IFAO

After 35 years of excavations by IFAO teams, the ancient city of Balat-Ayn Asil, established towards the end of the 5th dynasty, has revealed a huge stretch of urban buildings, among which the governors’ palaces are the most conspicuous. The northern palace, excavated at the end of the 70ies, was only investigated on a very limited scale, but though yielded an abundant epigraphic material. At some point in the early FIP, the long-used southern palace, under excavation since 1985, was drastically destroyed by fire, a circumstance which preserved a large part of its material in situ.

The paper will focus mainly on the study of these two palace archives from the late OK and FIP, consisting of clay ceilings and documents written on clay tablets. These collections have much to say about the life and society in the city and, on a wider scale, of the Dakhla oasis, at the end of the 3rd millennium