This week is coming out Egypt and the Nile Valley, volume 3, late eras (1069-332 BC) PUF editions, a volume dedicated to late eras, since the XXI^e dynasty until the end of the XXX^e dynasty. This is an opportunity for its author, Frédéric Payraudeau, lecturer at Sorbonne University (Paris), to present this innovative synthesis to us over an often overlooked period.

SFE: This book was long overdue!

Brother Payraudeau: Indeed, this 3^e volume of the Clio collection appears more than 25 years after the previous ones. It is paradoxically a chance, because the knowledge of these periods has evolved more deeply in the last 30 years than in the previous century. Today, they seem less marked by decadence than by successive adaptations that allowed Egyptian civilization to last a millennium after the fall of the Ramses. The proliferation of studies on late eras over the past 20 years, particularly in Europe, has significantly enriched the work but has slowed down its drafting, which has spanned over 8 years. The bibliography, however selective, spans 75 pages!

SFE: What were these great advances concerning these periods?

Brother Payraudeau: These questions do not arise in the same way for the Third Intermediate Period and the Late Period. For the first, the simple succession of pharaohs is still sometimes problematic but has progressed a lot since the work of Jean Yoyotte and Kenneth Kitchen. As for the Late Period, the historical knowledge was already solid, but the period was subject to a re-evaluation in the cultural field in particular. The art of these eras is now appreciated at its fair value by specialists in ancient Egypt as well as by the informed public, as shown by recent exhibitions at the Musée Jacquemart-André and the Musée de Grenoble. I am also happy to have been able to include illustrations in this volume, which was not the case for the previous works. The archaeological excavations concerning vestiges of these times have also developed a lot since the beginning of this century (Osirian chapels of Karnak, Tanis, Bubastis, Heraklion, Heliopolis…). This made it possible to clarify many points of history.

SFE: Does this book extend the issues dealt with in the first volumes?

Brother Payraudeau: Yes, we no longer write ancient history as we did thirty or forty years ago. Egyptology, although often accused of conservatism, has long been open to social, economic and cultural history, even if the documentation has its limits in these areas. So I wanted to give, in addition to a detailed chronological panorama of the XXI^e at XXX^e dynasties, an overview of knowledge and discussions on transversal subjects, absent from the first two volumes of the collection. We will thus find chapters on the monarchical state, administration, economy, culture and religion of late eras.

See summary of the book

_______________________________________________________________________________

News from “friendly” associations

On January 11, 2020, from 16:00 p.m., Mr. Bernard Mathieu will give a conference at the Association dauphinoise d'Égyptologie Champollion (ADEC), "Me, Inhermosé, high priest of Onouris"
The high priest of Onouris Inhermosé, who officiated under the reign of Mérenptah, son and successor of Ramses II, is not among the greatest figures of Pharaonic Egypt. His autobiography, however, the longest known for the Ramesside era, engraved in a rock tomb of Al-Mashayikh, not far from the ancient This, really deserves a stop.
The text, certainly by Inhermosé himself, draws on a classical tradition to add original developments. Its content and its formal elaboration make it possible to get to know this character, both a great state clerk and a fine scholar, "a scribe worthy of acclaim, a notable worthy of being praised".

________________________________________________________________________