Henri Louis Marie Alexandre Gauthier (19 September 1877 – 1950
) was a French
Egyptologist
Egyptology (from ''Egypt'' and Greek , '' -logia''; ar, علم المصريات) is the study of ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, architecture and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end of its native religious ...
and geographer. In 1903 he entered the
French Institute of Oriental Archaeology of Cairo. He made extensive excavations at
Dra Abu el-Naga
The necropolis of Draʻ Abu el-Naga' ( ar, دراع ابو النجا) is located on the West Bank of the Nile at Thebes, Egypt, just by the entrance of the dry bay that leads up to Deir el-Bahari and north of the necropolis of el-Assasif. The n ...
and
El Qattah (1904),
and devoted himself to work on both historical and geographical
issues of Ancient Egypt. In 1909 he was part of a French team which discovered
Huni's Pyramid in
Elephantine
Elephantine ( ; ; arz, جزيرة الفنتين; el, Ἐλεφαντίνη ''Elephantíne''; , ) is an island on the Nile, forming part of the city of Aswan in Upper Egypt. The archaeological sites on the island were inscribed on the UNESCO ...
, and discovered a large
granite
Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...
conical object with an inscription revealing the name of the pharaoh
Huni
Huni (original reading unknown) was an ancient Egyptian king and the last pharaoh of the Third Dynasty of Egypt during the Old Kingdom period. Following the Turin king list, he is commonly credited with a reign of 24 years, ending c. 2613 ...
of the
3rd dynasty of the
Old Kingdom
In ancient Egyptian history, the Old Kingdom is the period spanning c. 2700–2200 BC. It is also known as the "Age of the Pyramids" or the "Age of the Pyramid Builders", as it encompasses the reigns of the great pyramid-builders of the Fourth ...
.
Gauthier worked with
Gaston Maspero
Sir Gaston Camille Charles Maspero (23 June 1846 – 30 June 1916) was a French Egyptologist known for popularizing the term "Sea Peoples" in an 1881 paper.
Maspero's son, Henri Maspero, became a notable sinologist and scholar of East Asia.
...
who asked him to copy the inscriptions of the
Nubia
Nubia () (Nobiin: Nobīn, ) is a region along the Nile river encompassing the area between the first cataract of the Nile (just south of Aswan in southern Egypt) and the confluence of the Blue and White Niles (in Khartoum in central Sudan), or ...
n temples of
Amada
The Temple of Amada, the oldest Egyptian temple in Nubia, was first constructed by Pharaoh Thutmose III of the 18th dynasty and dedicated to Amun and Re-Horakhty. His son and successor, Amenhotep II continued the decoration program for this st ...
,
Kalabsha
New Kalabsha is a promontory located near Aswan in Egypt.
Created during the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia, it houses several important temples, structures, and other remains that have been relocated here from the site ...
and
Wadi es-Sebua
The temples of Wadi es-Sebua ( ar, وادى السبوع , translate=Valley of the Lions, so-called because of the sphinx-lined approach to the temple forecourts), is a pair of New Kingdom Egyptian temples, including one speos temple constructed ...
.
References
French Egyptologists
French geographers
1877 births
1950 deaths
Members of the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale
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