1163 Archaeology at the Temple (1/2)

Back in China, when Wei Kang had brought up the fact that they would need to work together with the local archaeologists for their expedition to Egypt, Zhang Zian had thought that the archaeologists had found wall paintings or relief sculptures containing the original Egyptian cats and had taken photos of them to send to Wei Kang. But if it were just photos, there would be no need to share them only after they reached Egypt, and they could have easily done it before. So he didn't quite understand what Hans and Wei Kang meant by a collaboration.

In a normal person's eyes, archaeologists looked and worked like Indiana Jones or Laura Claud, toying with the edge of death every day, pumped full of adrenaline, discovering a new shocking truth of the world every second.

In actual fact, archaeology was extremely boring. It was a job best suited to test someone's patience. The things that they discovered might not shock the world. They might not even make it into a small indie newspaper.

As for a lass with a figure as good as Laura's? Mmm… Well, by the looks of all these gruff men walking down from the jeep, even the parasites in their bodies might all be male.

They set up a tent and their table, laying a white sheet over it. Tools kept getting displayed on the table as well, seemingly starting a huge operation.

Hans introduced them. ”Due to the onset of summer and the month of Ramadan, we were planning to stop work for two months and resume work after the harsh summer. But in order to work with you, we have decided to work a bit more.”

”Thank you.” Zhang Zian took a look at the time. ”You are…starting work now?”

”Yes. Egypt's sun sets late, and the day is too hot to work in. We always start in the late afternoon and work until the sun sets. We sometimes work in the dark too, but most importantly we adapt our work timing to the locals'.” Hans pointed to the Egyptians on his team.

The locals acted as laborers on the team, mostly doing some rough hard work. They were in charge of digging up objects and doing the preliminary cleanup. They couldn't use excavators to dig things up here, so they had to do it carefully by hand.

”Come. Follow me.” Hans waved at him, asking him to come along.

Zhang Zian was initially worried that they would go bother Fina, but he found out that their site of work was not within the broken walls, but the side wall of the rubble.

The Temple of Bastet spanned a large area. Other than the portion where broken walls and stone were piled up, there was another huge area that belonged to the Temple of Bastet too.

Hans walked in the front with Zhang Zian following him, carefully making his way through the ruins toward the east, until they finally stopped in a huge hole dug out within the plot of land.

Earlier, they hadn't even noticed the giant pothole by the side. There were some locals working down there, half-squatting, half-kneeling on the floor as they used tiny brushes to clean out the artifacts that had peeked out from the floor. They couldn't see clearly what they were, since there was too much loose dirt covering them. As they cleaned off the dirt, they carefully dug further down, their actions light and gentle. With the speed they were going, they probably wouldn't even be able to dig an inch of dirt out in an hour.

Hans continued, ”If you specifically came here to look around, you must love cats, huh? The Temple of Bastet is a very important archaeological spot. We had once found a statue of Ramesses II carved out from red granite and other precious artifacts, including over 600 cat statues made from limestone, most of them offerings for Goddess Bastet.”