I am finally returning to work after an end-of-season bout of pneumonia knocked me out. Not what you think of when working in the desert, but maybe the hard work, the heat, and the general fatigue caught up with me. So now I’ll give four final posts that will bring our season to a close….
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While I’ve been sick, another blog post made it on to the National Geographic site: http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/04/continuing-excavations-at-an-ancient-burial-site-last-touched-in-1919/
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I got sick at the end of the field season–a cold that turned into pneumonia. Slowly getting better, and I promise posts (and responses) when I’m back on my feet.
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Due to overwhelming demand, I am giving my answer to the question of how tall our pyramid would have been when first built. The angle of the facing stones is about 73 degrees, and if you just do a calculation on that basis (yes, it’s trigonometry), you get a height of about 43 meters. If…
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My friend and colleague from the Kelsey Museum at the University of Michigan, Suzanne Davis, has arrived to conserve and restore our finds, to consult on issues of architectural preservation (our local sandstone is mostly of really poor quality, very soft), and to help us think through our longer-term site management plan. I haven’t…
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Here’s a real-life math problem: How tall was our pyramid when it was built? You can see that it has some original stones left toward the bottom, but the upper part is all rubble that would originally have been invisible behind a nice stone facing. We are working on this question ourselves. Here is what…
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The Sudanese team working at El Kurru is directed by Prof. Abbas Sidahmed Mohamed-Ali, with Prof. Jamaal Karfis of the University of Dongola at Karima (pictured here) as field director. We have had a chance to become good friends during this field season. The Karima team is continuing to clean and restore the dramatic tombs…
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We’ll be part of a National Geographic film being made about the empire of Kush, and the film crew is here! The producer/director, James Barrat, has been interesting to talk to because he asks creative questions that we haven’t always considered before…and the NGS team has been great to work with. Here, I am getting…
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Here’s one more note for the 6th graders in Ms. Donnelly’s class. They asked about what we hope to find in the burial chamber in the pyramid, and whether the kings and queens of Kush were mummified like Egyptians. They also wanted to know if there might be traps waiting for us in the burial chamber.These…
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We have continued to work on the mortuary temple that we think was devoted to the cult of a dead king (or maybe all the dead kings and queens in the cemetery). It’s a large building, and we have now nearly excavated the entire outer room with 26 columns. Stay tuned for a photo within…
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