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Chapter 15 The First Formed Chinese Archaeological Team in Egypt

Going back to the construction site of the Chinese archaeological team in the Karnak Temple has an unreal feeling.

When I left last year, the tents were covered with white damp plastic sheets.The white expanse was covered with wind and sand, like the shroud of the powerful Egyptian Empire in the past.

Egypt has entered the excavation season since October.Last year there were only two Tanfangs, east and west, but now the entire Maat Temple has been uncovered and turned into a group of Tanfangs.

The Chinese archaeological team in Egypt adopts a rotation system, which is to gather the strengths of all families.Except for the team leader and the other two resident teachers Wen and Liang, the archaeologists who come to Egypt are different every year.Teacher Liu who witnessed my discovery of the underground ruins last year did not come to Egypt again. This time it was Teacher Wang who took me as an intern.Mr. Wang is a pottery expert from the SX Provincial Institute of Archeology, and the other two from the SX Provincial Institute are Mr. Xin, who specializes in city site research, and Mr. Ji, who has rich excavation experience.

In addition to us, the members of the archaeological team this year also include the Gouzi family who were recruited.Don't say, these dogs are really in charge.Our expeditions were no longer dug up by wild dogs every night, and we also encountered accidental archaeological discoveries caused by dogs hiding bones on the site.

We know from the archaeological records of the last century that there was also a black and white dog named Henry in the French archaeological team.After all, if our team of dogs has inheritance, it should at least be Henry IX, but we all call her by her nickname: Maomao.Fluffy gets its name from Ma'at's feather, since the temple of Ma'at is her domain after all.

As one of the pinnacles of ancient civilization, Egypt has been imagined by many people, especially archaeologists and explorers.At present, there are about 250 international archaeological teams conducting research, excavation and protection of cultural relics in Egypt, and there are a dozen in the Luxor area.

Across the wall from us is the French archaeological team.The current French team is very different from that of seven or eighty years ago.Originally, their excavation at the Sekhmet Temple was coming to an end, but this year they did not get the excavation permit.So those archaeologists can only look at it, not break ground.

Of course, there is some reason why Egypt is so strict about archaeological permits.After all, Egypt once had a period of chaos.

In the 20s and 50s, the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology carried out systematic archaeological excavations for the first time in the temple area of ​​Karnak Montu.However, at this time, during World War II and the Egyptian War of Independence, the society was turbulent, archaeological excavation and research work had to be completed in a hurry, and many site information could not be recorded and preserved in time.Coupled with the smuggling of countless cultural relics, Egypt cannot be too cautious.

The fate between us Chinese and Egypt can be traced back to Mr. Xia Nai, the first archaeologist in New China. Mr. Xia Nai came to Egypt 80 years ago, and the excavation team of our National Institute of Archeology came here 80 years later.Many Chinese archaeologists used to come to Egypt to participate in excavations, but most of them came with archaeological teams from other countries.Up to now, we have the first established team of Chinese archaeologists.

Archaeology in modern Egypt respects family inheritance, and the Luxor area is under the administration of the Menistawi family.

The name Menistawi was given to the family by Flinders Petrie, a British archaeologist known as the father of modern archaeology, when he came to Egypt for archaeology more than 100 years ago.This family, named by the British, was responsible for the archaeological work in the Luxor area for more than a century.When Mr. Xia Nai came, it was Meinestaway, and it was Meinestaway who cooperated with the Chinese archaeological team more than 70 years later.Now Menistawi has cooperated with archaeological teams from more than 30 countries who came to Egypt for archaeology, inheriting the Egyptian archaeological business that his ancestors have been running.

Dealing with the Egyptians is skillful, especially the archaeological team of the iron-clad Menistawe Flowing Water.

When they first arrived in Egypt, the Chinese team adhered to the principle of doing things according to the rules, and the progress was pushed back and forth.First, all the unsightly trees around the construction site were cut down, and then the office was built, followed by countless other tasks like this.Anyway, it's not the turn to excavate.

In the first year, the archaeological team went to a lecture given by an Italian archaeologist.The man who took 28 years to excavate a tomb in the Valley of the Kings said that 20 of those years were spent dealing with modern Egyptians, leaving only a fraction for ancient Egypt.

Later, a French archaeologist communicated with us and taught us a lot of skills in getting along with the Egyptians.Let us deeply feel that these Europeans have also been polished by Arab wisdom.The Frenchman beat his chest, wishing he had been born more than a century earlier and missed the world that was rampant in Egypt.

When the French withdrew from Luxor during World War II, they thought they would be able to come back in a few days.Who would have thought that this class lasted for more than half a century, and the Maat Temple they controlled at that time was also owned by the Chinese archaeological team for excavation.This year the French archaeological team did not even get permission to excavate.

