IFAO

In 1910 during agricultural work east of the Suez Canal and some 50 km north-east of modern Ismailiya, Beda pots dating to the Early Dynastic Period were discovered. A study of Jean Clédat’s notes now preserved in the Louvre museum makes a new report on the finds possible. Considering the research carried out by Jean Clédat in the Suez area at the beginning of the XXth century, substantial information has been obtained on the location and the archaeological context of this exceptional discovery. This paper concerning the Beda pots and their incised serekhs constitutes a new contribution to our understanding of the Nile Delta region and its role in the contacts between Egypt and the Levant during the Early Dynastic period.

Publication of two late demotic "receipts of payment" (ỉw-Urkunden) from the Erzherzog Rainer Collection in Vienna. The documents were issued by the priests of the god Soknopaios and the goddess Isis-Nepherses at Soknopaiou Nesos.

The first papyrus (P. Vindob. D 6833) from regnal year 8 of Caesar Domitian (?) (= 88 / 89 A. C. E.) contains a tax (nḥt) on four ships (ḏy.w 4.t). The receipt also acknowledges other payments that were payed in installments in "money (and) copper" (ḥḏ ḥmt), and in kind with products like "cattle" (ỉḥ) or "jugs" (šš.w). The taxpayer is "the scribe of the priests" (pȝ sẖ nȝ wʿb.w), in all probability an administrator for another person, the owner of the four ships, whose name is mentioned in the text.

Publication of a commemoration stela, currently located in the Cairo Museum basement, that shows that the largest mudbrick wall enclosing the temple of Montu-Ra in Medamud was built by the roman Emperor Augustus, and not Ptolemy III, as previously believed by some. The stela also gives the original dimensions of the partly destroyed wall unearthed in the 1920s by Ifao and the Louvre, under the supervision of F. Bisson de La Roque.

The inscriptions engraved on some block statues belonging to the "cachette" of the temple of Amun at Karnak and ranging in date from the XXVIth dynasty to the Ptolemaic period, give precise and unexpected details about the procedure of the reversion of offerings. Thus, the extended placing of foodstuffs on the body of the statue is perceived as a threat that seriously jeopardizes the "health" of the dedicatee.

Analysis of spell 608 of the Coffin Texts and the ritual that is described therein.

Publication of seven blocks belonging to the library of the temple of Montu in Tod. The titles of the books give us some aspects of the Theban theologies during the Ptolemaic period.

This article discusses the translation of additional texts coming from the Edfu version of the myth of Horus. Through these glosses, priests certainly wanted to highlight religious thought through the universality of scarab/winged scarab in architecture. These commentaries appear throughout the "Victory of Winged Disk" story and the ritual of Victory festival studied by Maurice Alliot in Le culte d’Horus à Edfou au temps des Ptolémées.