On Saturday 20 June 2026 at 11 h, Laurent Coulon, Professor at the Collège de France's Civilization of Pharaonic Egypt, will give a lecture entitled " Osiris "façon puzzle" : le travail d'un égyptologue à Karnak ".
The lecture will take place at the Marguerite Duras media library, 115 rue de Bagnolet, Paris 20th.
Drawing on the experience of more than three decades of research into the Osirian sanctuaries of Karnak, the aim here is to illustrate what makes up the work of an Egyptologist in the field (and beyond) and what scientific objectives he or she pursues, far removed from a " treasure hunt ". In this instance, our investigation aims to understand why and how, in the Istmillennium BC, a funerary god, Osiris, established himself as a major interlocutor in a temple intended for the living. The metaphor of the " puzzle " is particularly meaningful in defining the work carried out on a daily basis at : the reconstitution of the decorations of Osiris' tomb, scattered in thousands of fragments, as well as that of the walls of the Osirian chapels, found over the course of several seasons of excavation, are the result of meticulous and patient assembly work that must also be based on extensive knowledge of the " parallel " offered by other known temples. The completion of this puzzle leads to two complementary results : on the one hand, a scientific study of these scholarly creations of the Osirian clergy, drawing on a theological repertoire that could be described as " kaleidoscopic " ; on the other, a very concrete restoration of the reconstituted monuments, which are then the object of heritage enhancement.
Laurent Coulon is an Egyptologist specializing in ancient Egyptian religion, particularly the cult of Osiris. His research also focuses on Egyptian eloquence and rhetoric, and more generally on the context of courtly society in which they were deployed.
A former student at the École normale supérieure and holder of the agrégation in Classics, in 1998 he defended a thesis entitled " Le discours en Égypte ancienne. Éloquence et rhétorique dans les textes de l'Ancien au Nouvel Empire " (dir. N. Grimal, univ. Paris-IV). After a spell as a scientific member of the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology (Ifao) between 1998 and 2002, Laurent Coulon was appointed Associate Professor at the University of Lyon 2 (2002-2008) and seconded to the Ifao as Publications Assistant in 2004. In 2008, he was recruited as a CNRS researcher in the Lyon-based HiSoMA team. In 2014, he defended a habilitation to direct research entitled " The cults of Osiris and the evolution of Egyptian religion in the Istmillennium BC. " (supervisor L. Pantalacci, univ. Lyon 2). In 2015, he was appointed Director of Studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in the Religion of Ancient Egypt chair and Director of the Wladimir Golenischeff Center (EPHE, PSL). He is President of the Société française d'égyptologie in 2018-2019. In 2019, he was appointed director of the Institut français d'archéologie orientale in Cairo for a four-year term . In 2023, he joins the Collège de France in the chair The Civilization of Pharaonic Egypt.
His research into the development of the Osiris cult in the Istmillennium B.C. is based on his archaeological and epigraphic work on the Osirian chapels and necropolis at Karnak, as well as at other sites (Oxyrhynchos, Ayn Manawir). Using digital humanities tools, he is also contributing to the development of online statuary corpora, notably that from the Karnak Cachette, or more recently that encompassing all late sculpture as part of the Late Egyptian Artefact Database project , co-directed with Olivier Perdu.
In 2023, Laurent Coulon was elected Professor of The Civilization of Pharaonic Egypt at the Collège de France ( ).
These lectures, aimed at the general public, reflect the wide range of disciplines present at the Collège de France : history, economics, sociology, literature, but also biology, chemistry, mathematics and evolutionary sciences.
With this new event, the libraries of the City of Paris are fulfilling their mission to disseminate knowledge and combat misinformation by offering the public opportunities to decode and explore certain areas of knowledge in greater depth. The aim is also to open a window on the world of research and how it works, and to bring Parisians closer to an exceptional institution, the Collège de France, which has been at the heart of the city's intellectual and scientific life for five centuries.
