Mr. Covington's Excavations

Dow Covington was a well-known Egyptologist active in Giza. I looked for any mention of excavations in the other blog posts, but I couldn’t find anything else on it. Previously in 1905, Covington was part of a team that was tasked with unburying part of the great sphinx, which had been partly covered over years from windblown sand. In my Monday issue of The Egyptian Gazette, on page three, under the “Pyramid Excavations” section, there was an article about Covington going back to work on the pyramids. He was going to dig out part of the northern base line of the Great Pyramid to look for more casing stones; casing stones are the precise, slanted stones that are like the final coat of pyramids to make them smooth. The pyramids have lost almost all of their casing stones over time, which is why the sides look like big steps. Covington was going to dig westwards of where they had previously found other casing stones on the Great Pyramid. This was really interesting to me because I had no idea what casing stones were. I never realized that there were angled stones placed on the outside of the pyramids; I thought they were all just made with steps on them. It was also cool to see how excavationists were interested in finding and studying casing stones a hundred years ago. Even back then the technology and precision it must have taken the Egyptians to build the pyramids was fascinating.

Here is a link to an article from the Cincinnati Art Museum about Dow Covington. I especially like their line, “Lorenzo Dow Covington died after being struck down, not by a Pharaoh’s curse, but by an automobile, aged 73”.