In one of his most unexpected discoveries in Egypt over the years, Brewer and his fellow researchers once decided to get rid of a notorious speed bump that had always given them bone-rattling jolts whenever they drove over it near their dig site. As it turned out, this "speed bump" was really a 12-foot statue of the pharaoh Ramses II buried close to the soil surface. The statue now stands in an Egyptian museum at Luxor.

But perhaps strangest of all was the abundance of boats depicted in the
art. After all, this area was far from any body of water,