Auguste Mariette at The Louvre, Paris

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Auguste Mariette, a renowned French archaeologist born on February 11, 1821, in Boulogne, France, made groundbreaking discoveries throughout Egypt that greatly expanded the understanding of ancient Egyptian history. In 1849, Mariette joined the Egyptian department at the Louvre and traveled to Egypt the following year to acquire ancient manuscripts, but instead began excavating at Ṣaqqārah, a site containing part of the burial grounds of ancient Memphis. His excavations unearthed the Avenue of the Sphinxes and the Serapeum, a temple housing the tombs of sacred bulls, making Ṣaqqārah a focal point for archaeological research. Mariette spent four years in Egypt, continuing excavations and sending most of his finds to the Louvre, where he became curator upon his return to France. In 1858, he accepted the position of conservator of monuments from the Egyptian government and settled in Egypt, where he remained for the rest of his life. By eliminating unauthorized excavations, Mariette secured a virtual monopoly on archaeological investigation, and restricted the sale and export of antiquities to preserve new discoveries for the Egyptian nation. In 1859, Mariette successfully convinced the Ottoman viceroy of Egypt to establish a museum at Būlāq, near Cairo, which became the world's premier repository of Egyptian antiquities, the Egyptian Museum. Among his notable finds was one of the finest examples of Egyptian temple architecture, the temple of Seti I. He also studied the pyramid fields of Ṣaqqārah and the burial grounds of Maydūm, Abydos, and Thebes. Mariette uncovered the great temples of Dandarah and Edfu, and conducted excavations at Karnak, Dayr al-Baḥrī, Tanis, and Jabal Barkal in the Sudan. Under his direction, the Great Sphinx was exposed to its rock level; the wall paintings found in a tomb at Ṣaqqārah provided a detailed panorama of life in the Old Kingdom (c. 2575-2130 bc). His published works include Abydos (1869), Aperçu de l'histoire d'Égypte (1874), and Les Mastabas de l'Ancien Empire (1889, ed. by Gaston Maspero). Mariette also suggested the plot for Giuseppe Verdi's opera Aida.