Saturday, July 14, 2007

Field photo du jour


Full photo here.

I believe this is the plan/section view generated by our survey work in 1991/1993, and produced by John Rutherford. It's the tomb where the newly identified Hatshepsut was in repose. We were there to both clear out the flood debris (and Howard Carter's backdirt) from several uninscribed tombs in the VK, map them all, and study them for possible flood mitigation. See Don Ryan's web site for a full description.

You can see it's a pretty cruddy tomb. Not a straight line in it. When Ryan opened it again -- he found it using a high-tech method of. . . .sweeping, as opposed to certain other parties who had pulled out all manner of ground-penetrating radar devices -- the mummy was on the floor, unwrapped and sans coffin, in the middle of the main chamber (C). They made a nice wooden box for her which is where she was for the recent work.

We mapped in the large joint/crack going diagonally across the burial chamber (see plan view, top) and installed crack monitors. The joint was filled with calcite, as are most of them around there. I don't believe there was much in the way of grave goods found, except for some coffin fragments, ushabtis, and a leg o' beef.

One fascinating phenomenon: I was working in the large side-chamber (Ba) and noticed that when I was talking, at a certain frequency my voice seemed to become much louder. So I experimented a little and found that at a certain pitch I would hit the resonant frequency of the chamber. Turned the whole tomb into a big ol' horn. It was pretty touchy though, and it only really worked if only one person was in the chamber.

So, like, I'm going to write a whole book on the subject of "The Sonic Properties of the Pharaoh's Tombs" and make a fortune.

I have some other photos of KV60 and elsewhere, too. They're all sitting in a box somewhere (except for some other ones I've already scanned) and I'll scan and post them occasionally.