16th
The last few days!
Thursday 13th to Saturday 15th October 2011
So, we moved into the very last few days - and Thursday 13th saw another early start as Jo headed up to Alexandria to give a talk at the Library! The talk described the work of this EES mission across the province since the start of 2005, focussing mainly on the investigations that have taken place during 2009-2011, both the ground survey as well as the excavations/research at Quesna. There was also time to discuss our first fieldschool, which was very well received. There was a good audience, with members of the SCA, the EES (our Cairo representative, Faten, who had kindly organised the talk together with Sherine Ramadan at the Library), and colleagues from the Library and the University of Minufiyeh. It was a very nice occasion and a great opportunity to bring the results of the project to Alexandria as well as to Cairo for the first time! Today also saw the delivery of our end of season report to our inspector, who has been incredibly helpful during the season, as has our former inspector in August.
After the talk, outside the Library!
Friday 14th October was a busy day of finishing accounts, downloading data from the total station and saying goodbye to friends and colleagues once again. It has been a very successful season, once again, particularly in view of the fieldschool, but also the important attention that we were also able to give to survey work - at Khatatbah, Kom Usim, el-Rimaly and, of course, Quesna. This season we also had a good ten days to focus on post-excavation recording at the site, which was hugely valuable for analysis of the skeletal remains from T9, for completing both reconstruction and drawing of the coffins, for drawing small finds, and photographing not only the small finds from this season, but small finds from the past seasons which will find their way into our publication on Quesna - insha’allah by the end of 2012!
Saturday 15th October saw Jo’s return to Berlin, with other members of the team having departed at various points during the preceding week. I, and we, are very grateful for the financial, logistical and other types of support that have been given to the mission during our work. We have been here since August and various team members have come and gone during this time, but all are equally appreciated - everyone has worked incredibly hard and shown much commitment to the project, as ever. I am thankful to everyone and look forward to returning early in 2012, insha’allah, to continue with our important work at Quesna and later in the year to work across the province!
Now …. the work doesn’t finish! It is now time to complete the full report for both 2011 seasons, to prepare ourselves for 2012 and, most importantly, to publish our results!
Thank you for reading our blog once again, we will be back in 2012. In the meantime, please do keep an eye on our webpage at:
http://ees.ac.uk/research/Minufiyeh%20Archaeological%20Survey.html
which will be updated in the coming weeks with new information!
The team at Quesna, with our local workforce!
The fieldwork in Minufiyeh was funded by The Egypt Exploration Society, the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst) and the Michela Schiff Giorgini Foundation.
