Jean-Yves Empereur
Encyclopedia
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
archeologist and egyptologist. He studied classic literature in the University Paris IV Sorbonne
University of Paris IV: Paris-Sorbonne
Paris-Sorbonne University is a public research university in Paris, France. The 1968 cultural revolution, commonly known as the French May, resulted in the division of the world's second oldest academic institution, the University of Paris, into thirteen autonomous universities...
(DEA
DEA (former French degree)
A Master of Advanced Studies is a non-consecutive postgraduate degree awarded predominantly in European countries. A MAS program offers comprehensive training in a specific field and can either give access to higher qualification in one's profession or lead to a new profession...
, CAPES, Agrégation de lettres
Agrégation
In France, the agrégation is a civil service competitive examination for some positions in the public education system. The laureates are known as agrégés...
in 1975, Doctorat in archeology in 1977).
He is a former member and general secretary of the École française d'Athènes. He conducted some excavations, including some submarine ones, in Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
, Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
and Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
, on the sites Thasos
Thasos
Thasos or Thassos is a Greek island in the northern Aegean Sea, close to the coast of Thrace and the plain of the river Nestos but geographically part of Macedonia. It is the northernmost Greek island, and 12th largest by area...
and Amathus
Amathus
Amathus was one of the most ancient royal cities of Cyprus, on the southern coast in front of Agios Tychonas, about 24 miles west of Larnaca and 6 miles east of Limassol...
.
He is a researcher from the CNRS
Centre national de la recherche scientifique
The National Center of Scientific Research is the largest governmental research organization in France and the largest fundamental science agency in Europe....
, director of the Centre d'études Alexandrines that he founded in 1990, and since then he leads the archeological research in Alexandria
Alexandria
Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...
, on earth and underwater.
Archeological excavations
Empereur conducts some emergency excavations right in Alexandria town center. The modern city was built over the ancient one, which means that the archeological excavations become possible only when old buildings are taken down for some civil works. On the Diana field, a Roman villa from the 2nd century can be found, showing some beautiful mosaicMosaic
Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration, or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral...
s.
In 1993, a dike was to be built on the supposed site of the lighthouse of Alexandria
Lighthouse of Alexandria
The Lighthouse of Alexandria, also known as the Pharos of Alexandria , was a tower built between 280 and 247 BC on the island of Pharos at Alexandria, Egypt...
. Empereur, Jean-Pierre Corteggiani and around thirty scuba divers then attempted a rescue operation by starting some excavations in a 2.25ha zone situated north-east from Fort Qaitbay.
Until 1996, these excavations in Alexandria harbour led to the discovery of many archeological remains: 5,000 architectural blocks weighing up to 75 tons, column
Column
A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a vertical structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. For the purpose of wind or earthquake engineering, columns may be designed to resist lateral forces...
s, capitals
Capital (architecture)
In architecture the capital forms the topmost member of a column . It mediates between the column and the load thrusting down upon it, broadening the area of the column's supporting surface...
, huge broken statues, a dozen sphinx
Sphinx
A sphinx is a mythical creature with a lion's body and a human head or a cat head.The sphinx, in Greek tradition, has the haunches of a lion, the wings of a great bird, and the face of a woman. She is mythicised as treacherous and merciless...
es, and above all the indisputable remains of the lighthouse itself. A 12-metre door made of Aswan
Aswan
Aswan , formerly spelled Assuan, is a city in the south of Egypt, the capital of the Aswan Governorate.It stands on the east bank of the Nile at the first cataract and is a busy market and tourist centre...
granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
was virtually reassembled. Some gigantic statues that used to stand against the lighthouse, representing Ptolemaic kings and queens
Ptolemaic dynasty
The Ptolemaic dynasty, was a Macedonian Greek royal family which ruled the Ptolemaic Empire in Egypt during the Hellenistic period. Their rule lasted for 275 years, from 305 BC to 30 BC...
, were found right next to their pedestal. Empereur hopes that in the future this marvellous site will be open to amateur scuba divers.
In March 1997, the site of the Necropolis
Necropolis
A necropolis is a large cemetery or burial ground, usually including structural tombs. The word comes from the Greek νεκρόπολις - nekropolis, literally meaning "city of the dead"...
, Alexandria's city of the dead, was discovered during the building of the bridge linking the western harbour to the Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
road. The director of the museums and archeological sites of Alexandria asked for Empereur's help on June 27th. The general map of the ancient city appeared then, with the streets following the drawings by Dinocrates, the first urbanist architect.
Filmography
Gédéon Programmes produced a documentary trilogy about Empereur's work, directed by Thierry Ragobert:- La septième merveille du monde (le Phare)
- Alexandrie la magnifique
- Les mystères d'Alexandrie
Trivia
In 2001 Empereur confronted video games publisher Eidos InteractiveEidos Interactive
Eidos Interactive Ltd. is a British video game publisher and is a label of Square Enix Europe. As an independent company Eidos plc was headquartered in the Wimbledon Bridge House in Wimbledon, London Borough of Merton....
for using his image in the fourth game of popular Tomb Raider series
Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation
Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation is the fourth video game in the Tomb Raider series. It was developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive. It was released on PC, PlayStation and eventually to the Sega Dreamcast with exclusive graphical and sound enhancements...
- the game's pratagonist, Lara Croft
Lara Croft
Lara Croft is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Square Enix video game series Tomb Raider. She is presented as a beautiful, intelligent, and athletic British archaeologist-adventurer who ventures into ancient, hazardous tombs and ruins around the world...
, meets a French friend of hers in Alexandria, who appears to be an exact portrayal of Jean-Yves Empereur. The publisher apologized and agreed to stop using his image in the games.