Mysterious Egyptian antiquities from Amiens came from the Saqqara necropolis

The tomb of Youyou, in Saqqara, snatched yippees from the curators of the Picardy museum. Youyou? This Egyptian name engraved on two limestone doorposts of mysterious provenance had been questioning the curators of the Amiens museum for nearly a century, with its beautiful but modest pharaonic collection. These same specialists now let their joy burst out. The chance discovery, in March, of a funerary chapel by the archaeologists of the Italian-Dutch Leyden-Turin expedition has dispelled the hazy origin of these ancient remains.

As indicated by the hieroglyphics discovered last month under the sand of the necropolis of Saqqara, Youyou was a renowned craftsman, a master goldsmith renowned for the gold leaf with which he adorned the treasures of his opulent clientele. When he died in the 13th century BC, the time of Ramses II, he was buried in a funerary chapel a little over a meter in diameter, decorated with polychrome reliefs. His grave housed an extended part of his family, spanning four generations. On the other hand, archaeologists have not found the uprights of this funerary chapel. And for good reason: they had been exhibited in Amiens since 1927.

"We did not know precisely where these amounts came from, except that the painter and collector Albert Maignan, who bequeathed them to the museum in 1907, had acquired them from Émile Amelineau, a penniless Egyptologist", explains Agathe Jagerschmidt-Séguin, heritage curator at the Musée de Picardie. The person in charge of the archaeological collections of the establishment recounts with pleasure the call made to her from Saqqara by her colleague Lara Weiss, from the University of Leiden. “This discovery confirms a hypothesis formulated in the 1980s and which already assumed that the vestige came from near Saqqara,” rejoices Agathe Jagerschmidt-Séguin.

On site, no furniture or bones remain inside the monument. The tomb of Youyou was probably looted of its treasures in the 19th century, before being buried again under the Egyptian desert and forgotten by all. The researchers rule out, finally, the possibility that we are mistaken in Youyou. Quite common, the name was borne by a priest of Osiris who was also a contemporary of Ramses II and whose naophore statuette in granite is kept in the Louvre museum. This is - a priori - a false lead. Not only do the craftsmanship and style of the remains of Amiens and Saqqara correspond perfectly, but, even better, the inscriptions of the two parts of the monument both evoke his activity as a goldsmith.

Youyou must have been at the head of an important workshop, to afford a modest tomb in the prestigious necropolis of Memphis, the ancient Egyptian capital. “Skilled trades and their know-how were highly recognized in ancient Egypt,” says Agathe Jagerschmidt-Séguin. The goldsmiths were certainly not priests or generals, but they could still enrich themselves and enjoy significant power, in particular because they were essential to the supply of funerary furniture for the aristocracy”.

The curator is finally moved by the rediscovered "human reality" of this individual who had until now been reduced to a few hieroglyphs in the collections of the Picardy museum. It cherishes the hope of soon highlighting this Egyptian discovery with a redesigned scenography of the two uprights of Amiens. “We could imagine a photographic device, resort to three-dimensional printing or think of other mediation biases”, already reflects Agathe Jagerschmidt-Séguin. Apart from the chapel of Youyou, the last annual excavation campaign of the Leiden-Turin expedition also unearthed the funerary complex of a priest of Amun, in the form of a tomb-temple, as well as three other mortuary chapels .