Today, it was not as hot as in the previous days and this has contributed to the productive day we got. After our Friday break –and the incorporation of new members– we started at 6:30 am with the distribution of the initial duties (some of them really basic!) and the distribution of the project members. Some of them work in a particular tomb or must move around the site the entire day (e.g., photography, GIS). Therefore, early in the morning we were already in our positions and ready for the plans previously discussed.

Even our rais Alí encouraged our 25 workers to start working allahtool (in Arabic: “right away”). One of the initial problems to resolve was the reconstruction of the tents, which collapsed with the wind the previous night. With good fixing points, new ropes, and much excitement, our Qurnawi friends succeeded and fixed them in a few minutes. Truly, there are not many jobs where one feels that he learns about people as in our case, where the efforts, attitude and good mood of the Egyptians teachs us much (and deeply) about life and its meaning. Perhaps, that is the reason why our gafirs (Arabic for “guards of the necropolis”) offer themselves to take care of part of our equipment during the night, or why we enjoy local food for breakfast, or even why a local worker shares a motorbike ride with one of our colleagues to the hotel where we stay. Everyday, work fuses with respect, care and the feeling that we do love what we do.

Of course, all these anecdotes and stories go hand in hand with the development of our work plans. One of the scientific interests of the Middle Kingdom Theban Project is the holistic comprehension of the monuments belonging to this period. Our presence in the necropolis of Deir el-Bahari and Asasif brings us this opportunity and we must gather all the trascendental information to confirm previous theories or to suggest new ones about this cemetery and the people who built it. Thus, is it of utmost importance to document the current status of the tombs, as well as to register both manually and digitally all the possible data and characterise every monument through the most advanced technologies and the traditional methods more practical. This procedure, which sadly is not as common as one would believe, allows to begin the archaeological excavations with all the original information, before being part of the creation of a new story for the monument.

In the tomb of Djari today’s work consisted on the preparation of targets and points to document the area that we are going to clean and adequate for the archaeological tasks to carry out next week. This area of the courtyard (south) will soon become an effective exit form the funerary complex without being to step onto other concessions. On the other hand, José and Laura were focused on verifying the location and current condition of the paintings in the façade of Djari’s tomb. For those who are not familiar with the wall paintings from this period, the scenes of the tomb of our director of Theban prisons are one of the most significant (and lesser known!) of the provincial art of the XI Dynasty. The works our team will carry put during the next weeks will allow to raise interesting questions about the painting and composition style as well as about the craftsmen who create them, besides other technical aspects such as the preparations of the walls, the mortar and the pigments.

The team working in Dagi’s funerary complex has also started to assess the current state of the tomb, paying special attention to the most problematic issues regarding the preservation of the wall paintings of the tomb. Despite the quality of the stone and the high level of artistic skills of the author or authors, these paintings present some deterioration and require a thorough study and an appropriate restoration methodology. On the other hand Jaime, Carmen and Raúl were able to locate some graffiti of the Coptic era that tells us about the reuse of the tomb as part of the monastery of Saint Epiphanius.

Regarding the conservation team, on their first day in the field, conservation team members Reed Hudson and Ella Andrews were joined by new team member Olivia O’Dwyer. They spent the day examining the wall paintings of Dagi and Djari and organising the conservation materials for the season. Last season they started documenting the wall paintings in Dagi and planning their conservation treatment, and continuing this work will be one of their first priorities. In addition, they are excited to begin work in Djari, which will present an interesting challenge – many of the wall paintings are hidden! At some point in the past wooden boards were installed to protect the wall paintings from the elements, and now the team will have to find a way to remove the boards, while ensuring that the wall paintings hidden behind them aren’t damaged. We will make sure to share photos of the process and the uncovered wall paintings, which haven’t been seen in decades.

In anticipation to the entangled years to come, the governor at Moalla, Ankhtify, prepared the series of troops that he succeeded to control in the three southernmost Upper Egyptian nomes and advanced against the Theban king Intef II and his coalition with Koptos. The references to the arrangements and intentions of this local leader are a clear example of the situation in the country of the Two Lands, with several regional parties struggling to control the Egyptian throne. Interestingly, a few years before Ankhtify appeared in the sources as part of an “altruistic” mission expanding from Elephantine to Hierakompolis that aimed at counteracting the effects of a dramatic famine and, above all, contributed to distinguish him as an exceptional nomarch. Without such pretensions but keeping the same spirit of Ankhtify “the brave, he who made himself”, the members of the MKTP wait for the initiation of our works tomorrow Saturday. With the help of rais Alí Farouk el-Qeftawi and our incredible workers and friends, we will work for the next four weeks to develop our plans and continue making use of the information to understand the great Theban mountain.

