Final Report on the Professional Development Award of Dr. Peter J. Brand for 2011-2012

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Final Report on the Professional Development Award of Dr. Peter J. Brand for 2011-2012
During my PDA I concentrated my efforts on the Karnak Great Hypostyle Hall Project, including fieldwork and publications. The Hypostyle Hall Project is a joint endeavor of the University of Memphis and the Université de Québec à Montréal, Canada. Its mission has three closely related objectives:

To make a complete scientific record of all the hieroglyphic texts and relief carvings from the Karnak Hypostyle Hall.
To make these inscriptions widely available to scientists and the world-wide public through traditional publications and via digital technologies like the internet.
To conduct scholarly research and analysis of the Hypostyle Hall to better understand those aspects of Egyptian civilization reflected in its inscriptions, including its history, religion, politics, society, and culture.

In May and June of 2011, the Project conducted a field season at Karnak Temple in Luxor, Egypt. The main thrust of this work was to begin to record the relief decoration and inscriptions on its 134 giant sandstone columns which are completely covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions and pictorial scenes carved in relief. The mission was led by me with the assistance of Egyptologists from the Université de Québec, the French Archaeological Institute and the Polish Academy of Sciences with the participation of several Memphis and Canadian graduate students. A full report on this field work can be found at:

http://www.memphis.edu/hypostyle/field_reports.htm.

A printed version will appear in the journal of the Franco-Egyptian Center at Karnak, (Peter Brand, et al., “Karnak Hypostyle Hall Project, Report on the 2011 Field Season for the University of Memphis and the Université de Québec à Montréal,”Cahiers de Karnak vol. 13, forthcoming) which I wrote together with my colleagues upon our return from Egypt in the summer of 2011.

The bulk of my time during the PDA period was devoted to completion of a manuscript of translations and technical commentary on a large set of hieroglyphic texts and wall carvings from the interior walls of the Hypostyle Hall. This work includes full translations, descriptions and analysis of all the interior wall scenes along with chapters on the chronology of these inscriptions during the reigns of pharaohs Sety I (reigned ca. 1289-1279 BCE) and Ramesses II (reigned ca. 1279-1212 BCE) and the methods employed by the architects and artisans for the construction and decoration of this huge monument. The work also includes a 90 page word index of all the Ancient Egyptian words and phrases used in the inscriptions. The work, co-authored by myself and the late Dr. William J. Murnane, my predecessor at the University of Memphis, is entitled: The Great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak: volume I, part 2, Translations and Commentary. The work will be published by the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute. A preliminary version is online at:

http://www.memphis.edu/hypostyle/interior_wall_scenes.php

The manuscript of this book was submitted in May 2012 to the Oriental Institute.

In addition to the book manuscript and preliminary report on the 2011 field season, I also completed two more scholarly articles:
Jean Revez and Peter Brand, “Le programme decorative des colonnes de la grande

salle hypostyle de Karnak: bilan de la mission canado-américaine de 2011,” Bulletin de la Société française d’égyptologie, in press.

Kevin Johnson and Peter Brand, “Prince Seti-Merenptah, Chancellor Bay, and the

Bark Shrine of Seti II at Karnak,” Journal of Egyptian History, forthcoming.

Another project I worked on was the creation of a new, completely redesigned website for the Hypostyle Hall Project: http://www.memphis.edu/hypostyle/. The site includes extensive background information on the Hypostyle Hall, our project to record its inscriptions and an online archive of photographs and translations of the hieroglyphic inscriptions and relief decoration in the building. The website will continue to expand in the coming months and years, but already it has preliminary reports on all our fieldwork between 1992 and 2011, an extensive gallery of photographs of many of the inscriptions and translations of the texts from the interior walls.