The Austrian team that was excavating near the holy lake was going to find archaeological materials left by the French in the last century.Since our construction site was also excavated by the French, we went together to see if we could find something.

It has to be said that the preservation of the archaeological record by the Egyptians is really messy.In fact, not only the records, even the cultural relics themselves have not been cherished much.There used to be two standing statues of Ramses II on both sides of the doorway. We could see arms and legs when we strolled last year. If we looked for them, we might be able to pick them up in the grass and put them together.Just like Osiris in the ancient Egyptian legend.When I go to transfer again this year, I can’t find it anymore.

We and the Austrian team struggled for a long time and finally dug up the archaeological records of the French in the last century in the warehouse.When I opened it, all I could remember were: "I ate garlic bread today, it was not baked enough", "Various recipes for Red Sea fish" and other food notes. There is no record about the excavation of the temple that I want, let alone The building is underground.

Ben had hoped to see something in the French team's notes, and now only got jealousy.

But speaking of it, our archaeological team occasionally eats fish from the Red Sea. Of course, it is impossible to be as extravagant as the French.Our Red Sea fish is still sent by little Minestaway.His friends are all over the Arab countries, let alone in Egypt.

In order to save time and cost, the archaeological team hired a chef to take care of lunch and dinner for the team members.Our chef has not changed since last year. He knows that I am allergic to seafood, so when the Red Sea fish was served on the table, he fried a lot of chicken for me to satisfy my craving.

Except for me who just returned to the team recently, the other members of the archaeological team have been in Egypt for more than two months.Because they can't eat pork, everyone has some shortcomings in their stomachs.So when I was eating alone, I faintly received some coveting eyes.I didn't need to look to know it must be Lou Shiqi.

There are two interns in the archaeological team this year.Besides me, this is Lou Shiqi.

Although Lou Shiqi has the name of an intern, he has rich experience in modeling and big data applications, and he can be regarded as the technical backbone of their institute.I asked the teachers in the team privately, and I was told that if Lou Shiqi and his archaeological institute didn't have much money, he wouldn't have come as an intern.Let me learn more from him.

Indeed, I have too little experience in field archaeology.But Shiqi in this building is not much older than me. Although there must be my teacher in a threesome, I still don't like calling a young man a teacher.And he looked even more childish, with a look of being well taken care of, which probably has something to do with the atmosphere of their unit being all elders.

When I first joined the archaeological team this year, I saw a person whose name was shiqi lou in our Sino-Egyptian archaeological group chat.

What am I talking about, the seventeenth floor?He asked: "Who is this? Why did you write your own floor on it?"

Only then did I know that this was Lou Shilin.I'm more flirtatious, so I just called him Shiqi later, and occasionally called him Teacher Xiaolouer on purpose.

Lou Shiqi was not angry at all, and retorted when I complained about his name: "Wang Yu, your name will burn your mouth."

I said it's the horoscope of the birthday, okay?He said, did you figure out that the five elements lack fire?I said that you are gossip owed.

In short, we are similar in age, and our mouths are not very good, so we gradually became friends.

They were not very disappointed that they did not find any useful information in the records of the French.Compared with other people's information, they are more willing to dig their own from scratch.

Archeology and archaeology, draw lines to recognize soil.

Unlike tomb robbers, archaeologists want to restore the truth of civilization, so they don't just focus on amazing cultural relics.Sometimes the living area is excavated. Although there are no valuable treasures, the past experience of this layer can be judged from the substances contained in the soil of different layers, combined with the color and quality of the soil.Last year, the team leader relied on this ability to see where dogs buried their bones.

Archeology is like a jigsaw puzzle, but what is finally presented is not a picture, but a civilization.But unlike a bought puzzle, there are always missing links in archeology.Every time I pass by the multi-column hall, I regret that I don't have the practical ability to construct space for archaeologists. I can't spell out the capital from the ruins, and I can't imagine the magnificent gods in the past from these broken walls. Temple building.

For the missing part of historical fragments, the unknown can only be pushed from the known.This is also part of post-processualist interpretive archaeology.The interpretation of ancient civilizations is based on artifacts and records, and respects what local civilizations look like, rather than civilizations defined under Western frameworks.But even if inferences are based on experience and available evidence, interpretations of the unknown are risky after all.

Excavation is meticulous work, and sometimes boring work.The soil has to be uncovered layer by layer, and it must not be squeezed down one by one.Even if a cultural relic is found, such as the statue of Osiris last time, we have to wait until the bottom layer of soil where the statue is located can be picked up.Because if you dig down rashly in order to chase cultural relics, you will break the stratum relationship and affect the judgment of the functions of different stratum planes.So the pottery pot we dug up the year before last had just revealed its belly last year, and it was already in the display case this year.

