RIP Sodom

The Broadband dongle is up and running again, while Helen is saying unkind things about the hotel wifi as she tries to use her iPad.

Picture 1: over the last few days our Egyptian labourers, who by the way are very fit and work really hard keeping up with dumping goofahs for two squares, have brought their dogs, who they called Sodom (right) and Gomorrah (left). They are only pups and are full of fun. They have this amazing instinct to be our protectors. The bark when anyone approaches, and if we walk away to far they come after us barking until we return to the pack. When we turned up this morning only Gomorrah was there. Sodom was run over and killed on the road last night and we all felt a bit sad. Sodom is not a good name to have round here.

Picture 2: Me down and dirty.

Picture 3: It will probably totally bore you but I'm proud of a days work. I took the top corner and the area below the wall foundation down 300mm, "defining" the longer wall and discovering another wall coming off it this afternoon. We are pretty sure these are Middle Bronze walls (Abraham's time so at least 3,700 years old). I was finding MB pottery sherds, some of which were thin like Royal Dalton. One sort was burnised blackware, glaze wasn't invented for anothet 1500 years, another white slip on red clay. Very well crafted. You may be able to pick up a gray tinge to the soil at the bottom of the excavations. This is soft gray ash, destruction ash, which means the floor level should be maybe another 3-400mms down. We are now about 3m below ground level. Two more days to go.

Picture 4: The trip up from the dig site is a climb of 1000m and is a long climb for vehicles. Our bus has the grunt to pass trucks, and there is a constant stream of them, the little 5 tonne vege truck to huge rigs. Today in the 30 minute climb we passed about 40 transport trucks carrying United Nations vehicles. Landrovers, ambulances, big army type trucks and containers. Haven't clue whence they came or where they are heading. Helen took about 10 photos as we passed them, and this is the one that had a vehicle in it! - not as easy as it looks.

We ventured to the Galleria Mall tonight to buy more gigs on the dongle and get some more chocolate biscuits and noticed that security was searching every vehicle that was entering the underground carpark, a reminder that things are a little tense here, a bigger version of the Westfield threat we have read about back home.

We are both fine. The evening prayer call at the Mosque has just ended and we are off to dinner.