poles, thick reeds, and the ties of thin rushes that held them together.

Reeds bound with grass cord

Contemporary roof construction

Roofs of this sort are quite heavy and if not kept in good repair will collapse rapidly after the house is abandoned.  This seems to have happened in T8.  The mud plaster floor underneath was in perfect condition.  You can still see, for example, how the owners had taken the mud floor right up onto the base of the walls.  In one corner, we found sherds from a single red ware bowl, a common dish at this site.  Katie, our conservator, was able to reconstruct about two thirds of the bowl, virtually all that was there.  The bowl must have been left because it was already broken.

Bowl from T8

This same house had a stair case that lead to the roof.  Because the walls are only one brick wide, the house’s owner could not have used the roof for storage, but it would have been a good place to sleep on a hot night.

Diana Craig Patch

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1911 (11.215.447)

For Valentine’s Day- a heart amulet from Malqata!

The heart amulet is made of variegated glass and was excavated in the Palace by the Egyptian Expedition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art during the 1910-1911 season.