Encyclopedia, Difference between revisions of "Auguste Mariette" - New World
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| − | [[Image:Auguste Mariette statue, Boulogne-sur-Mer.jpg|thumb|A statue of '''Auguste Mariette''' in his home city of | + | [[Image:Auguste Mariette statue, Boulogne-sur-Mer.jpg|thumb|A statue of '''Auguste Mariette''' in his home city of Boulogne-sur-Mer.]] |
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| + | '''François Auguste Ferdinand Mariette''' (born February 11, 1821 – died January 19, 1881) was a [[France|French]] scholar and [[archaeology|archaeologist]], one of the early pioneers of [[Egyptology]]. He became famous for his discovery of the ancient [[Serapeum]], and the founding of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, [[Egypt]]. | ||
| + | |||
| + | ==Biography== | ||
| − | |||
===Early career=== | ===Early career=== | ||
| − | + | '''Auguste Mariette''' was born at Boulogne-sur-Mer, [[France]], where his father was a town clerk. His first exposure to [[Egypt]] came in 1827, when he was only six years old. At the age of 12 he was already able to read [[Egyptian hieroglyph|hieroglyphs]] and decipher the [[Coptic language|Coptic]] writings. When his cousin Nestor L'Hote, the friend and fellow-traveler of [[Jean-François Champollion|Champollion]] died, the task of sorting his papers filled Mariette with a passion for [[Egyptology]]. | |
| − | + | His 1847 analytic catalogue of the Egyptian Gallery of the Boulogne Museum got him a minor appointment at the [[Louvre|Louvre Museum]] in 1849. He supplemented his salary as a teacher at Douai by giving private lessons and writing on [[history|historical]] and [[archaeology|archaeological]] subjects for local [[periodical]]s. | |
| − | === | + | ===Beginnings in Egypt=== |
| − | + | In 1849 the Louvre sent Mariette to [[Egypt]] to acquire [[Coptic]], [[Ethiopia]]n and [[Syria]]n manuscripts to add to their collection. The acquisition of Egyptian artifacts by national and private collections was then a competitive endeavor, the [[England|English]] being able to pay higher prices. Mariette arrived to Egypt in 1850. | |
| − | After little success in acquiring manuscripts due to inexperience, to avoid an | + | After little success in acquiring manuscripts due to inexperience, to avoid an embarrassing return empty-handed to France and wasting what might be his only trip to Egypt, he visited temples and befriended a [[Bedouin]] friend, who led him to [[Saqqara]]. The site initially looked deserted, with nothing worthy to explore. But after noticing a [[sphinx]], from the reputed avenue of sphinxes, he decided to give it a try and explore the place. That eventually led to the discovery of the ruins of the [[Serapis|Serapeum]]. |
| − | Accused of theft and destruction by rival diggers and by the | + | In 1851, he made his celebrated discovery, uncovering the avenue of sphinx and eventually the subterraneous tomb-temple complex of catacombs with their spectacular [[sarcophagus|sarcophagi]] of the [[Apis (Egyptian mythology)|Apis]] bulls. Breaking through the rubble at the tomb entrance on November 12th, he entered the complex, finding thousands of statues, bronze tablets and other treasures, but only one intact sarcophagus. Under one corner of its lid he placed dynamite, lighting it with his cigar and running before it exploded, thus destroying the only remaining bull. |
| + | |||
| + | Accused of theft and destruction by rival diggers and by the [[Egypt]]ian authorities, Mariette began to rebury his finds in the desert to keep them from these competitors. Mariette remained in Egypt for four years, excavating, discovering and despatching archaeological treasures to the Louvre, as was the accepted Eurocentric convention. However, the French government and the Louvre strike a deal to split the finds 50:50, so that on his return to Paris 230 crates go to the Louvre and an equal amount remain in Egypt. | ||
===Director of Antiquities=== | ===Director of Antiquities=== | ||
