Turin Papyrus Map

The Turin Papyrus is an ancient Egyptian map, which is considered important preserved topographic map from the period around 1160 BC. The bow was before 1824 in Deir el -Medina in Thebes found by Bernardino Drovetti, who worked as Napoleon's Proconsul in Egypt. The document is now in the Egyptian Museum in Turin.

Origin

The card was BC by the famous writer Amennachte made ​​(son Ipuys ) in 1160 and served an expedition to Wadi Hammamat Ramses IV in the Eastern Desert. The goal was metagreywacke Precambrian rocks, so-called " Bekhen Stones ", a Sandsteinart the Arabic - Nubian plate, from which King stelae should be made. Although already several times in the Egyptological literature the area around Bir Umm Wadi Hammamat Fawakhir with was called as the localization of the papyrus in Egypt's Eastern Desert, these assumptions were the first to be clearly confirmed by Klemm & Klemm ( 1989) on the basis of aerial photographs.

Map content

The map shows a 15 km long stretch of the Wadi Hammamat, its confluence with the Wadi Atalla and El -Sid, the surrounding hills, the Bekhenstein quarry, a gold mine and the settlement at Bir Umm Fawakhir.

There are also numerous comments on the pictures, the objectives of the Wadiverläufe, the distances between the quarry and mine the gold deposits in the hills and the Bekhensteinblöcken in the quarry on the map. The map is oriented top to the south towards the source of the Nile. As reconstructed in the Turin Museum, is the map the dimensions 2.8 x 0.41 m have what but not with recent investigations of Harrell and Brown ( 1992a, 1992b ) matches.

Importance

It concerns with the document not only the first, but already amazing modern design topographic map, but at the same time to the earliest known geological map, as they marked as black and pink hillside locations of the various rock types, and the different, as brown, green and white dots marked Wadi gravels indicates and also contains information for obtaining the stones and mining products.

The artist presented the terrain features have clear, and is in accordance with the actual conditions and increased information content through comments and contrasting colors.