So Dr. Gregory Marouard has
been a research associate in Egyptian archeology
at the Oriental Institute at the University of
Chicago since 2010. He received his PhD in art
history and archeology in 2010 from the University
of Poitiers in France. And his dissertation topic was
on archeology, architecture, and imagery of urban
houses outside the city proper during the Hellenistic
and Roman periods. So as you can tell
from that title, he comes into
Egyptian archeology with a classical
archeology background. And he now specializes in
urban, domestic, and harbor archeology. Since the first season
of Wadi al-Jarf in 2011, Gregory has been the
senior archaeologist in charge of the excavations
of the Harbor of Khufu. This is a French Institute,
the IFAO, a CNRS, and Paris-Sorbonne project
directed by Professor Pierre Tallet. And some of you may have caught
his lecture just a few weeks ago, two Sundays ago,
as a matter of fact, at the Museum of Fine Arts. In June 2016, this project was
awarded the prestigious Cino Del Duca Prize for archeology
by the French Academy. That's the biggest and most
important prize you can get. But this list of sites doesn't
end there, by a long shot. Since 2006 Dr. Marouard has
been the senior archaeologist, and then since 2010 co-director
with Nadine Moeller of the Tell Edfu project out of the
Oriental Institute, again University of Chicago. From 2010 to 2013 he was
director of the South Edfu pyramid project, which focuses
on the survey and rescue protection program of the last
unexplored provincial pyramid, spanning dynasties
three to four. Since 2013, he's been
director of The Oriental institute's mission to Dendera
and co-director of another joint project at Dendera, with
Pierre Zignani of the IFAO /CNRS and Yann Tristant
of Macquarie University in Australia. It goes on. Since 2015 he has
been consulting on archaeological
projects and questions for a Chicago House, that's
the epigraphic survey at the University
of Chicago in Luxor, and supervising some of the
operations at Medinet Habu, Ramses III's mortuary complex. In particular the house
of the famous Butekhamun and the Western High Gate. And also since 2015, he's
director of the Kom ed-Dahab Surbey, another Oriental
Institute Egypt exploration society delta survey. This is a large, Hellenistic
and Roman settlement and harbor installation located
in the eastern Egyptian delta, the Lake Manzala region. Is that not enough
sites for you? For about 18 years now,
he's worked at the following sites in Egypt. Buto, Karanis, Ayn Soukhna,
Wadi Araba, Abu Rawach, South Abydos, Karnak Temple,
Deir el-Medina, Bawit, Tabtunis, and Old Islamic Cairo. He's the author of
numerous articles in the standard French, German,
and Austrian Egyptological journals. And he's contributed to
several collective anthologies. And he's now preparing the
final excavation reports for a number of these sites. How he fits it all in and merges
it all together without going nuts is beyond me. But tonight we had to pick
just one of these sites, and so we've asked him to bring
us up to date on the Red Sea coast, with new discoveries
at Wadi al-Jarf, Dr. Gregory Marouard. Thank you so much, Peter, for
this really nice introduction. And thank you everyone
for coming in tonight. Thank you for people on
Facebook following us tonight. So that's my pleasure to present
these discoveries at the Wadi al-Jarf. As Peter mentioned, this is not
an Oriental Institute project. This is a French project, from
the French Institute and Paris University Sorbonne. And this is directed
by my colleague Pierre Tallet who is the chair of the
Egyptology department there. And I'm conducting the
excavation with him. So there is Egyptologists
that are probably more able than me to make
you more deep description of the papyrus
that we discovered at the site in 2013, which
make the site actually famous. So tonight I will focus first
on the excavation of this site and various projects that
conducted this excavation. And after I will show
you main documents, just to give you an idea
about what those papyrus talked about. The topic tonight
is quite exotic. We will not discuss
about any tombs or temple that we've found in
Upper Egypt or we'll talk about pyramids at
some point for sure. But for tonight, the
main focus will be, here, this area of the
Gulf of Suez Wadi al-Jarf is located here. And just for people
not really familiar with the local geography,
we have the Nile valley, right here have of Egypt, Sinai
Peninsula here, Israel, Jordan, and the Red Sea. So this research on
the Egyptian Harbor is a quite recent
research topic. We basically start
the excavation on most of these sites
around the year 2000, 2002. Those harbors are
linked to the phenomenon the royal expedition that were
carried out in two directions. The Southern peninsula, the
Southern Sinai Peninsula, and the distant land of
Punt Those expeditions went to Sinai in
order to collect mostly copper and turquoise. And they went to Punt
in order to collect incense and other
exotic products from the Horn of Africa. Something very important
each one of these expeditions had a navigation section
company at some point. So this you will see
is really important because we are not dealing
only with expeditions through the desert. We're dealing also with teams
of navigators, people that cross the Red Sea on boats. And about 15 years ago-- 20 years ago-- many
scholars still considered that the Egyptians were
really, really poor sailors. And this is absolutely
not the case. So several projects
focus on this question of the expedition and the harbor
installation on the Red Sea. So I will just show you very
quickly the two main sites-- harbor sites-- that we knew
before the Wadi al-Jarf. The first one is actually
located here on the Red Sea. Mersa Gawasis on the Red Sea. And this is an
American-Italian excavation, a local American
excavation because it's a University of Boston project. And this team worked mostly
between 2001 and 2015. This harbor site,
which dates back from the Middle Kingdom,
