Gaston Maspero
Gaston Camille Charles Maspero (June 23, 1846 &ndash ;June 30, 1916) was a French Egyptologist, director of Egyptian Museum in Cairo, where he established the French School of Oriental Archaeology. Fighting against an illegal export of Egyptian antiquities, he contributed toward the introduction of a series of anti-looting laws, which prevented Egyptian antiques from being taken out of the country.
Life
Gaston Maspero was born in Paris, France, to parents of Lombard origin. While at school, he showed a special taste for history and, at the age of fourteen, was already interested in hieroglyphic writing. It was not until his second year at the École Normale in 1867 that Maspero met fellow Egyptologist Auguste Mariette who was then in Paris as commissioner for the Egyptian section of the Exposition Universelle. Mariette gave him two newly discovered hieroglyphic texts of considerable difficulty to study, and Maspero, a self-taught, young scholar was able to translate them rather quickly, a great feat in those days when Egyptology was still almost in its infancy. The publication of these texts in the same year established Maspero's academic reputation.
After that, Maspero spent short time in assisting a gentleman in Peru, who was seeking to prove an Aryan affinity for the dialects spoken by the Indians of that country. In 1868, Maspero was back in France at more profitable work. In 1869, he became a teacher (répétiteur) of Egyptian language and archaeology at the École Pratique des Hautes Études and in 1874, he was appointed to the chair of Champollion at the Collège de France.
In 1880, Maspero went to Egypt as head of an archeological team sent by the French government. They eventually established the permanent Mission in Cairo under the name Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale. This occurred a few months before the death of Mariette, whom Maspero then succeeded as director-general of excavations and of the antiquities in Egypt.
Aware that his reputation was then more as a linguist than an archaeologist, Maspero's first work in the post was to build on Mariette's achievements at Saqqara, expanding their scope from the early Old Kingdom to the later, with particular interest in tombs with long and complete hieroglyphic inscriptions that could help illustrate the development of the Egyptian language. Selecting 5 later Old Kingdom tombs, he was successful in that aim, finding over 4000 lines of hieroglyphics which were then sketched and photographed.
As an aspect of his attempt to curtail the rampant illegal export of Egyptian antiquities by tourists, collectors and the agents of the major European and American museums, Maspero arrested the Abd al-Russul brothers from the notorious treasure-hunting village of Gorna, who confessed under torture to having found the great cache of royal mummies at Deir el-Bahri in July 1881. The cache was moved to Cairo as soon as possible to keep it safe from robbers.
In 1886, Maspero resumed work begun by Mariette to uncover the Sphinx, removing more than 65 feet of sand and seeking tombs below it (which were found only later). He also introduced admission charges for Egyptian sites to the increasing number of tourists to pay for their upkeep and maintenance.
In spite of the brutality towards the Abd al-Russul brothers, Maspero was popular with museum keepers and collectors and was known to be a "pragmatic" director of the Service of Antiquities. Maspero did not attempt to halt all collecting, but rather sought to control what went out of the country and to gain the confidence of those who were regular collectors. When Maspero left his position in 1886, and was replaced by a series of other directors who attempted to halt the trade in antiquities, his absence was much lamented.
Maspero resumed his professorial duties in Paris from June 1886 until 1899, when, at 53, he returned to Egypt in his old capacity as director-general of the department of antiquities. On October 3rd that year, an earthquake at Karnak collapsed 11 columns and left the main hall in ruins. Maspero had already made some repairs and clearances there (continued in his absence by unofficial but authorized explorers of many nationalities) in his previous tenure of office, and now he set up a team of workmen under French supervision. In 1903, an alabaster pavement was found in the court of the 7th Pylon and beneath it, a shaft leading to a large hoard of almost 17,000 statues.
Because of the policy of keeping all the items discovered in Egypt, the collections in the Bulak Museum were enormously increased. In 1902 Maspero organized their removal from Gizeh to the new quarters at Kasr en-Nil. The vast catalogue of the collections made rapid progress under Maspero's direction. Twenty-four volumes or sections were published in 1909. This work and the increasing workload of the Antiquities Service led to an expansion of staff at the museum, including the 17 year old Howard Carter. In 1907, it was Maspero who recommended Carter to Lord Carnarvon when the Earl approached him to seek advice for the use of an expert to head his planned archaeological expedition to the Valley of the Kings.
