Gaston Camille Charles Maspero (1846-1916) is one of the key figures in the young science of Egyptology, which emerged in the 19th century thanks to the work of French and English enthusiasts and lovers of Egyptian civilization.
Although Europeans came into contact with remnants of Egyptian culture throughout the Middle Ages, and especially during the Renaissance, serious research began only after Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt. It is known that a surprisingly large number of scientists, researchers, and artists participated in this seemingly purely military campaign, resulting in a vast amount of collected material. Over the next decades, Champollion will decipher the meaning of the ancient Egyptian script, hieroglyphics, based on the Rosetta Stone, enabling a much deeper understanding of the knowledge of this ancient culture.
Gaston Maspero, born in 1846 in Paris, showed an early interest in hieroglyphics, and by the age of fourteen, he had gradually taught himself to decipher them. Maspero was fortunate to meet Auguste Mariette, the head of all French archaeological excavations in Egypt, during his studies at École normale in Paris. Mariette brought two recently discovered hieroglyphic texts to France and entrusted their translation to the young Maspero, who gradually gained recognition as a hieroglyphs expert. Everyone was surprised when Maspero came up with the finished translation after just two weeks. These translations were published in the same year (1867), marking the beginning of Maspero’s academic reputation as an Egyptologist.
The following year, Maspero joined an expedition to Peru, upon the invitation of a researcher who wanted to prove the Aryan origin of the local languages, resulting in a fruitful collaboration. A linguist was needed for that. Very little is known about the expedition itself and its results, but Maspero returns from Peru in 1868, and the following year he takes over the position of teacher of Egyptian language and archaeology at the École pratique des hautes études in Paris. His career progresses and in 1874 he is appointed to Champollion’s position as professor of Egyptology at the College de France.
In 1880, Maspero goes to Egypt for the first time as the leader of an archaeological expedition appointed by the French government with the aim of establishing a permanent mission in Cairo and the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology, which Maspero succeeds in doing. Several months after Maspero’s arrival in Egypt, his older and famous colleague Mariette dies, and Maspero was the logical choice to succeed him as the head of all archaeological excavations in Egypt.
Mariette had started numerous excavations at Egyptian sites, and Maspero first devotes himself to the discovery of tombs and pyramids in Saqqara, as they were the… hidden numerical hieroglyphic inscriptions that needed to be copied and interpreted, and they could greatly help in better understanding the language and culture of the ancient Egyptians.
The findings in tombs and pyramids were fascinating, countless sequences of hieroglyphs which, as Maspero realized, spoke of the deepest mysteries of transitioning from this life to the next, and were written for pharaohs themselves as assistance on that journey. These records, now known as the Pyramid Texts, were filled with ancient symbols, astronomical and astrological knowledge, clear instructions about the otherworldly realms that the world had not yet seen. It is enough to say that these records, without illustrations, as they were not intended for the public, still intrigue Egyptologists and other researchers because their meaning has not been fully deciphered to this day. Indeed, they encompass esoteric knowledge largely lost to the modern age.
Maspero organized the copying and photographing of even four thousand such inscriptions and started their painstaking translation and publication. Furthermore, he made the texts available to other interested Egyptologists. To that end, he later established two professional journals in which the results of all research conducted in Egypt would be published, greatly advancing the development of young Egyptology through the exchange of data and knowledge with the entire Egyptological community. Regarding the texts from Saqqara, Maspero also published a book in 1894 entitled Les inscriptions des pyramides de Saqqarah.
The next major discovery followed in 1881 when, following the tracks of tomb raiders, the Abd-el-Rasul brothers, royal mummies were found below the temple of Queen Hatshepsut in Deir el-Bahari. This also exposed the clan that systematically looted ancient Egyptian tombs.
