Figure 40. Pumping the puddles; the main challenge is to keep the water away from the soil. Shown here is a small pump provided by Mayor Hassan Fahed and his municipal staff. 7-11-2015.
Figure 5. Dedication of USAID funded re-plastering of the reservoir: “Inception of the repair of this reservoir was on 22 December 1954; and completion was on 28 February, 1955. The writer of the line of text was Rakan Ibn Awdah es-Serour.” 10-21-2015.
Figure 64. Payday in the rain shelter of the House XIII great room. Ali Aqil and Bert de Vries distributing the weekly payroll, 5-11-2015. Photo by Muaffaq Hazza
Figure 28. While stones were being removed, another part of the team began removing the soil using buckets and ropes. The strategy was to remove the thinner layers from the edges where bedrock was higher to isolate the deeper and thicker layer in the middle. This and the following 20 photographs show the soil ‘melt’ away until the final remnant is removed from the deeper center. 20-10-2015
Figure 22. Stone and soil removal – experimental; it proved very difficult to flip the stones over the top edge. 22-10-2015.
Figure 12. A huge quantity of stone was thrown into the reservoir in the past 20 years. Foreman Ali Aqil serves as scale, 19-9-2015.
Figure 62. The crew. Ali Aqil, standing far right, was the group’s foreman whose work strategy enabled the completion of the reservoir reconditioning in four weeks. Photo by visitor, 7-11-2015.
Figure 2. Butler 1913 Ill. 138. The Great Reservoir; View from the Southeast. Archaeological Archives, accessed November 25, 2015, Identifier # 925; http://vrc.princeton.edu/archives/items/show/10746.
Figure 20. Stone removal part 4; this completed the clearing of sediment basin 2, 19-10-2015.