only the Middle Kingdom. And the main destination
for the expeditions that stopped at the site Mersa
Gawasis was the land of Punt, as you can see here
on this memorial. So this site give us-- since its discovery in 1976-- really, really
important information. And as you can see here on this
memorial of Vizier Intefiqer, in the lower part I
put the description. Basically the ancient Egyptians
used boats on the Red Sea. But those boats were
built in the Nile Valley, probably in Coptos, dismantled. They crossed the desert
with the dismantled boats. And they rebuilt the
boats on the seashore. Then after, they crossed the
Red Sea to their destination. So a very important detail. And when the
Italian-Americans started to excavate Mersa Gawasis,
they found several galleries like those, and a lot
of nautical equipment like ropes, anchors,
pieces of boats. They also found several
official reports. They are stele, mostly,
that was originally included in those small niches. And they found multiple
steles for most of the rulers of the 12th Dynasty. So we are at the Middle
Kingdom at that point. They also found several
evidence of this journey to the Land of Punt. For example these pottery
shards, but they also found a piece of obsidian. And we know that, from various
analyses, that more than 96% of all the obsidian
used in Egypt was originally
from Ethiopia area. So the second site. The second harbor site
came a little bit later in the landscape. It was discovered in 1998
by Mahmud Abdel-Razik thanks to several inscriptions. And this site is much
bigger than Mersa Gawasis, and it was used for
a much longer time. So far we think that the
harbor site at Ayn Soukhna probably starts in the
middle of the Fourth Dynasty and was almost in continuous
use until the end of the Middle Kingdom, with a short occupation
also during the New Kingdom. So about a millennia of
occupation on the site. Just to show you that's a
very strategic placement, very strategic weigh station on
the way to the Wadi Maghara and the Serabit el-Khadem area,
which is southern of Sinai, and the main source for
copper and turquoise. So the location was extremely
strategic on the way from Memphis. There they town a huge
well, a lot of water, a local environment, game
probably for hunting. and from Ayn Soukhna they
crossed the Gulf of Suez by boat, from here
to here, to el-Marka; We'll go back on this
site a little bit later. And it's very possible
that those expeditions not only goes by
sea, but also turn around the end of
the Gulf of swells. So we think that those
expedition where multiple, part by boat, part by land. So as I mentioned before the
site was discovered in 1998, thanks to both often-shown
inscription here, on the rock above the
galleries that belongs mostly to the first rulers
of the 12th Dynasty. Late Eleventh Dynasty,
early Twelfth Dynasty. So for several
years, we considered that this harbor
at Ayn Soukhna was something similar to Mersa
Gawasis, mostly Middle Kingdom occupation. Then after several years, we
found more and more evidence for an Old Kingdom
occupation at this site. So you can see here
that we have, actually, six galleries on this
band, but we had a total of 10 galleries on the site. So four galleries at Mersa
Gawasis, 10 at Ayn Soukhna. And those galleries has
been cut into the rock, probably, in the middle
of the 4th Dynasty. We have several elements,
like those inscriptions, here, official reports,
list of crew members, and there were carved or
inscribed here at the entrance. We had here in gallery G5, a
lot of big pottery containers that were used for storing water
and food for the expedition. So all of these
shapes of pottery are very typical for the
middle of the second part of the 4th Dynasty. And we also found
multiple clay sealings. This one is the
oldest one and belongs to Khafre, so the fourth
king of the 4th Dynasty, and probably the first Old
Kingdom ruler really active at the site. We also found several
other clay sealings that belong to most of the
rulers of the 5th dynasty. And those clay sealings
were used, in fact, to close boxes, bags, and
baskets, that actually preserved some food or goods
sent from the Nile Valley to the site. So they are a really
precious used document for us because they are
short life artifacts. And generally they can
give us a good idea of the context
and the chronology of the context we are in. We also found two
other inscriptions at the entrance of
one of the galleries. This one from King
Djedkare Isesi, which is the penultimate
ruler of the Fifth Dynasty. This inscription is quite
interesting, because we have, here, a mention of the
boat that they used, which is a Kebnet, a boat
probably in "Byblos style." And we know that this kind
of boat was only used-- and particularly during
the Old Kingdom-- in order to reach
the Land of Punt. So this is not enough, we've
found a couple of evidence, but we start to think
since several years now, that Ayn Soukhna was
probably the departure to expedition to the Sinai and
also to Punt during the Fifth Dynasty. The second inscription,
also of Djedkare Isesi is quite interesting, because
we have, one more time, mentions of people
involved in navigation. Like the mention
of an admiral here. But we have also a very
interesting detail here. The director of the
troop, Sed-hetep mentioned on this inscription,
is also known on the other side
of the Gulf of Suez in Sinai in Wadi Maghara
area by another inscription from exactly the same period. So we have, probably,
here, the same guy on both sides of the Red Sea. The Gulf of Suez, so it's
actually proving they stopped by Ayn Soukhna and
goes to the Wadi Maghara. Another interesting
detail, this is the only Old-Kingdom
inscription, so far that I know, with
mention of the number of people involved in the
expedition, 1,400 males. Last thing about Ayn Soukhna. So we had 10 galleries. In two of them, we found
for the Middle Kingdom, dismantled pieces of boats. So if you remember the
inscription from Coptos, the boats were built
in the Nile Valley, dismantled, transported
through the desert, and rebuilt on
