DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.55201#0169
156
EXCAVATIONS AT DEIR EL BAHRI
arrangements were made for Cook's to put up a new building and
vacate the site of the old one before our season began on November 1,
1927—an arrangement which was adhered to by Cook’s most punctili-
ously.
We had to explore the eighty meters or so covered by Naville’s
dump, and a layer of natural, drifted sand on the quarry floor less
than two meters thick judging from its ends already dug. For dis-
posal we had the deep eastern half of the quarry explored in previous
years, which meant a maximum carry of about two hundred meters.
Therefore we laid our tracks so as to give us six, or even eight rail-
heads at the face of the work and arranged the men so that there
could be two levels of diggers. Then we recruited a gang of seven
hundred men and boys, and in a short time a count of cars going by a
given point showed the dirt to be moving at the rate of eight hundred
cubic meters a day—an output that was kept up steadily for eight
weeks.
The lay of the ground was such that we could put our rails about
on the level of the bottom of Naville’s dump and we drove through
it from east to west, laying rails as we went until we came out on the
open space in front of Sen-Mut’s tomb, which had been dug the year
before. Then we faced the men around toward the east and started
back, digging through the natural, drifted material underneath,
taking up our rails again as the men worked under them. And im-
mediately we found an unexpected factor ruining our estimates.
As has just been noted, our excavations in 1926-27 on each side of
Naville’s dump had shown little more than a meter or two of wind-
and water-deposited sand under it, and we had supposed that once
we had cleared the dump away we would be almost on the bottom of
the quarry. However, as we dug eastward the quarry floor fell rapidly,
until it had finally attained a depth of seven meters below what we
had expected and our men had to be arranged in four levels at a
time. Not only did this add another nine or ten thousand cubic
meters to our task—and all of that to be carried up hill to the cars-
but in the hollow we found ourselves in a catch basin filled with water-
logged sand which had become cemented together into a tough,
tenacious mass that made most laborious digging.
But it was not only that the work was hard. It was much more
expensive than we had had any reason to anticipate, and we saw our
appropriation dwindling. We could scarcely say that the bottom had
dropped out of the quarry, but it had surely fallen a long way and
we were literally in a hole from every point of view. In fact, it would
EXCAVATIONS AT DEIR EL BAHRI
arrangements were made for Cook's to put up a new building and
vacate the site of the old one before our season began on November 1,
1927—an arrangement which was adhered to by Cook’s most punctili-
ously.
We had to explore the eighty meters or so covered by Naville’s
dump, and a layer of natural, drifted sand on the quarry floor less
than two meters thick judging from its ends already dug. For dis-
posal we had the deep eastern half of the quarry explored in previous
years, which meant a maximum carry of about two hundred meters.
Therefore we laid our tracks so as to give us six, or even eight rail-
heads at the face of the work and arranged the men so that there
could be two levels of diggers. Then we recruited a gang of seven
hundred men and boys, and in a short time a count of cars going by a
given point showed the dirt to be moving at the rate of eight hundred
cubic meters a day—an output that was kept up steadily for eight
weeks.
The lay of the ground was such that we could put our rails about
on the level of the bottom of Naville’s dump and we drove through
it from east to west, laying rails as we went until we came out on the
open space in front of Sen-Mut’s tomb, which had been dug the year
before. Then we faced the men around toward the east and started
back, digging through the natural, drifted material underneath,
taking up our rails again as the men worked under them. And im-
mediately we found an unexpected factor ruining our estimates.
As has just been noted, our excavations in 1926-27 on each side of
Naville’s dump had shown little more than a meter or two of wind-
and water-deposited sand under it, and we had supposed that once
we had cleared the dump away we would be almost on the bottom of
the quarry. However, as we dug eastward the quarry floor fell rapidly,
until it had finally attained a depth of seven meters below what we
had expected and our men had to be arranged in four levels at a
time. Not only did this add another nine or ten thousand cubic
meters to our task—and all of that to be carried up hill to the cars-
but in the hollow we found ourselves in a catch basin filled with water-
logged sand which had become cemented together into a tough,
tenacious mass that made most laborious digging.
But it was not only that the work was hard. It was much more
expensive than we had had any reason to anticipate, and we saw our
appropriation dwindling. We could scarcely say that the bottom had
dropped out of the quarry, but it had surely fallen a long way and
we were literally in a hole from every point of view. In fact, it would