Last night, we received the first six members of the project who joined the small group that was already in Luxor (Patricia, Raúl, Sergio, and Antonio). The group included a couple of members with experience at Deir el-Bahari (José Alba and Carmen Díaz), the new members Jaime Colás (UAH fellow), Laura Hernando (UAH fellow), Jesús Martínez (Margarita Salas postdoc fellow, URV), and Ana Jiménez, professional photographer that joins the team this year. Besides, this morning around 8 AM we also welcome from Great Britan and US three of our conservators, Ella Andrews, Reed Hudson and Olivia O’Dwyer. All of them will enjoy the visual experience of the Theban necropolis and a kind of job that we all love and wish to develop through our field duties.

Despite the heat and too little sleep, the team organized today at 10:30 AM the first work meeting to face with clear plans the first duties in the tombs of Djari and Dagi. The main goals in this season are the excavation, documentation, and conservation of the two façades of the tombs, including their texts and scenes. The originality of these compositions at the end of the XI Dynasty demonstrates the influence of the Theban pre-reunification style in later works. All these works will soon become the target of our researchers’ work and passion.

468 days after our last farewell to Deir el-Bahari, we are back again opening the tombs of a familiar landscape that is at the same time so different. For the first time after 6 archaeological seasons focused on the north and eastern areas of the Theban hill, in the tombs of Ipi (TT 315), Henenu (TT 313) and E1 (MMA 521), in this 7th season all our efforts will be concentrated in the Asasif area.

Our goals this season are the funerary complexes of the vizier Dagi (TT 103) and the director of prisons Djari (TT 366). Both Middle Kingdom monuments still preserve painted decoration on their walls of extraordinary quality, even though the passing of time has caused some damage to them. Thus, an international team of restorers, the biggest we’ve had in the MKTP up until now, will assess the current state of the paintings to decide which is the better strategy to follow in order to preserve as much as possible these treasures of the ancient Egyptian art. 

Our day today was a day of settling in in the field to get it ready for the next three weeks of work at full esteem. A day of reunion with our local experts in Luxor who over the years have become part of the MKTP family, lead by our esteemed rais Ali Farouk, and who we haven’t seen for more than a year. We visited the tombs to ases the current state of preservation, we built the tents which will give us a bit of shadow under the strong Egyptian sun, electricity has been installed, and we discussed in situ how to better proceed with all the plans that we’ve been building the past months in the university offices.

Mid morning our GIS expert, Kate Rose, joined the team already in the field, our moudir Antonio Morales, subdirectories Raúl Sánchez and Sergio Alarcón, and the photographer Patricia Mora. Tonight most of the members of the team of this summer season will arrive from Madrid and Barcelona, all keen to start working next Saturday. No doubt we start a new stage of tasks, research and adventure…

Djari and Dagi were comrades in the court of king Mentuhotep II. In fact, Djari was younger than Dagi when the latter was at the peak of his career with an impressive list of prestigious titles. Both served the famous king who had reunifed the country after a life marked by the Theban opposition to the Herakleopolitan power. This event transcended the history of Thebes after a century and a half of internal struggle, irregular economy (though full of opportunities), and the emergence of local chiefs eager of power. The reorganization of the country allowed many officials loyal to the Theban king to promote within the new echelons in the country, while many local elite families that opposed to Thebes disappeared. The administration got new structures and these two officials became two of the most important figures in the new statal domain: Dagi was one of the most important men of the country, visir, Upper Egyptian lord, and even funerary official in the capital; Djari, head of prisons, was a prominent person at Thebes.

After attending the funerals of these two individuals in their tombs at Asasif, not many colleagues of Dagi and Djari could imagine that four thousand years later a team of archaeologists from the University of Alcalá would investigate their history, life, and the ways in which they participated in the changes of this period. The administration represented by these officials in 2000 BCE echoes through the documents, permissions, and concessions of the Permanent Committee in actual Egypt, which protects and cares for the pharaonic monuments. Today, May 3, we initiate the Seventh Campaign with our visit to the officials in Luxor and the West Bank, where Dr. Fathy (General Director) and the directors Dr. Behaa and Dr. Ezz helped us to complete the bureaucratic process and to begin this archaeological and epigraphic adventure of The Middle Kingdom Theban Project. In our Digging Diary, we hope to present the work, progress, and discoveries of our mission, a multi-disciplinary and international initiative that we put in place once more with good expectations: step right up, come right in… see for yourselves!