the Red Sea shore. But at the end of
the expedition it's very possible that they
dismantle the boats and store them directly on
site, in those galleries. So like that, they
can reuse the pieces of boats for the next edition. So this is something we know
from Mersa Gawasis, something we know from Ayn Soukhna. And you will see that in the
case of the Wadi al-Jarf, it's exactly same thing. So I will not discuss too
much about Ayn Soukhna, we've already published
three monographs. One more is actually in press. In 2009, we made our
first colloquium. We organized the first
colloquium with our colleagues at Mersa Gawasis about the
Red Sea and pharaonic times. And it was the occasion
to just put together the characteristics of
those Egyptian harbors. So as you have seen
for the two sites, we have, all the time, a
complex of storage galleries. We have camps. All around, huge quantity
of big pottery containers. And for the Old Kingdom, or
mostly for the Middle Kingdom, those containers
are very peculiar. This is not something that
you found most of the time in the Nile Valley. It looks like these containers
were definitely dedicated to the expedition, in order to
store the food or the water. We have also on both
sides a huge number of nautical equipment,
traces of the products, brought back from
the area visited. And like the sealings
that I showed you with, we have multiple
administrative materials and official expedition reports. So that's the
elements that we knew were describing an Egyptian
harbor before starting our work at the Wadi al-Jarf. So the Wadi al-Jarf
came after that. We started the
excavation in 2011. And this site is, in fact,
much bigger and older than the two other examples. And this is probably the
first Egyptian harbor. This is the most complete one. And this is probably
the prototype. And in opposition
with Ayn Soukhna, for example, the use of
this harbor is really short. It was probably used only
during the reign of King Khufu. It's possible that his
predecessor, Sneferu, was at the origin of
the implementation, but so far, we have absolutely
no evidence for that. So we are located on the West
Bank of the Gulf of Suez, here, 25 kilometers
south of Zafarana. And really close to those very
famous monasteries in Egypt. If some of you have
been on Egypt before, there are some really
important places. But we are also located here
at the mouth of the Wadi Araba, which is a huge, huge Wadi. More than 40
kilometers wide that makes a direct link between the
Nile Valley and the Red Sea. So as Peter mentioned in the
introduction, a colleague of mine, Yann
Tristant and myself, we surveyed this area in
between 2008 and 2015. So we started a
survey before starting to work on the Wadi al-Jarf. And we found, here, on the
north of this Wadi Araba, a quite long pharaonic
trail that actually lead to several copper mines. And we were able to
date this occupation from the middle
of the 3rd, maybe the end of the 3rd Dynasty. So it means, before the
early 4th Dynasty, Egyptians already knew this area
and conducted expeditions in that direction. So they knew that they
can connect the Nile Valley to the Red Sea
through this area. And in 2015 we met
a clear connection between the Wadi al-Jarf
sites and the Wadi Araba. And we found this huge trail. So I don't know if it's quite
visible here on the screen, but you can see, here these
two parallel lines, they are the limits of a huge trail,
more than eight meters wide. And we were able to
follow this trail on 25 kilometers on the ground. But with the satellite images we
have almost the entire portion of this trail. And all around, we
found multiple evidence for 4th-Dynasty pottery
and we found, also, numerous portraits actually
produced at the Wadi al-Jarf. I will show you the
local production later. So this is probably one
of the oldest highways in the world, very large road. And if you remember, they
have to cross the desert with dismantled pieces of boats. So they need this kind of trail
to transport the wooden pieces. So that's a view
from the side, so when you finish to
cross the Wadi Araba, you arrive at the Wadi al-Jarf,
and this is the view you have. On the other side,
this big mountain, named the "Hamman Fir'awn,"
is actually in Sinai. And a stretch of sea in this
area is about 50 kilometers. So after about 100 miles
through the desert, they stop at the Wadi
al-Jarf, rebuilding boats, cross in straight
line, and they probably reach this fortress,
which was related recently from the early Fourth
Dynasty, because you can find, at that site, more than
86% of the pottery produced at the Wadi al-Jarf. So the Al-Markha
fortress is probably a part of the Wadi
al-Jarf complex, the head of the bridge,
the defensive installation that the Egyptian used on
the other side of the Red Sea in order to protect the arrival
of the team, the expedition, the goods, and also the
product that they took back to the Nile valley. So after the Al-Markha
fortress, it's very short. You have only 32 kilometers. Just one day, probably,
to reach the Wadi Maghara. And the Wadi Maghara is
quite famous since the end of the 19th century, because we
found multiple official reports in this area. And two were quite
interesting for us. One from Kings Sneferu and one
for King Khufu, right here. So you can see, "Hor Medjedu,
Khufu, Khnum knui ef wi," three names of Khufu that you
will see one more time when we will go into details
for the Wadi al-Jarf. So as usual, we are not
really the first on the site. There is always
someone that pass by. And in our case, this is
Sir John Gardner Wilkinson, who was the father of
the British Egyptology. And so in March 1823, he passed
by a site on the Red Sea, just after stopping at
the San Antonio Monastery. And he just gave
us this description that nobody really connected
until we rediscovered the site. And he mentioned here, the
ruins of an ancient town. Near the ruins is a
small knoll containing 18 excavated chambers. And he looked for inscription,
but the only thing that he found is only big
