Persona

De Keersmaecker, Roger O.

1931-2020

Roger O. De Keersmaecker was born in Leopoldville (Kinshasa), Belgian Congo, on 11 September 1931 and died in Wilrijk (Antwerp), Belgium, at midnight 15-16 June 2020. When he was still very young, he became interested in Egyptian art after reading in a popular magazine about the mystery and the curse after the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun. For a long time, a trip to Egypt was as far away as a trip to the moon.
In 1960 he married Helena Beeckman, and both started visiting European Egyptian collections, including those in Brussels, London, Paris, Turin, Leiden, Hannover, and Hildesheim. After five years of marriage, in 1965, his long-awaited dream became a reality: they both went for a fortnight to Egypt and spent one week in Cairo and another in Luxor, equipped with three cameras and many film rolls. They made taxi trips to Sakkara, Memphis, Dahshur and Fayum and admired the wonderful treasures of the Cairo Museum. From Luxor, they went to Dendera, Abydos, Esna and Edfu.
In the interior of the pylon of the temple of Edfu, Roger noticed his first graffito of John Gordon in 1804. Year after year, De Keersmaecker went back, only pausing one year due to the Egyptian/Israelian war. Marie-Paule Vanlathem brought him in contact with H. De Meulenaere, L. Limme, and the late J. Quagebeur. In 1975, during the opening of the great Akhenaten exhibition in Brussels, H. De Meulenaere announced that Roger was selected as a photographer to work for two seasons at the tomb of Padihorresnet in Asasif (Theban Necropolis). Later he worked for several seasons with the Belgian archaeological mission at El Kab. Previously, he had already started his research on early travellers' graffiti, which took him to Sudan three times.
De Keersmaecker was a member of the Fondation Egyptologique Reine Elisabeth, Brussels, and of the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East, Cambridge (www.astene.ORG.UK), and published several articles in the ASTENE Bulletin. He was the author, printer and publisher of the Travellers' graffiti from Egypt and the Sudan. Information adapted from De Keersmaecker, Roger O. (2006), Travellers' graffiti from Egypt and the Sudan, V: Thebes: the Temples of Medinet Habu, final page.

• De Keersmaecker, Roger O. (2006), Travellers' graffiti from Egypt and the Sudan, V: Thebes: the Temples of Medinet Habu, final page.
• http://www.egypt-sudan-graffiti.be/ (accessed November 2020).
• ASTENE Bulletin 82 (2020), p. 4-7.