IFAO

This article aims to publish two original and personal artworks by Bernard Bruyère. Both of them are inspired by some funerary scenes from Deir el-Medina’s tombs and were painted by the archaeologist directly on the walls of the IFAO dig-house on-site. The first painting, located in one of the lower-level rooms of the house, consists of a reproduction of a figure from Ipuy’s tomb (TT 217), while the second, located in Bernard Bruyère’s old room, parodies a unique scene from TT 2 – TT 2B: the embalming of a fish. This parody, little known outside the circle of “Deir el-Medina people” and French scholars, and usually called the “bouillabaisse recipe,” bears witness to Bernard Bruyère’s artistic skills and shows another side of his character, more playful and humorous.

The “scene of the oracle” is one of the most famous scenes from the Montu temple in Medamud. According to the interpretation of the text given by its first publisher, Étienne Drioton, this scene has been considered as the description of an oracular process (precisely situated in time) of the “bull of Medamud.” Within the framework of the programme for a new edition of texts of the temple by the Medamud mission (IFAO/Sorbonne Université) we wanted to go over the translation again and reconsider it. We propose to relate this scene to the cult reliefs and no longer to see it as a representation of an oracle, but as a way for the people to have access to a divine image. This re-examination also allows us to reconsider the meaning of the rear temple and to propose new arguments to justify the location of the scene.

This article presents 33 unpublished limestone blocks dated to the reign of Nectanebo II and found in Awlad Musa, north of Suez, by the Supreme Council of Antiquities between 1995 and 2006. An assemblage of a few of them is now on display in the Suez Museum. These inscribed blocks were reused material, as indicated by the fact that they were randomly included in the masonry of a latter building. It is extremely likely, given the identity of the gods they feature, that these blocks came from Tell el-Maskhuta in Wadi Tumilat. Most of the scenes are fragmentary and represent the king offering to different gods, the majority of which are linked to the Heliopolitan sphere. A geographic procession is carved on the basement featuring the most ancient occurrence of Osiris “lord of the Eastern Gate,” an epithet known up until now only on two Ptolemaic steles found at Maskhuta.

Jaroslav Černý (1898-1970) was an Egyptologist of Czech origin, a Czechoslovak and later stateless citizen, active in Czechoslovakia, Egypt, Italy, France, Great Britain, Germany and the United States. He debuted a cosmopolitan and productive part of his career at the Institut français d’archéologie orientale in Cairo in 1925. Černý’s presence at the IFAO constituted a dual French-Czechoslovak connection—the dominant French position in the Antiquities Service and as a preferred ally of Czechoslovakia. An analysis of intellectual and political dynamics benefits from complementing by a biographical research. Černý’s collaboration with the IFAO also constituted a major move in his individual Egyptological career. First, it opened perspectives of teamwork within Egyptian and international Egyptology. Secondly, it was a decisive step in his research strategies concerned with the community of Deir el-Medina, therefore it had a rather more intricate significance than being solely an element of a stratagem of Western dominance in Egypt, this time ostensibly represented by a smaller European nation that appeared as trying to join the existing contestants in a larger game of appropriation of Egyptian cultural heritage.

Fouillée dans les années 1930 et 1970, la nécropole romaine de Kôm Abou Billou a livré des milliers de restes humains qui n’ont jamais été étudiés. En 2014, la reprise des fouilles sous la direction de Sylvain Dhennin a livré des vestiges d’une conservation exceptionnelle qui documentent les pratiques funéraires et les données biologiques d’une population encore méconnue du point de vue de l’anthropologie biologique dans la littérature archéologique.

The Roman necropolis of Kom Abou Billou was excavated in the 1930s and 1970s and rendered thousands of human remains that have never been studied. Since 2014 the excavation under the direction of Sylvain Dhennin delivered remnants of exceptional conservation that document funerary practices and biological data of a population still unknown in this field in archaeological literature.

This article is a lexicographical study on small to middle-size mammals based on new photographs, mainly from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Among them is the ḥṯs-animal for which the identification as a gerbil jird (Meriones sp.) is proposed. Another one is ḥḏrt, a much debated animal in the egyptological literature. This should be a shrew (Crocidura or Suncus sp.).

The fragmentary Papyrus H 40 of the IFAO is in fact an Oracular Amuletic Decree similar to those published by I.E.S. Edwards in the HPBM. The main purpose of the text is the protection of a pregnant woman and the onomastic might refer to the family of the High Priest Pinedjem II. It could be the most ancient of the OAD (21st Dynasty).

Publication of a Graeco-Roman relief, which shows the goddess Nut pouring out a libation for the ba-bird (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Ägyptisch-Orientalische Sammlung Inv. 5092). As is demonstrated in this short article, the scene was part of the frieze inside the “naos” of the famous tomb of Petosiris at Tuna el-Gebel. The significance of the frieze is briefly discussed and parallels for the motive in funerary art and temple decoration are pointed out.

Essentially known by his traditional title attested in Edfu, Philae and in the great ­hypostyle hall of Kom Ombo, Ptolemy XII Auletes also used a second title in which he reused the Golden Horus name of Ptolemy X Alexander I. This second title is only attested in two crypts of Dendara Temple and a chamber of Kom Ombo. This study attempts to date these two royal protocols and concludes that they respectively date back to the first (80/76-58 BC) and the second reign (55-51 BC) of the king. These conclusions thus enable the author to propose more precise dates for the construction program of the places where this title appears.

Tell el-Neshed is located in the Sharqiya governorate, not far from the eastern edge of the Nile delta. Excavations led by the French Institute for Oriental Archaeology in Cairo (IFAO) in 2015 and 2016 uncovered extensive remains of an early Old Kingdom settlement. Fieldwork brought to light several superimposed mud-brick buildings and silos dated to the early 4th Dynasty. A test trench revealed more than 3 m of 3rd – early 4th Dynasty deposits above the water table. Tell el-Neshed is one of the very few early Old Kingdom settlements known so far in the Nile Delta. As such, it should provide us with new insights into the economic and social life of the rural communities in this time frame. By supplementing the textual evidence about how the territory was run in the early Old Kingdom, excavations at Tell el-Neshed aim at making a meaningful contribution towards a better understanding of the implementation of the territorial reforms undertaken by the 3rd and 4th Dynasty monarchs and the involvement of royal power in rural zones.