fragments of vast bitumen, charcoals, and clothes. And he concluded that these
galleries were, in fact, catacombs and probably
used by Greek and Romans because the Greeks and
Romans burned the dead. So it cannot be in the Egyptian
site, and the story was other, and the site was lost
for about a century. When we started
excavation in 2011, the very first thing we found
on the top of the whole kingdom remains are actually evidence
of the passage of Sir Gardner Wilkinson at the site. So because from
this description, we were not absolutely 100% sure
that it was describing the Wadi al-Jarf. But we found several
fireplaces here. We know that one of
the galleries here, G3, was excavated
a long time ago. And we found a couple
of things, porcelain from a teacup, porcelain
from Manchester. We found a little cork
with written ink on it. We found those
Ottoman pipes, and we knew that Wilkinson liked
to live like a Turkish, like a Mameluke. But we found also
these end note. And this is actually
a description written by Wilkinson, because
we have many notes about what Wilkinson during this trip. For example, the Tell
Amarna description. And we were able to
prove that he probably wrote this note himself. And this is a description
that he probably sent to his friend Burton. Actually he was
in the Wadi Araba. And that's a description
for reaching the site at Wadi al-Jarf from the
San Antonio Monastery, but he just left the note
next to the fireplace. He left and that's it. So it was extremely
emotional for us to find the traces
of the first person to really discover the site. There is also these two guys. They were pilots for the Swiss
canal company in the mid '50s. And they were
archaeologist amateurs. And during the weekend,
generally they took their Jeep, and they go south of Suez,
and they found the site. They spend, regularly,
the weekend there. They were able to
grow some plants, take pictures of
these big storage jars that we'll see later. They tried to bring
archaeologists to this site, and they sent multiple letters
to the French Institute, but no one really cared. And in 1956, Suez
Crisis arrived. They went back to
France and the site was lost for another 50 years
until we rediscover it thanks to satellite images in 2008. But it took us three years
to start the excavation. Long process, and we made
our first season in June 2011 during the Egyptian revolution. We're probably one of the only
excavation-- or new excavation projects-- starting
in a new Egypt. So this satellite image
is actually showing you that the site is multi-polar. And it's stretches
from the sea shore to the mountains, more
than five kilometers. So I will start with the harbor
facilities on the seashore. So we found underwater remains. We have, here, a
quite impressive pier, more than 150 meters in
length from west to east, plus 40 meters on
the beach, here. And this pier is
turning, it's an L shape. And it's turning to the
south for another 120 meters. So in 2011, we were quite lucky. We had astral luck, because
we had a full moon eclipse. And it created a very,
extremely low tide. So it was possible for us
to record almost everything just with two feet of water. Generally, there is much
more water than that. So we were a able to
make a plan like that, just carrying total
station reflector. And we mapped the pier. And at that point we noticed
that inside of the harbor, there is multiple anchors still
in situ and multiple storage jars. So this is a kite view,
and you can see here the concentration of anchors. We have more than 21-- we have 25, actually--
anchors in the water. In 2015, we were able to
excavate the part of the pier actually on the beach. So we have a
geomorphologist with us. He's actually studying the
evolution of the shore. And we think that the
level of the Red Sea was slightly different
during the whole kingdom and the Fourth Dynasty,
maybe a little bit higher. And when you just look at
the pier, here, in this area, you can see a demolition
which is probably marking the level of the sea. And the waves and
the rip currents probably destroyed the
pier at this level. Now the Red Sea is much lower. So next to this pier, we found
several dwellings and storage facilities. Two buildings, and in
between the two buildings, here, we found more than
100 anchors in situ. They were stored in this space
probably at the final closure, the very last occupation, the
very last closure of this site. And you can notice that the
anchors were put in circle. It's very sensible,
here, also here. And all the time, when they
are in circles like that, it's because there were
stored around a post. We have only the imprint. We have just a post
hole today, but when they stored the
anchors, the ceiling, the light roof of this building
was probably still in situ. So we have many anchors before
the Wadi al-Jarf excavation, probably we knew something like
35 anchors for entire Egypt, most of them from Mersa Gawasis. So we got something like
135, just in one campaign. So to cause a lot of time
to study those elements. So they are really
well-preserved. You can see on this one
the residue of ropes. And regularly, we
have also red marks that probably correspond
to the name of the boats or the name of the
team of navigator's involved with these
anchors and with the boat. It's difficult. There
is only two signs and we have no comparison,
so far, only one in court in Ayn Soukhna has been
discovered with inscription. In the case of Wadi
al-Jarf, it's almost all of them have been inscribed with
four to five different names. So that's a kite view of those
installations next to the pier. We excavated the floor,
and we were quite lucky because on the top of the
floor and inside the floor, we found multiple,
more than 100, of these clay-sealing fragments,
the same kind of clay sealings that they show you in Ayn
Soukhna, a little bit before. So you can see the
scale of these elements. It's really small, but for us it
has given tons of information. And all of these clay
sealings are actually mentioning the name of Khufu. So this is the first
real chronological link that we can make
