* be carefully guarded from strangers. Profiting by the delays caused by the Patriarch's orders, he began to visit the sites of ancient Egyptian buildings in the neighbourhood of Cairo. While at Sakkârah one day he discovered by accident a sphinx, on which were inscribed the names of Ausȧr-Ḥapi or Osiris-Apis (Serapis), similar to one he had seen at Cairo. He remembered that the Serapeum at Memphis was described by ancient authors as standing on a sandy plain, and he believed that he had really found the spot where it stood and its ruins. Neglecting the original object of his expedition, he collected workmen, and in 1850 set to work to dig; two months' work revealed one hundred and forty sphinxes, two chapels, a semi-circular space ornamented with Greek statues, etc. Through the jealousy of certain people who united the profession of politics with wholesale trading in antiquities, the Egyptian Government of the day issued an order to suspend the excavations, and the work was stopped. Soon after, however, the French National Assembly voted 30,000 francs for excavation purposes, and towards the end of the year Mariette was enabled to enter the Serapeum, where he found sixty-four Apis bulls, stelae, etc. As the dates when the bulls were placed in the Serapeum are stated, they afford a valuable help in fixing the chronology of Egypt as far back as the XVIIIth dynasty. The year 1852 was spent in clearing out the Serapeum, and early in 1853 he came to the Pyramids of Gizeh, where he carried on excavations for the Duc de Luynes; in the latter year he discovered a granite temple near Gizeh. About this time he was appointed Assistant-Curator at the Louvre. In 1854, 'Abbâs Pasha, who had suspended Mariette's excavations two or three years before, died; he was succeeded by Sa'id Pasha, who at once conferred the honour of Bey upon Mariette, and commissioned him to found an Egyptian Museum at Bûlâk. Mariette proceeded to work * Εστι δὲ καὶ Σαράπιον ἐν ἀμμώδει τόπῳ σφόδρα, Strabo, xvii. i. 32. out a plan for the complete excavation of ancient Egyptian sites, and it is said that he began to work at thirty-seven places at once; his work literally extended from "Rakoti (Alexandria) to Syene." At Tanis he brought to light valuable monuments belonging to the XIIIth, XIVth, XIXth and XXIst dynasties, among which must be specially mentioned the statues and the sphinx which he attributed to the Hyksos; he explored hundreds of maşțăbas in the cemeteries at Gizeh, Sakkârah, and Mêdûm; he opened the Mastabat el-Far'ûn; at Abydos, which he practically discovered, he cleared out the temple of Seti I., two temples of Rameses II., and a large number of tombs; at Denderah, a temple of Hathor; at Thebes he removed whole villages and mountains of earth from above the ruins of the temples at Karnak, Medînet-Habû and Dêr elBahari; and at Edfû he removed from the roof of the temple a village of huts, and cleared out its interior. Mariette was appointed Commissioner of the Paris Exhibition of 1867, and upon him devolved the task of removing to Paris several of the most beautiful and valuable antiquities from the collection under his charge at Bûlâk. In 1870 he was overtaken by severe domestic troubles, and a disease which had some years before fastened upon him now began to show signs of serious progress. Notwithstanding his infirmities, however, he continued to edit and publish the texts from the monuments which he had discovered, and remained hard at work until his death, which took place at Cairo on January 17th, 1881. His body was entombed in a marble sarcophagus which stood in the courtyard of the Bûlâk Museum, and which has since been removed to Gizeh, together with the antiquities of the Museum. The following is a list of the most important of Mariette's works: Abydos, description des fouilles exécutées sur l'emplacement de cette ville. 3 tom. Paris, 1869-1880. Fol. Album du Musée de Boulaq. Cairo, 1871. Fol. 8vo. ou Choix de Monuments et de dessins découverts exécutés pendant le déblaiement du Sérapéum de Memphis. Paris, 1856. 4to. Deir el-bahari. Leipzig, 1877. 