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Temple Recovery Project | Field Journal: Day 1
Field Journal — Day 1
Expedition Log: Intern Archaeologist A. N. Khouri
Temple Recovery Project
Location: Western bank expanse, outskirts near Al-Minya
I still can't believe I was assigned to this team. A month ago I was cataloguing pottery shards in the Cairo storerooms, the sort of thing they give to the youngest archaeologists so we don't break anything important, proud to say nothing yet to say the least. Then yesterday, it was Dr. Hassan himself calling me in. He said they needed “fresh eyes” on a new investigation.
But nothing of this is "new." in a way. You see, It began with a smuggled slab of stone intercepted as it was being transported out of Egypt by an unknown private collector. Ugh I swear the amount of things getting smuggled is getting out of hands these days. The smugglers claimed, the authorities said, to have found it half-buried in the desert out here on the western bank of the Nile, near Al-Minya. A place with no known ruins.
Dr. Hassan examined the slab last week. He said that it dated back to the Old Kingdom. Which is pretty rare to discover these days since they are either destroyed by now or like I mentioned before smuggled.But the strange part wasn't the age-
It was the deliberate defacement.
The name of the god inscribed on the tablet had been forcibly erased like violently gouged out with deliberate force. In ancient Egyptian belief, removal of a name meant erasure of existence itself, wiping a god from memory, from worship, from history. That's like a fate worse than death on their culture.
But none of us know of any god who was ever erased. None. well none that we know of? I mean the closest I can think of is Amun ra when Pharoah Arkenaten "tried" because he wanted another god... but that's a whole lot different. Annnnd that's why this expedition exists.
A patron, from a country which I cant pronounce its name, has funded a full team to trace the origin of the slab and to find any mention of this "forgotten" deity.
And somehow, I—barely above intern level—was chosen to join them. In all seriousness I'm pretty sure that's because im one of the first ones they see available...
Anyways, Today we reached the site: nothing but sand, wind, and the soft hiss of the Nile far behind our backs. The rest have already begun preliminary sweeps, but I was told to document the tools and mark our starting perimeter. I should be excited. I should be honored. Instead, I feel… weird. There’s something uneasy about this desert. But starting tomorrow, we begin the first excavation trenches.
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