Filling water bottles at the sink this morning and thinking about the Valley of the Kings in October, which runs to roughly 35 C by midday and gives you no shade worth the name. Belzoni had a crew of local workmen digging through flood debris to get into what we now call KV17, and the records keep his name and not theirs. He was Italian, he'd been a strongman on the London stage before this, and in 1817 he came out of the rubble into the most decorated tomb in the valley.
They had: crowbars, ropes, candles, wax and plaster for taking casts, and no plan at all for the paint. The colours were still fresh when they went in — reds, blues, the ceiling — and the casting and the open air and the damp breath of visitors took a toll on them afterwards. Nobody in 1817 knew what humidity does to a sealed room. I'd still like the names of the men who carried the water down those stairs, which go down a long way.
Inés, the alabaster sarcophagus out of that tomb went downriver by Nile boat — a few tonnes of stone, loaded over a plank onto a shallow hull with no crane anywhere near. The boatmen and the sledge crews got it to Alexandria intact, and we don't have their names either.
The alabaster sarcophagus from that tomb ended up in Sir John Soane's house in London, in the basement, under a light well he built so it comes from above. Put a candle behind the stone and it still glows amber — the walls are thin enough to pass light. Soane threw a three-night party when it arrived.