| Gaston Maspero |
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| CATEGORIES ABOUT GASTON MASPERO | |
| french egyptologists | |
| maspero | |
| 1846 births | |
| 1916 deaths | |
| alumni of the École normale supérieure | |
| maspero, gaston | |
| directors of the egyptian antiquities service | |
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In November 1880, Professor Maspero went to Egypt as head of an archeological mission sent there by the French government, which ultimately developed into the well-equipped 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 of Egypt. He held this post till June 1886; in these five years he had organized the mission, and his labors for the Bulak Museum and for archeology had been early rewarded by the discovery of the great cache of royal mummies at Deir El-Bahri in July 1881. Maspero now resumed his professorial duties in Paris until 1899, when he returned to Egypt in his old capacity as director-general of the department of antiquities. He found the collections in the Cairo Museum enormously increased, and he superintended their removal from Gizeh to the new quarters at Kasr En-Nil in 1902. The vast catalogue of the collections made rapid progress under Maspero's direction. Twenty-four volumes or sections were already published in 1909. The repairs and clearances at the temple of Karnak , begun in his previous tenure of office, led to the most remarkable discoveries in later years, during which a vast amount of excavation and exploration has been carried on also by unofficial but authorized explorers of many nationalities. In 1907, it was Maspero who recommended to Lord Carnarvon , the services of Howard Carter , 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 . He died in June 1916. 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; 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'' (Paris, 1893, etc.), 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'' (1907), 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); ''Causeries d'Egypte'' (1907), translated by Elizabeth Lee as ''New Light on Ancient Egypt'' (1908). EXTERNAL LINKS REFERENCES |
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