Hotel California - the true Egyptian national anthem

Hello people! I hope everyone's Christmas didn't involve a bag-snatcher like mine, but I hope it did include laughs, love and chocolate pudding, also like mine.

I'm having to leave Egypt early for family reasons, unfortunately. Since I'm catching a flight today I don't have time for a proper post, so I'm going to leave you with some photos. All I want to say is that this trip exceeded any expectation of what I thought it would be. It's renewed and inspired me archaeologically, it's introduced me to people who will remain with me a lifetime, it's scared me and challenged me and admonished me and rewarded me. Based on the suddenness of my return, I feel like I'm going to be a bit lost for a while, still sifting through it all in my mind. But I wanted to say thanks for sharing some of the journey with me, I hope you've enjoyed it even a fraction as much as I have.

Lots of love to you all x

Shake me up, Judy!

Hello peoples! Since I last wrote Egypt decided to remember it was technically winter and become freezing cold. Only in the mornings and at night, mind you, the day is still generally sunscreen weather.

Because I have a million thoughts and not the time to write down every story, nor the unwarranted attention of you all, I'm going to cheat and dot-point out some excerpts of life at Amarna from the past few weeks. Please excuse the laziness!

• A single cat is a joy. A pack of cats is an horror. The dig house cats are something like that family from 'Here Comes Honey Boo Boo'. Except they do unspeakable things with/to each other. When they're not shagging they're fighting, or breaking into the dig house to eat biscuits/chips/paperwork, or making noises like demon-possessed children do in the films. We tried to give them away to the workmen but no one wanted them (clever guys). The cats have recently decided to sleep in the bread oven because of the colder weather. While this may solve the long-term problem of too many cats, I'm worried about my food being cooked in the same place as a manky cat sleeps. I'm going to get a parasite that sends me blind, I know it.

• I think the workmen get an unholy pleasure in choosing the worst moment to pop up and offer you a tray of sticky desserts, like during a sandstorm or when your hands are full of bone or dead-person hair. Then they come back again, and again, and suddenly it's become a three cake kind of day. They mime to me that I won't get fat because I'm troweling all day, but since at that time I was holding a tiny paintbrush and had just spent 2 hours brushing minuscule fragments of plaster, I don't think it really works.

• When it rains in Egypt, crazy things happen. Donkeys are electrocuted by power lines, cats run around confused by wetness from the sky, workmen go home (actually not that crazy) and archaeologists make hats. In honor of it being the 100th year anniversary of the bust of Nefertiti being found, we threw a big party and made Nefertiti crowns in her honor. It was marvelous.

• In this regard, a Nefertiti crown can be made out of anything, pretty much. Mine was made from biscuit packets, coffee wrappers, the inside of a cheese box and those plastic bubbles tablets come in. When I washed the rubbish in the kitchen sink, the cook didn't even bat an eyelid, which made me wonder what other things he's seen throughout the years here.

A drawing by our cook, I love it.

• Egyptian shindigs are wonderful things, with music and dancing and a whirling dervish with a skirt that lights up at the click of a button. It further confirmed to me if you have enough guts (or gin), anything can be used as a dance prop - a broom handle, a level stick, a rifle (one of the guards, believe me, he had some moves).

• There are moments in life where you stop and think - this is perfect. I have to say that walking at sunset with a host of other Nefertitis to the house where the bust was found, champagne stowed in someone's backpack and glasses shared amongst the group, this was one of those times.

• Possibly as an Egyptian ploy to prevent obesity, packets of chips here have a depressingly small amount of content. As in approximately 4 chips. Meaning you eat two or three packets to get a normal sized serving of chips, leading to you being overwhelmed with feelings of guilt, shame and secrecy. Oh Doritos. On that note, they also have flavours of kebab, paprika and both cheese AND seasoned cheese.

