In 2011, Pierre Tallet and his team at the Orient and Mediterranean Laboratory1 started excavations at the archeological site of Wadi al-Jarf, on Egypt's Red Sea Coast. They hit the jackpot in spring 2013, when they uncovered the oldest papyri ever found, together with 99 anchors from boats of the Old Kingdom. For 4,600 years, these remains had lain on the banks of the Red Sea, at the heart of a site now considered to be the oldest artificial harbor in the world. The port was used during the reign of Cheops, at the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty (around 2,600 BC), to search for materials in the Sinai. These included copper and turquoise, used in the building of the pyramids. “Wadi al-Jarf was an important seaport, and comprised several types of buildings spread out over five kilometers. Among these, a system of storage galleries carved into the mountain, a few kilometers from the shore, most likely served to stock material,” Tallet says. Although the archeologists expected to find boat remains and information about the operation of the port, they had no idea that they would come across three to four hundred fragments of papyrus. “The documents mention the Pharaoh's thirteenth census, which took place during the twenty-seventh and final year of his reign,” Tallet explains. “That was a real stroke of luck, since dates are unusual for the Old Kingdom.” This was an invaluable discovery, since the papyri turned out to be at least a hundred years older than the earliest comparable documents known. They contain an account of supplies for the teams working in the port, as well as an exciting find: the logbook of an Egyptian government official called Merer, relating his journeys to the limestone quarries at Tura to find rocks that he brought back to Giza. The researchers are in no doubt: this foreman worked at the Pyramid of Cheops, while the Wadi al-Jarf harbor was the rear base for the construction of the pyramids, which concentrated the country's activity as well as shipping in the Red Sea. 1 Orient et Méditerranée, textes – archéologie – histoire (Université Paris Sorbonne/ Université Paris 1/CNRS/EPHE/Collège de France/Musée du Louvre). 14 2013, A year at the CNRS What were the characteristics of the Universe in its earliest stages? By drawing up an extremely detailed map of the cosmic microwave background, the European Space Agency's Planck mission has provided groundbreaking answers to this fundamental question. “This image of the light emitted by the Universe a mere 380,000 years after the Big Bang sheds new light on the composition and organization of the Universe at the time,” says François Bouchet, a cosmologist at the Paris Institute of Astrophysics, and co-Principal Investigator for the scientific analysis of data from the Planck mission. The very high-resolution map of the primordial Universe was obtained mainly by analyzing the first fifteen months of measurements by the High Frequency Instrument (HFI)1 on board the spacecraft, launched in 2009. “The challenge was to isolate the weak signal of the cosmic microwave background emitted by the primordial Universe from all stray radiation sources, either from the spacecraft itself or from the Milky Way and other galaxies in our neighborhood,” Bouchet points out. This colossal four-year undertaking involved an international team of 450 researchers, including many from France. Study of the data collected by Planck provided more accurate estimates of the age and expansion rate of the Universe. Above all, the map of the sky established by the spacecraft made it possible to finely characterize regions with slightly different densities that foreshadow today's stars and galaxies, thus improving understanding of the microscopic mechanisms that may have given rise to them. Finally, while analysis of the data collected by Planck during its first fifteen months of observation has confirmed with unparalleled precision the standard cosmological model, it also reveals certain puzzling features of the primordial Universe that can only be explained through new advances in theory— and confirmed once ongoing analyses are completed. 1 The HFI consortium, coordinated by Jean-Loup Puget of the Institute of Space Astrophysics (IAS, CNRS/Université Paris-Sud) and François R. Bouchet of the Paris Institute of Astrophysics (IAP, CNRS/UPMC), involves 80 researchers from ten CNRS, CEA and University laboratories. ArXiV March 2013 EGYPTO LOGY COS MOLOGY 4,600 YEAR-OLD PAPYRI DISCO VERED AT WADI AL-JARF EARLIEST TIMES OF THE UNIVERSE REVEALED © Gaël Pollin / IFAO This accounts papyrus dating from the last year of the reign of Cheops is the oldest known to date. Planck's all-sky map of the cosmic microwave background. © ESA - Collaboration Planck
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