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Concept
Jean-Philippe Lauer
Summary
Jean-Philippe Lauer (7 May 1902 – 15 May 2001), was a French architect and Egyptologist. He was considered to be the foremost expert on pyramid construction techniques and methods.
He was born in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, France to a wealthy family of Alsacian origins. He studied architecture, but his cousin Jacques Hardy, an architect working in Egypt, advised him to come to Egypt due to the poor prospects for young architects in post World-War France. Lauer thus arrived in Egypt in 1926 where Pierre Lacau, then head of Supreme Council of Antiquities, gave him an 8-month position assisting Cecil Mallaby Firth's work on Djoser's Step Pyramid.
His collaboration with Firth working very well, Lauer's position was regularly renewed, and by 1928, he was still in Saqqara. There he met Marguerite Jouguet, the daughter of the renowned Hellenist Pierre Jouguet, who had been appointed director of the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale. Monsieur Jouguet had published translations of many Greek papyri found in Egypt, and was a professor of ancient history and papyrology at Lille. J.P. Lauer married Marguerite on 1 October 1929 in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.
Firth died in 1931 and was subsequently replaced by James E. Quibell. Five years later in 1936, less than a year after Quibell's death, Lauer's position was not renewed, yet he decided to stay in Egypt. In the 1950s, J. P. Lauer worked in close association with his friend Zakaria Goneim on the step pyramid of Sekhemkhet. Later, in 1959, he helped Goneim clear his name on allegations that he had smuggled a vessel discovered by Lauer and Quibell out of Egypt.
In 1963, together with Jean Leclant, he founded the Mission Archéologique Française de Saqqâra which is still active to this day. From his arrival in 1926 until his death in 2001, J. P. Lauer worked in numerous excavations and restorations projects on the Saqqara plateau, stopping only for a short time when Gamal Abdel Nasser assumed power in Egypt. Aged more than 90 and still working onsite he was nicknamed "the forgotten of God" by Egyptian workers.
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