Also our honey jar has a picture of a crocodile on it and it says "Activity, Strength and Lively". I can't even come up with an explanation for that, unless it involved getting the honey actually from the crocodile (milking it? Is that how it would work?) which would comprise both activity, strength and a certain amount of liveliness.

• Lastly, people say the funniest things here in all seriousness. Like "I haven't touched a body in weeks" or "I put his head in a box and his beard fell off" or "How would you age me from my mandible?" or and my favourite so far, "Pigs are a pain in the ass, they eat babies and stuff".

Things are wrapping up here, these are the last few weeks before we finish up and leave site. That's going to make me very sad if I stop and think about it, so instead I'm going to focus on my plant-stem matting I have to draw tomorrow and apologise in advance for any potentially somber future blogs full of deep musings on friendship and goodbyes.

Lots of love in the holiday season to you all, eat some prawns for me please (I'm totally craving them).

xxxxx

Mr Melanie's Arabic kwayes!

Greetings from the sandy land, people! I'm sorry for the gap between updates recently, you'll be glad to know it's because I've actually been doing important archaeological stuff, or just going to bed at 8pm, both are key factors. I wanted to start off by saying that the recent unrest in Egypt has not extended to Amarna - the most unrest we experience is when a truck goes past with a musical horn, and the most scared I've felt is going to the toilet block and seeing one of the local wild dogs (apparently if you lift your arm like you're going to throw a rock at them they run off, but I was too scared to try so I just scuttled into the toilet and hid for a bit instead).

So I thought for this post I'd run through what a normalish day is like here, obviously including all of the searching for magical items, jumping out of planes in inflatable rafts, battling nazis and bedding exotic beauties. Just with more planning. And troweling. And measuring. And more troweling.

I wake up about 5.45am, which would normally make me cry and rock in a corner but for some reason in Egyptland, I don't mind. Again, I go to bed at a time even your grandmother would mock so I can't feel too smug about getting up easily so early. After breakfast the two trucks arrive with the workmen and we load up our equipment and head off to site, which is about 10 minutes down the road. The rest of the team ride in the back of the truck, which apparently is getting to be quite a cold trip now, but one of the other archaeologists and I ride in the front with the driver. Sometimes it's quite fun but sometimes he just lectures me about how terrible my Arabic is and why doesn't Mr Hannah speak Arabic more often. Yes, he has a point, but at 6.30 in the morning I don't take too kindly to being lectured. I have learnt the word for 'motorbike', 'teeth' and 'sun' from him though, based on what I assume are his scenic descriptions of the landscape. I'm planning on learning the words for 'dead donkey being eaten by dogs' next.

We're divided into three teams on site, based on which area we're working in and we each have a team of workmen as well. I like the workmen for our group very much, they teach me words (like 'relax/take it easy') and we mime out jokes and try to understand what the hell the other person is saying. Sometimes this is successful - today I overheard one of the workmen talking to another and he said (translated) "Basbousa tomorrow" and my ears immediately pricked up because Basbousa is yum and of course I'm going to learn the names of desserts first in any language! But one of the workmen was speaking to me the other day and kept saying the word for 'son' and pointing at the sky and I thought he meant his son had died so I kept saying how sorry I was and looking sad but it turns out he just lives in Cairo.

Anyway there's lots of work to do each day and it's varied enough to always be interesting. Sometimes I trowel with the workmen, cleaning off the different layers and keeping an eye out for burials. When a layer (unit) is finished then it has I be photographed, drawn and then you take levels, then the whole process begins again. Once enough burials have been found you choose one and begin; you have to work on it quite quickly as you don't want the bone to be exposed to the elements too long. Sometimes I look up the hill at our squares, all in a row and dotted by little white sheets, like these people are freshly dead from some epidemic instead of being well and truly dead from a long time ago. I've worked on a number of burials so far (maybe 8?) and the only similar factor is that none turned out the way that I thought they would, which is very much a characteristic of archaeology I think. I've dug a burial that I thought was a tiny baby until it kept growing and growing into a child instead, I've dug a wooden infant's coffin that ended up being empty except for some broken pottery and a bone smaller than my thumbnail (therefore it technically was an individual and I had to fill out oodles more paperwork!). I've dug torsos that were a mess but then the legs are perfectly in situ, I've dug what I thought was wool and instead turned out to be a plait of hair. My favourite so far has been a skeleton of a child, whose left hand was curled outward from the body. These delicate finger bones curled in that manner, it really drove home to me that this is the bit inside a person that remains behind, an imprint of how their body came to rest for the last time. It really is a privilege to uncover, but also is a task that must be treated with respect and dignity, if that makes sense?

