Gebel el-Silsila is a site of considerable interest to the EES. Ricardo Caminos together with Harry James and later others carried out work there for the Society between 1955 and 1982, yet little of this has been published. What is more, for years, much of Caminos’ survey material had been on a long-term loan in Berlin, making it virtually inaccessible to researchers. However, with the extension of the Society’s archive space and the imminent arrival of scholars from Egypt with interest in the site, it was felt the time had finally come to repatriate the documents!
Sunrise over Stansted... and arrival at fair Schönefeld
Thus, with military precision the great archive retrieval mission was planned, and some weeks ago the Society’s Publications Manager was dispatched to Berlin one sunny dawn to make it happen. Once in the German capital, two-and-a-half days were spent negotiating the outer reaches of the public transport network, organizing pick-up times with the transport company we’d hired, and, of course, checking, sorting and wrapping the valuable material.
Gold-Else in Tiergarten, pointing in the right direction... Hansaplatz to Zehlendorf and beyond to Gebel el-Silsila
Genius loci
Running like a clockwork, in the end, two big boxes of field notes and several large rolls of tracings were sent on their way to London. They arrived a few days later when two big fellows stepped from their van and into the EES office with the words ‘We’re from Germany!’ Now sitting on the shelves of our refurbished archive, the Gebel el-Silsila material is ready to be explored again.
Mission accomplished!
