IFAO

The disc of Hemaka (Cairo Museum) is, to the best of my knowledge, the first representation of the hexagonal net. Inside the net two wading birds (storks, cranes or egrets) are depicted; in any case, they are waders.

My study on the present-day hunting techniques on the Manzala Lake showed that there are two types of hexagonal nets: one with a bottom and another without. The first is used in the hunting of waterbirds and divers (ducks, coots, etc.). The nets are stretched out in shallow water, and the bottom prevents the birds from escaping by diving under the net which, once closed, forms a prismatic bag.

In the case of crane and gull hunting, the nets could also be stretched out on the ground.

The second type of net, without bottom, is used for the hunting of waders walking in shallow water or on sludge, such as Ġamingos. It is conceived in such a way that the birds do not catch their feet in the stitches.

In October-November 2000, the archaeological mission of the Louvre museum at Saqqara brought to the fore new inhumations in the area of the mastaba of Akhethetep. Twenty five sarcophagi were thus excavated and studied. These are modest sepultures of late period (end of the dynastic period and beginning of the Ptolemaic). The burials remind of those already discovered on the Saqqara site around the pyramid of Teti and, more recently, of Anubieion.

This two-part article deals with the Harem Conspiracy. In the first part an analysis of the Judicial Turin Papyrus shows that this document is not "judicial", but is in fact a protection text of the deceased King against the acts of the deceased Conspirators.

The second part is a study of an unpublished Rifaud Text. The main results of it are:

a. The Varzy Papyrus belongs to the dossier of the Harem Conspiracy;

b. A magical practice of bewitchment was directed against the King himself;

The earliest-known version of Imy-Duat occurs on fragmentary inscribed limestone blocks now in the Cairo Museum. This documentation found in two separate tombs (KV 38 and KV 20) and customarily thought to form the decoration of the burial chamber raises many questions. The first part of the study is devoted to the discovery of the fragments and their subsequent registration in the Museum: unpublished information kept in the hand-written inventories confirm that the most important part of the objects – now exhibited in the Atrium – was found by Carter in KV 20. Among the few fragments recovered in KV 38 by Loret there are only two pieces which are exactly of the same kind, while the others belong to a second version of Imy-Duat written in larger scale on mud plaster. According to its size the Imy-Duat version reproduced on the limestone blocks looks like a copy on papyrus and seems hardly adaptable to an architectural context. Close examination of the inscribed blocks led us to question whether they were ever gathered together in order to line the walls or to be arranged in rectangular fashion around the royal sarcophagus. Some fragments give evidence of an ancient egyptian numbering system but these indications are very difficult to interpret because of the incomplete state of the documentation. The original location of the blocks and the subsequent attribution of the first version of Imy-Duat are discussed in the third part of the paper. Our final proposal takes into account the different observations mentioned above. We ascribe the limestone version to Hatshepsut in whose tomb the majority of the fragments were found and explain the situation as follows: uninscribed blocks intented to form the lining of the walls may be brought into the tomb (some of them were possibly numbered at the occasion), but the wall decoration was never carried out; some isolated blocks may therefore be reused as simple media in order to copy the funerary text on an indestructible material.

The transliteration «Piy» or «Peye» for the name formerly known as «Piankhy» was first suggested by Priese in MIO (1968). The present study aims at reviewing the arguments of Prise’s article, and showing particularly that the sign of life in the royal name actually had a phonetic value. This name was however not genuinely Egyptian. It was certainly Old Meroitic, as Priese had felt. The Egyptian name p(ȝ)-ʿnḫ(y) was pronounced in Demotic [āpo n

This article intends to look at the field of use of two related substantives, namely ḥȝwt and ḥȝwty, which both designate the divine face. The examples gathered here allow us to recognise various specific values. As evocation of a divine face, bearer of the uraei and of the crowns, the face ḥȝwt(y) appears in the private documentation as an object of piety. One wishes to «see» this divine face. It is also part of a theological reĠexion. In this respect we examine the values of the šf ḥȝwty epithet that usually refers back to the criocephalous manifestation of the demiurge. A collection of examples from the New Kingdom also reveals that the ḥȝwty (with graphies that bear witness of a duel), can be connected to the divine ship, bearer of the two prow and stern figures, criocephalic in the case of theban Amon, a manifestation of a divine face central to divinatory practice.

Study of a row of four stone mausolea in the necropolis of Bashendi (Dakhla Oasis). The first one, leaning against the famous Kitynos’s tomb (1st-2nd c. A.D.) is built in pharaonic style. The three others, quite identical, display features of classical style, especially pilasters on attic bases. The layout being a square (around 7,5 m), they were covered by a dome as can still be seen on the well preserved tomb 4 reused as Sheikh Bashendi’s qubba. These mausolea date back to the 1st-2nd c. A.D. They provide a landmark of the spreading of graeco-roman architectural patterns in Egypt during the Early Roman Empire.

Publication of the archaelogical map of Dendara area. This territorial data available on digital medium allows for some remarks on the urban form and the limit between sacred and civil spaces. This limit, on the occasion of the construction of a new enclosure wall, should mark a place of urban restauration accompanied by important phenomena of tabula rasa in the civil districts.