After four winters of excavation, the curtain has finally fallen on the project near Ur, where I have now lived for a total of over nine cold, beige months. This project has been great. highlights, many of which have featured in this blog, include excavating a cuneiform archive from 1500 BC, finding an intact rattling Babylonian rattle, seeing the sun rise over the Iraqi marshes, achieving an almost perfect score in Ur-Rules Bananagrams and having my own toilet.
Only let down by WE to get rid of the final E. Otherwise full marks
Excavation on site went out with more of a fizzle than a bang. The large slump in the centre of the courtyard (known on site as M’s great depression), which I’d been chasing all season, turned out to be the last known whereabouts of a substantial ancient tree rather than the lost tombs of the Sealand kings, buried with the wealth of a nation. My final roll of the dice on site was to dig a chunky-size sondage with the aim of seeing if our sub-floor vaults went any further north. In predictable fashion, the sondage failed to answer the question it was dug to address, while adding several more questions to the long list of things we don’t understand. At this point I threw my trowel down in disgust, fed the site dogs a last can of awful tuna and declared my work here done.
It’s all over; Steve and Runt mourn the end of the tuna and boiled egg gravy train
Of course it wasn’t done. I had to spend three days writing my report, which I unwisely chose to do while listening to Radio 1 online, meaning I’m now uncomfortably burdened by extensive knowledge of the works of Ed Sheeran and Little Mix, and a renewed certainty that the universe is meaningless and life is suffering.
Two days before we left, the end of the project was nailed down by the newest American invasion of Ur, when a team of sixteen US archaeologists finally arrived to crash our party. We’d actually been expecting them since mid February, but after the Trump travel ban was imposed they had some mysterious problems getting their Iraqi visas. Then when they finally did fly to Basra at the start of March the Iraqis gleefully deported them for having the ‘wrong’ visas. It seems that even Iraqi border control can be worn down in the end however.
It’s a good job this is the last season as we’ve run out of idiot poses for the ziggurat steps
We packed up our cabins for the last time, posed on the ziggurat looking like ass-hats for the last time, burnt our exit visas (unflushable used toilet paper) for the last time, and finished what was left in the drinks cabinate (except that Bavarian whiskey which no one will touch – sorry Bavaria but stick to what you know eh?). Our last Sunday at Ur was a full moon and as night fell a storm was starting to blow across southern Iraq. At around midnight me and F lay on our backs on top of the ziggurat and watched the clouds racing across the moon.
“This is weird” I said.
“Yes,” said F, “very fucking weird.”
What we meant, although both of us consider the verbal expression of finer sentiments to be vulgar, was that we were sad to be leaving Ur.
Full moon at Ur, as if there aren’t enough triggers for mental instability here already
Digging up old stuff in hot places 