Egyptian archaeologists hold their own history in their hands
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 iconic archaeological sites, the role of ceramicist was filled by a foreign archaeologist with credentials from Cambridge or Princeton, not an Assiut 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,” Ms. Ebrahim says, smiling.
As workers brush away dust and sand outside, a leather sandal pokes out from the ground, strap facing up, slightly sun-dried but looking as if it had fallen off the foot of its careless owner days – rather than 3,400 years – ago.
Today, in Aten, the recently discovered city at the foot of the Valley of the Kings, Ms. Ebrahim and a new generation of Egyptian archaeologists and specialists are uncovering fresh details of daily life in ancient Egypt and with them, newfound feelings of professional pride and overdue respect.
The discoveries are thanks to a new generation of Egyptian archaeologists trained
