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Discovery
Discovery
How the knife was discovered
How the knife was discovered
The knife was discovered by French Egyptologist and Louvre curator Georges Aaron Bénédite. He discovered the knife in Cairo, Egypt. The owner of the knife went by the name of M. Nahman, a private antique dealer. At the time, the knife was sold separately in two pieces: the handle, and the blade. Mr. Nahman did not notice that the two pieces belonged together. Bénédite immediately purchased the knife from Nahman for the Louvre. Bénédite had recognised how well the knife had been preserved, as well as the general time that it was made.
Bénédite wrote to Charles Boreux, the head of département des Antiquités égyptiennes at the Louvre. It is easy to think that Bénédite was the one doing everything but it was actually Boreux who had the knife restored and the pieces joined back together. In March of 1933, Léon André started work on the restoration. In 1997, Agnès Cascio and Juliette Lévy restored the knife again. This was the most recent restoration project on the knife.
Blue: Cairo where it was bought by Georges Aaron Bénédite for the Louvre
Orangy Red: Where M. Nahman found the knife
Green: Where M. Hahman claimed to have found the knife
Purple: The Louvre Museum where it is now
Where the knife came from
Where the knife came from
Why is the Gebel el-Arak Knife, called the "Gebel el-Arak Knife"? It started when the knife was purchased. When Bénédite first bought it, Nahman claimed that he had found the knife on a plateau called Gebel el-Arak. Closer inspection led Bénédite to believe that it was in fact, not from Gebel el-Arak, but from Abydos, an ancient city in Egypt. However, the name stuck. This shows that you should never trust a sketchy dealer.
Nowadays…
Nowadays…
As of today, the Gebel el-Arak Knife now resides in its home at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, the same place that Bénédite brought the knife to. If not for Covid, you would be able to travel to the Louvre and see this knife.
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