Découvertes chromatiques dans les carrières du ouadi Hammamat
Résumé
Halfway between the Nile and the Red Sea, the road crossing the ancient Eastern Desert and known to us today as Wadi Hammamat is home to the greywacke and siltstone quarries that had been exploited from Predynastic times onward. Renowned since the days of its first modern-era explorers, the quarries have been explored many times by epigraphic and archaeological survey teams over the last century. After Dr Annie Gasse’s 1980s expedition, which uncovered hundreds of engravings, a current edition project aims to (re)study an extensive epigraphic material of close to 400 inscriptions. This work has recently brought to light under-explored local practices: red inking and painting of rock faces with yellows, greens, blacks and blues. Thanks to DStretch-processed images, no less than 26 occurrences have already been recorded, covering the entire Pharaonic period, from the Old Kingdom to Roman rule. Although this material is still under study, the purpose of the present paper is to provide insight into this corpus and present the most significant sample of these new iconographic and textual sources. The initial interpretive study reveals that these practices served three specific purposes: functional, aesthetic and symbolic.