excavated the Serapeum at Sakkara, providing the Louvre with a large collec-
tion of objects. He returned to Egypt in 1857 to assemble a collection of
antiquities to be presented as a gift to ‘Prince Napoleon’—Napoleon III’
cousin—during his planned (but never undertaken) visit to Egypt. Before
Mariette returned to France in 1858 a good friend of the pasha, the French
engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps (the builder of the Suez Canal between 1859
and 1869), convinced him to appoint Mariette as ‘Maamour’, director of
Egyptian Antiquities, and put him in charge of a resurrected Antiquities
Service. He was given funds to allow him ‘to clear and restore the temple
ruins, to collect stelae, statues, amulets and any easily transportable objects
wherever these were to be found, in order to secure them against the greed of
the local peasants or the covetousness of Europeans’ (in Vercoutter 1992:
106). Mariette saw the beginning of a period of about ninety-four years of
predominance of French archaeology over Egyptology, lasting even during
much of the ‘temporary’ British military occupation of Egypt from 1882
(Fagan 1975; Reid 2002: chs. 3–5; Vercoutter 1992).
Mariette managed to set up a museum in 1863 and to slow down the pace
at which Egyptian monuments were being destroyed, partly by forbidding all
archaeologicalWeldwork other than his own. To a certain extent he was also
able to hold back the export of antiquities. In 1859 the news of a discovery of
the intact sarcophagus of Queen A-hetep and the seizure of allWndings by the
local governor required Mariette’s strong intervention to stop this illegal
appropriation of archaeological objects. The resulting treasure was presented
to the pasha and included a gift of a scarab and a necklace for one of his wives.
The pasha’s delight at both theWndings—as well as, and as Fagan points out
(1975: 281), at the discomWture of his governor,—led him to order the
building of a new museum, which would eventually be opened at the suburb
of Bulaq in Cairo. The Queen A-hetepWnding was also important in a
diVerent way. When the Empress Euge ́nie, Napoleon III’s wife, asked the
pasha to receive this discovery as a gift to her, he sent the Empress to ask
Mariette, who refused to handle it. This decision was not received happily by
either of the sovereigns, but it was a landmark in the conservation of Egyptian
archaeology (Reid 1985: 235). Mariette also ignored Napoleon III’s comment
that the antiquities of the Bulaq would be better oVin the Louvre (ibid. 2002:
101).
Mariette—as well as his successor to the post, Gaston Maspero—was
merely able to reduce the destruction and illegal export of antiquities rather
than stop it completely. There were even accusations of the Antiquities
Service’s involvement in the illegal handling of works of art (Fagan 1975:
passim). He had to be especially vigilant towards the agents of the great
European museums. The craving for more antiquities had not halted, despite
Europe and the Ottoman Empire 121