| − | However, unsatisfied with a purely academic role after his discoveries at Saqqara | + | However, unsatisfied with a purely academic role after his discoveries at Saqqara, after less than a year he returned to [[Egypt]] on the insistence of the Egyptian government under [[Muhammad Ali]] and his successor [[Ismail Pasha]], who in 1858 created the position for him, as the conservator of Egyptian monuments. |
| + | |||
| + | Moving with his family to Cairo, Mariette’s career blossomed. Among others he was able to: | ||
| + | *gain government funds to set up the [[Egyptian Museum]] in Cairo (aka the Bula Museum or Bulak Museum) in 1863 in order to take the pressure off the sites and stop the trade in illicit antiquities; | ||
| + | *explore the pyramid-fields of [[Memphis, Egypt|Memphis]] and, exploiting his previous success, find a cache of c.2000B.C.E. painted wooden statues such as [[the Seated Scribe]], and the decorated tomb of [[Khafra]] and the tombs of [[Saqqara]]; | ||
| + | *explore the necropolis of [[Meidum]], and those of [[Abydos, Egypt|Abydos]] and [[Thebes, Egypt|Thebes]]; | ||
| + | *unearth the great temples of [[Dendera]] and [[Edfu]]; | ||
| + | *conduct excavations at Karnak, Medinet Habu and Deir el-Bahri, which marked the first full Egyptian use of the [[stratification (archaeology)|stratigraphic methods]], developed by [[Karl Richard Lepsius]] | ||
| + | *explore Tanis, the Egyptian capital in the Late Period of Ancient Egypt | ||
| + | *explore [[Jebel Barkal]] in [[Sudan]] | ||
| + | *clear 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." | ||
| + | |||
| + | In 1860 he set up 35 new dig sites, whilst attempting to conserve already-dug sites. His success was aided by the fact that no rivals were permitted to dig in [[Egypt]], a fact that the [[Great Britain|British]] (who had previously had the majority of Egyptologists active in the country) and [[Germany|Germans]] (who were politically allied with the country's Ottoman rulers) protested at as a 'sweetheart deal' between Egypt and [[France]]. Nor were Mariette's relations with the Khedive 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. Even early on, in February 1859, Mariette dashed to Thebes to confiscate a boatload of antiquities from the nearby tomb of Queen Aotep that were to have been sent to the Khedive. | ||
| + | |||
| + | In 1867 he returned to France to oversee the ancient Egyptian stand at the World's Fair [[Exposition Universelle (1867)|Exposition Universelle]], held in [[Paris]]. He was welcomed as a hero, for keeping France pre-eminent in [[Egyptology]]. | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===Later career=== | ||
| + | In 1869, at the request of the Khedive, Mariette wrote a brief plot for an opera, which was later revised into the scenario by [[Camille du Locle]]. The plot was later developed by [[Giuseppe Verdi]], who adopted it as a subject for his opera [[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]]. ''Aida '' was to be premièred to mark the opening of the [[Suez Canal]], but was delayed until in 1871. Intended for January of that year, the Cairo premiere is delayed again by the siege of Paris at the height of the [[Franco-Prussian War]]. It was finally performed in Cairo, on December 24, 1871. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Mariette was raised successively to the rank of [[pasha]], and European honors and orders were showered on him. | ||
| + | |||
| + | In 1878 Cairo museum was ravaged by floods, destroying most of his notes and drawings. By spring 1881, prematurely aged and nearly blind, Mariette realized that he wouldn’t live longer, so he decided to appoint his own replacement in the Museum of Cairo. To ensure France retained supremacy in Egyptology, he chose the Frenchman [[Gaston Maspero]], rather than an Englishman (the English were then making up the majority of Egyptologists in the country). | ||
| − | + | Mariette died in Cairo and was interred in a [[sarcophagus]]. | |
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| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