So that's normally how the morning/early afternoon is divided up, of course when you're working on a skeleton you're also cleaning, drawing, photographing and leveling for each of the different phases of what's being uncovered. Plus second breakfast is snuck in there at 10.30 and it's depressing how quickly you get used to a second breakfast!

We leave site at 2 (there's never enough time either, you're always working until the last minute) and have lunch and then begin on the paperwork. For me this is a calm part of the day; I sit there with my coffee and sort through my papers, going over what I've worked on and deciding on how best to describe what I've seen and excavated. Then, depending on how much was done during the day, you finish up and have a shower (it's so glorious - there's always hot water and it's amazing to feel clean when you've been so very sandy and dirty) and then read/talk/sleep until dinner at 7. I'm very bad at down time here though, so I've been working after I finish my paperwork on a bit of a different project, but one that is equally exciting.

All of the object cards that outline every artefact that's been found across the site, since the earliest excavations over 100 years ago, are in the process of being catalogued into a computer, which I'm helping out with. Anyone who knows me would understand how this appeals to my sense of order, I really enjoy logging in the information and seeing the number of entries grow. The thing that really excites me about this though, is that not only does the catalogue list the details of the find, it will also include photos, drawings, maps, and importantly where the artefact is now. Even better, once this is all completed, it will be available for free online so anyone can use it for their research. That blows my mind. I know there's a lot of you out there who, like me, have spent hours trawling through old excavation reports, hoping the term you're looking for is listed in the index. With this database, I could search materials, or geographic location, or current museums, or object type, and have access to images and contextual information that is invaluable. I know I'm possibly too excited by this, but it represents what I think Egyptology should be about. Access to information, to help feed the research of others in an open-handed, free and easy to use way. I love it.

Anyway I've been going on forever I'm sorry, and there's still so much I want to say. Serves me right for leaving this go for so long. I just wanted to say that the other day I was brushing the sand off a skeleton, the sun was warm on my back and a light breeze was blowing. I though 'I'm actually excavating a cemetery, that contains subjects that I've studied for my own research, I'm working with an international team under inspiring and encouraging leadership and I'm in Egypt' and I felt so overwhelmed by gratitude, by joy and by this incredible sense of peace and rightness, that I wanted to cry. These moments don't come around that often in life, and so I'm thankful.

Lots of love to you all, I miss you guys and wish that you could experience this time with me. My words really don't do it justice! Take care all of you, and I'll chat sooner rather than later, I promise.

xxxxxx

And some photos

Here's some photos from the trip so far, comprising weird advertising, beautiful landscapes, our on-site toilet, a slightly dodgy drawing of a skeleton and a picture of one of the other archaeologists and myself (which I actually stole from her, thanks Mel!).

Remembering/Forgetting AKA I can't wear that on the French Riviera!

This week I've been thinking about the smell of guavas, the enjoyment of an outdoor toilet, the fallacy of hope, where peanuts come from, the planets in the sky, how a person can fit into a plastic bag, honesty with strangers, shoes washing up with feet in them and how sharks die if they stop moving forward.

In no particular order, here are some excerpts from life at Amarna this week.

