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00:04Since Bonaparte's expedition in 1798, Europeans have been pouring into Egypt.
00:13For half a century now, French, British, then Italian and German explorers have sought to
00:22expand their influence in this new El Dorado, full of archaeological sites waiting to be explored.
00:30By the hundreds, ships leave the port of Alexandria, carrying cargoes of artifacts, statues, mummies,
00:36and sometimes even nearly whole temples, bound for the museums of Europe's great capitals.
00:47What's left for the Egyptians?
00:50Until then, that question didn't concern the mercenary raiders who came to help themselves to antiquities,
00:55like the Italian Giovanni Battista Belzoni, the British explorer Howard Weiss, or even the French consul Bernardino Drovetti, one of
01:04the earliest collectors.
01:06But in the middle of the 19th century, Egyptology enters a new era.
01:13Excavations will become more rigorous and more regulated.
01:16No longer resembling the cynical, systematic plundering of earlier times.
01:21And this new policy will take shape under the leadership of a Frenchman,
01:26who will become one of the greatest Egyptologists in history.
01:45In the autumn of 1850, Auguste Mariette sets foot on Egyptian soil for the first time.
01:57The 29-year-old Frenchman works in the Department of Egyptian Antiquities at the Louvre.
02:05He's been given an assignment.
02:07To acquire Coptic and Syriac manuscripts to enhance the French collections.
02:18Auguste Mariette never intended to become an Egyptologist.
02:22At 20, the young graduate, who earns his living teaching drawing in French,
02:27dreamed of becoming a writer or journalist.
02:30Then his father asked him to sort out the papers of a distant cousin he has never met, who has
02:35recently died.
02:41Auguste Mariette was a relative of NĂ©stor Lotte, who'd accompanied Champollion's expedition
02:46and left behind a number of papers and very beautiful drawings,
02:51watercoloured drawings of sites and monuments in Egypt.
03:08And this, it seems, led to him being bitten by the Egyptology bug.
03:17Mariette roams the libraries in order to make sense of NĂ©stor Lotte's many documents.
03:22He comes across some copies of the description of Egypt and devours every book he can find about this country.
03:34In a municipal museum, he also finds a sarcophagus and a mummy brought back from Egypt
03:39by the writer-diplomat Dominique Vivant-Denon during Bonaparte's expedition in 1798.
03:49Fascinated, the young Mariette spends hours studying the sarcophagus.
03:53Teaching himself using Champollion's grammar book, he begins translating the hieroglyphs on its lid.
04:01A few years later, he gets a job in the Department of Egyptian Antiquities at the Louvre.
04:14Only weeks after arriving in Egypt, Mariette realises that his mission is doomed to fail.
04:22Mariette kind of made a bit of a false start when he was here.
04:25His priority was to gather manuscripts, including Coptic manuscripts, and he found that by the time he got to the
04:33country,
04:34there was a reluctance on the part of the people who looked after such things to part with any more.
04:40They probably already lost as much of these things to European collectors as they could tolerate.
04:48Returning to France empty-handed is not an option.
04:53Mariette, it seems, almost found himself wondering what to do next.
04:57But he didn't, in the grand scheme of things, take him very long to realise that Saqqara would be a
05:02very fertile territory for somebody looking to gather antiquities.
05:07So Auguste Mariette chooses to settle on the plain of Saqqara, about 30 kilometres south of Cairo.
05:14The site, where only a few ancient pyramids rise out of the sand, is completely barren.
05:20For thousands of years, it was home to the most important necropolis in northern Egypt,
05:25that of the city of Memphis, located just four kilometres away.
05:30I'm at Saqqara, one of the famous burial grounds of ancient Egypt, where many of the earliest pyramids were built.
05:40It's a place that was known as of the late 18th century by scholars like Champollion and the Napoleonic expedition,
05:47because everywhere they would dig, they would find mummies, bones, pottery, fragments of the ancient past.
05:56So much so that it was called the Plain of Mummies.
06:05Auguste Mariette came here in 1850, and he had the idea that maybe he could find something really special.
06:13And he began working in this zone.
06:16But he didn't have a permit yet for official excavation.
06:20But that didn't stop Mariette.
06:21He had a goal, and he had an idea, and it was this area that drew his attention.
06:34If we want to get an idea of what Mariette was seeing when he came to Saqqara,
06:39we actually can use pretty much any area of this wonderful site.
06:43And we see, on the ground all around us, things out of place.
06:50That were brought here by people long ago.
