During the 2000 season excavation of Tomb 23, the distinctive teeth of an elephant were observed on the surface to the south of the tomb (square 9I). Barbara thought the burial of this mighty animal might be associated with this extensive and obviously very important funerary complex. But were these teeth from the same elephant found in the late 1990s or from another one? Were there really two of these exotic creatures in this cemetery? Were the elite rich enough to afford two? Our archaeo-zoologists Wim Van Neer and Veerle Linseele were not convinced. Collections made in the past from this surface concentration produced no duplicates of bones or teeth with the elephant found earlier in Tomb 13 some 30 m away. Perhaps portions of the same elephant were scattered, or had been shared, around the cemetery. In order to rescue this important information before it might be lost and hopefully answer this question, we began excavations within the 10 x 10 m square designated 9I. We could excavate only selected locations within this square because of our limited time, so we concentrated our efforts on and around a large depression in the center of the square around which we had found the densest accumulation elephant bones.

The square was riddled with depressions, left, some ancient and some more modern, but which was which? We decided to explore the large depression in the center of the square, right, but a smaller one to the south was also intriguing.

The surface of the square, and the cemetery as a whole, is riddled with depressions surrounded by heaps of debris from multiple looting events spanning several millennia. In fact, the evidence suggests that the cemetery was looted, if not already in predynastic times, at least in the New Kingdom, the Roman period, during the Middle Ages, and from the turn of the 20th century to the present time. Thus, determining which of the numerous depressions might be the actual grave of the elephant was not an easy task. First we mapped the surface topographically and then slowly began taking down the heaps of disturbed debris, carefully plotting the depth and location of each elephant bone as it appeared. We eventually came down on a hard, packed surface into which we could see the many pits had been cut. Unfortunately, this was not the desert surface of 3600 B.C., but one that had built up since that time, so the depressions only showed us where the plunderers had been at work. Elephant bones were embedded in the silt and gravels of two neighboring pits, one large (approximately 5 m in diameter), which seemed the most likely location of the burial on the basis of size alone, but in the density of bones in the smaller pit was intriguing.

The density of bone in the small pit was remarkable, each level producing more and more. Left, Hamdy uncovers the jaw. Right, Helena foil wraps the elephant bones for transport to the dig house. In all 10 rolls of foil were used.

As we could not be sure that the large depression really outlined the elephant's grave, we decided to sink a 2.5 x 2.5 m test trench to one side of it, essentially bisecting it in order to inspect the stratigraphy, while Joe Majer excavated the smaller pit to the south completely. Joe quickly came down on a dense deposit of elephant cranial bones, easily identified by the wafer-thin sinus bones that make the massive head relatively light. Once this was lifted (no mean feat), we found an answer to one of our questions: the elephant's lower jaw. As Barbara's elephant had a complete jaw, this was clearly a different animal. A mouse jaw recovered just moments before the jaw of the elephant was revealed brought how to us just how large this creature, although still just a teenager, was. We also soon came to appreciate the size of the bones when it came to packing them for transport to the dig house. We simply hadn't brought along elephant-sized ziplock bags and in the end more than ten rolls of aluminum foil--the entire stock in Luxor--was used to wrap these precious bones.

Meanwhile, in the test trench within the large depression, numerous elephant bones were appearing: a portion of tusk, foot bones, vertebral disks the size of hockey pucks, and strange bones that I thought to be the legs of sheep or goats, until I was shown they were the vertebral spinus processes, the pointy bits on the back of the vertebrae that you can feel going down your back. Unfortunately by this time, the archaeo-zoologists had returned home, and we were left to figure out elephant anatomy essentially on our own with the help of a picture of an elephant skeleton kindly e-mailed to us by Wim.

One of the elephant's vertebrae, left, and the spurs off the back of the vertebrae, called the spinus process, that were so large I thought they were bones of a sheep or a goat.

Joe's deposit eventually funnelled into a round hole about 1 m in diameter, chock full of more head bones (the head of an elephant is quite large). This hole then further diminished in size as it descended down over a meter into the hard silts and gravels of the wadi sediments. What kind of pit was this? Why dig a conical hole over 1.6 m deep? Why were the bones of the elephant distributed in such a way in two different places? Had the elephant been disarticulated or cut up for burial? How do you get a large animal into a small hole anyway? These were the questions we pondered as we carefully plotted each bone as we descended. We were determined to make sense of it, despite the repeated disturbance.

It was not until we finally got to the floor of the grave in the test square in the central depression that we could answer some of these questions, at least in part. The floor was reached at 1.15 m below the surface, and it was an amazing sight. On it lay three large bones that essentially filled the entire space, leaving little room for the workmen, and certainly no room for a basket boy or, frustratingly, an Egyptologist. I watched from the side of the trench as they gradually revealed the articulated front leg of the elephant, part of the massive pelvis, and a shoulder bone that had been knocked out of place. I could also make out a dark stain spreading across the floor and the bones. When I could take it no longer, I jumped in to examine it: a fine linen fabric both above and below the bones. Sandwiched between these gossamer layers was a thick layer of blackened elephant skin, in some cases still adhering to the bones.

Spreading around, over, and under the bones was a fine fabric. Sandwiched between the bones and the fabric was blackened elephant skin.

Clearly at least part of the elephant had been laid in its grave with its skin still on its bone. The recovery of a substance that looked like bone but felt like soap told us that it still had its flesh as well, as this mysterious substance later was identified as elephant blubber! (Technically, it is adipocere, a wax-like substance that fatty tissue chemically changes into under certain conditions.) It was also clear that this elephant had been buried with honors and not, for example, as a food offering. The sheer quantity of fabric required to cover an elephant was hard to fathom. But that was not all. It was also provided with grave gifts of red ocher and green malachite (a copper ore) used as eye make up, a diorite macehead, an alabaster jar, amethyst bead, and, perhaps a tad tastelessly, an ivory bracelet! His pottery grave goods included fine black-topped beakers, a bowl decorated with white paint, and a jar imported from Maadi, a predynastic site near modern Cairo. Clearly no expense had been spared. On a more somber note, it is hard to know whether the number of transverse arrowheads (hafted at the pointed end) found in the grave debris were grave goods for the elephant's afterlife, or the items that dispatched him hence.

The elephant was sent to his grave well endowed with jewelry, cosmetics, and even an ivory bracelet. A black-and-white diorite macehead and stone vessels were also included in the grave. The arrows found within the grave may have been grave goods or the agents of his demise.

We were excited and exhilarated to have made the acquaintance of such an amazing creature and our respect for the power and wealth of the site's early rulers was greatly increased. Elephants were not native to Egypt at this time and had to be imported from the south. Their ability to obtain not one, but two of them, leaves no doubt about the high status of the people buried in this cemetery. But there were still many questions. Why were so many head bones in that small and strangely shaped pit to the south? Had the elephant been decapitated and its head buried separately to render this dangerous animal safe and harmless in the afterlife? Examination of the balk walls showed that the tomb had been repeatedly plundered. We could clearly see pits cutting into pits, with stratigraphy so complicated that we tried out our plastic slip-cover method of recording yet again to copy all the various events. This level of disturbance made it clear to us that answers would come only from further excavation, but time was up. While anxious to return home for a much needed holiday break, we were already anticipating our return.