So on Monday I was sitting on my bed, reading a book, and I saw a black speck crawling on me. I tried to squash it but it jumped really high, and then jumped again and again and disappeared. And I felt itchy-shivery from me head down to my toes and was overwhelmed with repulsion because it was a FLEA! A flea in my bed!! Who knows how many others there were?? And how do you get rid of them?? These are things I've never considered before, but I did find out several things about fleas from my fellow archaeologists that I'm now going to share with you all.

1) A good way to catch them is by wetting a bar of soap (apparently a red one, but I'm not sure why or where you'd find such a colour?) and then mashing them into it so they're trapped.

2) When you catch them you have to roll them quickly between your fingers to moosh their legs off, if you try and just squash them it doesn't work. Their legs are their power, like Samson's hair.

3) Once you've rolled their legs off you have to pinch them with your fingernail and they make a crack noise. That's how you know they're dead.

Now I like to think I'm not that freaked out by creepy-crawlies or wrigglies, but there's just something about fleas, and lice and other bitey bloodsuckery things that Freaks. Me. Out. My brother had a book on insects when he was a kid and there was this one picture of a man's head in it, and his hair was just BEADED with lice eggs. And that's making me itchy-shivery just thinking about that grossness. So I attribute some of my reaction to this photo.

I ended up getting a can of very noxious smelling Egyptian insect spray, of which the instructions include putting a wet rag over your mouth, and not to use when pregnant, and I sprayed the hell out of my mattress and pillow. I changed all my sheets, got rid of the suspicious woolen blanket and then borrowed someone's fan because I would probably die if I went to sleep breathing that air. And I'm choosing to believe I was successful, since I don't appear to have any bites or any more unwelcome visitors (knock wood). Mum says my first world problems are becoming second to possibly third world problems, which I thought was quite funny and in some ways true.

On Wednesday morning I couldn't sleep so I got up at 5.30, when the sky was just beginning to change from night to day. And so I was shown Venus, Jupiter and a very faint Mars by one of the other people here. I've actually never had planets pointed out to me in the sky before and to me it was incredible. The planets stayed in my mind the rest of the day. Do you think after walking on the moon, and seeing the earth rise in space, that astronauts find it difficult to fit into normal life again?

When we were returning to the house after a day on site, we passed a donkey cart piled high with green bushes. As we all sit in the back of the truck, some of the workmen grabbed a bunch of plants and it turns out that they were peanut bushes with fresh peanuts attached to the roots. I've never eaten a new peanut before, and I have to say it wasn't that nice. Sort of bitter and starchy. But it was this glorious pink colour, and I was surprised at how often I've eaten these things without ever thinking of how the began.

Do you know what I really like? When people are honest with you and share their thoughts even when they don't really know you. It feels real. Like an actual real interaction with another person. And when it happens I think you realise how rare these sort of connections are.

Lastly, I've been thinking about sharks, and how if some species stop moving forward they die. They need to pump the water over their gills to extract oxygen or something. I've been thinking, maybe I'm a lot like these types of sharks? My thesis burnt me out, in a way it ostracised me from people I care about, it made me sad and scared, it overwhelmed me, it often made me doubt myself. I was very ready to hand in a half-arsed job, just so it would be gone. I thought 'when I'm done, that's that! I'll earn some money (still important, still high on the priority list!), move out again (again, still important!), see friends, eat out, go to concerts, travel for fun. Live guilt-free. I'm done with academia and Egypt and everything else'.

But being here, it's reminded me that archaeology and Egypt and yes, even thesis writing, it's me. It's who I am. And that there is so much more to being an archaeologist than writing a thesis. And that a thesis is but a tool to, in some ways, allow you access to working and studying sites that you've only dreamed about. And that a thesis is an avenue for you to think and engage and analyse and explore. It can be you, if by the end you remember who you are!

If I stop moving forward, maybe the part of me that's passionate, that got excited about holding a pot sherd in first year uni, who saw a picture of a dig in Egypt and thought 'that would be incredible - people who get to do that are so lucky', who genuinely enjoyed studying knots for a year, that part will die.

