Tuesday Spotlight: Inspector Merer's logbook

Transporting blocks for Khufu’s pyramid across the Nile river

1-2pm (UK) / 3-4pm (Egypt) | This lecture will be recorded, register to be sent a video link

This Tuesday Spotlight lecture within our wider theme of Traversing the Nile, exploring the varied travel and trade networks along the Nile in both ancient and more recent history.

In 2013, the archaeological mission of Wadi el-Jarf, on the Red Sea shore unearthed a set of papyri that were left on the site at the time of its last use, at the end of Khufu’s reign. This batch of documents includes, among other things, a series of logbooks which report several missions carried out by a team of boatmen on behalf of the Egyptian monarchy. Their regular work clearly involves guarding and supplying the royal institutions of the Giza area, notably Khufu’s Valley Temple. But they can also be entrusted with other missions, more or less distant from their home base. Papyrus B, the best preserved of all, reports the transfer of limestone blocks from the quarries of Tura, on the east bank of the Nile, to the pyramid site.

Book

Pierre Tallet is the holder of the chair of Egyptology at the Sorbonne. He has led several archaeological missions in Egypt, notably in the pharaonic harbours of Ayn Sukhna and Wadi el-Jarf (on the Red Sea shore), as well as in the Sinai Peninsula, in the Serabit el-Khadim region. He is currently director of the French Institute of Oriental Archeology in Cairo.

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