06:53Pot sherds, ancient pottery, stones, and some of the stones speak volumes.
07:00What's drawn my attention here is something unusual on the ground.
07:04This is a piece of pink granite from Aswan, from the southernmost border of Egypt, brought here very deliberately in
07:13ancient times.
07:22But in the case of Mariette, what it was was not a piece of pink granite.
07:28It was a head, a bright white limestone, in the form of a king.
07:34And as he cleared the sand, he revealed a long lion's body.
07:39Human head, lion body, a sphinx.
07:45All the hours Auguste Mariette has spent trawling through libraries suddenly come back to him.
07:52And one book in particular by the Greek geographer Strabo from the first century A.D.
07:58Auguste has read it dozens of times.
08:03Auguste Mariette would have had in mind Strabo's account of Saqqara and the Serapium,
08:08which was approached via a processional route lined with sphinxes.
08:13That's the kind of, maybe seems simple to us now, but that's the kind of leap of genius
08:18that in this case led to the discovery of the Serapium, which is one of the most spectacular monuments
08:23to have survived from ancient Egypt.
08:27Bravo!
08:28For now, Mariette has only discovered one sphinx during unauthorized and clandestine excavations,
08:35which must remain secret.
08:39But if Mariette is indeed on the trail of the Serapium,
08:43he's about to rediscover one of the most important places of worship of the ancient capital Memphis,
08:49of which Saqqara was the necropolis.
08:51At Memphis in Saqqara, people worshiped the god Pata, god of creation and patron of craftsmen,
08:58whose incarnation on earth was a sacred bull, the Apis bull.
09:11I'm here in Memphis.
09:13This is where the pharaohs lived and had massive palaces.
09:17And the Apis bull was one of the central elements of the worship of ancient Memphis.
09:24The priests of Pata would go out throughout the country and they'd be looking for specific markings
09:30that identified one animal out of the entire animal world as being the living emanation of the god Pata.
09:39And what were these markings?
09:43The Apis bull had to be black and white.
09:46On the forehead, a triangle.
09:49And on the back, a picture almost of a falcon.
09:53Under the tongue, a shape that looked like a beetle, the scarab beetle.
09:59And the tail bifurcated into two strands.
10:04Once all of these criteria had been met and they found that one perfect bull,
10:10they would bring it here to the Apis house.
10:16The Apis bull was treated like a god, fed, bathed, washed.
10:21And upon the natural death of the Apis bull, the Egyptians did something extraordinary.
10:26They mummified them just like they mummified their kings and high officials.
10:32And these are the actual massive slabs of alabaster upon which they conducted that surgery.
10:47And once this was done, it was carried in a grand procession out to Saqqara, to the Serapium.
11:01At Saqqara, is Mariette truly on the trail of the Serapium of Memphis, the sanctuary devoted to the Apis bulls?
11:11After the first sphinx, he finds a second, then a third.
11:19Soon, he has uncovered an avenue of 141 sphinxes.
11:25Mariette is now convinced the Serapium, whose entrance was lined with sphinxes, must be close.
11:31And as he clears the sand around the sphinxes, he uncovers a lot of extraordinary objects,
11:37including a statue now known throughout the world.
11:50Here we have an icon, an absolute masterpiece of Egyptian art.
11:55It's the scribe.
12:03Mariette, who founded it at Saqqara, described it as the crouching scribe.
12:08And the name has stuck.
12:14From the moment he discovers this statue, Mariette is captivated.
12:19How can one not be fascinated by this striking, lively gaze?
12:33Naturally, news of Mariette's successes begins to spread.
12:38Rumors circulate in Cairo that the Frenchman has even uncovered statues made of gold.
12:44Jealous and less successful treasure hunters contact the authorities,
12:48especially since everyone knows Mariette is excavating without official authorization.
12:55Eight months after the start of his excavations,
12:58Auguste Mariette receives a visit from two officials sent by Egypt's new sovereign, Abbas Pasha.
13:04He's unearthed an old protection order issued by his grandfather, Muhammad Ali.
13:10It states that excavations require an official permit,
13:14and that all exports of antiquities are strictly forbidden.
13:20Mariette isn't the type to let himself be intimidated.
13:24His first reaction is to angrily dismiss the two officials,
13:27because he's not the only one excavating in Egypt without a permit.
13:32Why is he being called to account, and not the others?
13:43But once his anger subsides, he changes his mind.
