Maps and Mapmaking in Egypt: Turin Papyrus Map

An ancient Egyptian map drawn on a scroll of papyrus paper was discovered between 1814 and 1821 by agents of Bernardino Drovetti, the French Consul General in Egypt. The map came from a private tomb in the ancient village of Deir el‐Medina, near the modern‐day city of Luxor (ancient Thebes) in Egypt (Fig. 1). This village housed the workers responsible for excavating and decorating the royal tombs of the Egyptian New Kingdom (1539–1075 BCE) in the nearby Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens (Bierbrier, 1982; Cerny, 1973; Romer, 1984). Soon after it was found, the map was sold to King Charles Felix, ruler of the northern Italian Kingdom of Sardinia and Piedmont. In 1824, this king established the Egyptian Museum in Turin, the kingdom’s capital, and here the map has resided ever since. The many map fragments were originally considered parts of three separate papyri that were designated as “Papyrus or P. Turin” 1869, 1879, and 1899. Most of these fragments were eventually recombined to form a single map about 280 cm long by 41 cm wide (Fig. 2). This papyrus has long been recognized as one of the oldest geographic maps to survive from antiquity and much has been written about it (e.g., Gardiner, 1914; Goyon, 1949; Harrell & Brown, 1992; Janssen, 1994; Klemm & Klemm, 1988; Murray, 1942; O’Connor, 2012, pp. 59–67; Thomas, 1913). The current reconstruction of the map in the Egyptian Museum, which dates to the early 1900s, is incorrect in several of its details. A new arrangement of the map fragments has been proposed and this is shown in Figs. 3, 4, 5, and 6. The principal changes are the transposition of map fragments H‐J and E, the placement of L at the bottom of E, and the narrowing of gaps between many of the fragments (which shortens the map to about 210 cm). This new reconstruction is consistent with the requirements that: