24 - 30 May 2001
Issue No.535
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 24 - 30 May 2001 Issue No.535 |
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Obituary
Archaeologist through and through
Jean-Philippe Lauer, 1902 - 2001
Egypt has lost one of its most devoted and beloved scholars, Jean-Philippe Lauer, most well-known for his conscientious work on the Saqqara plateau where he worked from 1932 after taking over excavation of the site following the death of Cecil Firth. He died in France, aged 99.
Jean-Philippe Lauer
Lauer was fascinated with the site, and especially with Djoser's Step Pyramid complex, then in ruins, which he nevertheless recognised as one of the most important monuments in Egypt. He devoted his life to its restoration. As a result of his work, we know that the monuments were built to mirror the structures of the state capital about 2686 BC, from which we can glean a picture of administrative and religious activities at the time. By faultlessly copying the themes of nature, Imhotep, its builder, bequeathed a legacy to which architecture was to return time and again.
Born in Paris in 1902, Lauer studied architecture at l'École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris, and was appointed architect of the then Egyptian Antiquities Service (under French director general Étienne Drioton) in 1926.
I first met him in 1976 when I was preparing my guidebook on Saqqara. I had frequently seen him on the plateau, but had never approached him. When I did, to ask whether he would help me in my understanding of the monuments, I recall that he looked at me with a somewhat bemused expression, tilting his head to one side, as though I were asking the impossible. Then he said "Come," and strode off across the desert.
That is how I remember him: a slender figure walking at such a rapid pace that I had to run to keep up with him. As he walked he talked, pausing at each monument to describe it in patient and careful detail.
Djoser's Step Pyramid complex was Lauer's special concern. In his first book on Saqqara, published in 1951, he described it thus:
"From the moment ... that he came to the throne, about 2900 BC, this Pharaoh (Djoser) decided to build a funeral monument which, by its majesty, its unparalleled dimensions, and its beauty, would fill all his contemporaries with admiration ... Following tradition, he called upon his Prime Minister Imhotep, already famous for his learning and his knowledge of science, to put the plan into execution. It was Imhotep who chose for his royal master this incomparable site, overlooking the royal capital of Memphis from the edge of the Libyan plateau, from where the eye surveys not only the Nile valley lying below, but also the beginning of the Delta."
It was Jean-Philippe Lauer who pointed out to me that there was only one entrance to this enormous complex, on the east, but that there were 14 closed dummy doors scattered at irregular intervals between the bastions of the enclosure wall. It was he who drew my attention to the beauty of the 40 fasciculated columns, each joined to the side wall by means of a small connecting wall. He told me that the columns, at the time of the discovery, stood no more than one-and-a-half metres high, and how they were painstakingly matched and rebuilt.
Frequently on my visits to Saqqara I would see Lauer in the great court, moving between lines of carefully positioned blocks of stone collected from around the complex, searching for clues to piece them together.
Jean-Philippe Lauer was widely honoured, having received several orders of merit from France, the Order of the Republic of Egypt, and l'Ordre de la Couronne d'Italie. He has made major contributions to Egyptology, and will be sadly missed.
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