Hans Schneider, born in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1939. Ph.D. from the University of Ghent. Professor Extraordinarius at the Archaeology Department at Leiden University and Head of External Projects at the National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden.
Fellow (1 September 2002 – 30 June 2003)
During my stay at NIAS, I was able to work on two monographs. The first will be a publication on the tomb of Iniuia, which was excavated under my supervision in 1993 in the New Kingdom Necropolis of the ancient capital city of Egypt, Memphis. Iniuia was a high official under Tutankhamun. I finished chapters on the architecture of the tomb complex as well as a chapter on Chapel A, one of the two chapels in the superstructure, which had funerary wall paintings of Iniuia and his family and worked on the second chapel, the main cult-room of the tomb, which will form the greater part of my book. I was able to reconstruct the original location of the limestone relief-blocks that once decorated the inner walls, but had been found ex situ during the excavation. In the scenes depicted on these reliefs, Iniuia is represented in his capacity as ‘Overseer of the Cattle of Amun’ and as ‘Great Steward of Memphis’. Further research is required of the art historical aspects of the tomb and of the texts inscribed on both reliefs and other architectural elements in this chapel.
My second research topic was to study and edit a manuscript by Jean-François Champollion le Jeune, decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphs. This document, acquired by the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden during the nineteenth century, is one of the rare early writings of Champollion and probably the only one of its kind outside France. It was written by Champollion in 1806, when he was fifteen years of age and studying at the Lycée impérial in Grenoble. It is entitled Notes Diverses and consists of twenty-five pages of text and illustrations. It contains two abstracts, with comments by Champollion, from the Histoire du Ciel, a famous and popular publication written in 1739 by the apologetic theologian Abbé Pluche. My edition of the Notes Diverses contains chapters on the history of the acquisition of the manuscript by the Leiden museum, the early writings of Champollion, his sources and the books he read, his handwriting, spelling and illustrations, as well as on the contents of the text. A transcription of the text with commentary forms the main part of the work. A special chapter is devoted to Champollion and Horapollo. I was able to finish preparing the text for publication and it is also my intention to publish the book in French.