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Auguste Mariette was a 19th-century French Egyptologist and adventurer, recognised as one of the founders of Egyptology; and yet, despite his significant contributions to the field, he remains largely overlooked. This article examines the extraordinary and highly improbable journey of a man who, although not predestined to walk such a path, left a substantial legacy to both Egypt and France.
Early life
François-Auguste-Ferdinand, more commonly known just as Auguste, was born on 11 February 1821, in Boulogne-sur-Mer in northern France. His father, François-Paulin Mariette, came from a line of lawyers, sailors, and scholars, but it appears that Auguste inherited his taste for adventure from his grandfather Guillaume, who served as a privateer under the French kings Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Described by his classmates as full of enthusiasm, tempestuous, and sometimes impulsive, the young Mariette was bursting with curiosity, and showed an early interest in history and archaeology. As a teenager, he and his younger brother Charles often explored the underground passages of the Castle of Boulogne- sur-Mer, in search of a legendary secret passage leading from the rampart galleries to the neighbouring town of Ostrohove. Ernest Deseille, a friend of the family and biographer of Mariette, highlighted his determination:
How many times he collected pieces of candle for this enterprise, which did not succeed, but not for lack of trying.
At the age of 16, Mariette ended his studies to take up a clerical role at the town hall of Boulogne-sur-Mer. Two years later, he left for England to teach French and drawing at the highly regarded Shakespeare House Academy in Stratford-upon-Avon. Unfortunately, he angered the school’s headmaster by being overly charming to his female students, and was dismissed. He chose to remain in the Midlands area, finding work in a ribbon factory in Coventry, where he created new designs, but the meagre wages he received compelled him to return to Boulogne-sur-Mer a few months later. After gaining a degree in literature, in 1842 he became a professor at the municipal college, teaching French, Latin, drawing, and, occasionally, English.
A passion for ancient Egypt
The same year, Mariette was made responsible for organising an extensive collection of papers and manuscripts following the death of his distant relative Nestor L’Hôte. L’Hôte was well known in the field of Egyptology for his exceptional artistic skills, and he had participated in the Franco-Tuscan expedition led by Jean-François Champollion and the Egyptologist Ippolito Rosellini. Although at first reluctant to take on this extra work, under pressure from his father, Mariette began the task and discovered a new passion for the ancient Egyptian civilisation:
The Egyptian duck is a dangerous animal. It welcomes you kindly, but if you allow yourself to be taken in by its innocent air and treat it familiarly, you’re lost: one peck and it inoculates you with its venom, and you’re an Egyptologist for life.
He made frequent visits to the small Egyptian collection at the local museum, and resolved to teach himself to read hieroglyphs, Demotic, and Coptic. To supplement his modest college wages, he began writing serialised novels for local newspapers and gave private tuition to his students. While visiting one of his students at the home of Millon’s, a wine merchant, he met Éléonore Millon. They were married on 5 June 1845; Mariette was 24 and Éléonore just 18 years old.
Paris
Mariette continued teaching and writing, but by this time he had realised his vocation lay elsewhere. In 1847, he travelled to Paris, where he arranged to meet Emmanuel de Rougé, Curator of the Department of Egyptian Antiquities at the Musée du Louvre, and Charles Lenormant, Professor of Archaeology at the Collège de France. Both were impressed by the knowledge and determination of the self-taught enthusiast. With the support of Lenormant and Philippe Jeanron, a fellow Boulogne-sur-Mer resident and Director of the National Museums, Mariette was offered a three-month sabbatical at the Louvre. He had no difficulty being granted leave by the director of the Boulogne- sur-Mer college, who was in fact eager to replace him with a professor who would not neglect his students for hieroglyphs. He was fortunate, too, to have the unwavering support of Éléonore, who was willing to step aside to allow her husband to follow his all-consuming passion.
Egypt
In August 1850, Mariette was officially commissioned by the Louvre to acquire Ethiopian, Syriac, and Coptic manuscripts in Egypt. At the age of 29, he made his first trip to Egypt, with no idea how the next few months would change his future – and the future of Egyptology.
Obtaining authorisations to purchase in Egypt was a complicated process, and the young Egyptologist was not a patient man. He decided to travel from Alexandria to Cairo, where he met Marius Bonnefoy, a French archaeologist who had previously worked for Jean-François Champollion. The two men became friends and decided to go sightseeing in the surrounding area.
While visiting the desert at Saqqara, Mariette discovered the head of a sphinx emerging from the sand. It strongly resembled the sphinxes he had admired in the gardens of the Belgian Consul in Alexandria, and in the shops of the Cairo antiques dealers. On seeing this sphinx, Mariette recalled a passage from the Greek geographer Strabo, describing a long avenue of sphinxes leading to the long-lost Serapeum at Saqqara (the necropolis of the sacred Apis bulls):
There is also a temple of Sarapis, situated in a very sandy spot, where the sand is accumulated in masses by the wind. Some of the sphinxes which we saw were buried in this sand up to the head, and one half only of others was visible. Hence we may conceive the danger, should any one, in his way to the temple, be surprised by a [sand]storm.