between the harbor and the reign of this King. So we have his Horus name, we
have his cartouche sometimes. Here we have, probably, on
this clay sealing, a mention of the pyramid, Ahket Khufu. And the examples
that I show you here, the six examples are made we
have a dark clay, originally from the Nile Valley. So it means those
sealings belong to some bags, or baskets, or a
boxes sent from the Nile Valley to the site, opened on the site. I don't know what they did
with the contents, probably they sent it on the other site. But these two examples,
here, are made with the local yellow clay. So it means in
these buildings they opened box, or basket, or bags
sent from the Nile valley. But they probably also
sealed bags in direction to the Nile Valley. So we are here on the
building that probably deal with all the goods
that they send to the Sinai or they brought
back from the Sinai. So between the seashore
and the gallery area, we have this huge building that
we call intermediate building, because it's in between. It's 2.5 kilometers
from the seashore, in the middle of nowhere. But we found, here probably
the largest pharaonic building on the Red Sea. It's 60 meters by 35 meters. And it was completely
filled with alien sand we had to remove more than 3,000
cubic meters of alien sand. To finally finish the
excavation last season. So it took us only two seasons
to do that, a lot of sand, a lot of sand, and we
found a beautiful floors, perfectly clean. Nothing, almost nothing on it. So we excavated huge
building, and we found just several fireplaces,
mostly in this long room, in front, this
common room, in front of all the elongated rooms. So a few fireplaces, big storage
jars, several tools, no ceiling impression, no ceilings. But with the pottery, we can
clearly date this building from exactly the same phase. So this is a component of
the harbor installation, no problem. It was extremely well preserved. It's not sensible
on this picture, but this wall is actually
two meters in elevation, and there is almost no
demolition in the building. Some of the blocks have
been probably reused, but this building was
just left like that and slowly filled by sand. You can see here
that, on the floor, we have regular post holes. So all these elongated
rooms, there is 12 rooms, were originally covered
with a light roof and you have, just
on the bottom here, one of these complete jars
that we found in situ. So a big building,
very clean floor. We realized that
before they left, they probably closed the door
and they probably dismantled the ceilings. So they tried to keep this
building functional after they left for the last time. We made a test trench
under the floor. And we found another phase of
building, which is actually a very sensible here,
different orientation, small rectangular rooms. We have a lot of pottery
material, no clay sealing, nothing like that. But the pottery
material is actually synchronous to the entire site
and to this building also. So we had a very fast
succession of installation here. Small installation
at the beginning of, a very big one at some
point probably two, three, four phases. Probably two, three, four
phases and expedition also. But all of them are probably
from the time of Khufu. This building is very
interesting for us because it actually
creating the second link with the pyramid construction
project in the Nile Valley. Because so far, this layout,
with elongated rooms, is only known in the
context of expedition and around the pyramid complex. So you have here this
example at Heit el-Gurob excavated by Mark Lehner. And in fact they are
exactly the same proportion. You have those examples
of elongated installation rooms on the back of
the Khafre Pyramid, but the most interesting example
is probably this one here. This is a dual magnetic
survey, recently published by the German Institute. And we are just a
few dozens of meters south of the Red
Pyramid of King Sneferu, so the predecessor
of Khufu, and they found exactly the same
kind of installation that we interpret
as workmen barracks. Mark Lehner is interpreting
those installations as probably dorms. So we have huge
instillation, probably used for the dwelling part
of the expedition, probably the troop, in the
case of Wadi al-Jarf, probably the troop that have
to cross through the Red Sea through the Sinai. So we have also several camps. I will not go too much on detail
because we did not excavate. This is just a kite view,
but this part of the site is still untouched. And finally we have also,
like in Mersa Gawasis, like in Ayn Soukhna, we
have multiple galleries, but at this site we
have 30 galleries. All carved in the rock. We have a group of 17 here,
and another group here. And you can see that
here, in the middle, there is a blank spot. Well so since we
did this plan, we discover two more
galleries in this area. So they used all the
space available in order to cut as much as possible. So when we found them
they were completely filled with sediment, and
after eight campaigns-- well the eighth campaign is
coming next March and April-- so in seven campaigns
we were able to excavate all those galleries. 1 to 17 on this group. And so we have two standards. Generally, most of them
are between 16 to 18 meters in length, three meters
wide, two meters high. But we have two examples
of very long galleries, like this one, G3, more
than 34 meters in length. It looks like
being in the metro, it's the subway when
you enter in this thing without the light. It's really, really impressive. And this is probably
not a surprise if it is inside
this long gallery that we found the only trace
of a possible official report. So this is a small
piece of inscription, maybe the size of my hand. All the rest of it have
been destroyed probably by the water infiltration. And the name of the guy, Idu
we have a guy here, Idu, scribe of the Fayum. He was probably a part
of a long procession of officials represented on
this inscription originally. We have other installations
in those galleries. Those tiny low walls, all
