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Mention excavation in Egypt and most of us immediately see ourselves entering Tooten-Kamun's tomb, discovering the hidden

treasures of the pharaohs and at a stroke rewriting history.

Aspiring archaeologists should be warned that this happens only very rarely.

Most archaeology is a slow, dirty business, followed by even slower recording of what's been found,

and the tone of archaeological reports has a deliberate,

academic, almost clerical dryness, far removed from the riotous swagger of Indiana Jones. In 1900 a member of the Egypt Exploration Society

excavated a grave in southern Egypt. He soberly named his discovery

Grave A23

and he noted the contents

body male

baton of clay painted in red stripes with imitation mace head of clay.

Small red pottery box four-sided nine inches by six inches leg bones of small

animal pots inches, leg bones of small animal, pots, and stand of four clay cows.

These four little clay cows are a long way from the glamour of the pharaohs, but you could argue that cows and what they represent have been far more important to human history. Babies have been

reared on their milk, temples have been built to them, whole societies have been fed by them,

economies have been built on them.

Without cows, there are no cowboys, and without cowboys no Wild West.

Our world would have been a different and a duller place without the cow.

They were a very important part of the Egyptian economy.

It became essentially a symbol for life.

It's not that easy for archaeologists to pin down how food processing worked in these early stages.

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