Gaston Camille Charles Maspero (June 23, 1846 - June 30, 1916), French Egyptologist, was born in Paris, his parents being of Lombard origin. While at school he showed a special taste for history, and when fourteen years old was already interested in hieroglyphic writing. It was not until his second year at the Ecole Normale in 1867 that Maspero met with an Egyptologist in the person of Auguste Mariette who was then in Paris as commissioner for the Egyptian section of the exhibition. Mariette gave him two newly discovered hieroglyphic texts of considerable difficulty to study, and self-taught, the young scholar produced translations of then in less than a fortnight, a great feat in those days when Egyptology was still almost in its infancy. The publication of these in the same year established his reputation. A short time was spent in assisting a gentleman in Peru, who was seeking to prove an Aryan affinity for the dialects spoken by the Indians of that country, to publish his researches; but in 1868 Maspero was back in France at more profitable work. In 1869 he became a teacher (repititeur) of Egyptian language and archaeology at the École Pratique des Hautes Études; in 1874 he was appointed to the chair of Champollion at the College de France. June 23 is the 174th day of the year (175th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 191 days remaining. ... 1846 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... June 30 is the 181st day of the year (182nd in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 184 days remaining, as the last day in June. ... 1916 is a leap year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar) Events January-February January 1 -The first successful blood transfusion using blood that had been stored and cooled. ... Egyptologist is the designation given to an archaeologist or historian who specialises in Egyptology, the scientific study of Ancient Egypt and its antiquities. ... The Eiffel Tower has become a symbol of Paris throughout the world. ... The Lombards or Longobards or Langobards were a Germanic tribe in history. ... Hieroglyphs are a system of writing used by the Ancient Egyptians, using a combination of logographic, syllabic, and alphabetic elements. ... The French scholar and archaeologist Auguste Ferdinand François Mariette (February 11, 1821 - January 19, 1881) was the foremost Egyptologist of his generation, and the founder of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. ... The École Pratique des Hautes Études is a university in Paris, France. ... Jean_François Champollion For the comet rendezvous spacecraft, see Champollion (spacecraft). ... The Coll ge de France is a higher education teaching and research establishment located in Paris, France. ...

In November 1880 Professor Maspero went to Egypt as head of an archaeological mission despatched thither by the French government, which ultimately developed into the well-equipped Institut Francais de l'Archéologie Oriental. This was but a few months before the death of Mariette, whom Maspero then succeeded as director-general of excavations and of the antiquities of Egypt. He held this post till June 1886; in these five years he had organized the mission, and his labors for the Bulak museum and for archaeology had been early rewarded by the discovery of the great cache of royal mummies at Deir el-Bahri in July 1881. Maspero now resumed his professorial duties in Paris until 1899, when he returned to Egypt in his old capacity as director-general of the department of antiquities. He found the collections in the Cairo Museum enormously increased, and he superintended their removal from Gizeh to the new quarters at Kasr en-Nil in 1902. The vast catalogue of the collections made rapid progress under Maspero's direction. Twenty-four volumes or sections were already published in 1909. The repairs and clearances at the temple of Karnak, begun in his previous tenure of office, led to the most remarkable discoveries in later years, during which a vast amount of excavation and exploration has been carried on also by unofficial but authorized explorers of many nationalities. Categories: Ancient Egypt stubs | Ancient Egypt | Egypt | Geography of Egypt ... Main entrance of the Egyptian Museum The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, known commonly as the Egyptian Museum, in Cairo, Egypt, is home to the most extensive collection of pharaonic antiquities in the world. ... Giza (Arabic, الجيزة, transliterated al-ǧīzah; pronounced in Egyptian Arabic dialect of Cairo al-Gīza; also sometimes rendered in English as Gizeh, Ghizeh, or Geezeh) is a town in Egypt on the left bank of the Nile river, across from the old city of Cairo, and now part of the... Karnak is a village in Egypt that was once part of the ancient capital of Egypt, Thebes. ...

Among his best-known publications are the large Histoire ancienne des peuples de l'Orient classique (3 vols., Paris, 1895-1897, translated into English by Mrs McClure for the S.P.C.K.), displaying the history of the whole of the nearer East from the beginnings to the conquest by Alexander; a smaller Histoire des peuples de l'Orient, I vol., of the same scope, which has passed through six editions from 1875 to 1904; Etudes de mythologie et d'archeologie egyptiennes (Paris, 1893, &c.), a collection of reviews and essays originally published in various journals, and especially important as contributions to the study of Egyptian religion; L'Archeologie Egyptienne (1907), of which several editions have been published in English. He also established the journal Recueil de travaux relatifs a la philologie et a l'archeologie egyptiennes et assyriennes; the Bibliothque Egyptologique, in which the scattered essays of the French Egyptologists are collected, with biographies, &c.; and the Annales du service des antiquites de l'Egypte, a repository for reports on official excavations, &c.

Maspero also wrote: Les Inscriptions des pyramides de. Saqqarah (Paris, 1894); Les Momies royales de Deir el-Bahart (Paris, 1889); Les Contes populaires de l'Egypte ancienne (3rd ed., Paris, 1906); Causeries d'Egypte (1907), translated by Elizabeth Lee as New Light on Ancient Egypt (1908).

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ... The Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) in many ways represents the sum of knowledge at the beginning of the 20th century. ...