29th
Monday 28th March 2011
Another warm day! We started off at 7am accompanied for the start of our journey by the local police and then we went to the village of Sobek el Dahak - which we had also visited on Monday, having first been there for a very brief visit way back in 2005 during the first year of the survey project. We took a different route this morning, via the city of Benha as the roads are somewhat better. We started out on the highway and then transferred onto small single lane roads which go through numerous small villages interpersed with mataba - speed bumps - which have increased in number since last summer, which is a great thing for slowing the traffic down. With all the equipment in the car we have to go even more slowly over these than the other vehicles on the road! Our hosts in Sobek have given us a warm welcome and after a day spent familiarising ourselves with the layout of the town yesterday (and being invited for more fateer, we made two drill cores today on the edge of the village, with the aim of assessing the proximity of past river branches and channels.
The second burrima at Sobek being lowered
As at Umm Harb, we had two local men working together with us on the drill core and taking care of the heavy work and I took care of the sediments that came up - sorting through for artefacts and environmental samples and recording brief details of the sediments, and photographing them, so that they can be examined in detail by a colleague in the summer season - insha’allah! The modern village is built upon the mound, and the walk around yesterday was very interesting in terms of observing processes of decay, particularly of the old mud-brick buildings, which are now being taken over by red-brick architecture.
The old school within Sobek el Dahak
There is a real mix within the village and several buildings in the process of collapse, as well as the common occurrence of buildings where one has to walk down several steps to get into the door - due to the accumulation of deposits along the modern streets.
An old mud-brick building, today partly beneath the modern street level
We finished work at 2.30pm as Sobek is somewhat further away from home than Umm Harb and by the time we got to Shibin it was nearly 4pm. Then it was time for some more errands, at the petrol (benzine) station, where we are becoming rather well known, and also the money exchange, before accepting an invitation from our old landlord, Mr Sharif, to an early dinner. Two inspectors visited us for dinner last night and also a professor of Archaeology at the University of Minufiyeh.
As for the next few days we will move on to Kom Usim and will report on this tomorrow evening!
