2008. Épuisé
Description | The Author | Target audience | Table of contents | By the same author
Book in French. The Nile valley has always been famous for its fertility resulting from periodic flooding. It is personified by the God Osiris who fertilizes Isis, the black earth. Dense vegetation then grows on this earth: “the great green”, called “Wadj-wer” in Egyptian. The great Gods of Egypt are responsible for this prosperity; they own it, especially Horus, son of the flood, being the son of Osiris and Isis. The term Wadj-wer covers all aspects of the soil: they walk and navigate on it, they cultivate it, they fight on it, they get lost on it.
The pharaohs had no authority on part of the delta, which constitutes the main part of Wadj-wer and the largest area of the country. Rebel populations led an autonomous life among the reed and papyrus thickets on a land divided by large or smaller waterways, independant from the kings who have always been on the defensive towards the Haou-nebout and other Rekhyt, and towards the islands in the middle of Wadj-wer throughout Egypt's history.
For a long time, the Egyptians have lived self-contained within the natural boundaries of the country, i.e. the area flooded by the Nile. When Ptolemy III's scribes had to describe the island of Cyprus, they were clueless: they didn't know how to depict, in hieroglyphs, any other island than the ones formed by the alluvia of the Nile.
As Wadj-wer can be found throughout the ages and in all parts of the Nile valley, it is hardly surprising that many aspects had to be taken into consideration when studying the approximately 360 attestations of the term. It is about the soil of Egypt and the flood of the Nile that makes it green up regularly. It is the flood that maintains what the Egyptians described with the term “the great green”, Wadj-wer.
The author
Claude Vandersleyen was born in Brussels in 1927. He has been teaching the art, language and history of Ancient Egypt at the Université Catholique de Louvain. In 1995, he wrote a book published in the collection « Nouvelle Clio » of the Presses Universitaires de France, entitled L’Égypte et la Vallée du Nil II.
For more than 30 years, he has been dedicating his research to the geography of Egypt and the Near East, and more specifically to the term Wadj-wer.
Target audience
This study is for Egyptologists, philologists and anyone interested in historical geography.
Table of contents
Chapitre Premier. Les Grecs et l’Égypte
Chapitre 2. Les dieux de ouadj our
§ 1 Les dieux de ouadj our sous l’Ancien Empire
§ 2 Les dieux de ouadj our sous le Moyen Empire
§ 3 Les dieux de ouadj our jusqu’à la fin de l’Égypte pharaonique
§ 4 Sobek et Horus
Chapitre 3. Osiris
§ 1 Osiris et ouadj our
§ 2 Les effluves (rdw) d’Osiris
§ 3 Le Nil et les “Nils”
§ 4 Le noun
§ 5 L’Inondation
Chapitre 4. Le Fayoum
Chapitre 5. Le sol de ouadj our
§ 1 Le territoire de ouadj our
§ 2 La géographie physique
§ 3 L’agriculture
§ 4 La délimitation du pays
Chapitre 6. L’eau de ouadj our
§ 1 Le Nil et le Ym
§ 2 Le vocabulaire des régions aquatiques
§ 3 Les bateaux
§ 4 Tempêtes – naufrages
Chapitre 7. La population de ouadj our
§ 1 Le delta ou la Basse Égypte
§ 2 Le reste de l’Égypte
§ 3 L’administration
Chapitre 8. Les nations hors d’Égypte
§ 1 Les documents historiques
§ 2 Les Fenkhou
§ 3 Les Héryou-sha
§ 4 Pount
§ 5 La Terre du dieu
Chapitre 9. La localisation des termes géographiques
et des populations dans le delta
Chapitre 10. Les dangers de ouadj our
Chapitre 11. Les documents obscurs ou inutilisables
Chapitre 12. Documents réétudiés
§ 1 La stèle de Naples
§ 2 La stèle de Pithom
§ 3 Le décret de Canope
Chapitre 13. Commentaire sur les comptes rendus de Ouadj our 1999 et autres opinions sur le sujet
§ 1 La publication de Ouadj our w3d wr Un autre aspect de la vallée du Nil, en 1999
§ 2 The Navy, de Säve-Söderbergh
§ 3 Le compte rendu de Joachim Quack
§ 4 La traduction et l’interprétation de ouadj our avant et après 1968/1972
§ 5 L’évolution des idées
§ 6 L’incidence de l’interprétation de ouadj our sur les problèmes historiques
Chapitre 14. Conclusion
Chapitre 15. Alessandra Nibbi, The Sea Peoples, 1972
Chapitre 16. The delta and the Nile valley: the meaning of wadj wer
Utilitaires
Chronologie des attestations de ouadj our
Inventaire des documents contenant l’expression ouadj our
Bibliographie
Indices
Liste des illustrations
