Pierre Montet was born on July 27, 1885 in Villefranche-sur-saone, France. He was a French Egyptologist who conducted major excavations of the New Kingdom (1567- 525 B.C.) capital of Tanis in the Nile Delta, discovering funerary treasures from the Twenty-first Dynasty and the Twenty-second Dynasty.
He was a Professor of Egyptology at the University of Strasberg from 1919-1948 and at the College de France in Paris from 1921-1924. He conducted his first major excavation at Byblos (modern Jubayl, Lebanon), one of the oldest continuously inhabited towns in the world. He uncovered what he believed to be the earliest alphabetical writings and published his researches in Bybloset l’ Egypte (1928). Active in Tanis from 1929-1951, he made his important tomb discoveries in 1939, which yielded exceptionally rich examples of metalwork showing signs of Syrian influence. This included a silver coffin and gold mask.
Montet died in Paris on June 19, 1966.
Montet published:
La Necropole Royale de Tanis (1958)
Everyday Life in the Days of Ramesses the Great (1958)
Eternal Egypt (1964)
Charles- Picard, Gilbert. Encyclopedia of Archeology. G.P. Putnam and Sons, New York, 1969.
Written by Students in an Introduction to Anthropology Class, Minnesota State University, Mankato, Minnesota
Edited by Marcy L. Voelker, 2007