Diary of Merer

Diary of Merer is located in Northern Egypt
 Wadi al-Jarf   Find-spot 
 Wadi al-Jarf 
 Find-spot 
 Giza 
 Giza 
 Tura quarries 
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Map of northern Egypt showing the location of the Tura quarries, Giza, and the find-spot of the 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 26th year[1] of the reign of Pharaoh Khufu (reigned in the early 26th century BC, estimated c. 2589 – c. 2566 BC[2][3][4]) during the Fourth Dynasty of Egypt.[5] 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.

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.[6][7][8][9] A popular account on the importance of this discovery was published by Pierre Tallet and Mark Lehner, calling the corpus "Red Sea scrolls"[10] (an allusion to the Dead Sea Scrolls).

The Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass describes the Diary of Merer as "the greatest discovery in Egypt in the 21st century."[5] Parts of the papyri are exhibited at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.[11]

  1. ^ Tallet 2017, p. 160.
  2. ^ Clayton, Peter A. Chronicle of the Pharaohs. p. 42. Thames and Hudson, London, 2006. ISBN 978-0-500-28628-9
  3. ^ Malek, Jaromir, "The Old Kingdom" in The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, ed. Ian Shaw, Oxford University Press 2000, ISBN 978-0-19-280458-7 p. 88
  4. ^ "Khufu's 30-Year Jubilee: Newly Discovered Pieces of a Puzzle". Archived from the original on 21 May 2024. Retrieved 21 May 2024.
  5. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Smithsonian was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ "4,500-year-old harbor structures and papyrus texts unearthed in Egypt". NBC News. Retrieved 2019-07-30.
  7. ^ "Story of the Pyramid builders revealed in 4500-yr-old papyri". CatchNews.com. Retrieved 2019-07-30.
  8. ^ "A 4,500 Year Old Papyrus Holds the Answer to How the Great Pyramid Was Built". interestingengineering.com. 2017-09-25. Retrieved 2019-07-30.
  9. ^ "Revealed: 4,500-year-old Papyrus that details the construction of the Great Pyramid – Mysterious Earth". Archived from the original on 2020-11-16. Retrieved 2019-07-30.
  10. ^ Tallet, Pierre; Lehner, Mark (2021). The Red Sea scrolls: how ancient papyri reveal the secrets of the pyramids. London New York, New York: Thames & Hudson Ltd. ISBN 978-0-500-05211-2.
  11. ^ Stille, Alexander (2015). "The Power and the Glory". Smithsonian. 46 (6): 6.