Collection(s) : Les guides de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientale
Paru le 31/07/2023 | Broché 179 pages
Public motivé
translation into english Ian Shaw
The site of Deir el-Medina is unique in its particularly well-preserved archaeological remains, which represent an exceptional ensemble in Egypt (consisting of a village, a necropolis and a temple), and in the rich documentation that it has delivered across the millennia.
The inhabitants of Deir el-Medina-artists as well as craftsmen-dug and decorated the hypogea of the sovereigns in the Valley of the Kings and Queens. They did not restrict the use of their talents to the only benefit of the sovereigns, but decorated, or had decorated by the most skilled amongst them, their own tombs and were buried with hundreds of cult objects and grave goods. The scribes kept archives, which constitute an incredible wealth of information for the history of the New Kingdom and the functioning of the royal sites. They also had literary interests, and some of them established libraries, which are considered among the richest of those that have survived.
Walking around the site of Deir el-Medina and studying the paintings that adorn the walls of the rock tombs, the visitor will get to know the spirit of its occupants, their earthly ambitions, the religious and funerary universe of their conception of the afterlife and also the feasts of the multiple deities who composed the local pantheon. Coming upon the temple, built in the Ptolemaic period, comes as a perfect ending to this archaeological walk.
Egyptologist, former Research Fellow of IFAO, Guillemette Andreu-Lanoë has been curator and director of the Department of the Egyptian Antiquities in the Louvre Museum. As a specialist of Deir el-Medina, she was In charge in 2002 of an international exhibition (Paris, Turin, Brussels) displaying the world of the artists and craftsmen of Deir el-Medina.
Former Research Fellow of IFAO, Professor Emerita at Sorbonne University, Dominique Valbelle has devoted many years to the site of Deir el-Medina. She has written a synthesis on the institution and the men of « the Tomb » and has published several volumes on the ouchebtis, the weights with hieratic inscriptions, a tomb and the census registers in the Village.
