Cet ouvrage constitue le bilan des travaux que Nicolas Grimal,titulaire de la chaire Civilisation archéologie,philologie, histoire, a menés ces vingt dernières années au Collège deFrance.
After his Agrégation in Classics in 1971, he obtained a PhD in 1984. He has been a professor at the Sorbonne since 1988.
From 1989 to 1999, he headed the French Institute of Oriental Archeology in Cairo. Since 1990, he has been the scientific director of the Franco-Egyptian Centre for study of the temples of Karnak. He has held the chair of Egyptology at the Collège de France since 2000.