Gaston Maspero Popular Books

Gaston Maspero Biography & Facts

Sir Gaston Camille Charles Maspero (23 June 1846 – 30 June 1916) was a French Egyptologist known for popularizing the term "Sea Peoples" in an 1881 paper. Maspero's son, Henri Maspero, became a notable sinologist and scholar of East Asia. Early life Gaston Maspero was born in Paris in 1846 to Adela Evelina Maspero, who had been born in Milan in 1822, daughter of a Milanese printer, and of an unnamed father, but identified by family tradition with Camillo Marsuzi de Aguirre, Italian revolutionary on the run. He was educated at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand and Jesuit boarding school, followed by university studies at the École Normale Supérieure. While at school he showed a special taste for history and became interested in Egypt following a visit to the Egyptian galleries of the Louvre at the age of fourteen. At university he excelled in Sanskrit as well as hieroglyphics. It was while Maspero was in final year at the École normale in 1867 that friends mentioned his skills at reading hieroglyphics to Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, who was 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 the young self-taught scholar produced translations of them in less than a fortnight, a great feat in those days when Egyptology was still almost in its infancy. The publication of these texts in the same year established his academic reputation. Career After leaving university Maspero spent a short time in assisting a gentleman in Peru who was seeking to prove an Aryan affinity for the dialects spoken by the Quechua of that country to publish his research, but in 1868 Maspero was back in France at more profitable work. In 1869 he became a teacher (répétiteur) of Egyptian language and archeology at the École pratique des hautes études. Maspero fought in the defence of France in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 and was granted French citizenship in recognition of his service. In January 1873 he presented the first doctoral thesis on Egyptology in France. In 1874 he was appointed to the chair of Champollion at the Collège de France, succeeding Emmanuel de Rougé. By the end of the 1870s he was regarded as the leading French Egyptologist of his generation. In November 1880 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. Maspero later claimed he only took the position to prevent it falling out of French hands by being given to Emile Brugsch, who was German. After a brief vacation back in France to organise his affairs Maspero returned to Egypt in September 1881 to take up his position. 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. He expanded 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 five later Old Kingdom tombs, he was successful in that aim, finding over 4,000 lines of hieroglyphics which were then sketched and photographed. In 1882 he led the first excavation at Lisht which resulted in the discovery of the eroded Pyramid of Amenemhet I. He dispatched Emile Brugsch to Luxor to supervise the removal of a cache of royal mummies that had recently been found. Basing himself on his official streamer Maspero himself took charge of work at Zawiyet el-Aryan, Dahshur and Meidum. In October he had to endure a three-week long bout of dysentery, and before the end of that same year had fallen down a tomb-shaft, had an attack of rheumatism and a minor stroke. Maspero also began plans to clear out the Luxor Temple. This would require compensating the owners of the various houses that had been constructed against, inside and on top of the temple. As the Antiquities Service was desperately short of funds he negotiated with Thomas Cook to introduce a visitors tax (later changed to an entry ticket) but this was insufficient. He pleaded to the British colonial authority but Sir Colin Scott-Moncreiff, undersecretary of state at the Ministry of Public Works rejected his petition, claiming it was the practice in England for undertakings such as this to be funded by personal donations. A public appeal raised enough funds to commence clearance of the temple in 1884. As an aspect of his attempt to curtail the rampant illegal export of Egyptian antiquities by tourists, collectors and agents for the major European and American museums, Maspero arrested the Abd al-Russul brothers from the notorious tomb-robbing village of Gurneh (Kurna), 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. He was elected member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres on 20 November 1883. In 1886, he resumed work begun by Mariette to uncover the Sphinx, removing more than 65 feet (20 m) of sand and seeking tombs below it. He also introduced admission charges for Egyptian sites to the increasing number of tourists to pay for their upkeep and maintenance. Maspero was popular with museum keepers and collectors because he was known to be a "pragmatic" director of the Service of Antiquities, one who would allow them to remove from the country what he did not want for the Bulak Museum in Cairo. 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 teaching at the Collège de France and the École des Hautes Etudes from June 1886 until 1899, when, at 53, he returned to Egypt in his old capacity as director-general of the department of antiquities and remained there until his retirement in 1914. On 3 October 1899, 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 Egyptologists and regularly visited to oversee its reconstruction work, opposing some Romantics who wished the ruins left as they were. In 1903 an alabaster pavement was found in the court of the 7th Pylon, and beneath it a shaft leading to a large hoard o.... Discover the Gaston Maspero popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Gaston Maspero books.