Yesterday, the commission of the Permanent Committee of Antiquities visited the tomb of Ipi. They inspected the archaeological works in the main courtyard that are being carried out this season. They also entered the tomb of Ipi and saw the sarcophagus located in the funerary chamber. At the end of the visit, they evaluated the progress of the Middle Kingdom Theban Project very positively.
Due to this inspection the works started later than usual. In addition, the previous night we were notified that three members of the team (Antonio, Patri and Bettina) had been in contact with someone who tested positive for COVID. Luckily, the affected person was sensible and communicated the situation immediately so that these members of the team could self-isolate. Due to this, Antonio, Patri and Bettina could not continue with their tasks on site until they could take a COVID test themselves. Mohamed was the one who spoke to the commission and introduced the site. He did a great job and thanks to that we all obtained a satisfactory evaluation.
As we were less people working at the site, Henenu’s tomb remained closed for the day. David and Iria started to analyze the painted reliefs from Henenu’s tomb by recording the main data of each piece.
Mohamed kept on supervising the ongoing archaeological works of the courtyard. At the same time, Bea continued her tasks with the ceramic materials and identifying and classifying the finds of the day together with Carmen who registered the new objects.
Reed worked with some fragments from Henenu’s tomb and with the special finds from Ipi’s tomb. Among them, she selected a group of shabtis to begin working on the next day.
After thirty-six hours since the intitial contact with the person who had tested positive for covid, Antonio, Patri and Bettina were able to take a test that fortunately came back negative.
The activity during the day was calmer than usual and even the dinner was more unexpected than usual and a nice surprise as it consisted of pizza! Let’s see what tomorrow brings!
