Les Papyrus de la Mer Rouge III

This third volume of "Red Sea papyri", devoted to the group of papyri discovered in 2013 in the "large deposit" in front of caves G1 and G2 at the Wadi el-Jarf site, focuses on the publication of the best-preserved accounting documents that were part of this ensemble. Fourteen of the documents presented here (from papyrus G to papyrus T) relate, in different ways, to the recording of foodstuffs, equipment and tools made available to the teams working in this intermittent port on the Red Sea at the end of the reign of Khufu. These accounting lists record the delivery of different kinds of bread, cereals, dried fish, various types of beer and a wide variety of foodstuffs, which clearly shows that the highly specialized personnel employed by the monarchy to carry out monumental projects like the building of the Great Pyramid of Giza were very well treated by the administration, and sometimes even had access to products that were relatively rare at the time, such as honey, dates and ointments. A final document (papyrus U)-unfortunately very fragmentary-is probably one of the earliest known geographic "guides".