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| − | + | ==Legacy== | |
| − | + | Mariette had never written much, and most of his notes and drawings had been destroyed in the flood. Nevertheless, he is remembered as one of the most renowned and well known [[archaeology|archaeologists]]. He believed that [[Egypt]]ians should be able to keep their own antiquities, and has founded the Museum of Cairo, which hosts one of the biggest collections of [[Ancient Egypt]]ian artifacts in the world. | |
| − | + | ==Publications== | |
| − | + | * Mariette, Auguste. 1857. ''(Le) Sérapéum de Memphis''. Par: Gide. | |
| + | * Mariette, Auguste. 1875. ''Karnak: étude topographique et archéologique avec un appendice comprenant les principaux textes hiéroglyphiques découverts ou recueillis pendant les fouilles exécutées à Karnak''. Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs | ||
| + | * Mariette, Auguste. 1880. ''Catalogue général des monuments d'Abydos découverts pendant les fouilles de cette ville''. Paris: L'imprimerie nationale. | ||
| + | * Mariette, Auguste. 1890. ''The monuments of Upper Egypt''. Boston: H. Mansfield & J.W. Dearborn | ||
| + | * Mariette, Auguste. 1892. ''Outlines of Ancient Egyptian History''. New York: C. Scribner's Sons. | ||
| + | * Mariette, Auguste. 1976. ''Les mastabas de l'ancien empire: Fragment du dernier ouvrage de Auguste Édouard Mariette.'' G. Olms. ISBN 3487059878 | ||
| + | * Mariette, Auguste. 1981. ''Monuments divers recueillis en Egypte et en Nubie''. LTR-Verlag. ISBN 3887060636 | ||
| + | * Mariette, Auguste. 1999. ''Voyage dans la Haute-Egypte: Compris entre Le Caire et la première cataracte''. Errance. ISBN 2877721779 | ||
| − | === | + | ==References== |
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | + | * Brochet, Pierre, Béatrice Seguin, Elisabeth David, & Claudine Le Tourneur d'Ison. 2004. ''Mariette en Egypte, ou, La métamorphose des ruines.'' Boulogne-sur-Mer: Bibliothèque municipale. | |
| − | + | * Budden, Julian. 1981. ''The Operas of Verdi'' (Vol. 3). Oxford University Press. | |
| + | * Lambert, Gilles. 1997. ''Auguste Mariette, l'Egypte ancienne sauvée des sables''. Paris: JC Lattès. ISBN 2709618222 | ||
| + | * Poiret, Françoise C. 1998. ''François Auguste Mariette: Champion de l'Egypte''. Boulogne-sur-Mer: Le Musée. | ||
| + | * Ridley, Ronald T. 1984. ''Auguste Mariette: One hundred years after''. Leiden: Brill | ||
| + | * Ziegler, Christiane, and Marc Desti. 2004. ''Des dieux, des tombeaux, un savant: en Egypte, sur les pas de Mariette pacha.'' Paris: Somogy. | ||
==External links== | ==External links== | ||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | + | * [http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9050923 Auguste Mariette] – Biography on Encyclopedia Britannica | |
| − | + | * [http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/klmno/mariette_auguste.html Auguste Mariette] – Biography on Minnesota State University website | |
| + | * [http://members.tripod.com/~ib205/apis_4.html The Cemetery of the Sacred Bulls] - excerpt from Mariette’s ''The Monuments of Upper Egypt'' | ||
| + | * [http://www.egyptologyonline.com/ Egyptology] – Online resources on Egyptology | ||
| + | * [http://www.egyptianmuseum.gov.eg/ Egyptian Museum in Cairo] – Official website of the museum | ||
| + | * [http://www.egyptologyonline.com/egyptologists.htm Pioneers of Egyptology] - Mariette in context of other 19th century Egyptologists | ||
| + | * [http://www.aldokkan.com/geography/serapeum.htm Serapeum] – Article on Mariette and the Serapeum at Saqqara | ||
{{Credit1|Auguste_Mariette|80794683|}} | {{Credit1|Auguste_Mariette|80794683|}} | ||
Revision as of 04:49, 6 May 2007
François Auguste Ferdinand Mariette (born February 11, 1821 – died January 19, 1881) was a French scholar and archaeologist, one of the early pioneers of Egyptology. He became famous for his discovery of the ancient Serapeum, and the founding of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Egypt.
