Jean François Champollion (1790-1832) is perhaps the most famous of the early students of Egyptian hieroglyphs. After writing his “De l’écriture hiératique des anciens égyptiens” at Paris, he produced in 1824 in two volumes, his “Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens égyptiens,” on which his fame largely depends, as he was the first to furnish any practical system of deciphering the symbolic writing, which was to disclose to the waiting world Egyptian history, literature, and civilisation. Champollion wrote many other works relating to Egypt, and may truly be considered the pioneer of modern Egyptology. While much of his work has been superseded by more recent investigations, he was so imbued with the scientific spirit that he was enabled securely to lay the foundation of all the work which followed.
The distinguished French savant, Augustus Mariette, (1821-1881) began his remarkable excavations in Egypt in the year 1850. The series of discoveries inaugurated by him lasted until the year 1880. Mariette made an ever-memorable discovery when he unearthed the famous Serapeum which had once been the burial-place of the sacred bulls of Memphis, which the geographer Strabo records had been covered over by the drifting sands of the desert even in the days of Augustus.
The Serapeum was in the neighbourhood of the Sphinx, and, on account of its great height, remained in part above the ground, and was visible to all passers-by; while everything else in the neighbourhood except the great Pyramid of Khûfûi was totally buried under the sand. Mariette worked his way along the passage between the Great Sphinx and the other lesser sphinxes which lay concealed in the vicinity, and thus gradually came to the opening of the Serapeum. In November, 1850, his labours were crowned with brilliant success. He discovered sixty-four tombs of Apis, dating from the eighteenth dynasty until as late as the reign of Cleopatra. He likewise found here many figures, images, ancient Egyptian ornaments and amulets, and memorial stones erected by the devout worshippers of antiquity. Fortunately for Egyptian archæology and history, nearly all the monuments here discovered were dated, and were thus of the highest value in settling the dates of dynasties and of the reigns of individual monarchs. Mariette afterwards discovered a splendid temple in the same place, which he proved to have been the famous shrine of the god Sokar-Osiris. He was soon appointed by the Egyptian Viceroy, Said Pasha, as director of the new museum of antiquities which was then placed at Bulak, in the vicinity of Cairo, awaiting the completion of a more substantial building at Gizeh. He obtained permission to make researches in every part of Egypt; and with varying success he excavated in as many as thirty-seven localities. In some of the researches undertaken by his direction, it is to be feared that many invaluable relics of antiquity may have been destroyed through the carelessness of the workmen. This is to be accounted for from the fact that Mariette was not always able to be present, and the workmen naturally had no personal interest in preserving every relic and fragment from the past. It is also to be regretted that he left no full account of the work which he undertook, and for this reason much of it had to be gone over again by more modern explorers.
In the Delta excavations were made at Sais, Bubastis, and elsewhere. Mariette also discovered the temple of Tanis, and many curious human-headed sphinxes, which probably belong to the twelfth dynasty, and represent its kings. He further continued the labours of Lepsius about the necropolis of Memphis and Saqqâra. Here several hundred tombs were discovered with the many inscriptions and figures which these contained. One of the most important of these findings—a superb example of Egyptian art—is the statue called by the Arabs “The Village Chief,” which is now in the museum at Bulak. Mariette followed out his researches on the site of the sacred city of Abydos. Here he discovered the temple of Seti I. of the nineteenth dynasty.
