François Auguste Ferdinand Mariette (; 11 February 182118 January 1881) was a French scholar, archaeologist and Egyptologist, and the founder of the Egyptian Department of Antiquities, the forerunner of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Early career

Auguste Mariette was born in Boulogne-sur-Mer, where his father was town clerk. Educated at the Boulogne municipal college, where he distinguished himself and showed much artistic talent, he went to England in 1839 when eighteen as professor of French and drawing at a boys' school at Stratford-upon-Avon. In 1840 he became pattern-designer to a ribbon manufacturer in Coventry, but he returned the same year to Boulogne, and in 1841 took a degree at the University of Douai. 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'Hôte, the friend and fellow-traveller of Champollion, died, and the task of sorting his papers filled Mariette with a passion for Egyptology. Largely self-taught, he devoted himself to the study of hieroglyphs 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.

First trip to Egypt

thumb|right|300px|alt=A large group of men and women are gathered below the head of the Sphinx with the Great Pyramid looming behind|Auguste Mariette (seated, far left) and Emperor [[Pedro II of Brazil (seated, far right) with others during the monarch's visit to the Giza Necropolis at the end of 1871.]]

Mariette first went to Egypt in 1850. He was entrusted with a government mission for the purpose of seeking and purchasing high-quality Coptic, Syriac, Arabic and Ethiopic manuscripts for the Louvre collection so that it retained its then-supremacy over other national collections.

The following are Mariette's most notable explorations and discoveries after he moved his family to Cairo:

  • Gaining government funds open the museum in Cairo at Bulaq in 1863 in order to take the pressure off the sites and stop the trade in illicit antiquities.
  • The pyramid-fields of Memphis and (exploiting his previous success to find a cache of ca. 2000BC painted wooden statues such as the Seated Scribe) the tombs of Saqqara.
  • The necropolis of Meidum, and those of Abydos and Thebes.
  • Disinterred the great temples of Dendera and Edfu.
  • The first full Egyptian use of the stratigraphic methods first developed by Karl Richard Lepsius and of the photographing of every object prior to its excavation carried out at the excavations of Karnak, Medinet Habu and Deir el-Bahri.
  • Partially explored the archealogical site of Tanis (the Egyptian capital in the Late Period).
  • Explored the 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". Heinrich Brugsch, a German philologist documented how Mariette was suspicious of Egyptians and forbade Egyptians from copying hieroglyphs in the Cairo Museum. Mariette was concerned, Brugsch states, that Egyptians might be appointed into official positions within the Museum and was dedicated to stopping that from occurring.

In 1867, he returned to oversee the ancient Egyptian stand at the Exposition Universelle to a hero's welcome for keeping France preeminent in Egyptology. In 1869, at the request of the Khedive, he 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 Aida, Mariette and Du Locle oversaw the scenery and costumes, which were inspired by the art of Ancient Egypt. The premiere of Aida was originally scheduled for February 1871, but was delayed until 24 December 1871, due to the siege of Paris at the height of the Franco-Prussian War (which trapped Mariette with the costumes and scenery in Paris). The opera met with great acclaim.

Mariette was raised successively to the rank of bey and pasha, and European honors and orders were bestowed on him.

The bust of other famous Egyptologists, including Charles Wycliffe Goodwin, have been placed on a semi-circular memorial around the sarcophagus.

List of selected publications

;Publications

  • Mariette, Auguste. 1857. (Le) Sérapéum de Memphis. Paris: 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. [1888] 1976. Les mastabas de l'ancien empire: Fragment du dernier ouvrage de Auguste Édouard Mariette. G. Olms.
  • 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. 1981. Monuments divers recueillis en Egypte et en Nubie. LTR-Verlag.
  • Mariette, Auguste. 1999. Voyage dans la Haute-Egypte: Compris entre Le Caire et la première cataracte. Errance.

Notes

References

Further reading

  • Auguste Mariette by Amandine Marshall, 2010

See also

  • Suez Canal Company
  • The Monuments of Upper Egypt, 1877: (excerpt: discovery of the Serapeum, in English)
  • Mariette and the Serapeum at Saqqara
  • The monuments of Upper Egypt by Mariette.
  • Denderah, 1870-74, by Mariette
  • Section on Mariette in Archaeologists: Explorers of the Human Past, by Brian Fagan, 2003
  • Works by Mariette on the Internet Archive