He decided to use the money for manuscripts he had been given by the Louvre to begin excavations in the area – a bold but risky move. After months of work, complicated by the machinations of his rivals (archaeologists, antiquarians, collectors, and tomb robbers), Mariette officially announced the discovery of the Serapeum in February 1852. It was the first major archaeological discovery in Egypt.
Egypt’s first museum
During his stay in the country, it became clear to Mariette that Egypt’s heritage was at risk – being sold off to collectors for a few piastres, or destroyed by local Egyptians who did not realise the importance of ancient monuments or mummies they came across. With his usual energy and determination, and the support of his friend Ferdinand de Lesseps (the former tutor of Mohamed Sa’id Pasha, the Viceroy or Khedive of Egypt), he convinced Sa’id Pasha of the importance and usefulness of a museum. It would be established in Bulaq, a district of Cairo, and would become Egypt’s first museum.
Some of the masterpieces of Egyptian art Mariette unearthed are now in the Louvre, including the famous squatting scribe statue with the exceptionally life-like face. However, many were originally on display in the Bulaq Museum, among them the statue of Kaaper, nicknamed Sheikh el-Beled (‘the chief of the village’ in Arabic) due to its resemblance to the chief of Saqqara village who was part of Mariette’s excavation team. Other highlights included the statue of King Khafra protected by the falcon god Horus; the dual statue of Rahotep and his wife Nofret, whose eyes of inlaid rock crystal make them look almost alive; and the famous golden-flies necklace of Queen Ahhotep I. This last item caused a diplomatic dispute when the French Empress Eugénie demanded it for herself. Mariette firmly refused, despite knowing full well that he would incur the wrath of the imperial family.
The Egyptian Antiquities Service
Mariette was still troubled by the looting and destruction putting Egypt’s monuments at risk. With the support of Lesseps and Prince Napoléon-Jérôme Bonaparte (to whom he had served as a guide during the prince’s visit to Egypt), he managed to convince the Viceroy of the need for a specialist organisation to combat this threat. On 1 June 1858, Sa’id Pasha appointed Mariette the director of a new institution, the Egyptian Antiquities Service – the world’s first organisation designed to protect and promote a country’s heritage. In 1993, it was renamed the Supreme Council of Antiquities, and in 2011 became part of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
Under Mariette’s authority, archaeological excavations and restoration projects were carried out throughout the country. At times, he had to manage more than 30 teams simultaneously, sometimes with 15,000 workers under his command. This concept of archaeology is far removed from today’s scientific criteria of slow and methodical excavation. The first sites were opened at Giza and Saqqara, as well as at Tell el-Yahudiya in the Delta and, in the south, at Abydos, Edfu, and several sites in the Theban area.
At Deir el-Bahri, Mariette unearthed the striking architecture of Hatshepsut’s Temple-of-Millions-of-Years. Not far from there, on another slope of the Theban mountain, he discovered a royal cemetery, abandoned when the pharaohs chose the Valley of the Kings as their eternal resting place. At Dendera, the magnificent temple dedicated to Hathor had almost disappeared beneath a mud-brick village. When workers finished dismantling the modern houses, they discovered that the interior of the structure was filled to the ceiling with earth, broken pottery, and rubble of all kinds, which Mariette cleared. The Temple of Horus at Edfu was found in a similar state, with no fewer than 108 mud and earth houses in and around the temple complex. It took some 200 workers many years to clear and restore the complex. The Medinet Habu complex had also suffered considerable damage from encroachment, particularly during the Coptic Period, when the temple was used as a church, and the former storerooms were transformed into dwellings. The site had been used as a stone quarry since the Arab Conquest, too.
Aïda
In 1869, the Viceroy of Egypt, Isma’il Pasha, gave Auguste Mariette a more unusual mission: to write the script for an opera to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal. Mariette accepted the challenge and proposed the idea of setting the opera in ancient Egypt. When he completed his script for Aïda, the Viceroy contacted Giuseppe Verdi to compose an opera based on Mariette’s work, but the Italian composer felt it was not worth his time, and refused to read it. Undaunted, Mariette persisted, falsely suggesting that Verdi’s rivals Richard Wagner and Charles Gounod were ready to work on the project if he refused. When Verdi read the script he was captivated, and agreed to compose Aïda, which premiered at the Khedivial Opera House in Cairo on 24 December 1871; it remains one of the most frequently performed operas. Mariette himself was involved in the design of the sets and costumes.
Mariette’s legacy
Mariette’s contribution to Egyptology is often overlooked, and yet he had considerable influence on the preservation and study of ancient Egyptian antiquities. The museums of Cairo and Paris received major pieces of ancient Egyptian art discovered during his excavations, and he was instrumental in the protection of Egypt’s heritage – a legacy that deserves recognition and respect.
Amandine Marshall is a regular contributor to Ancient Egypt magazine. She holds a doctorate in Egyptology, and is the author of several books, including two in French dedicated to Auguste Mariette. She also produces two English-language YouTube channels: ToutankaTube for adults and NefertiTube for children.
Further reading:
• A Mariette (1892) Outlines of Ancient Egyptian History (New York: C Scribner’s Sons; available at https://play.google.com/books).
• A Marshall (2021) Auguste Mariette: un aventurier-égyptologue (Toulouse: Mondes Antiques).
