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THE HARBOR OF KHUFU on the Red Sea Coast at Wadi al-Jarf, Egypt

Pierre Tallet has been Associate Professor of Egyptology and Archaeology at the University of Paris Sorbonne since 2001. Since 2014 he has headed the section “Mondes Pharaoniques” of the CNRS Unit 8167 “Orient et Méditerranée.” As the assistant for the publications at the IFAO during the late 1990s, he participated in many archaeological expeditions at Balat (Dakhla Oasis), Bahariya Oasis, Karnak temple, and Deir el-Medina. Since 2000, he has been the co-director of the excavations at Ayn Sukhna and since 2006 he has led an survey of the Southern Sinai mining areas around Sekhabit al-Khadim, whose results are currently in press at the IFAO. He has headed the French mission at Wadi al-Jarf since 2011.

Gregory Marouard is an archaeologist, specialist in domestic archeology and Egyptian urbanism. Since 2010, he has been Research Associate at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago. He is co-director of the Tell Edfu Project and he has collaborated on the field with Pierre Tallet since 2002 at Ayn Sukhna and Wadi al-Jarf. After several years of experience in rescue archaeology in Europe, he has been involved since 2000 as senior archaeologist and ceramicist on several excavations in the Fayum area, at Buto, Karnak temple, Dendara, Abydos, and Bawit. He also participates in an extensive survey project in the Wadi Araba, investigating the access trails from the Nile Valley to the Wadi al-Jarf.

In 2011, a team from the University of Paris-Sorbonne and the IFAO discovered an important harbor complex from the Old Kingdom at Wadi al-Jarf. Located along the Egyptian shore of the Red Sea, this strategic anchorage was used as a departure point to the Sinai Peninsula for royal expeditions to the copper and turquoise mining areas located on the opposite side of the Gulf of Suez. The site was exclusively occupied during the beginning of the 4th Dynasty and it can now be considered the oldest harbor in the world. In 2013 the discovery of several dozen fragments of papyrus, the oldest inscribed papyri ever unearthed in Egypt, confirmed the early date of this site and revealed a final closure of this installation at the end of the reign of Khufu.