IFAO

This paper is divided in two parts. Part one is a translation and a commentary on the sections of the Kamose stelae mentioning the conquest of the oasis of Djesdjes by the king of the Theban XVIIth dynasty. It is argued that all the passages about the oasis, in the Kamose text, concern only one campaign and one oasis, Bahariya. Bahariyans are considered enemies like other Egyptian populations from Middle Egypt who collaborated with the Hyksos rulers. Part two presents the recently prospected cemeteries of Bahariya in the context of the material culture of Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period. The IFAO mission in Bahariya has discovered on the surface of the necropolis of Qaret al-Toub some clear fragments of Tell al-Yahudiya ware, probably imported from one of the production centres located mainly in the Eastern Delta of the Nile. This attestation to commercial relations between Bahariya and the Northern part of Egypt, directly under Asiatic rule, provides interesting data complementary to textual evidence suggesting that Bahariyan elites were in contact with the Hyksos at the end of the Second Intermediate Period.

The monastery of Bawit (Middle Egypt) was discovered by the French archaeologist Jean Clédat in 1900. The site was excavated from 1901 to 1913 by Ifao which published several reports. The new excavation concerns two places on the kôm: the so-called “north church” and sondages. Sondages 1 and 2, completed in 2003, have permitted the clarification of the stratigraphy of the northern part of the monastery, where excavations were made in 1913 by Jean Maspero. The structures indicate that they were originally dwellings dating to the Byzantine period (from the sixth to the second half of the seventh centuries).

Four unpublished drawings related to the monastery of Bawit are kept in the archives of the French Institute. The group contains two maps from the excavation led by Jean Maspero in 1903 that give little information regarding other published documents. However, the recent reopening of excavations in this area makes them worthy of consideration. Two fragments of mural paintings, now lost, present some iconographical interest: A Saint on Horseback Killing the Evil, sketched by François Daumas, and the Murder of the Innocents, by Jean Clédat.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.