28 Facts About Gaston Maspero

Sir Gaston Camille Charles Maspero was a French Egyptologist and director general of excavations and antiquities for the Egyptian government.

Gaston Maspero was highly regarded for his versatility and contributions to Egyptology.

Gaston Maspero authored the comprehensive and was the first editor and translator of the Pyramid Texts, known as the Book of the Dead.

Gaston Maspero's work extended to art, mythology, and religion, influencing many through his role as editor of the and Director of the Egyptian.

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.

Gaston Maspero was educated at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand and at a Jesuit boarding school, followed by university studies at the Ecole Normale Superieure.

In 1869 Gaston Maspero became a teacher of Egyptian language and archeology at the Ecole pratique des hautes etudes.

In November 1880 Gaston Maspero went to Egypt as head of an archeological mission sent there by the French government, which ultimately developed into the well-equipped Institut francais d'archeologie orientale.

Gaston 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.

Gaston Maspero 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.

Gaston Maspero 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.

Gaston Maspero was elected member of the Academie des inscriptions et belles-lettres on 20 November 1883.

Gaston Maspero introduced admission charges for Egyptian sites to the increasing number of tourists to pay for their upkeep and maintenance.

Gaston 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.

Gaston 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 Gaston 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.

Gaston Maspero resumed his professorial duties in Paris teaching at the College de France and the Ecole 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.

Gaston Maspero had already made some repairs and clearances there 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 1904, when the British decided to raise the Aswan Low Dam by seven metres, Gaston Maspero managed to raise the necessary funds to isolate, consolidate, but study a large number of religious buildings in Lower Nubia, which were threatened with engulfment.

Gaston Maspero set up a network of local museums throughout Egypt, including a new larger Cairo facility, to encourage the Egyptians to take greater responsibility for the maintenance of their own heritage by increasing public awareness of it.

Gaston Maspero was interred in the Cimetiere du Montparnasse in Paris.

Gaston Maspero married the journalist Harriett Yapp, known as Ettie, on 11 November 11,1871.

Gaston Maspero was Commander of the Legion of Honour and received an honorary degree from the University of Oxford.

Gaston Maspero was made an honorary Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1909.

Gaston Maspero was a member of Queen's College, American Archaeological Institute, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society, American Oriental Society and the Turin Academy of Sciences.

Gaston Maspero was not only its editor but its main contributor during the nearly 40 years of its existence.

Gaston Maspero established the Bibliotheque egyptologique in which the scattered essays of the French Egyptologists are collected, with biographies, etc.

Gaston Maspero's influence extended into popular culture as well; the Egyptian director Shadi Abdel Salam featured him in the acclaimed film The Mummy.