13:47He knows all too well that if he wants to continue pursuing the trail of the Serapium,
13:52he has to deal with the authorities.
13:55He suspends his excavations and does everything he can to sort out his situation.
14:02The matter is taken to the highest diplomatic level between France and Egypt,
14:07but eventually tensions ease.
14:10Mariette even obtains official authorization to send more than 500 objects to Paris,
14:15enriching the collection at the Louvre.
14:23Mariette resumes his work, but he no longer enjoys complete freedom.
14:28Two Egyptian army staff officers now remain permanently on the site,
14:32recording the results of his excavations each day
14:35and ensuring, above all, that no new objects are exported.
14:40Mariette finds a cunning way to get round this.
14:55Mariette finds a cunning way to get round this.
14:56Mariette has not lost sight of his original objective,
14:58finding the entrance to the Serapium.
15:01He waits until the guards leave, then excavates at night with a small team.
15:06At dawn, he covers up their work with sand.
15:13And finally, on November the 12th, 1851,
15:19Mariette, come, come, come, Mariette!
15:22As they dig in the middle of the night, they uncover an opening.
15:27What have you found?
15:35Wait.
15:38Wait.
15:46After about 12 months of digging,
15:49Mariette finally came here to the entrance to the Serapium,
15:54the underground burial vaults of the sacred Apis Bowls.
16:01In the course of this discovery,
16:03Mariette kept going down and down and down,
16:06as deep as 10 to 12 meters.
16:09It was a massive excavation.
16:12And as he started to go inside,
16:15he found unbelievable surprises.
16:34When Mariette came into the Serapium for the first time,
16:38he was confronted by a terrible acrid smell.
16:41And he says in his reports that a bluish vapor kind of rose up in a column,
16:48like something out of a volcano.
16:50And it took four hours for that to clear out until he could go further.
17:01And what he saw as he penetrated deeper into the subterranean vaults of the Serapium was stunning.
17:08Four to five meters high vaults, some corridors as long as 240 meters, just going on and on.
17:21When Mariette finally got all the way into the Serapium, he found 28 of these immense rock-cut caverns filled
17:31with some treasures.
17:32And the treasures were spectacular, huge, hard stone sarcophagi.
17:38And each one of these over 50 tons in weight, so extremely heavy.
17:49They're covered with protective inscriptions and cartouches naming the Pharaoh under whose reign the bull was buried.
17:59But the mummified bulls were not found in the sarcophagi.
18:11So this was the main area that Mariette found.
18:14But he found another area that was fascinating in an upper zone that was perpendicular to this one.
18:23And Mariette discovered some extraordinary treasures, in particular a golden mask, not of a bull, but of a human face.
18:35This golden mask, now in the Louvre, covered the face of a mummy identified through its jewelry and amulets as
18:42that of Prince Kaumoisette.
18:46A son of Ramses II, he served as High Priest of Petah, and during his father's reign, had the Serapium
18:54enlarged.
18:57The Serapium is unquestionably one of the major discoveries in the history of Egyptian archaeology.
19:03But for Mariette, this success comes at a price.
19:07These discoveries excited jealousy, and it's said that even Mariette's life was threatened at times by those who were jealous.
19:16And a group of antiquities collectors and dealers who were jealous of Mariette's discoveries began to organize against him and
19:24even try to shut him down.
19:29Unperturbed, Mariette continues his excavations for two years.
19:34But he continues to keep the true extent of his discoveries hidden from the Egyptian authorities.
19:39With the help of a few trusted men working out of sight, he packs hundreds of antiquities into crates and
19:46secretly ships them to France.
19:48Far more than the 500 objects he's officially authorized to export.
19:53Naturally, Mariette doesn't appreciate people poking their noses into his excavation site.
19:59He complains about visitors, royalty and wealthy travelers alike, who come to see his sanctuary.
20:05Politically, he can't refuse them entry, but he gives them an icy welcome.
20:17After four years working at Saqqara, things got difficult for Mariette.
20:23For one thing, he was running out of money, but also there were political problems.
20:30The ruler of the day, Abbas Pasha, was assassinated by two of his mamluks.
20:36And in his place came his uncle, Said Pasha.
20:43And this kind of political instability led Mariette to think about returning to France.
20:50Mariette had come to Egypt with express intention to discover Coptic and Syriac manuscripts.
20:56He didn't end up finding any.
20:58Instead, he brought back nearly 7,000 objects from the Serapium excavations, which led to great fame and acclaim for
21:07him.
