On Monday our whole group piled in three very-full vehicles and drove to the other end of the lake to visit the Roman site of Karanis. It's always good for field-school participants to get an idea of what comparable sites look like. In this case Karanis is much larger than our site, but was excavated piece-meal back in the early 1920s-1930s. I've never been on a tel before, so I found the visit most interesting. (A tel is what results from people living generation after generation in one spot: a large mound accumulates as they keep overbuilding and throwing out trash.)

The haphazard excavation has left some areas much more presentable than others, and has resulted in a hodge-podge of visible remains across the whole site. We walked around the site and checked out large numbers of millstones, two temples, a bath area, a granary, and various plain buildings. The day was very hot with no wind, but did cool off a little after we were there a couple of hours. Guys with machine guns stood watch from the perimeter.

Here are a few stll shots from Karanis, as well as a panorama.


The North Temple


Hundreds of these stones populate the site. Purpose unknown.


Building of unknown function.


A bath tub. Sounds like an excellent idea!


Overview of Karanis panorama (500 MB). Note the reddish debris at the base -- those are all potsherds -- a mountain of broken pottery pieces.


It was interesting to drive along the lake during the day-time on this trip, and I saw my first camel here. It was carrying a big load of long-stemmed crops. I must take back what I originally said about the lake not smelling so great. It's fine, but there are a couple of mud flats near the road that stink a wee bit, and that's what I smelled when arriving the other night.

On Tuesday we all went for another swim, down to the artificial lakes that lie below the big one here. They built the lakes in the late '70s, and Egypt's only waterfalls connects the two. We drove out into a huge expanse of desert before we reached the water, which turned out to be most refreshing! It's a beautiful site with the stark bright desert all around above, and feathery wispy reeds right along the water, sighing in the breeze. I'll have to take the panorama rig (or at least a camera) if we go there again so you can see.

The finds have not been coming in that fast for the past couple of days. Today (Wednesday) will probably not generate many either, because they're going to have to spend a lot of time re-excavating their trenches because of the sandstorm yesterevening. After a day of no wind at all on Monday, it really blew in with a vengeance yesterday. One of the tents even went down (ironically it belonged to the camp manager, who had put up all the tents before we arrived).

There have probably been worse sandstorms, but this one reminds me they aren't fun to be caught in. We had to run around closing up all the house windows and covering computer equipment. That made it safely, but everything in my tent had a layer of fine-grain sand on it. They now serve the dinnerware in plastic bins full of water, so that it stays clean, even though the sand collects in the water too.


Sandstorm


There are several police forces in Egypt. One is for traffic, one is for tourists, etc., and they have nothing to do with each other. The one or two guards usually stationed at the house with shotguns are tourist police, and they're okay. The other local police force (the ones with uniforms and machine guns and nice cars), however, are the ones causing us the grief. They've lately been beating up people in the neighborhood and breaking their things for no justifiable reason. We're not sure whether this is connected to our stay, but it is making the local populace not like us. Willeke went off to see the governor about an hour ago to see what can be done about the problems. She could do a great deal more archaeology if the police weren't so troublesome. Makes one appreciate American society a bit more.

(As of the timestamp on this message, we have no working phone line; it will be posted as soon as we do.)