Today the day started with a visit to Dra Abu el-Naga. There one of our inspectors, Dr Mohamed Boeabish, showed us a number of tombs included in the Kampp catalogue that he is re-excavating and studying. The conservation of many of the paintings in these tombs, dating from the New Kingdom, was astonishing and the team was delighted to be able to visit.

As the work at the site started a little later, we were at full speed from the very first minute. At Henenu’s tomb, David and Iria continued with the cleaning of the tomb. They focused on the antechamber, the room that connects to the corridor leading to the burial chamber.

Sika and Carlos studied painted fragments from inside the sarcophagus. Jaume and Lily helped with the documentation of these pieces and were able to join together three of these limestone fragments.

At Ipi’s tomb, the day began with Oscar and Bea working with the total station. The excavation of the courtyard is now focusing on the eastern area, south of the tomb of Meseh. It is a very interesting area and at the end of the day we started to uncover Middle Kingdom ceramics, something that gives us very valuable information about the construction of the courtyard. Hazem has rejoined the team and he is focused on drawing and completing the information on the shabtis obtained in past seasons in the tomb of Ipi.

Also at Ipi´s tomb the conservation team finished a series of tests on the papyrus fragments to establish a methodology for their treatment. They also continued the treatment of the cartonnage fragments from the 2016 and 2017 seasons that had been previously cleaned and documented by Fathi and Reed, joining several fragments and stabilizing any fragile areas.

Carmen has been left in charge at E1 after Jose’s departure. With the help of Óscar, they photographed the corridor and the chamber. They documented the previous day’s finds and cleaned a superficial stratum that opens up to the corridor to finally photograph it. Óscar and Carmen joined MKTP in 2018 thanks to two collaboration grants for students at the University of Alcalá and this is already the third campaign in which they are participating.

We currently have three collaboration and archaeological training grants open, two for UAH students and one for members of the Spanish Association of Egyptology. If you are interested, you can check the requirements on the Facebook page Orientalística en la UAH and you could participate in the VII campaign of the team in 2022!