Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures

2016 Edition
| Editors: Helaine Selin

Maps and Mapmaking in Egypt: Turin Papyrus Map

Reference work entry
First Online:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7747-7_9771
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Discovery and Reconstruction of the 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; Černy, 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...
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.University of ToledoToledoUSA