Françoise Dunand


Françoise Dunand is a French historian, professor emeritus of the University of Strasbourg. She is a specialist on Greek and Roman Egypt.

Career

Since 1981, Françoise Dunand has been leading the "Alpha Necropolis" team to excavate the necropolises at the Kharga Oasis in Egypt. She is a former member of the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale in Cairo, she has published a number of books and articles on late Egyptian religious beliefs and practices. Since 1983 she has directed IFAO archaeological excavations at the necropolis at the village of in Egypt’s western desert. The findings at Duch are partly presented in her book Les momies : Un voyage dans l'éternité.
She frequently collaborates with Roger Lichtenberg, a medical doctor and director of the radiology unit at the in Paris. He has conducted anthropological and palaeopathological studies on the mummies of Duch, and is co-author of Les momies : Un voyage dans l'éternité.
She participated in the writing of a collective work La mort et l'immortalité : Encyclopédie des savoirs et des croyances by signing in the second chapter entitled La mort et le devenir du corps, an article Des corps sortis du temps.

Awards

Since Herodotus, the ancient travellers had been struck by this strange country, which "is nothing like the others", and the ancient Egyptians preserved the dead body in as life-like a manner as possible. Thanks to the testimonies of the Arabs, the West has always known that ancient Egypt was a country of mummies. Today, we know most of the process of mummification, desiccation of bodies obtained through the dry climate of Egypt, the removal of viscera, the use of natron and bandages. Similarly, we know what kind of rituals accompanied the preparation of the corpse, who were responsible for the mummification process. As for why the mummification, it is related to the Egyptian religion, for which it is the guarantee of immortality, the possibility of a new life.
Based on recent radiographic and genetic analyses of bodies, Françoise Dunand and Roger Lichtenberg take stock of the historical knowledge of mummies, and add a scientific dimension in this small colourful book—Les momies : Un voyage dans l'éternité —published by Éditions Gallimard in the Archéologie series of their and curiosity of Egyptomania in the 19th century, up to the scientific research of the 20th century with the contribution of radiology techniques. The second chapter—"Making a Better Mummy"—deals with how the ancient Egyptians mummified a body, while the third chapter, "Toward Immortality", illustrated with ancient paintings explaining the rites and beliefs. Chapter Ⅳ, "From Eternal Life to Harsh Reality" tells the valuable offerings which the ancient Egyptians furnished with their dead, and the direct consequence of this: the pillaging of tombs. In the last chapter, the scientists give anthropological results.
In its second part—the "Documents" section—the book provides a compilation of excerpts taken from some ancient documents and texts by 19th-century investigators, which is divided into five parts: 1, Funeral Rites; 2, Mummification According to Herodotus; 3, An Unpeaceful End; 4, Two Sensational Discoveries; 5, Looking into Mummies. The book closes with a chronology, map, further reading, list of illustrations and an index. It has been translated into American and British English, Dutch, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Traditional Chinese.

Selected publications

; Participated in the collective work
Les Momies du Désert, a 13-minute short documentary film about Françoise Dunand’s archaeological dig at the Kharga Oasis, directed by Serge Tignères and Alain Zenou. It is part of the DVD documentary Le mystère des momies from Arte's documentary collection The Human Adventure, and available in English.