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Günter Dreyer (5 October 1943 – 12 March 2019) was an
Egyptologist Egyptology (from ''Egypt'' and Greek , ''-logia''; ) is the scientific study of ancient Egypt. The topics studied include ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, architecture and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end ...
at the
German Archaeological Institute The German Archaeological Institute (, ''DAI'') is a research institute in the field of archaeology (and other related fields). The DAI is a "federal agency" under the Federal Foreign Office, Federal Foreign Office of Germany. Status, tasks and ...
. In southern Egypt, Dreyer discovered records of linen and oil deliveries which have been carbon-dated to between 3300 BCE and 3200 BCE, predating the Dynastic Period.


Academic career and findings

He originally worked as a chemical laboratory assistant. He studied Egyptology, Assyriology, and ancient Near Eastern Archeology at the
University of Hamburg The University of Hamburg (, also referred to as UHH) is a public university, public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('':de:Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen, ...
(1969-1971) and
Free University of Berlin The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public university, public research university in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in West Berlin in 1948 with American support during the early Cold War period a ...
(1971-1978). During his studies, he took part in excavations in Kamid al lawz in
Lebanon Lebanon, officially the Republic of Lebanon, is a country in the Levant region of West Asia. Situated at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian Peninsula, it is bordered by Syria to the north and east, Israel to the south ...
, the Mortuary Temple of Seti I in Qurna, and on
Elephantine Elephantine ( ; ; ; ''Elephantíne''; , ) is an island on the Nile, forming part of the city of Aswan in Upper Egypt. The archaeological site, archaeological digs on the island became a World Heritage Site in 1979, along with other examples of ...
. In 1978 he received his doctorate with a thesis on temple dedications from the early period and the
Old Kingdom In ancient Egyptian history, the Old Kingdom is the period spanning –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 Dynast ...
(''Der Tempel der Satet 1. Die Funde der Frühzeit und des Alten Reiches''). Between 1978 and 1987, Dreyer was a consultant in the Cairo department of the DAI and took part in excavations on Elephantine, in Wadi Garawi, and in Abydos . In 1987 he received a habilitation grant from the German Research Foundation and accepted a teaching position at the Free University of Berlin. In 1988, Dreyer and his colleague Werner Kaiser excavated at the temple
Umm el-Qa'ab Umm El Qaʻāb (sometimes romanisation, romanised Umm El Gaʻab, ) is an archaeological site located at Abydos, Egypt. Its modern name, meaning "Mother of Pots", refers to the mound made of millions of broken pieces of pots which defines the landsc ...
in Abydos on the cemetery "U" the burial site of the king (U-j), which is dated to the Naquada period IIIa2, known as king
Scorpion I Scorpion I () was a ruler of Upper Egypt during Naqada III. He was one of the first rulers of Ancient Egypt, and a graffito of him depicts a battle with an unidentified predynastic ruler. His tomb is known for the evidence of early examples of wi ...
. Currently, this is the earliest known large royal tomb of old Egypt. The most important finds were about 400 large wine jars being inscribed resp. having tags showing phonetically readable characters of a script, the first of its kind in Egypt. They identify the person laid into the grave, as the inscription says, "plantation of (king) Scorpion." Script also name his successor, a king Double Falcon I. The scientific importance lies in the fact of finding
Egyptian hieroglyphs Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs ( ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined Ideogram, ideographic, logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 1,000 distinct char ...
which predate
cuneiform script Cuneiform is a Logogram, logo-Syllabary, syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform script ...
. The mentioned hieroglyphs are on small wooden tags applied to the jars, probably marking their origin and "are fully developed", as Dreyer stated. In October 1989, he became the 2nd Director of the DAI, Cairo Department. He was responsible for the editing of the department's publication and also took over the management of the excavations in Abydos. In 1997 he published his habilitation thesis The Predynastic Royal Tomb Uj in Abydos, and his early written documents, and he became head of the excavations on Elephantine. In November 1998, Dreyer became 1st director of the Cairo department of the DAI. In the same year, Dreyer found another writing on small ivory labels, and he concluded that these support the challenge to the prevailing view that the first people to write were the
Sumer Sumer () is the earliest known civilization, located in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (now south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. ...
ians of
Mesopotamia Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary of ...
(modern-day Iraq) sometime before 3000 BCE. The academic also led excavations at the quarry cemetery in Giza (2002/03) and at the royal tombs of the 2nd dynasty in Saqqara (since 2002). He retired in 2008, and Stephan Seidlmayer was his successor. But he continued to work on his excavations and research in the following years.


Commemoration

On October 5, 2023 to commemorate the 80th year of his birth, the Thomas Heagy Foundation for the study of Early Egypt established the "Committee to Commemorate the life and achievements of Gunter Dreyer". The Committee consists of Thomas C Heagy (President of the Thomas Heagy Foundation), Isabel Plumed (Dreyer's widow), and Dietrich Raue (current Director of the German Institute of Archaeology in Cairo). At its inaugural meeting, the committee established as its first priority, the completion of the publication of cemetery Umm el Qaab which was left unfinished by Dreyer's untimely death.


Works

* ''Der Tempel der Satet 1. Die Funde der Frühzeit und des Alten Reiches'' he Temple of Satet 1: The finds from the Early Period and the Old Kingdom 1986. * ''Umm el-Qaab 1. Das prädynastische Königsgrab U-j und seine frühen Schriftzeugnisse'' mm el-Qaab 1: The predynastic royal tomb U-j and its early written records Archäologische Veröffentlichungen, vol. 86. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1998, . * editor with Daniel Polz: ''Begegnung mit der Vergangenheit. 100 Jahre in Ägypten. Deutsches Archäologisches Institut Kairo 1907–2007'' ncounter with the past. 100 years in Egypt. German Archaeological Institute Cairo 1907-2007 2007.


See also

*
Bull (Pharaoh) Taurus or Bull is the provisional name for a Predynastic Egyptian ruler whose historicity is disputed. He is considered a ruler of the late Chalcolithic Naqada III culture of southern Ancient Egypt, Egypt. If "Taurus" or "Bull" actually represents ...


References


External links

* https://archive.archaeology.org/9903/newsbriefs/egypt.html * https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/featured_articles/20020416tuesday.html?scp=7&sq=abydos&st=cse {{DEFAULTSORT:Dreyer, Gunter 1943 births 2019 deaths German Egyptologists German male non-fiction writers People from Cloppenburg Archaeologists from Lower Saxony University of Hamburg alumni Free University of Berlin alumni