New book on discovery of Egypt's Karnak Cachette launched

Egypt's antiquities ministry and the French Institute for Oriental Studies (IFAO) launched a new book that highlights George Legrain's discovery of Karnak Cachette under the title: "Karnak Cachette: New prespectives on the discoveries of Georges Legrain."
Hussein Bassir, the general-director of the General Administration of Scientific Publication, explained that the book is the result of fruitful cooperation between the Ministry of Antiquities and the IFAO.

The cooperation, Bassir explained, helped highlight the excavation works carried out at Karnak temples by the renowned French archaeologist Georges Legrain, after one hundred years of his discovery of Karnak Cachette and to pay tribute to his diligent work at Thebes.

The book has four parts: Part One analyses cachettes in Pharaonic Egypt, Part Two deals with historical and archaeological approaches to the Karnak Cachette, Part Three investigates the contribution of the Karnak Cachette to Egyptian and art history, and Part Four goes into the Late Period statues of Karnak Cachette and their function in the Karnak temples.

The book ends with an index and English summaries of the contributions.

Twenty-four studies on the Karnak Cachette are included, written by international scholars.

The contributions, written in English, French, and German, investigate objects found in this deposit, analyse the Cachette itself, and shed light on other Egyptian cachettes.

George Legrain (1865-1917) started his work in Egypt as a member of the French institute before being appointed by Jacques De Morgan as inspector of the Service des Antiquités and then as director of the works at Karnak in 1895.

Legrain excavated the cachette between 1903 and 1907, leading to the discovery of a very high number of artifacts, some of which are still unpublished. These objects are of great significance for the religious life at Karnak and for the history and art of ancient Egypt between the Middle Kingdom and the Ptolemaic Period.

The Karnak Cachette is really one of the major archaeological discoveries in Egypt of the twentieth century.