IFAO

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.

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.

Rediscovered by James Bruce at the end of the XVIIIth century, the tomb of Ramesses III (KV 11) is one of the most famous and important monuments in the Valley of the Kings. Well known for the design and decoration of the upper part, the tomb is less known for its lower part, which is in very bad condition today. This lower part was still preserved in the XIXth century, but among the travellers and scholars who visited the tomb at that time, very few made descriptions or drawings of the decorations in the lower part. Until now the only two sources of our knowledge were the Notices descriptives of J.-Fr. Champollion and the Notices des hypogées royaux of E. Lefébure; however the unpublished manuscripts of Robert Hay kept in the British Library provide a third source. These important manuscripts contain some folios devoted to the tomb of Ramesses III, which provide crucial information about the decoration now lost. The aim of this paper is to publish this material, which consists of eight pages of hand-written notes (including sketches) and two views of the sarcophagus chamber executed with the help of the camera lucida. After an introduction of Robert Hay and a discussion of his work in Egypt (Part 1), the author gives the transcription of the English text (Part 2) and try to reconstruct the lower part of the decorative programme of KV 11, from the descent to corridor S to the last room Z (Part 3). For the reconstruction, the author collects the information in all three sources (which complement each other well) and take into account, as much as possible, the traces of decoration which remain extant on the walls.

It is well known that the ancient Egyptian lexicon shows structural patterns very close to those of Semitic languages, at least as much as derivation processes (prefixation, suffixation, -reduplication) are concerned. A specific type of reduplication (ABCC) has been used in Egyptian to build a significant number of animal names, as pȝgg.t, frog, ḥfrr, tadpole, ḥdqq.w, rats, or ḫprr, beetle. Gathering about thirty attestations of this specific pattern, which conveys a diminutive / pejorative meaning, we can get arguments to rebuild the vocalic structure as AaBCáC-aw (masc.), AaBCáC.at (fem.). For this Egyptian pattern, the Accadian ’dmm, wasp, or kulbābu, ant, offer convincing Semitic counterparts.

The colophons in Egyptian literature are found from the XIIth dynasty to the Roman Period. Most of the time, we find them in literary texts, Books of the Dead, and late ritual texts. The use of colophons varies according to the period and the nature of the text. This article offers an explanation for the expression ỉw.f pw and its variants, which are found at the end of various manuscripts, and tracks the evolution of this expression.

The epigraphic survey carried out in April 2004 by the Ifao team in the Saite Chapel nū 1 (nomenclature of Fakhry) of ʿAyn al-Muftella in the Baḥariya Oasis allowed us to identify a large number of divine figures on the first register of the walls. This article proposes an initial interpretation of the links between the divine groups, which have been almost completely identified.

The magical papyrus Louvre E 32308 comes from Deir al-Medīna and belongs to a group of amulets which, once folded, were hung around the neck of the patient. It can be differentiated from others with texts of the same kind by the great number of drawings that surround the text. It also contains several sequences similar to those found in P. Turin 1996. These sequences are not true parallels, but variations that can only be explained as personal choices on the part of the scribe, choices that were sometimes based on graphic or phonetic variations.

The present article consists of the publication of a statuary group discovered by G. Legrain at Karnak in 1904. The monument, dating from the end of the IVth or the beginning of the IIId century BC, now preserved in the Cairo Museum (JE 36576), belongs to an Amun priest from XoĪs: -Pacheryentaisouy.