Author Description

In December 2014, excavation near the temple of Ptah in Karnak uncovered a favissa--a pit filled with objects--dug a few meters behind the shrine of the god. The pit contained thirty-eight objects, statues, statuettes and statuary elements, in limestone, greywacke, copper alloy and Egyptian frit, sometimes gilded. The visualization and analysis of the favissa filling has been made possible by the use of modern photogrammetric survey, and 3D modeling methods. Dug at the end of the Ptolemaic Period, the pit housed a New Kingdom broken statue of the god Ptah, surrounded by religious artefacts and many Osirian bronzes, most of the objects dating back to the Third Intermediate Period and the Late Period (especially 25th and 26th Dynasties). The analysis and the interpretation of the data lead, in this volume, to look at the Egyptian sacred caches as a whole, and to consider the present deposit as a testimony of the burial of a statue of the god Ptah in an Osirian ritual context.