4to. Les Mastaba de l'ancien empire. Paris, 1889. Fol. Le Sérapéum de Memphis. Paris, 1857. Fol. Voyage dans la Haute Égypte. Cairo, 1878. Fol. Mariette was succeeded as Director of the Bûlâk Museum by M. Maspero, who proved an able administrator, and who carried on many of the works which Mariette had left unfinished at his death. Mariette had formulated a theory that none of the pyramids was ever inscribed inside, and consequently never attempted to open the Pyramids of Sakkârah, although he lived at their feet or some thirty years; M. Maspero, however, dug into them, and was rewarded by finding inscribed upon the walls a series of religious texts of the greatest importance for the history of the religion of Egypt. M. Maspero was, in 1886, succeeded by M. Grébaut, who, in turn, was, in 1892, succeeded by M. de Morgan. Jacques Jean Marie de Morgan, Ingénieur civil des Mines, was born on June 3rd, 1857, at the Château de Bion, Loir-et-Cher, and is descended from a family which came originally from Wales. For more than twenty years he has devoted himself to the study of archæology, but he is, nevertheless, a distinguished pupil of the School of Mines at Paris, and is eminent as a geologist and mathematician. To the exactness induced by the study of mathematics, and to his scientific training as a geologist and observer of nature, his works entirely owe their value, for he arranges his historical, geographical, and other facts in a logical manner, and does not confound fact with theory or assumption with evidence. In 1882 he made a tour through India for scientific purposes, and in the same year he published his Géologie de la Bohême, 8vo. In 1884 he undertook an expedition to Siam and the neighbouring countries, and in the following year he published some account of his work in Exploration dans la presqu'île Malaisie, Rouen, 1885. In this year we also find him contributing articles to the newspaper L'Homme; and in 1886 he published in the Annales des Mines an important article entitled, Note sur la géologie et l'industrie minière du royaume de Perak. During the years 1886-1889 he was employed on a mission to Turkey-in-Asia, the Caucasus and Armenia, and he published the scientific results of his travels in two volumes, large 8vo., entitled Mission Scientifique au Caucase. Études archéologiques et historiques, Paris, 1889. In this work M. de Morgan shows that he is well acquainted with the statements about these countries made by classical writers, that he is familiar with the best works upon general archæology, such as those of Sir John Evans, Montelius and Mourier, and also that he knows well the works of Brugsch, Maspero, George Smith, and of other scholars of Assyriology and Egyptology at first hand. From 1889 to the beginning of 1892 M. de Morgan made an to Persia, Kurdistan and Luristan, and the results exp of in these countries have appeared in due course. fears of his work as Director of Anticarried out the following works :-At cleared away from the tombs Francis C ll, G.C.B., and the tomb of Se-renput has been entirely cleared. At Kom Ombos the whole temple has been excavated; at Luxor the works have been carried on with great activity; at Sakkârah the tomb of Ti has been restored and cleared; at Dahshûr two brick pyramids and several mașțăba tombs have been excavated; and at Gizeh and Memphis important excavations have been made. M. de Morgan was, in 1897, succeeded by M. Loret. Victor Loret was born at Paris on September 1, 1859. He has been a Member of Institut Français d'archéologie Orientale au Caire since its foundation in 1879; and he was "Maître de conférences d'Égyptologie à l'Université de Lyon" in April, 1886. He is the author of Manuel de la langue Égyptienne (Paris, 1891); La Flore pharaonique (Paris, 1892); and of articles in the various publications devoted to Egyptology. Towards the end of 1899 it became generally known that M. Loret was to be succeeded as Director of the Gizeh Museum by M. G. Maspero, who had done such excellent work at the old Bûlâk Museum after the death of Mariette. This eminent scholar is the author of a large number of important works on Egyptian philology, history, archæology, etc., and is undoubtedly the greatest of the Egyptologists who have directed the National Museum of Egyptian Antiquities. The remembrance of his wise and liberal policy at Bûlâk in the past, and his archæological experience and knowledge, lead all to believe that the interests of the great museum, both from a material and a scholarly point of view, will be well guarded under his renewed rule. The various Directors of the Museum have been most ably seconded in all their endeavours by Emil Brugsch Bey, the Conservator of the Museum, to whom the arrangement and classification of the collections therein are chiefly due. He holds the traditions of the great Mariette, having been his fellowworker, and possesses an unrivalled knowledge of sites. |