IFAO

The identity of the character depicted in the Coptos colossi and their chronology have become two controversial points in the study of these works of art. Soon after they were discovered, the idea that they could be a primitive representation of the god Min was proposed. Their location within the perimeter of the temple of Coptos, as well as the presence of certain iconographic motifs, led a priori to that conclusion. Nevertheless, some later works have opposed that hypothesis. Whether these statues belong to the Egyptian artistic environment or not has been the starting point of the formal and comparative study developed in the first part of this paper. Within the iconographic field we have, in the second part of this study, evaluated every one of the motifs inscribed on the statues. Through the results provided by the evidence, we have concluded that the Coptos colossi were early representations of the god Min. Early because they belong to a chronological period situated between the end of Naqada II and the beginning of Naqada III. The differences in content with historical images of the god Min arise from representing an entity that ruled over the desert and the sea; a different Min, pertaining to the so-called "Preformal tradition", that we consider a former sculptural symbol of the same principle, namely Fertility.

This ostracon, belonging to the Ifao collections, is a loan agreement drawn up for Apa John, "the Father of the hospital" of the monastery of Apa Mena, south of Assiut. The writer, Apa Victor, son of Baruch, lives in the neighbourhood of Sbeht. Not far from the well-known monasteries of Wadi-Sarga and Bala’izah, this long forgotten town was once the main city of the Apollonopolite Parva nome and a bishop see. This monastery is termed a "petra", a community clusterd in a peculiar lanscape of caves running far up the limestone cliffs overhanging the Nile. The pilgrims, especially the sickmen, crowded the "petra" on the feast day of Saint Mena. This text contributes to our understanding of everyday life in Coptic Egypt.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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;

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.