Auguste Mariette
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The French scholar and archaeologist Auguste Ferdinand François Mariette (February 11, 1821 – January 19, 1881) was the foremost Egyptologist of his generation, and the founder of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
Born at Boulogne-sur-Mer, Mariette proved to be a talented draftsman and designer, and he supplemented his salary as a teacher at Douai by giving private lessons and writing on historical and archaeological subjects for local periodicals.
Meanwhile his cousin Nestor L'Hote, the friend and fellow-traveller of Champollion, died, and the task of sorting his papers filled Mariette with a passion for Egyptology. He devoted himself to the study of hieroglyphics and Coptic. His 1847 analytic catalogue of the Egyptian Gallery of the Boulogne Museum got him a minor appointment at the Louvre Museum in 1849. Entrusted with a government mission for the purpose of seeking and purchasing Coptic, Syriac, Arabic and Ethiopic manuscripts for the national collection, he set out for Egypt in 1850.
In 1851, soon after his arrival, he made his celebrated discovery of the avenue of sphinxes that led to ruins of the Serapeum near the step-pyramid at Saqqara and eventually the subterraneous catacombs with their spectacular sarcophagi of the Apis bulls. Instead of manuscripts, official French funds were now advanced for the prosecution of his researches, and he remained in Egypt for four years, excavating, discovering — and despatching archaeological treasures to the Louvre, as was the accepted Eurocentric convention. He was raised to an assistant conservator at the Louvre when he returned to Paris.
Soon a genuine opportunity worthy of his energy and talent opened: in 1858 the position of conservator of Egyptian monuments to Ismail Pasha was created for him, and he moved with his family to Cairo. His career blossomed into a chronicle of unwearying exploration and brilliant successes: the museum at Bula; the pyramid-fields of Memphis and Saqqara; the necropolis of Meidum, and those of Abydos and Thebes; the great temples of Dendera and Edfu were disinterred; important excavations were carried out at Karnak, Medinet-Habu and Deir el-Bahri; Tanis (the Egyptian capital in the Late Period) was partially explored in the Delta; and even Gebel Barkal in Sudan. He cleared the sands around the Sphinx down to the bare rock, and in the process discovered the famous granite and alabaster monument, the "Temple of the Sphinx". Mariette's success was aided by the fact that no rivals were permitted to dig in Egypt.
Mariette's relations with the Khedive were not always stable. The Khedive, like many potentates, assumed all discoveries ranked as treasure and that what went to the museum in Cairo went only at his pleasure.
In 1869 Mariette, at the request of the Khedive, wrote a brief plot for an opera. The following year this concept, worked into a scenario by Camille du Locle, was proposed to Giuseppe Verdi, who accepted it as a subject for Aida. For this production Mariette and Du Locle oversaw the scenery and costumes, which were intended to be inspired by the art of Ancient Egypt. The Khedive had originally asked Verdi to compose an ode in honour of the opening of his Royal Opera House in Cairo in November 1869, but the composer had declined, and the theatre opened with a performance of Rigoletto. Aida was to be premièred in January 1871, but the siege of Paris at the height of the Franco-Prussian War trapped Mariette with the costumes and scenery in Paris; the Cairo premiere took place on 24 December 1871, to great acclaim.
Mariette was raised successively to the rank of bey and pasha, and European honors and orders were showered on him. Though not all his discoveries were thoroughly published, the list of his publications is a long one. He died in Cairo and was interred in a sarcophagus.
External links
- [The Monuments of Upper Egypt, 1877]: (excerpt: discovery of the Serapeum, in English)
- [Egyptology website:] Mariette in context of other 19th century Egyptologists
- [Mariette and the Serapeum at Saqqara]
- [egypt4eternity.com] Information on the Mariette Pacha exhibition at Boulogne-sur-Mer, France - 2004
References
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