Our project is in the middle of our offseason; we’ve written a report on some of our work that will appear in the journal Sudan & Nubia. A little plug for this journal–it’s the best way to find out about the latest archaeological work in Sudan, it’s in color, and it costs $28 per year….
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(guest post by Jack Cheng, our draftsman, artist, and my friend and colleague for almost 20 years!) In excavating the pyramid at El Kurru, we calculated that about 100 tons of fill had been deposited in just the last room (similar amounts were removed from the first two rooms in last season). Some of the…
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(Left to right, sort of: Geoff Emberling, Martin Makinson, Rikke Therkildsen (she’s in the back), Nacho Forcadell, Jack Cheng (also in the back), Luis Martín Díaz, Kate Rose, Sebastian Anstis (in the back–he’s not really that tall), Carrie Roberts, Suzanne Davis, Martin Uildriks, Sarah Duffy, Naomi Miller, Jacke Phillips, and Mahmoud Suliman (he’s not really…
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Between the hectic work at the end of the season and the terrible internet connection, I wasn’t able to post about our final results for the season. So in the next few days, I’ll write about where things stand and our plans for next season. Our most dramatic result was in the burial chamber of…
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We have decided to remove the fallen rubble from the north face of the pyramid to see if there might be further indications of how and when it was built and how it may have been connected to the pyramid of one of the most important kings buried at El Kurru—Piye (also called Piankhy)—whose pyramid…
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It continues to be an amazing experience to excavate a pyramid. I went into the innermost burial chamber that we are excavating after the workmen had left for the day, and really experienced what it means to be as quiet as the tomb. Based on other pyramids of this date in Nubia, we expect to…
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I’m back in Karima and can make a few more blog posts… We continue to expand our knowledge of the massive city wall that separates the palm groves along the Nile from the modern village. We are still looking for evidence that it is earlier than the Christian period, but we haven’t found it yet—so…
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We have continued excavating the underground rooms of the mortuary temple—there were two spaces remaining to clear. One was a small, square, featureless storeroom that contained nothing (like the rest of the temple!). The other appeared to be a corridor connecting two rooms with columns on either side. We knew only about the doorways on…
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I’m in the town of Karima, buying construction supplies and taking advantage of the internet connection here to make a couple of blog posts. Here’s a guest post from our archaeobotanist, Naomi F. Miller: It has taken several days to get organized, so I have not yet begun to float. But I have walked around…
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Excavators in the inner room under the pyramid: El Haj, Ashari, Ghazafi, and Jaffar MadaniThe area of massive rock collapse is visible as multi-colored stone; the brown-yellow stone below is the Nubian sandstone that forms the original back wall of the chamber We are continuing to have a very difficult internet connection, but this is…
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