https://www.academia.edu/38635081/Hirokatsu_Watanabe_1942-2019_2019_
(84) Hirokatsu Watanabe (1942-2019) (2019) | Nicholas Reeves - Academia.edu
I t is with great sadness that I have to report
interpretative skills were second to none, and
in high demand both within Japan itself and
abroad. Besides Egypt, he worked with
success in Bahrain and Sinai, at Mohenjo-daro
and Tyre, and in Dubai. The scene of his
greatest triumph would be the Huaca Loro
site in Poma, northern Peru. Watanabe's 1996
survey here, carried out for Izumi Shimada of
the recent death of my long-time friend and
co-worker Hirokatsu Watanabe, at his home
in Shizuoka, Japan. He was 76.
As a radar engineer with several decades of
experience in the field, Watanabe's 1996
survey here, carried out for Izumi Shimada of
SIUC, was to reveal the existence of a highly
important cemetery of intact and richly
equipped shaft tombs—burials which
underpin everything we now know
concerning Middle Sicán funerary practice.
My own collaboration with Watanabe-san
began in 2000, when he undertook a
preliminary radar survey of Egypt's Valley of
the Kings for the Amarna Royal Tombs
Project. Regrettably, permission for us to
complete and refine this work was denied,
and investigations on the ground would be
left to others. Watanabe's radar had revealed
several promising features; one of these,
stumbled upon by Otto Schaden in 2005,
proved to be the intact, post-Amarna funerary
storeroom KV63.
I was to call upon Watanabe's assistance again
in 2015, this time to test for the possible
presence of additional chambers within KV62.
Initially doubtful, he was soon convinced: as
the radar antenna passed in front of
Tutankhamun's decorated north wall, the
change on the monitor was immediate and for
all to see—a clear and clean division between
structurally distinct left- and right-hand
sectors. This was precisely as I had proposed
in The Burial of Nefertiti? in 2015, based on
surface scans published by Factum Arte the
year before. As Watanabe's survey
progressed, voids too were detected behind
both this wall and the west.
Although subsequent tests seemed to
undermine Watanabe's results, it is now
apparent that none of these was as
definitively negative as claimed. When I last
saw my friend in Tokyo in November 2018 he
continued to express confidence in both the
quality of his data and the reliability of his
readings. Time will tell the extent to which
this confidence was justified, but his opinions
in the past had rarely proved wrong; certainly
his findings matched the archaeological
indicators—indicators which otherwise go
unexplained.
Watanabe-san was the consummate
professional, a valued colleague, and a good
and honourable man who contributed much
to this world. He will be greatly missed.
Nicholas Reeves, 26 March 2019
-- Sent from my Linux system.
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