26 April - 2 May 2001
Issue No.531
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 26 April - 2 May 2001 Issue No.531 |
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Among the Pharaohs
Being an archaeologist is not easy. It is a career full of difficulty and mystery. But the thrill of the find makes all the toil worthwhile. An archaeologist for a day, Nevine El-Aref finds out why
Archaeology reveals the life and history of ancient civilisations, and the ground is both a theatre where archaeologists perform their work, and a repository of hidden treasures. Discoveries large and small, from pottery shards to temples, tombs and fortresses, eventually find their way to Egypt's many museums or remain on site as silent witness to our ancestors. From the start of an excavation until the moment of discovery lies a world of toil, troubles and false hopes; but the rigours are so sweetened by the thrill of the find that many leap at the chance to work on a dig. I was one of them, and I recently visited the excavation mission headed by Zahi Hawass, director general of Giza Plateau and Bahariya oasis, to explore a major archaeological area around the Valley of the Golden Mummies.
Playing with history: Hawass's team of archaeology students and our Weekly correspondent photo: Khaled El-Fiqi
The day started gruellingly. I was up before dawn, at 5am, when Bahariya oasis is still shrouded in darkness. Looking about, I saw the lights of four-wheel drives blinking on the horizon, announcing the arrival of our transport to the excavation site. I was not the only guest with the expedition; 15 American students joined us to do field training as part of their archaeology course.
It was a cold morning. A chilly breeze ruffled our hair. We headed into the silent desert, only the noise of our jeep breaking the quiet. Two kilometres in, we came across a white van surrounded by a knot of workers waiting for us beside the highway. On Hawass' hand sign, the van followed us until we reached the Valley.
All along the road, I couldn't help thinking of the famous Pharaohs' curse and wondering: would the curse attack me?
"Do you believe in the Pharaohs' curse?" I asked Hawass. He turned to me and laughed. "What a mess," he said and wondered how I, an archaeological reporter, could believe such scares.
There is no such thing as a Pharaohs' curse, he declared, adding that it was the invention of a German writer who sensationalised the deaths of Lord Caenarvon and Howard Carter after their discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb by attributing them to a baleful, ancient hex. He did suggest a scientific possibility: that when tombs or other monuments are excavated after thousands of years, microbes may still survive. Then the person who enters the monument may die of old diseases. Be the deaths from spells or microbes, neither made for comforting thinking. But many Egyptologists have discovered sites and nothing has happened to them. Hawass finally reassured me. He pointed our that these days, when a site is opened, a small hole is made to allow any dormant microbes to escape before the tomb is fully laid bare.
"I have worked in this field for over 30 years and nothing has happened to me," said Hawass. "People delight in inventing mysterious stories about Pharaohs who did sometimes write curses at the entrances of their tombs, as at some tombs in the pyramid builders' necropolis," he said, suggesting the probable origins of the myth.
On our arrival, the Golden Mummies area became a hive of activity. Workers scurried over the desert sand, laden with excavation tools carried in white linen bags. They moved quickly and purposefully, their silhouettes taking form as the grey dawn lit the desert.
By our pit, the workers' leader gave his orders and the workers took their positions. At the same time, Hawass lectured the students and me about the area and explained its historical background. Later we joined the workers' team.
As novice staff, we acted as archaeological workers not as professional archaeologists. We divided ourselves into three groups. One marked the excavation pit with green plastic bags full of rubble. The second shovelled sand with trowels into black buckets. The third group disposed of the buckets far from the site. On the far side of the pit other workers tackled a newly discovered tomb.
To ease the back-cracking drudgery, the workers constantly tried to enliven the atmosphere by singing, chanting new verses with each bucket of sand they carried from the tomb. By noon, the desert had heated up fast. We were exhausted but tried to keep going until the workers had their lunch hour. At last we gave up and sneaked inside the adjacent tomb searching for Hawass and his team. We found them brushing, cleaning and studying a new set of 11 mummies.
Of the mummies, two were headless. The sight of them was strangely unnerving. "I feel that I am in a time machine," said Will Sinclair, one of our team, before asking Hawass about his feelings when he came across a mummy. Hawass, who was brushing one of the decapitated mummies, immediately recalled the stink encountered upon approaching a mummified body that has been buried for two thousand years. "It is indescribable," he said. Luckily, "I have become inured to the stench over the years. My younger colleagues marvel at how I can continue the work unfazed," he chuckled.
"Why are the mummies mutilated like this? It seems that they have been burned," asked Sarah, another student. El-Hussein Abdel-Bassir, the head inspector of the excavation, explained that the mummies had not been immolated; the colour of the mummies' linen wrapping, polished with mummification liquids, only made them look charred. Until recently, nobody knew why they were headless, but studies of the tomb revealed that it had been robbed. Perhaps the tomb's robbers destroyed the mummies. We then helped the archaeologists by picking up skeletons, pottery, onyx pieces and dried barley. Some of our group were fascinated by the mummies themselves and went to brush dust from the bodies of the ancient Egyptians.
With work in full swing, I sat on the tomb's floor and foraged in the sand. Two minutes later I spotted something glittering. I removed the sand quickly but carefully, and uncovered a golden fragment. "I am a discoverer!" I cried. "I am a discoverer!" I was surprised and delighted. For the first time I felt the elation archaeologists feel when they make a discovery after a hard day's search.
When we left the tomb it was almost sunset. We were exhausted, dirty and hungry and it was hard to choose what we needed most: a shower, dinner, or a bed. Eventually we flopped into chairs and relaxed in our hotel's courtyard, some drinking juice, others preferring tea and shisha (water pipe).
The life of professional archaeologists is arduous. It needs a strong person who loves the job. But the exhilaration of discovery that I momentarily felt when I found my golden shard, explained to me how people can devote their lives to digging in the reluctant sands. For all the toil, for all the hardship, the joyous revelation of a piece of the past makes all the effort worth it.
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