In Valley of the Kings dig, an all-Egyptian team makes its mark

On a mild, late November morning, almost completely hidden behind the 5-foot-high walls of a sprawling, yellow-gray mud-brick city rising from the ground, a dozen members of an archaeological team survey and brush away soil.

In a nearby tent, carefully holding jagged pottery shards in one gloved hand under a lens, Asmaa Ebrahim painstakingly scribbles down notes on the 3,000th piece of pottery.

Traditionally, in this valley, rich with ancient Egyptian history and the iconic archaeological sites to match, the role of ceramicist was filled by a foreign archaeologist with credentials from Cambridge or Princeton, not a South Valley University graduate from upper Egypt.

For decades here, Egyptians were the laborers, never the discoverers. But not on this dig.

“For once, Egyptians are the leading Egyptologists,” Dr. Ebrahim smiles.

As workers brush away dust and sand, a leather