Today it was a busy day for the team in several ways: on the one hand, we were very happy to receive the visit of Gustavo Cabanillas, President of Gaselec Foundation, one of the sponsors of the project. The moudir welcomed Gustavo Cabanillas down the hill and explained to him the nature of the necropolis, the progress of the project, the latest discoveries, and how happy we were to be funded by this foundation. Each of the team members showed him his work, noting how important is the existence of these opportunities of funding to offer the community interesting discoveries, findings, and interpretations. In addition, we also got the visit of a group of young researchers from the IFAO that work in the temple of Karnak. They came together with Abraham Fernández, one of our team members who have not been able to work with us due to the contract he recently signed with the IFAO that will take him to work in Karnak. Mohamed and Sebastian, considering how busy we were with the visits, helped the moudir and took the French group to the different sections of the tombs of Henenu and Ipi to show them the latest works.
In the tomb of Henenu the upper courtyard was already finished and we had to focus only on the northwestern pile, where some details had to be examined down to the bedrock. Some rocks that appeared there might come from the construction of a nearby shaft. In the meantime, Sergio continued working on the photographing of the reliefs, while Kelly examined two shafts of the inner sections of the tomb. In one of them a beautiful blue faience shabti appeared.
In the upper courtyard of Ipi work is getting more and more exciting but complicated. Archaeologists there, mainly Mohamed Osman, struggle with some structures in the area that appeared in the nearby area of the northwestern wall, but in the next few days surely we will be able to explain these archaeological contexts. In addition, it was the first day of work for our colleagues from the UAH, Teresa, Ernesto, and Flavio. As soon as they arrived to the site, the three of them got rapidly engaged into his duties: while Teresa initiated the study of the geomorphology of the necropolis and the positioning of our tombs in this system, Ernesto and Flavio started to check the best points to set the 3D scanner. This scanner “reads” vertically and horizontally, with 360 degrees rotation when necessary, taking millions of points every five degrees.
At the end of the day we return for our lunch to the Marsam Hotel together with Gustavo Cabanillas, with whom we were willing to spend some more time. At the site he was a fantastic visitor, curious, inquisitive, and intrigued for our work (naturally!), but he demonstrated to be also a nice gentleman, full of stories, honest, and without doubt very committed to support projects in Egypt. It was great to have him with us!