Biography
Early career
Auguste Mariette was born at Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, where his father was a town clerk. His first exposure to Egypt came in 1827, when he was only six years old. At the age of 12 he was already able to read hieroglyphs and decipher the Coptic writings. When his cousin Nestor L'Hote, the friend and fellow-traveler of Champollion died, the task of sorting his papers filled Mariette with a passion for Egyptology.
His 1847 analytic catalogue of the Egyptian Gallery of the Boulogne Museum got him a minor appointment at the Louvre Museum in 1849. He supplemented his salary as a teacher at Douai by giving private lessons and writing on historical and archaeological subjects for local periodicals.
Beginnings in Egypt
In 1849 the Louvre sent Mariette to Egypt to acquire Coptic, Ethiopian and Syrian manuscripts to add to their collection. The acquisition of Egyptian artifacts by national and private collections was then a competitive endeavor, the English being able to pay higher prices. Mariette arrived to Egypt in 1850.
After little success in acquiring manuscripts due to inexperience, to avoid an embarrassing return empty-handed to France and wasting what might be his only trip to Egypt, he visited temples and befriended a Bedouin friend, who led him to Saqqara. The site initially looked deserted, with nothing worthy to explore. But after noticing a sphinx, from the reputed avenue of sphinxes, he decided to give it a try and explore the place. That eventually led to the discovery of the ruins of the Serapeum.
In 1851, he made his celebrated discovery, uncovering the avenue of sphinx and eventually the subterraneous tomb-temple complex of catacombs with their spectacular sarcophagi of the Apis bulls. Breaking through the rubble at the tomb entrance on November 12th, he entered the complex, finding thousands of statues, bronze tablets and other treasures, but only one intact sarcophagus. Under one corner of its lid he placed dynamite, lighting it with his cigar and running before it exploded, thus destroying the only remaining bull.
Accused of theft and destruction by rival diggers and by the Egyptian authorities, Mariette began to rebury his finds in the desert to keep them from these competitors. Mariette remained in Egypt for four years, excavating, discovering and despatching archaeological treasures to the Louvre, as was the accepted Eurocentric convention. However, the French government and the Louvre strike a deal to split the finds 50:50, so that on his return to Paris 230 crates go to the Louvre and an equal amount remain in Egypt.
Director of Antiquities
However, unsatisfied with a purely academic role after his discoveries at Saqqara, after less than a year he returned to Egypt on the insistence of the Egyptian government under Muhammad Ali and his successor Ismail Pasha, who in 1858 created the position for him, as the conservator of Egyptian monuments.
Moving with his family to Cairo, Mariette’s career blossomed. Among others he was able to:
- gain government funds to set up the Egyptian Museum in Cairo (aka the Bula Museum or Bulak Museum) in 1863 in order to take the pressure off the sites and stop the trade in illicit antiquities;
- explore the pyramid-fields of Memphis and, exploiting his previous success, find a cache of c.2000B.C.E. painted wooden statues such as the Seated Scribe, and the decorated tomb of Khafra and the tombs of Saqqara;
- explore the necropolis of Meidum, and those of Abydos and Thebes;
- unearth the great temples of Dendera and Edfu;
- conduct excavations at Karnak, Medinet Habu and Deir el-Bahri, which marked the first full Egyptian use of the stratigraphic methods, developed by Karl Richard Lepsius
- explore Tanis, the Egyptian capital in the Late Period of Ancient Egypt
- explore Jebel Barkal in Sudan
- clear 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."
In 1860 he set up 35 new dig sites, whilst attempting to conserve already-dug sites. His success was aided by the fact that no rivals were permitted to dig in Egypt, a fact that the British (who had previously had the majority of Egyptologists active in the country) and Germans (who were politically allied with the country's Ottoman rulers) protested at as a 'sweetheart deal' between Egypt and France. Nor were Mariette's relations with the Khedive 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. Even early on, in February 1859, Mariette dashed to Thebes to confiscate a boatload of antiquities from the nearby tomb of Queen Aotep that were to have been sent to the Khedive.
In 1867 he returned to France to oversee the ancient Egyptian stand at the World's Fair Exposition Universelle, held in Paris. He was welcomed as a hero, for keeping France pre-eminent in Egyptology.