the time, we found them. There is one on the back here. And those walls were
probably used, in fact, to store and to pile
the piece of wood that they used for the boats. We found similar low walls
in Ayn Soukhna under the boat that I showed you before. And this installation
was probably here in order to avoid
a direct contact of the piece of the
hull, the piece of wood, will try to avoid a direct
contact with the floor. If there is some
water infiltration in galleries at some point,
it will just destroy the wood. And in the case of Wadi
al-Jarf, when the expedition went to the Sinai,
probably all the members crossed the Red Sea, there
is no section by land. So the entire success
of the expedition is linked to the proper
storage of these tenements in the galleries. So unfortunately, they took
most of the pieces of boats at some point, and we have
only small pieces left. Most of the pieces
that you have here are made with
cedar from Lebanon. So imported wood. Extremely precious,
expensive wood, so it also justified this
necessity of low walls in order to protect them. We found also hundreds,
thousands of small pieces, tenons, just elements that
proved that the wood had been re-carved at some point. We have also some
pieces sometimes with inscription on it,
so this is a software that we are using, D-Stretch,
in order to push the red color. That's very, very useful. So and we have, box and
box of fragments of ropes. And the galleries were also
used, not only for the wood, to store big jar containers,
like I showed you in Ayn Soukhna before. But in this gallery,
for example, we found more than 188
complete jars in situ. They had just collapsed,
because a part of the ceilings collapsed later. But now those deposits were
almost completely undisturbed. And we have two more galleries
with similar deposits on the side of this gallery. It's an ongoing excavation. We know that these storage jars
have being produced locally. We excavated, so far,
four pottery kiln. We have three more to
excavate next season . This one, here, is the largest
pottery kiln ever discovered in Egypt. It's more than 3 meters,
20 centimeters in length. It's really a
massive pottery kiln. It was used for firing-- or big jars-- maybe. On whole soil, small part
of the local production are service dishes,
small Meidum bowls. And as you can see,
we found regularly earth-fired pieces of pottery. This is actually very
typical Meidum bowl for the early fourth dynasty. We found a potter's wheel-- a complete profile here. We found the peat for
preparing the clay. So this is a harbor,
but there is also-- in order to provide
all the pottery, there is a full pottery
workshop with it. So now those are the
big storage jars. They were inscribed with
those red signs before firing. That's something-- I've never
seen anything like that before. So when the jar was
ready, a scribe passed. He just inscribed those signs. They fired the pots,
and the sign turned red. And they were cooked, so
including to the clay. So most of these inscriptions
are really well preserved. So we have, generally,
the three inscription. This one-- remember
it , "Ma-Ouret." But we have also this one-- "Rekhu-bikwy-nebu"-
which is, in fact, built on the Golden
Horus name of King Khufu. So just in case we don't
know, it's written on it. This production is
clearly in the tradition of the early fourth dynasty. And the presence
of the Golden Horus name on the jars before
firing is just showing us that this production is
strictly contemporary, and it was through
the reign of Khufu. We have many other
inscription on the blocks here that they use
in order to close the entrance of the galleries. So this red mark is also built
on one of the name of Khufu. So that's another example
of the D-Stretch software that we use for reading
better the inscription. And so now, I will go
on detail on the closure system of the galleries. So on this group of
four galleries here-- G8, 9, 10, 11-- you can see that
the blocks in blue were probably put at the
entrance of the galleries at the very beginning. So they came, they
carved the galleries, they put these blocks-- blue blocks-- on the
side of it, creating a sort of pathway here
leading to the gallery. And then, each time
they leave the site, they push those blocks-- the red blocks at the
entrance-- in order to close the entrance
of the gallery. So a very heavy,
massive closure system at the entrance in
order to make sure that the wooden pieces will
be well preserved inside. So after the last occupation and
the last closure of this site, some people came and take
out the wooden pieces, but they never tried
to move the blocks out. They just cut the
ceiling like looters. They just cut the
ceiling of the galleries. They took the piece of boats. They reshaped and recarved them,
and they left the site with it. So we have the
entire closure system at the entrance in the
gallery perfectly in situ-- completely untouched since
the final closure of the site. And in the space
between the blocks, they put all those
tiny pebbles blocks, and we trashed a lot of things. And because we archaeologists
love the trash, we found a lot of objects-- a lot of elements from the
daily life at the site. So they trash many pieces of
boats, like this big piece. This is one meter, so
it's the largest piece we found so far, also
cedar from Lebanon. But all these tools
from the everyday life, even complete copper tools. We found this mallet. I have seen exactly the same
one at the MFA this morning. We found complete object-- just trash, here. They can bring them
back to develop it? They can reuse it? No. It's just trash. It's really the final
closure of this site. And you can see that we have
tons of pieces of linen. And regularly, there
is inscription on it. So as you see,
there is inscription on almost everything--
on the copper chisel. We have seen one on the wooden
pieces before here on textile. So everything is inscribed. But the most
interesting discovery came in 2013 in this area-- in the portcullis system
of the gallery J1-- when we found a set of papyrus,