I don't know if a shark gets tired from the constant moving, if sometimes it just wants to hold its breath and float. But eventually the need to move forward kicks in again, and fresh air circulates its body. And that might be, in a way, like me.

Phew heavy stuff for only week two! This is what happens when you neglect to bring duty-free alcohol.

Lots of love to everyone, and I apologise for my self-indulgent ramblings. I miss you all incredibly xxxx

...and the aforementioned photos.

The first is of the desert through a dusty car window, the second is of the dig house and the third is of the most deliciously romantic soft toilet paper you've ever experienced - apparently.

Yalla Shababs! AKA Humans have a tongue bone?

Hello anyone and everyone. I feel like I should quickly offer up a few disclaimers. First, I don't shout 'yalla shababs!'* at my workmen, I'm generally very nice, although it would be such a fun thing to shout based on the way it rolls off your tongue. You should try it now. By the way, am I really stupid to not know we have a tongue bone? I was encouraged to not let people know I wasn't aware of this fact, apparently I'd lose 'cred' with the other members of my team. Who knows how many other ways I'm yet to lose the small amount of 'cred' I may be accumulating? I'll keep you posted.

My second disclaimer is that while I am archaeologising in Egypt, I'm not going to be writing specifically about the people I'm working with, nor give specific details on what's being found. The first one's for privacy and the second is because I don't own the rights to the information found on site. So I may have lured you all in with the promise of egyptological sweets and have now instead given you a kick in the pants. My apologies.

So I'm out of Cairo and am at the dig house at Amarna. Honestly, I was very relieved to leave the city on Saturday. I think I had a bad reaction to my typhoid/hep a vaccination I received the day before I left (moral of the story, don't leave these things until the last minute); I had high temperatures all week, swollen glands, and almost passed out a few times. This coincided with very hot weather and the festival of Eid, which meant drumming and air horns being sounded for over 24 hours outside my window. Normally an interesting cultural experience I'm sure, but to me it felt like hell. Possibly punishment for mashing Keith's vinegar egg in grade 2, who knows. But it was horrible and I cried a lot of frustrated sweaty tears and sent a lot of 'what the hell am I doing here?!' emails home.

Anyway, this isn't a whingy blog, suffice to say I was glad to shake the dust off my feet and leave Cairo behind. And then we were driving down the dirty street, past dusty apartment blocks and alley ways and broken buildings and oh yeah, there's the pyramids. And I got that excited squirmy feeling in my stomach and felt overwhelmed with how lucky I am. So the story has a happy ending!

Right now I'm sore and have sand in all sorts of inappropriate places, but I feel massively content. I've gotten soft thesising for so long! I can't even kneel on gravel for a few hours without wincing and shifting around like a damsel in distress. It feels really right that I'm here though, it feels so good to be digging and planning and recording and drawing, to be evaluating a site with my eyes, thinking of how to describe it and how it connects with everything else. I've also missed the camaraderie that comes with being a part of a team, from organising your site box in the morning, to sharing a meal together, discussing your trench, debating the next move, practicing Egyptian with the workmen, it feels really good. I drew my first skeleton yesterday, it was not that great but to be fair to myself, half of it had been pulled out of the trench and robbed and then shoved back in, so it did look pretty messy when we found it!

I got my visa extended in Minia for four months, so I won't be taken to some back room at the airport and be shouted at in Arabic and then never allowed to return. I also got a grope on the bum the same day, by some winking sleaze bag in the crowd, so I guess it was a 'you can stay in Egypt for longer but be prepared for what that may entail' kind of day.

That's about if for today I think. Except I was amused that the toilet paper here is called 'Romance'. I know whenever I think of the heady allure that comes with two people connecting in an intimate way, I also think of toilet paper. The two go hand in hand, obviously.

I'm going to attach some pictures, hopefully it won't use up all my Internet. Lots of love to everyone, I hope you are all enjoying the summer weather and getting some beach time and evening drinks in as much as possible.