Georges Aaron Bénédite

Who was Georges Aaron Bénédite?

Georges Aaron Bénédite was a French Egyptologist and curator at the Louvre.

He was born at Nîmes, the son of Samuel Bénédite and Isabelle Bénédite born Lisbonne, whose second husband George Lafenestre, was a noted poet, art critic and curator of the Louvre, who helped raise the young George Aaron. George Aaron himself became a curator at the Louvre in the Department of Egyptology in 1907.

Bénédite is noted for his discovery of the tomb of Akhethetep at Saqqara on March 28, 1903. The chapel of Akhethotep, now in the Louvre was brought back by Bénédite as was customary for egyptologists at the time. Bénédite excavated several tombs in the Valley of the Kings, such as KV41 in 1900. He is one of the first to propose the existence of theater in ancient Egypt

Bénédite is also known for his buying for the Louvre the Gebel el-Arak Knife from private antique dealer M. Nahman in Cairo in February 1914. Bénédite immediately recognized the extrodinary state of preservation of the artefact as well as his archaic datation.