IFAO

The Karnak Cachette Database offers the first attempt to make a general inventory of the objects (statues, stelae, etc.) from various periods, found between 1903 and 1907 by G. Legrain in the « Cachette » of the court (VIIth pylon) at Karnak. The first on-line version of this database was launched in November 2009. It is the result of cooperation between the French Institute of Oriental Archæology (IFAO) and the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt (SCA).

The project has been made possible through access to extensive photographic documentation, mainly provided by the Corpus of Late Egyptian Sculpture kept at the Brooklyn Museum, with the addition of several thousand photographs taken by the IFAO at the Egyptian Museum in 2008-2009. Through the active collaboration of the curators at the Egyptian Museum and the members of the Egyptian Museum Database Project, the registers of the Egyptian Museum could be carefully consulted and some hitherto completely unknown objects are listed for the first time in this database. The inventory of objects has been compiled by extensively examining G. Legrain’s papers and archives, including unpublished manuscripts of the Catalogue Général and squeezes kept at the Franco-Egyptian Center at Karnak.

The lecture will give an overview of the achievements and perspectives of the project.