Diary of Merer

The Diary of Merer (also known as Papyrus Jarf) is the name for papyrus logbooks written over 4,500 years ago by Merer, a middle-ranking official with the title inspector (sḥḏ, sehedj). They are the oldest known papyri with text, dating to the 27th year of the reign of pharaoh Khufu during the 4th dynasty. The text, written with (hieratic) hieroglyphs, mostly consists of lists of the daily activities of Merer and his crew. The best preserved sections (Papyrus Jarf A and B) document the transportation of white limestone blocks from the Tura quarries to Giza by boat.

Wadi al-Jarf
Find-spot

Giza

Tura quarries

Map of northern Egypt showing the location of the Tura quarries, Giza, and the find-spot of the Diary of Merer

Buried in front of man-made caves that served to store the boats at Wadi al-Jarf on the Red Sea coast, the papyri were found and excavated in 2013 by a French mission under the direction of archaeologists Pierre Tallet of Paris-Sorbonne University and Gregory Marouard. A popular account on the importance of this discovery was published by Pierre Tallet and Mark Lehner, calling the corpus "Red Sea scrolls".

The Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass describes the Diary of Merer as "the greatest discovery in Egypt in the 21st century." Parts of the papyri are exhibited at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.