The royal mummies were found in a sort of ancient hiding place, believed to have been made by the Egyptian priests themselves to prevent robbery and desecration of the mummies. The identified mummies were those of Seti I, Amenhotep I, Ahmose I, Thutmose I, II, and III, Ramses II Ramesses IX of the XVIII and XIX dynasties, as well as Pinedjem I and II, and Siamun of the XXI dynasty, together with their original sarcophagi and burial treasures. It is assumed that the mummies were removed from their respective tombs sometime during the New Kingdom period. The mummies themselves were in a poor state, and it is said that Maspero, after examining the first mummy, was so saddened that he refused to unwrap and examine the others for the next few years.
This was one of the reasons that motivated him to make great efforts, as his position called for, to raise awareness among Egyptians about the value of their heritage and the need to protect it from deterioration. That’s why he initiated the establishment of a network of museums throughout Egypt, and the enactment of laws against the unauthorized removal of Egyptian artifacts from the country, which was a common practice among collectors who did so on behalf of European museums or for their own benefit. Maspero succeeded in ensuring that every discovery had to be reported, and that Egyptian authorities and experts I can decide whether to allow an object to be taken out of the country. Thanks to the order that has been introduced, the archives of Egyptian museums have begun to be filled with a large number of beautiful finds that would otherwise have been swallowed up by the black market of archaeological artifacts. After his departure from Egypt, the new leaders of archaeological excavations began to implement an even stricter policy, wanting to completely halt the trade in archaeological finds, but this only resulted in increased trading on the black market and the inability to officially record the finds or inform interested researchers.
Maspero continued Mariette’s work on excavating the Great Sphinx buried in the sands on the Giza plateau. In 1886, a huge amount of sand covering the Sphinx up to its head was removed, and the search for tombs believed to be located beneath the Sphinx was also begun. The secret chambers in that location were only recently discovered, confirming the accuracy of Maspero’s research intuition. Interestingly, Maspero argued that the Sphinx is very old, certainly older than the time of Pharaoh Khafre (Kefren), whose name appears in an inscription on a stele located between the Sphinx’s paws. He believed that the name should not be associated with the builder, but that Khafre only ordered the excavation of the already buried Sphinx. Today’s Egyptologists mostly agree with his opponents and date it to the time of Khafre, somewhere between 2520 and 2494 BC. However, some researchers support Maspero’s view, especially Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock in the book “The Mystery of the Sphinx,” believing that Maspero correctly translated the inscription and correctly concluded that the Sphinx must be older than the Egyptian dynasties known in history.
In 1886, Maspero returned to Paris and spent the next thirteen years publishing texts about his activities and findings in Egypt. In 1899, he returned to Egypt again and took over his former position as the head of archaeological research. At the end of that year, Karnak was hit by a strong The earthquake and damage to the temple caused eleven more columns to be lost, turning the hypostyle hall into a large ruin. Despite opposition from the romanticists of the time who wanted the ruins to be left in their original state, Maspero ordered the restoration, meaning the re-erection of the fallen columns. During the works, a passage was discovered beneath one of the pylons, where an extraordinary discovery of seventeen thousand statues was found.
During his long absence from Egypt (1886-1899), the amount of archaeological findings increased so much that in 1902 he organized the opening of a new large museum in Kasr en-Nil. He also conducted a comprehensive inventory of artworks, creating a catalog that by 1909 included twenty-four volumes and served as a foundation to which all future findings were added. He dedicated this period of his work in Egypt to the development of museums, institutions, and recording of excavations and discoveries, thus establishing a structure that could handle the growing interest in the future. He is known for his research on Egyptian culture. He published his findings, translations and conclusions in numerous works, among which the most significant are Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient classique (3 vols), Etudes de mythologie et d’archéologie égyptiennes (Paris, 1893.), L’Archéologie égyptienne (1907.), Les inscriptions des pyramides de Saqqarah (Paris, 1894.), Les momies royales de Deir el-Bahari (Paris, 1889.), Les contes populaires de l’Egypte ancienne, and others.
All of this makes Gaston Maspero the true founder of modern Egyptology, a man who has enabled numerous generations of researchers and enthusiasts to come into contact with the most valuable findings of this fascinating civilization.