Graffiti and secondary epigraphy in Deir el-Medina. A progress report

International audienceThis brief paper presents the preliminary results of an epigraphic project started in Deir el-Medina in 2013, which is focused on graffiti and secondary epigraphy in a built environment. The expression of secondary epigraphy is here used for inscriptions that were not part of the initial definition/programme of a building or environment but that contribute to its appropriation, and redefine it. These inscriptions and graffiti indicate human and social relations to specific places. They witness to the negotiation of individual and group identity. Far from being subversive, most of these graffiti were socially accepted and should be considered as organic to the field of literacy next to manuscripts. Three kinds of space are considered here: tomb chapels, "chapelles de confrérie" and houses. This paper presents the range of recorded inscriptions and focuses on a case study with the place christened by Bernard Bruyère "Chapelle des Trois Loges". This fellowship chapel (no. 1211) contains a sanctuary with three naos on the west wall. These naos are undecorated; yet they were painted with more than twenty dipinti, mainly in red ink. The latter are mostly figurative and follow rules of monumental decorum. Compared with ostraca used for practice and examined in relation to the documentation found in situ by Bruyère, this unpublished ensemble seems to indicate a place of scribal social meeting and possibly training