Today was the opening day of our 2023 season of the LMU Ankh-Hor Project. All went very smooth, thanks to the great colleagues in the inspectorate in Luxor and on the west bank and first of all our wonderful inspector Mahmoud Sayed. We are currently a small team, but more team members will arrive next week. This year’s focus will be on conservation and documentation of wooden painted coffins and cartonnage cases from TT 414, the tomb of Ankh-Hor.

Like in the last years, we have again a very comfortable, spacious conservation tent set up as well as smaller tents for documentation and drawing of objects. All working steps are by now already routine – I started sorting Late Period and Ptolemaic coffins according to priorities and took first photos of selected pieces.

I am very happy that our two Egyptian conservators, Mohammed Mahmoud and Karima, started their work already today. Both are experts for wood and have an extensive working experience here in Thebes but also at other sites in Egypt. Mohammed has worked with us already in 2021 and is thus very familiar with the material from TT 414.

Today, already several fragmented Ptolemaic coffins were successfully cleaned and consolidated – a wonderful start and a very nice outlook for the next weeks!