When I am free, I like to stand on the Maat Temple overlooking the entire construction site.

Once the Arabs did not know about ancient Egypt, but now scholars can even restore the voice of priests thousands of years ago by restoring mummified muscle tissue.We are obviously farther away from the era of ancient Egypt than the Arabs who came to this land in the sixth century AD, but technology and exploration let us know more.

So with the development of science and technology, we know more about the earth, will we discover earlier civilizations?

I want to see what the world used to be like.The future will come, but the past will not repeat itself.If you can see different civilizations in different times and places in this world, then this life is really not in vain.

Ahmed, who was in the same exploration with me this year, was the one who worked with me last year.He has rich excavation experience, and once excavated the barracks of Thutmose III in the western desert.We occasionally chat for a few days when we are not busy at work, and we are quite familiar with each other.After all, I am not from a professional background, and my understanding of Egypt is not as deep as that of the locals. In addition, Ahmed is a very experienced archaeologist, so I have been pestering him to ask questions.Including but not limited to archaeological work, local customs and so on.

Ahmed also told me about his time in the army.He served in the Egyptian Air Force before becoming an archaeologist, and one of his skills was desert survival.From him, I heard a lot of illustrations of small edible animals in the Sahara Desert.

I remembered the immersive 4D movie in the multi-column hall, so I asked Ahmed: "Did the Nile flow through the multi-column hall before?"

"Not only the multi-column hall, but the entire Temple of Karnak used to be the Nile Valley."

Ahmed said that when he excavated at the entrance of the Karnak Temple in the 90s, he could still get water out with a few shovels.Now there is no such almanac, and the transformation of nature by human beings is very effective.After all, let alone the Aswan Dam, even the Fuxing Dam has been repaired.

4000 years ago, the pharaoh's small pier was connected to the canal, connected to the Nile River, and the boats carrying sacrifices passed through the temple.The place where we are excavating now has also been washed by the Nile at various times.In the countless layers of soil uncovered here, mixed with evidence of the flow of the Nile River many times.

I nodded apprehensively as I recalled the suffocating experience.

Because of the hot weather in Egypt, the daily excavation time is from [-]:[-] am to [-]:[-] noon.We usually eat the breakfast that everyone takes turns cooking at the station before coming to the construction site.But no matter what we ate in the morning, according to our face to the loess and our backs to the sky, we were already hungry before twelve o'clock.So every day around ten o'clock, we will have an extra meal with Egyptian characteristics on the construction site.This snack hasn't changed since two years ago, it's all flatbread falafel salad.Falafel is a kind of vegetable dumpling-like food. It still has a unique flavor when you eat it at first, but you can't stand eating it for dozens of days.Once I couldn't take it anymore, so I urged Lou Shiqi to take a bottle of Laoganma from his inventory to the construction site.As a result, our Egyptian colleagues liked the hotness better than us.

Before Lou Shiqi came, under the guidance of the seniors in their institute, he packed half a box of food. Among them, the most popular ones were not snacks and ham sausage, but Laoganma and mustard.I am a person who doesn't like spicy food, but I can't stand the single taste of the dishes in Egypt.So when I saw Lou Shiqi took out the old godmother, my eyes turned green.This hot woman who saved the palate made our friendship a little stronger.

After eating, I went back to Tanfang and scraped the soil.

The east side is relatively deep, already more than three meters.During the excavation process, a stone was deliberately left for the convenience of going up and down.But even so, going out for a trip is not easy.I stepped on the stone and looked around like a meerkat. There were no Chinese players around, but an Egyptian youth was passing by pushing a small cart filled with soil.

I stopped him and said in my only Arabic: "Please give me a brush, thank you".

The Arab young man showed some surprised expression when he heard my poor Arabic.After he put the car down, Tanfang next door touched a brush for me, and I thanked him again.The young man blinked shyly, his eyelashes were dragged into long shadows by the sun.

After sweeping the soil, I found that no one was coming, so I crawled out of the pit.

There is a pit for sacrificial offerings at the ruins of the temple of the 26th Dynasty in the west, and everyone gathered around to look at it.Taking advantage of no one's attention, I sneaked to the underground building that I slapped out last year and circled twice.

The building has clearly been excavated.The soil inside has been cleaned out, and it looks like a temple.Excavation traces have been extended northwards towards the Ma'at Temple in the past.What I accidentally discovered last year was just the outer room of a temple, and the main body should be under the Maat Temple.

According to Ali, the temple is dedicated to the god who turns human blood into gold.

The archaeological team had previously conducted lake-like sediment tests here, and the wall at the southeast corner of the Maat Temple should have been under the Nile during the Middle Kingdom.The main reason why the Maat Temple can be built on an underground building is that it is buried under thick soil, but if the soil is uncovered rashly, the Maat Temple above will collapse without bearing Another one is that if exposed to the air, it may damage the cultural relics and reliefs inside the building.Therefore, the archaeological team only dug one entrance and prepared to go in to see the situation first.If in case the French had excavated this temple in the last century, then we need not be too cautious.

