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April 28, 2024, 7:29 am UTC    
February 25, 2023 04:34AM
Quote

The Merer papyrus is not a diary but an archive.

Wadi el-Jarf was the harbour of King Khufu on the Red Sea, French archaeologist Pierre Tallet has been excavating the site since 2011. At the site Tallet and his team found a papyrus archive, which is now recognised as not only the oldest papyrus known to us today, but also chronicles how inspector Merer and his workmen transported limestone blocks to the Giza necropolis.

The Wadi el-Jarf site is, as I said, a harbour on the Red Sea that was used at the beginning of the Fourth dynasty to reach the copper and turquoise mines of the southwestern part of the Sinai Peninsula. In 2013, hundreds of fragments of papyrus from the end of Khufu’s reign (ca 2551–2528 BCE) were collected at the entrance of one of the site’s storage galleries. This is the oldest papyrus archive found in Egypt; produced by a team of sailors and stone haulers led by Inspector Merer.

The discovery consists of accounts of commodities delivered to the workers, and logbooks recording their daily activities over several months. Most surprisingly, the logbooks do not record the activity of this group on the Wadi el-Jarf site but describe previous missions under the direction of Inspector Merer transporting limestone blocks from the quarries of Tura to the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza, then under construction on the opposite bank of the Nile.

The best source (in my opinion) is this open access research paper by Pierre Tallet, it's in English and Arabic:
[www.ancientportsantiques.com]...

Here is an informative article (in French and English) about the Wadi el-Jarf site and Merer's papyrus:
[www.larecherche.fr]...

This is a short introduction, and a map, about the ongoing Wadi el-Jarf archaeological mission, and excavations:
[honorfrostfoundation.org]

A short article about the Merer papyrus here, it's often presented as the oldest papyrus known to us, but in my opinion that's not what makes this find so incredibly interesting:
[www.seeker.com]...

And another short article about the papyrus can be found here:
[www.livescience.com]...

And here is a medium long-read about the papyrus ... :
[www.smithsonianmag.com]

[Samira Minetti].

[tinyurl.com]

Hermione
Director/Moderator - The Hall of Ma'at


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Papyrus Archive of Merer: Resources

Hermione February 25, 2023 04:34AM



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