ancientegyptdaily: The Diary of Merer is the name for papyrus logbooks written over 4,500 years ago
ancientegyptdaily: The Diary of Merer is the name for papyrus logbooks written over 4,500 years ago that record the daily activities of stone transportation from the Tura limestone quarry to and from Giza during the 4th Dynasty. They are the oldest known papyri with text. The text was found in 2013 by a French mission under the direction of archaeologists Pierre Tallet of Paris-Sorbonne University and Gregory Marouard in a cave in Wadi al-Jarf on the Red Sea coast.The text is written with hieroglyphs and hieratic on papyrus. The diary of Merer, a middle ranking official with the title inspector, is thought to date to the 26th year of the reign of Pharaoh Khufu and describes several months of work with the transportation of limestone from Tura to Giza. Though the diary does not specify where the stones were to be used or for what purpose, the diary may date to what is widely considered the very end of Khufu’s reign, Tallet believes they were most likely for cladding the outside of the Great Pyramid. About every ten days, two or three round trips were done, shipping perhaps 30 blocks of 2–3 tonnes each, amounting to 200 blocks per month. About forty boatmen worked under him. The papyrus is exhibited at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. [X] -- source link