Archéo-Nil

Society for the study of pre-pharaonic cultures of the Nile Valley

Launched in 1990 out of the need to provide a platform for the growing interest and activity in the fields of Prehistory, Egyptology, Archaeology and Ethnology, Archéo-Nil aims to promote the study of  pre-pharaonic civilisation in the region of North East Africa.

At the crossroads of several disciplines, Archéo-Nil has developed its activities in two main directions: firstly, to provide support for professionals, within the framework of academic institutions (CNRS, Universities and Institutes); and secondly, to provide a platform for the dispersal of this knowledge to the wider community.

A/Prof. Yann Tristant (professor at KU Leuven, Belgium) has been president of Archéo-Nil since 2011. The former President and founder of Archéo-Nil is Prof. Béatrix Midant-Reynes, emeritus CNRS research director and former director of the French Institute in Cairo (2010-2015).

An annual thematic journal is a significant aspect of the society's scientific activity.

Scholars are regularly invited to present the results of their research to the public.

To date Archéo-Nil boasts over a hundred members that include, students, full subscribers, benefactors and donors. Our members include many people within the International academic community.

By the 5th millennium B.C., the inhabitants of the Nile Valley had already started to organise themselves into village communities. They had begun the practice of agriculture and animal husbandry. Funerary goods that accompanied some of the dead reveal a complex society whose people did not enjoy equal rights and in which the elite asserted their status through the possession of luxurious objects (flint knives, palettes, copper objects, etc). Writing appears towards 3200 BCE with the first kings of Egypt, regrouped into the so-called Dynasty "0". During an accelerated process of social acculturation, these communities witnessed the advent of a new epoch, namely the emergence of the State that would eventually lead to the Pharaonic Period.

Archéo-Nil encompasses all themes that are devoted to this period, from the development of the first agricultural communities during the Neolithic through until the Early Dynastic Periods. Studies published in the Archéo-Nil Journal cover a wide and diverse geographical area including the Nile Valley and neighbouring deserts, extending into Central Africa, the Sahara and the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. The themes that concern the Archéo-Nil focus upon methodological, theoretical and practical implications.