Author Description

In the mid-1970s, Michel Azim, architect at the Franco-Egyptian Center for the Study of the Temples of Karnak, undertook the first large-scale archaeological investigation in the courtyard of the 10th pylon since the work of Georges Legrain at the beginning of the 20th century. Despite its importance, however, this operation has remained largely unpublished and the results of the work carried out have been the subject of only a few preliminary reports and notes. The present book concludes an ambitious program of inventorying the documentation of these excavations stored in several French and Egyptian institutions. All the results of the research carried out from 1975 to 1977 are re-examined here in the light of a stratigraphic evaluation test-pit undertaken in 2015-the archaeological material from which is analyzed by a dozen specialists. Although the sequence of constructions and occupations of the 10th pylon courtyard remains very close to the one initially established by the excavator, the recent analyses make it possible to more precisely calibrate the chronology of the site, and will thus prove essential for the study of Ancient Thebes.