a huge quantity of papyrus. There is probably
800 pieces so far. Those are the oldest inscribed
papyri ever discovered in Egypt. And you will see this
was extremely exciting, because a third of this papyrus
are not talking about anything in connection with
the Wadi al-Jarf, but they are in connection
with the construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza. So another clear evidence
for connection with Khufu. So we never expect
this discovery. And believe me or not, we found
this one the 1st of April, so it was not a joke. And we never expect
such a discovery. It was really tense
for Pierre, because we got the master part-- the main part-- of the deposit
two weeks before the end of the season. So it was a real
glass plate factory. We have to send every
two days our foreman in the near town in order
to buy this piece of glass that we use in order to
protect the piece of papyrus. So we have two
categories of documents. We'll go very first on the
account, which is about 2/3 of the documents in general. This is probably one of
the oldest Excel worksheet. It's working exactly
in the same way. I'm not an Egyptologist,
I'm an archaeologist, so the first time
I saw this piece, I said, oh, well, it's
an Excel worksheet. So this one is quite iconic. It was published all around,
because it's actually giving us a year. And this is a perfect
terminus post quem So it means they
close the galleries, and they trash or
deposit the papyrus when they are at the very
end of the occupation. And the date that we have here
is corresponding, more or less, to the end of the
reign of Khufu. So far, this is the last
year we know for his reign. There is apparently
another inscription that show up on
the closing system of the second boat at
Giza, very recently, mentioning a year 14 census. But for us, we have the
year after the 13th census of the large and
small cattle, which mean we are on the year 27. The census was done
every two years. So 13, 26 years,
the year after-- we are probably year 27
of the reign of Khufu. And you have his Horus
name, actually, here. So this is an account. You have here daily entries
and the list of good. But more interesting
for us, here you have the name of the team
for which those goods were delivered. And if you remember
those small signs, that's exactly the same
that we have on the jars. So on the papyrus, we
have the name of the team that we have also on the
jars, written before firing. But sometimes,
this is a di-pinti. And this is probably the name
of the team or one of the teams that was involve
into the expedition-- or the final
closure expedition-- of the site at Wadi al-Jarf. That's one of the
best preserved pieces. This is an account of bread. It's more than 86
centimeters in length. And when I told you it's
working like an Excel sheet, you can see here some of the
different kind of cereals. And here, they just
record what deliveries were scheduled,
what was delivered, and what is spending. And this is quite
interesting, also, because we have here the
provenance of the goods. This is the harbor
nome, which is a nome-- region, an administrative area-- in the eastern delta. So really, north of Egypt. So apparently,
these nome provide the food for this team
that works in Giza area. And that team was also send
at Wadi al-Jarf sometimes. So it looks like the goods are
coming from almost everywhere in Egypt. But in those documents we
have, these are Harpoon nome. We have also another provenance. So it's actually
quite interesting. But one third of the papyrus
are much fascinating, because they are a diary. They are an account of time of
a team that actually records several activities that they
had done in the Nile Valley, near the Giza area. So nothing in connection
with the Wadi al-Jarf itself. So I will be very short,
unfortunately, on that. But most of these papyri
has been published already by my colleague, Pierre Tallet. And Papyrus A and B-- there is much more coming. So those are the
best part preserved. So we have these three big
pieces here, Papyrus A and B. And this is a
count of the times. So the team of an inspector-- someone in charge,
Inspector Merer-- his team record, on a daily
basis, all the activities we have done in a day. So on such a document, you have
here the months of activity. Here, this is the
first month of Akhet, That's the beginning
of the year. Every 20 columns, here,
you have a red line. It's because the account
of time work in decade. And for each day,
there is two columns. So here, you will have
two columns for the day. Here, it's day nine. And for each day, they
would record what they did. And this is mostly-- today, we've done this
work at this place, we sleep at that place. And every day, for several
weeks and several months. So we'll go fast because
the time is running. But the most exciting part,
probably, in Papyrus B is actually-- the work they
done was transporting blocks from the Tora quarries
to the construction sites of the Great Pyramid at Giza. So you see here, day
26, Inspector Merer sailed with his phyle. So the phyle is
actually his team. It's about 40 people, probably. So he sail with his
phyle from Tora South, loaded with stones
for the Akhet-Khufu-- Akhet-Khufu is the name
of the Great Pyramid. Spending the night
at Ro-She Khufu-- we'll have a closer
look on that later-- the mouth of the lake of Khufu. Day 27. Inspector Merer sailed with his
phyle from the Ro-She Khufu. Navigation down the river,
north to the original Khufu. Loaded with stones. Day 28, Inspector Merer
sailed with his phyle from the origin of Khufu. In the morning, navigation
upstream to Tora South. Day 29, Inspector Merer and
spent a day with this phyle, collect the stones at Tora. It's extremely repetitive. We consider that for each
decade, every 10 days, it did this route
from the Tora quarries to the construction sites
probably two or three times. So it's journey. Basically, he's doing that. He is living. This is mostly-- well, I'm
going too much in detail here. I'm going to lose my-- so every 10 days, they change. That's a rotation. So for 10 days, they