In 1914 Maspero was elected the permanent secretary of the Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres. He died in June 1916 and was interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.
Work
Among his best-known publications are the large Histoire ancienne des peuples de l'Orient classique (3 vols., Paris, 1895-1897, translated into English by Mrs McClure for the S.P.C.K.), displaying the history of the whole of the nearer East from the beginnings to the conquest by Alexander the Great. He also wrote a smaller Histoire des peuples de l'Orient, 1 vol., of the same scope, which passed through six editions from 1875 to 1904; Etudes de mythologie et d'archéologie égyptiennes (1893), a collection of reviews and essays originally published in various journals, and especially important as contributions to the study of Egyptian religion; L'Archéologie égyptienne (1887), of which several editions have been published in English. He also established the journal Recueil de travaux relatifs à la philologie et à l'archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes; the Bibliothèque égyptologique, in which the scattered essays of the French Egyptologists are collected, with biographies, etc.; and the Annales du service des antiquités de l'Egypte, a repository for reports on official excavations, etc.
Maspero also wrote: Les inscriptions des pyramides de Saqqarah (Paris, 1894); Les momies royales de Deir el-Bahari (Paris, 1889); Les contes populaires de l'Egypte ancienne (3rd ed., Paris, 1906); and Causeries d'Egypte (1907), translated by Elizabeth Lee as New Light on Ancient Egypt (1908).
Legacy
For over forty years Maspero has been one of the leading figures in Egyptology research. He published whole series of works which introduced Egyptian culture to the outside world. Maspero also helped set up a network of local museums throughout Egypt to encourage the Egyptians to take greater responsibility for the maintenance of their own heritage by increasing public awareness of it. He succeeded where his predecessors had failed in the introduction of a series of anti-looting laws, which prevented Egyptian antiques from being taken out of the country.
Publications
- Maspero, Gaston. 1875. Histoire des peuples de l'Orient. Paris: Hachette
- Maspero, Gaston. 1889. Les momies royales de Deir el-Bahari. Paris: E. Leroux
- Maspero, Gaston. 1893. Etudes de mythologie et d'archéologie égyptiennes. Paris: E. Leroux
- Maspero, Gaston. 1894. Les inscriptions des pyramides de Saqqarah. Paris: É. Bouillon
- Maspero, Gaston. 1895-1897. Histoire ancienne des peuples de l'Orient classique. Paris: Hachette
- Maspero, Gaston. 1907. Causeries d'Egypte. Paris: E. Guilmoto
- Maspero, Gaston. 2001 (original published 1887). L'archéologie égyptienne. Adamant Media Corporation. ISBN 1421217155
- Maspero, Gaston. 2002 (original published 1882). Popular stories of ancient Egypt (original title Les contes populaires de l'Egypte ancienne). Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 1576076393
- Maspero, Gaston. 2003. Everyday life in ancient Egypt and Assyria. Library of ancient Egypt. London: Kegan Paul International. ISBN 0710308833
- Maspero, Gaston. 2006 (original published 1884). The dawn of civilization. Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 0766177742
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- David, Elisabeth. 1999. Gaston Maspero, 1846-1916 le gentleman égyptologue. Bibliothèque de l'Egypte ancienne. Paris: Pygmalion/G. Watelet. ISBN 2857045654
- Deuel, Leo. 1961. The treasures of time; firsthand accounts by famous archaeologists of their work in the Near East. Cleveland: World Pub. Co.
- Jastrow, Morris. 1916. Sir Gaston Maspero. Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society.
External links
- L'archéologie égyptienne – Full-text Maspero’s work on Project Gutenberg
- Maspero’s biography in Dictionaries of Art Historians
- Royal Caches at Deir el-Bahri – On Maspero’s work at Deir el-Bahri
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