Rifaud rediscovered: Reconstructing the sacred landscape of Tell el-Moqdam (Leontopolis) based on his unpublished 1825 excavation manuscript

Abstract

Jean-Jacques Rifaud (1786-1852) was the first to conduct excavations at Tell el-Moqdam (Leontopolis) in 1825. Despite his pioneering work, his research largely went unnoticed by the scholarly community, as only a few sentences in Tableau de l'Égypte and an illustration of the excavation site in Voyage en Égypte were published, with no further details. However, the archives of the Bibliothèque de Genève house an unpublished manuscript that provides a detailed account of Rifaud’s excavation at the tell. This manuscript offers new perspectives on the archaeological site and presents an opportunity to re-evaluate and reconstruct the sacred landscape of Tell el-Moqdam (Leontopolis) from a contemporary scholarly standpoint.

Key-words: Jean-Jacques Rifaud (1786-1852), Tell el-Moqdam (Leontopolis), Tell el-Fares (Fayum), Statue Padimahes (Leiden AST 71), Sargophagus lid Padimahes (Penn Museum 16134).