There had been several months of excavation research here before I came here.The Chinese-Egyptian archaeological team preliminarily believed that the underground building should be a temple belonging to the [-]th Dynasty, and they don't know if they can see the god Ali mentioned after entering.

When I was looking around outside the half-open temple, Lou Shiqi came over, wearing a triangular scarf like a red scarf.It turned out to be the preliminary trend surveying and mapping for the final excavation.

I asked: "Can you simulate the general situation of the temple below without excavating it?"

Lou Shiqi began to chatter: "Your words will definitely not work, but mine will do. Now the thickness information of the underlying buildings can be measured with ultrasonic body waves, and it can be done with infrared imaging."

I snorted and prepared to go back to Tanfang and continue scraping the dirt.Anyway, I can't see the reason now. Since the final excavation will be carried out here soon, I will wait for the time to dig in.

Seeing that I was about to leave, Lou Shiqi hurriedly said, "Hey, how did you just leave?" His Mandarin was a bit soft, and he couldn't tell where the accent was, so he guessed blindly that he was from the south.

I said: "Isn't this a stage for you?"

Lou Shiqi waved and asked me to go over.After I walked back, he pointed at the underground temple mysteriously: "When I first came here, I heard that someone brought the temple back to light by one's own efforts. Is it you?" Stories about the ground collapsing with a whole body of righteousness also spread.

"Do you want to become the protagonist of the legend too?" I asked him.

Lou Shiqi tilted his head and looked at me defensively: "I will not destroy cultural relics. If you want to destroy cultural relics, I will not cover you either."

I walked over and leaned into his ear and said maliciously: "Pushing you down as a sacrifice is not considered destroying cultural relics."

Lou Shiqi thought for a while, then nodded: "That's right. I'm not as heavy as you, and I'm sure I won't be able to damage the temple."

This guy really owes it when he wants to be annoying.I pulled him away and turned around to leave.He also said behind: "Hey, don't you want to try!"

I ended the conversation with a middle finger.

The days in the archaeological team are monotonous and fulfilling.In addition to excavating personally, we also have another job to record the excavation.

I sat on the edge of the Maat Temple, drawing the Tan Fangqun and the newly discovered plane today stroke by stroke.There are traces of dovetail tenons on the stone next to me, which shows that the tenon and tenon technique was also used in the construction of temples in Egypt.

A cloud just happened to come.I raised my head and moved my cervical spine, and a few swallows flew over my head.

The little animals are tough travelers, and they may have flown in from England for the winter, as spring comes earlier in Egypt.

In addition to the Egyptian archaeologists on our construction site, there are also old technicians and workers who helped in the excavation.These old technicians all come from a village called Gufti, where the Europeans were looking for workers when they first came to Egypt.Later, after training, the whole village is full of experienced excavation technicians, and they have been passed down from generation to generation.

Egyptian workers mostly wore abayas on the construction site.I love how old mechanics stand up and dust their robes at the end of work.That flick seemed to shake off a thousand years of time carelessly.

Basically every day the sun shrouds the Nile.However, once the sun is blocked by clouds, it will be very cold.Only then did I have the real sense of being in winter.

It was noon again, but the sun was still hidden behind the clouds.

Teacher Wang packed up his things and said to me: "Hurry up and leave. The team leader will pick up people at the airport in the afternoon. They won't have time to eat if they are late."

On the banks of the Nile, swallows hover over the ruins of a shrouded temple.

　Guess who the leader is going to pick up?

　　[Menestawi is more like ancient Egyptian than Arabic, meaning Menes of Two Lands.Menes is the founding pharaoh of ancient Egypt, and Tawi means the merger of upper and lower Egypt in ancient Egyptian.The king's name of the Egyptian pharaoh will reflect the situation at that time.For example, the lord of the two lands or the people who united the two lands, these are the founding pharaohs after the chaotic period.More common are people who bring peace and so on. 】

　　[An essential skill in archaeology is the ability to identify different layers.For example, if the shovel is scratched flat and the color of the soil is different from that before, then it is necessary to scrape a few more times to find out where the boundary is.In addition to the color, the soil quality is also particular.For example, the soil dug out when digging a hole is backfilled into the hole, and its soil quality is different from that of the soil that has not been dug.The soil soaked in the river water is also different from the soil exposed to the sun.Then there are the inclusions carried in the soil.The teachers in the team told me that when they were students, it took them a long time just to scrape the soil and look at the formation.These people's efforts in interpreting the land have been accumulated one shovel after another. 】

　　
　
(End of this chapter)