The Turin Papyrus Map is the oldest surviving geographical (and geological) map in the world. The map depicts the 15-kilometer stretch of Wadi Hammamat showing villages, hills, gold mines and quarries, and the distances between them. Performed on a papyrus scroll around 1160 BC. e. for the participants of the expedition organized by Ramses IV to the quarries there by the famous scribe of tombs Amennakhte.
And although Amennakhte did not put his signature on it, there is no doubt that he is the author of the map. Egyptologists are well familiar with his handwriting, known from many other papyri, there is one more evidence, the first, the earliest text on the back of the papyrus is nevertheless signed by Amennakhte. It is not at all surprising that it was he, as one of the two Scribes of the Tomb, who created this map during the reign of Ramses IV. The remains of the house of Amennakhte, son of Ipai, have been identified at Deir el-Medina by an inscription on the doorframe.
The map, which is on display in the Egyptian Museum of Turin, was discovered in Deir el Medina, a village of artisans near Thebes, by the people of the Napoleonic envoy, the French consul general in Egypt, Bernardino Drovetti between 1814 and 1821.
She is reported to be found in a tomb at Deir el-Medina, an artisan settlement in Ancient Egypt.
Left side of the card.
Right side of the card.
Soon, the papyrus was sold to the Sardinian king Charles Felix, who established in 1824 the Egyptian Museum in Turin (the capital of the Sardinian kingdom), the first museum of its kind in the world. The map is currently in his collection. Many parts of the papyrus were originally thought to be fragments of separate papyri representing maps of Ancient Egypt and identified as the Turin Papyri of 1869, 1879 and 1899, but ultimately small pieces, like in a mosaic, were assembled into a single map about 280 centimeters long and 41 centimeters wide. When the papyrus was discovered, it was opened, after which it was processed, which explains its poor preservation.
The Turin papyrus map is notable, first of all, in that it provides specific topographic data of Ancient Egypt. There are maps drawn outside Egypt of an earlier period, but they are all too abstract in comparison with the relatively modern geographical outlines on the Turin papyrus.
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The map shows a fifteen-kilometer stretch of Wadi Hammamat (Valley of Many Baths), a dried-up river bed in the Arabian Desert, between the cities of Keift and El Quseir. In ancient Egypt, the region was considered the main one in the mining industry, being also an important trade route from Thebes to the Red Sea port of Elim, then to the Great Silk Road, leading to Asia or Arabia or the Horn of Africa (Somalia).
Inscriptions, carvings on rock walls, which are at least three thousand years old, represent the richest scientific material for historians and, of course, an outstanding sight. The topography and geological data of Wadi Hammamat are clearly depicted on the papyrus map. In Wadi, there were Precambrian rocks of the Arabian-Nubian shield, composed of basalt, shale, quartz with a gold content, bekhen stone, which was highly valued by the ancient Egyptians (metagrawacke), used to make statues, sarcophagi, and pallets.
The papyrus was compiled by order of the pharaoh Ramses IV. It is known that this pharaoh had a weakness for construction. His funeral temple in Asasif, according to the plan, was to be truly colossal. True, these plans were not destined to come true - the pharaoh died before the builders had time to rise above the level of the foundation of the temple, nevertheless, such ideas required an established supply of stone, so it is not surprising that it was under Ramses IV that the largest was sent to Wadi Hammamat. an expedition that would now be called a geological exploration. It is as part of this expedition that we meet our old friend Amennakhte, the son of Ipaya, a scribe.