The Red Sea Scrolls: How Ancient Papyri Reveal the Secrets of the Pyramids

by Mark Lehner, Pierre Tallet

Overview

The inside story, told by excavators of the extraordinary discovery of the world’s oldest papyri, revealing how Egyptian King Khufu’s men built the Great Pyramid at Giza.

Pierre Tallet’s discovery of the Red Sea Scrolls—the world’s oldest surviving written documents—in 2013 was one of the most remarkable moments in the history of Egyptology. These papyri, written some 4,600 years ago, and combined with Mark Lehner’s research, changed what we thought we knew about the building of the Great Pyramid at Giza.

Here, for the first time, the world-renowned Egyptologists Tallet and Lehner give us the definitive account of this astounding discovery. The story begins with Tallet’s hunt for hieroglyphic rock inscriptions in the Sinai Peninsula and leads up to the discovery of the papyri, the diary of Inspector Merer, who oversaw workers in the reign of Pharaoh Khufu in Wadi el-Jarf, the site of an ancient harbor on the Red Sea. The translation of the papyri reveals how the stones of the Great Pyramid ended up in Giza. Combined with Lehner’s excavations of the harbor at the pyramid construction site the Red Sea Papyri have greatly advanced our understanding of how the ancient Egyptians were able to build monuments that survive to this day.

Tallet and Lehner narrate this thrilling discovery and explore how the building of the pyramids helped create a unified state, propelling Egyptian civilization forward. This lavishly illustrated book captures the excitement and significance of these seminal findings, conveying above all how astonishing it is to discover a contemporary eyewitness testimony to the creation of the only remaining Wonder of the Ancient World.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780500052112
Publisher:	Thames & Hudson
Publication date:	01/11/2022
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	335,123
Product dimensions:	9.50(w) x 7.00(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Mark Lehner is president of Ancient Egypt Research Associates and research associate at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. He has conducted fieldwork at Giza for over forty years. He is the author of the bestselling The Complete Pyramids and the definitive volume on the subject, Giza and the Pyramids.

Pierre Tallet is a professor of Egyptology at the Sorbonne and president of the French Society of Egyptology. He is the leader of the archaeological mission at Wadi el-Jarf, where he discovered the Red Sea Papyri.

Table of Contents

Prologue 6

Introduction 13

Part I On the Trail of the Pyramid Builders 20

Chapter 1 Riches in Egypt's Remote Deserts 22

Chapter 2 Finding the Red Sea Ports 37

Part II Why the Red Sea and the Pyramids are Linked 66

Chapter 3 The Quest for Copper The Crucial Mines in Sinai and their Role in Building the Pyramids 68

Chapter 4 From Sneferu to Khufu Great Kings and their Giant Pyramids 84

Chapter 5 From Khufu to Khafre Wadi el-Jarf to Ayn Sukhna 121

Part III The World's Oldest Written Documents 130

Chapter 6 Finding the Papyri 132

Chapter 7 Translating the Papyri 147

Chapter 8 What the Papyri Tell Us 162

Part IV The Story of Inspector Merer 178

Chapter 9 How Merer and His Men Transported Stone to Giza 180

Chapter 10 From the Red Sea to the Nile Delta A Year in the Life of Merer and his Men 198

Part V How they Built the Great Pyramid 212

Chapter 11 From Workers' Village to Port City 214

Chapter 12 Ankh-haf, Director of the Port of Khufu 235

Chapter 13 Feeding and Supplying the Workers 249

Chapter 14 How They Might Have Raised the Stones 257

Part VI Legacy 282

Chapter 15 How the Pyramids Created a Unified State 284

Epilogue Future Discoveries on the Red Sea Coast? 303

Chronology 308

Bibliography 309

Sources of Illustrations 314

Acknowledgments 315

Index 315