A Whirlwind Ending

I’m not sure I have ever been on a dig where I’ve gotten the luxury of a leisurely amount of time to  finish up, and this season at Elkab was no exception.

Anne and I were the first to leave, so on friday we packed our bags and did a paperwork marathon. All the forms were filled out, all the maps & drawings were properly labeled, all the elevations entered, all the photos named and cross listed.

On Saturday morning, luckilly, Shadida started up and successfully got us to the site. I’m pretty sure everyone had their fingers crossed the whole way. The last things to do for any excavation are to clean, photograph and draw the profiles of the excavated units. This is actually one of my favorite parts, because you can really understand what happened in an area from a nicely cleaned profile. We managed to do it all by about 12:30.

Then we caused a small riot among the children of the village when we decided to buy baskets from them. Let’s just say I gained some insight into what it would be like to be smothered by a sea of small children with baskets. Everyone survived, even the kids, and I now have made a small dent in my christmas shopping.

With that, a last look at the puppies, and lots of Masallamas and Nashoofak essenna illy guy, we were off.

Back at the house by 1:30, we had a few minutes for a flurry of picture downloading, making backups, eating lunch, and changing clothes before the taxi arrived.

I am sad to go of course, especially when this site is so interesting and we have only scratched the surface. But hopefully I will be back for more next year!

I mean how could I say no to this crew?

To close, here are some great shots from the whole season:

 Breakfast

  The Nile

  Art happening

 The doors of the old SCA office

 Some fashions should not be revived

  After a really good find!

 Can’t get enough of these puppies

The road to Luxor-

It all comes back around, Luxor temple on the last night-