This present study in the series Paleographie hieroglyphique offers a
segment of hieroglyphic writing from a discrete period: the disturbed
times from the end of the Old Kingdom to the end of the First
Intermediate Period. Unlike other volumes in this series, however, the
hieroglyphs from the Akhmim cemetery of El-Hawawish have been drawn from
various sources: tomb reliefs and paintings, stelae, wooden coffins and
statues; consequently, both the length of the era and the varied nature
of the writing surfaces and the materials used at times encouraged the
introduction of numerous and interesting variations into Egypt's
hieroglyphic corpus. The Australian publication of this hieroglyphic
record from El-Hawawish has been especially important because of the
poor state of preservation of the tombs and the limited printed material
available prior to the 1980s. The original documentation was carried out
by volunteer students from the universities of Auckland (New Zealand)
and Macquarie (Australia), under the inspiration and guidance of
Professor Naguib Kanawati. Particularly notable are the careful
transcriptions from the wooden coffins from this era, revealing a most
inventive and sophisticated approach to writing so many thousands of
years ago. Without the dedicated work of those numerous modern hands,
the El-Hawawish hieroglyphic corpus would have been lost forever. This
volume presents a representative sample of that precious writing.
