Conservation at the temple of Mut

During this past week I continued to treat small finds excavated from the west side of the Taharqa gate, and to watch the progress of the stabilization and rebuilding of the south wing of the gate. In his last blog entry, Richard wrote about the processing of the hundreds of pottery sherds dug up over the course of the season. Occasionally there are enough sherds from a single vessel to reconstruct it, and for me there is a certain zen-like satisfaction in assembling these 3-D puzzles. In the picture on the left, I’m sorting through pieces looking for possible joins, and I’m using the sand-filled tubs to prop up the pieces that I’ve already glued together. The adhesive of choice in this case is the ever-useful Paraloid B-72 acrylic resin. Pictured on the right is part of a large, double-handled vessel with white slip decoration that I put together.

I also continued to clean coins using the mechanical and chemical methods described in my previous blog entry. One of the clearer images I found on the dozen or so coins I’ve cleaned so far is pictured on the left. It’s probably the profile of a Roman emperor wearing a laurel wreath, and hopefully there’s enough information visible for a specialist to identify and date the coin. Another of this week’s projects, a broken limestone fragment with part of an inscription carved on its face, is pictured on the right. The block was found reused in the north side of the Taharqa gate, and probably dates to the time of Ramses II according to Jaap van Dijk, our team’s hieroglyph specialist. The fragile face of the stone was consolidated with a 2% solution of B-72 resin in acetone and ethanol, applied with a syringe.