Later career
In 1869, at the request of the Khedive, Mariette wrote a brief plot for an opera, which was later revised into the scenario by Camille du Locle. The plot was later developed by Giuseppe Verdi, who adopted it as a subject for his opera 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. Aida was to be premièred to mark the opening of the Suez Canal, but was delayed until in 1871. Intended for January of that year, the Cairo premiere is delayed again by the siege of Paris at the height of the Franco-Prussian War. It was finally performed in Cairo, on December 24, 1871.
Mariette was raised successively to the rank of pasha, and European honors and orders were showered on him.
In 1878 Cairo museum was ravaged by floods, destroying most of his notes and drawings. By spring 1881, prematurely aged and nearly blind, Mariette realized that he wouldn’t live longer, so he decided to appoint his own replacement in the Museum of Cairo. To ensure France retained supremacy in Egyptology, he chose the Frenchman Gaston Maspero, rather than an Englishman (the English were then making up the majority of Egyptologists in the country).
Mariette died in Cairo and was interred in a sarcophagus.
Legacy
Mariette had never written much, and most of his notes and drawings had been destroyed in the flood. Nevertheless, he is remembered as one of the most renowned and well known archaeologists. He believed that Egyptians should be able to keep their own antiquities, and has founded the Museum of Cairo, which hosts one of the biggest collections of Ancient Egyptian artifacts in the world.
Publications
- Mariette, Auguste. 1857. (Le) Sérapéum de Memphis. Par: Gide.
- Mariette, Auguste. 1875. Karnak: étude topographique et archéologique avec un appendice comprenant les principaux textes hiéroglyphiques découverts ou recueillis pendant les fouilles exécutées à Karnak. Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs
- Mariette, Auguste. 1880. Catalogue général des monuments d'Abydos découverts pendant les fouilles de cette ville. Paris: L'imprimerie nationale.
- Mariette, Auguste. 1890. The monuments of Upper Egypt. Boston: H. Mansfield & J.W. Dearborn
- Mariette, Auguste. 1892. Outlines of Ancient Egyptian History. New York: C. Scribner's Sons.
- Mariette, Auguste. 1976. Les mastabas de l'ancien empire: Fragment du dernier ouvrage de Auguste Édouard Mariette. G. Olms. ISBN 3487059878
- Mariette, Auguste. 1981. Monuments divers recueillis en Egypte et en Nubie. LTR-Verlag. ISBN 3887060636
- Mariette, Auguste. 1999. Voyage dans la Haute-Egypte: Compris entre Le Caire et la première cataracte. Errance. ISBN 2877721779
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Brochet, Pierre, Béatrice Seguin, Elisabeth David, & Claudine Le Tourneur d'Ison. 2004. Mariette en Egypte, ou, La métamorphose des ruines. Boulogne-sur-Mer: Bibliothèque municipale.
- Budden, Julian. 1981. The Operas of Verdi (Vol. 3). Oxford University Press.
- Lambert, Gilles. 1997. Auguste Mariette, l'Egypte ancienne sauvée des sables. Paris: JC Lattès. ISBN 2709618222
- Poiret, Françoise C. 1998. François Auguste Mariette: Champion de l'Egypte. Boulogne-sur-Mer: Le Musée.
- Ridley, Ronald T. 1984. Auguste Mariette: One hundred years after. Leiden: Brill
- Ziegler, Christiane, and Marc Desti. 2004. Des dieux, des tombeaux, un savant: en Egypte, sur les pas de Mariette pacha. Paris: Somogy.
External links
- Auguste Mariette – Biography on Encyclopedia Britannica
- Auguste Mariette – Biography on Minnesota State University website
- The Cemetery of the Sacred Bulls - excerpt from Mariette’s The Monuments of Upper Egypt
- Egyptology – Online resources on Egyptology
- Egyptian Museum in Cairo – Official website of the museum
- Pioneers of Egyptology - Mariette in context of other 19th century Egyptologists
- Serapeum – Article on Mariette and the Serapeum at Saqqara
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