Auguste Mariette was a Frenchman who was sent to Egypt by the Louvre Museum to collect Coptic manuscripts. While excavating in Sakkara, Egypt, Mariette came across ruins that were submerged in the sand. He began excavation on the ruins and discovered an ancient building known as Serapeum. After discovering the ruins, Auguste Mariette devoted nearly his whole life to Egyptology.
Mariette became loyal to the idea that Egyptians should be able to keep their own antiquities. He tried to enlist the help of the Khedive (the lord of Egypt) to set up an Egyptian Service of Antiquities with himself as director. The Khedive had other goals in mind however, he wanted to get everything he could from Napoleon III, the King of France. Napoleon III went along with Mariette’s plan, but the Khedive was an unreliable ally, subjecting Mariette to every kind of inconvenience and even refused him funds necessary to complete excavations. However, Mariette succeeded in using his position to limit the robbery of antiquities and to impose some sort of excavation policy, a policy that said only Mariette could dig. This at least prevented the rivalries that were fought in Mesopotamia.
During an excavation in 1859, Mariette discovered the burial of Queen Aahotep near the entrance to the Valley of Kings at Thebes. Jewelry and a gilded coffin, a gift of the Queen’s royal son, were some of the precious findings that were discovered. Before he could dig out the artifacts however, a local Mudir (Egyptian governor) seized it and took off in a boat. Mariette, wanting to remain on good terms with the Khedive, followed him in a faster boat, caught up to him, and boarded the Mudir’s boat and forced him to hand over the jewelry which he then took to the Khedive.
The Khedive now showed a more attractive side of his character, as he was amused by the story of Mariette seizing the jewelry from the Mudir. After choosing a few pieces of jewelry for himself and one for one of his wives, he ordered the rest of the pieces to be displayed at the museum. So Mariette got what he wanted and Egypt possessed the first National Museum and the first National Antiquities Service.
During his time in Egypt, Mariette excavated at many of the well-known Egyptian monuments. He dug extensively at Memphis, Sakkara and Thebes; he uncovered the Sphinx and the great temples of Dendera and Edfu. He went everywhere from Tanis to the Delta to Bebel Barkel in the Sudan. Mariette died in 1881 with great European honors and also with great Egyptian honors, he was proclaimed a Pasha. Though most of his work was never written down and some of it unfinished and unpublished, he was one of the most renowned and well known archaeologists.
References:Budden, Julian (1981). The Operas of Verdi, Vol. 3. London: Cassell, 163-187.
Written by Students in an Introduction to Anthropology Class, Minnesota State University, Mankato, Minnesota 2002.
Edited by Marcy L. Voelker, 2007