will collect the stones at Tora North. They will go to the site
here at Ro-She Khufu. And It will take them
two days, round trip. So it took the blocks, put
the blocks on the boat, move one day, unload
the blocks, go back. So two days for a round trip. 10 days after the changing,
they will work from Tora South, and they will go to She Khufu-- which is close to Ro-She Khufu. We're going to see
that on the map after. And it's taking three days. So it's a little bit longer. But they're doing
that regularly for, according to
Pierre's evaluation, for about three months-- probably four months. We have only pieces
of the papyrus. And all these
activities have been done during the Nile flood. So the level of the
Nile is high enough. They load the blocks,
transport the blocks to the construction site. And they're doing
that intensively. A little detail. One of these
preparers is actually mentioning quite
important personage-- the half-brother of Khufu. So you can see here, on
day 24 of the papyrus before, Inspector
Merer and his phyle collect stones with the
subordinate of the palace, the "aper" team of
the noble Ankhhaf, director of the Ro-She Khufu. So at some point, they
worked for this guy. And if you have been
to the MFA, this is one of the masterpiece
of the museum. So we have here an
historical record of a really high-rank personage,
half-brother of Khufu. And this person is mentioned
as the director of the Ro-She Khufu, but he was probably
in charge of the construction of all the king, and probably
in charge of the construction of the pyramid-- at least, at the end
of the reign of Khufu. We have multiple toponyms
also recorded in this papyrus, like here are the
chapels of Khufu, with a triple determinative
of the chapel. And those documents made
it possible to reconstruct some elements of the topography
of the pyramid complex at Giza. And here, you can see
the 3D reconstruction made by Mark Lehner. And we think that several
of the toponyms recorded in the papyrus are actually
matching with those installation-- particularly
here, the Ro-She Khufu, which is the mouth of the lake-- probably the entrance and
access to here, a lake. So we can imagine that Merer and
his team came from North Tora, and just arrived this
area on one date. And after, they unload
the stones here. We have another toponym here-- She Khufu, which is in
connection with South Tora, and this is probably linked to
a part of the bath naturally in the area of the
Khufu Valley Temple, probably closest
to the Sphinx area. So for the moment,
Pierre only published this part of the documents. We have other fragments. Papyrus C is actually mentioning
something else-- probably the construction of an harbor
installation in the Nile Delta. So at that time of the year-- November, December--
the Nile flood is down. So the team of Merer
was sent somewhere else for doing other activities. Papyrus D and E, probably,
are in connection, also, with some maintenance
activity in the Nile valley. And for a season of
April, May, and June, with only very tiny pieces-- the study is still progress. Pierre is really
working with a puzzle. It's only tiny pieces. But just to give
you an idea of when you put the things together,
you found something that might be exciting. So all this, is still the
same set of documents. And you can see that here,
for about seven days, the team of Merer is
sailing in one direction. And after sailing for
probably three to four days, we start walking. So it's probably a real
extrapolation for the moment but, it might be possible that
this section of the papyrus is recording the trip from
the team of Merer from Giza. We know that they are leaving
from the second nome of lower Egypt. It's recorded in the document. And they probably go
south, sail for seven days, and start to record the trail
they did in the Nile valley. So it might be too
early, but it's possible that this
document, they start to record the work of
the team of Merer on the way to the Wadi al-Jarf. And according to Pierre,
seven pieces of the papyrus are already mentioning some
activities probably done at the site of Wadi
al-Jarf, or in the Sinai. So these documents were probably
a full year of recording. We preserved just the good
part at the beginning, but more is certainly coming. So I will finish here, because
I probably completely exploded the timing. But this is just a map that
summarize the information that we finally got after
15, about 20 years of work in the Red Sea now. We know that the first
harbor, the prototype, is definitely at Wadi al-Jarf. They build a huge complex-- probably too huge--
with multiple galleries that they never completely
used, huge buildings that they left almost clean. And at the end of
the reign of Khufu, this site was completely
closed and never reused. But if you remember this the
clay ceilings in Ain Sokhna. About 15, 20 years after the
closure of the Wadi al-Jarf, Khafre started to set in
to install a new hardware installation here at Ain Sokhna. And this one will be functional
for the next 800 years. In both case, they're
reaching the same area. In both case, we probably
stop at the Tell Ras Budran and Markha Fortress. But this location of Ain Sokhna
was much more interesting for the King that actually
build the complex in Giza. Moving from Giza
through the Wadi Araba, through the Wadi
al-Jarf, was too long. You had at least 10
to 12 days to cross the desert, plus at least
seven days on the Nile. So it was too far, too distant. Even if they built a perfect
harbor you can imagine, for Wadi al-Jarf, was
probably not so convenient. And they finally decide
to set the harbor for quite a long
time in Ain Sokhna, because the distance to Memphis,
to the capital, and to Giza, was shorter. And they are not afraid to make
two or three time a longer trip on the Red Sea. At that point
navigation is probably perfectly under control. So this is more or less done
the evolution of the harbor that we can build for this
area of the Gulf of Suez. So yes. Thank you so much. [APPLAUSE]
