I’Vench Egvptologist who e. xcavated inanv of the major Egyptian sites and monuments and founded the Egyptian Antiquities Service. He was born and educated in Boulogne-sur-Mer and in 1839-40 he lived in England, teaching French and drawing in Stratford and working unsuccessfully as a designer in Coventry. In 1841 he returned to Boulogne to complete his education, and the following year he developed an enthusiasm for Egyptology when he examined the papers bequeathed to his family by his cousin Nestor L’Hote, who produced huge numbers of drawings as a draughtsman on CTi. A.vipoLLiox’s expedition to Egypt in 1828-9.
Between 1842 and 1849 Mariette taught himself hieroglyphics (using Champollion’s grammar and dictionary) and studied Coptic, eventually obtaining a post in the Louvre, where he made an inventory of all of the Egyptian inscriptions in the collection. In 185(1 he was sent to Egypt to acquire papyri for the T. ouvre, but instead embarked on the excavation of the Saqqara ser. apel. m; the ensuing four years were probably the most successful of his archaeological career. In 1855 he became. Assistant Conservator at the Louvre and two years later he returned to Egypt. With the financial support of Said Pasha, the viceroy of Egypt, he undertook several simultaneous excavations, including work at Giza, Thebes, Abydos and Elephantine. In June 1858 he was appointed as the first Director of the newly created Egyptian Antiquities Service, which enabled him to gather together sufficient antiquities to establish a national museum at Bulaq, near Cairo. His subsequent excavations at thirty-five different sites, regularly using large numbers of relatively unsupervised workers, were criticized by later, more scientific, excavators such as Flinders I’ETRit. and George relsM’R, but he is nevertheless deservedly honoured b modern archaeologists as the creator of the Egyptian Antiquities Service and the Egyptian. Museum, without which the plundering of Egypt would have carried on at a far greater pace in the late nineteenth ceniur}-. He died at Bulaq in 1881 and was buried in a sarcophagus which was later moved to the forecourt of the modern Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
.A. Mariiht k, Le Serapemn de Memphis (Paris, 1857).
—, Notice des principaux iiiomiii/enis exposes dans lesgaleriesprovisotres ilii Miistk’... d Boulak (Cairo, 1864).
—, The monuments of Upper Egypt (London. 1877).
E. .Mariett e, Mariette Pacha (Pari. s, 1904).
G. D. A.NTEE, A hundred years of archaeology, 1st cd. (London, 1950), 160-4.
World History
