Until recently the Scribe of the Necropolis (now more accurately: Scribe of the Tomb) Dhutmose was mainly known from a handful of documents from his partly preserved correspondence and the so-called house of his son, Butehamun, at Medinet Habu. Little was known about his activities as administrator of the institution responsible for the creation of the royal tombs in the Valley of Kings.
Recent chance discoveries of papyri in the museums of Vienna and Turin have provided us with a wealth of new data about his work and his private life. As a result of the study of his handwriting, more documents could be ascribed to him. All in all, we now get a picture of the remarkable career of a very busy man living in a tense time and under tricky circumstances.
Dr Robert J. Demaree studied Egyptology at the Universities of Leiden, Copenhagen, Oxford and Amsterdam. He was assistant curator at the Museum of Antiquities, Leiden from 1958-1962, and afterwards worked as a publisher for many years. He has been a lecturer at Leiden University since 1984, specializing in the hieratic script and in the socio-economic history of the New Kingdom, notably of the inhabitants of Deir el-Medina. He is currently working on the publication of hieratic papyri in Turin, ostraca in London, Cairo, Brussels and several other collections, and graffiti from several sites in Egypt, such as Thebes, Saqqara, Edfu, Hierakonpolis and Deir Abu Hinnes.
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