Washington University in St Louis
Jennifer Smith, PhD, associate professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, was belly crawling her way to the end of a long, narrow tunnel. The tunnel was carved in the rock at a desert oasis by Egyptians who lived in the time of the pharaohs.“I was crawling along when suddenly I felt stabbed in the chest,” Smith says. “I looked down and saw that I was pressing against the broken end of a long bone. That freaked me out because at first I thought I was crawling over bodies, but I looked up and saw a sheep skull not too far away, so I calmed down. At least the bones weren’t human.”
What was she doing in the tunnel?
The answer: seeking an uncontaminated sample of a mineral that might have been the key ingredient in the blue used to decorate “blue painted pottery” popular among the Egyptian elite during the New Kingdom (1550-1079 BC).
Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes