October 2017
Dear all, I am delighted to be writing to you from Coptos, a new EES joint venture conducted in cooperation with University of Lyon (France) and the Ifao. I am more than pleased to highlight the fact that the EES is happily returning to a site first excavated by one of our most glorious members, William Matthew Flinders Petrie. I flew to Egypt the day after the AGM. After having spent a first short night in Cairo, we drove to Coptos early Monday morning in order to arrive in the middle of the afternoon. At first, the Upper Egypt warmth was striking (37°C) but we got acclimated progressively :) ! After having signed the opening of the mission on the Tuesday 10th at the Qena inspectorate, we had our first day on the field on the Wednesday. This day and the second were used to remove the vegetation that was covering the whole site after a year left alone [fig.1]. Then came the Friday, our only day off from the field, used to organize the coming of the rest of t