21:07And so Mariette was able to proudly say,
21:10Well, I have not brought back any Coptic or Syriac manuscripts.
21:14I haven't inventoried any libraries, but I have brought back to France a temple, stone by stone.
21:24Most of the objects Mariette removed from Egypt, mostly illegally, have now become part of the collection at the Louvre.
21:32Five years earlier, he'd entered the museum through the back door.
21:35Now he holds the position of assistant curator.
21:38He loves this recognition, but he's missing Egypt.
21:42Very often I sat at my desk reading the description of the burials of the Apis Bulls.
21:48After five minutes, I was no longer at the Louvre.
21:52I was back in the Serapium, feeling the stifling, hot air of the galleries on my skin.
21:59Then I'd send everything to the devil.
22:03Translation, philology, even the Louvre.
22:09It got to the stage for Mariette where he didn't want to be anywhere other than Egypt.
22:14As hard as it must have been for him and for his family, and as hard as all of that
22:20fighting that he had to do with the authorities in Egypt was, Egypt was his home.
22:26And he couldn't function properly, it seems, without being here.
22:30When Mariette returns to France, he has a real change of heart, and he also has a change of approach.
22:36And when he's sitting back in France, he's really reflecting on some of what he's seen, which is the disappearance
22:43of ancient monuments in Egypt.
22:49I lived in Egypt for four years, and in those four years, I witnessed something almost unbelievable.
22:55700 tombs disappearing from the plains of Abu Sir and from Saqqara.
23:05A concern is growing within him that there needs to be a national repository for antiquities in Egypt.
23:13A dream that Champollion had imagined earlier, but never realised.
23:19Mariette had clearly fallen in love, I think, with not just the idea of ancient Egypt, as it was in
23:25his mind back home in France, but he'd fallen in love with the place.
23:29And obviously had at least the beginnings of an understanding of how important it would be to ensure that sites
23:36and monuments could retain their integrity here in Egypt,
23:41and not simply be broken up and taken away.
23:47For more than 50 years, Westerners have been plundering Egypt, while the Egyptians don't yet appreciate the value of their
23:54temples and monuments.
23:56They continue to use them as diplomatic gifts, or to dismantle them for building materials.
24:03But this situation is about to change.
24:08And as a reformed plunderer, Auguste Mariette will become the principal architect of this.
24:14First, he approaches the French diplomat and entrepreneur, Ferdinand de Lesseps, who is overseeing a huge project in Egypt, the
24:22construction of the Suez Canal.
24:25The canal will allow ships to travel between Europe and Asia without sailing around Africa.
24:33Under the leadership of Muhammad Ali and his successors, Egypt continues to modernize and industrialize, calling on foreign engineers and
24:42conscripting tens of thousands of Egyptian laborers,
24:45men who rarely appear in photographs from the period.
25:02Thanks to Ferdinand de Lesseps, Auguste Mariette returns to Egypt and obtains an audience with its ruler, the Viceroy Said
25:10Pacha.
25:14Mariette had really annoyed him when, through articles in the French press, he realized the true extent of the objects
25:20diverted to the Louvre.
25:22But Said Pacha listens and allows him to present his ideas.
25:27Mariette explains that from now on, he wishes to work for Egypt and for the preservation of its heritage.
25:34He also wants to resume excavations in a more rigorous and scientific manner.
25:39To convince the Pacha, he proposes creating a museum in Cairo.
25:46Since all the great European capitals possess an Egyptian museum, he explains,
25:50it's absurd that Egypt itself should not have one.
25:54And his arguments hit the mark.
25:57Said Pacha, won over by both the project and Mariette's personality, grants his request
26:04and appoints him his Director of Egyptian Antiquities, a post with staff to carry out his tasks.
26:16One of the first tasks Mariette confronts is the clearing of sand from the temples of Upper Egypt.
26:22In particular, the Temple of Edfu, which, thanks to Mariette's teams, will regain its former glory.
26:43When Mariette began his work here, the temple interior was completely occupied by dwelling places,
26:51houses and other buildings that you'd expect in any kind of urban setting in Egypt at that time.
26:57The temple was full of those buildings and an accumulation, actually, of centuries' worth of buildings.
27:03All of that meant the level of the floor was much higher than it is now.
27:12Suddenly, you can imagine, once Mariette's work was finished,
27:16you're confronted with this massively tall, and it is 32 metres high, fully decorated.
27:25The temple was built in the last three centuries BC, in the era we call the Ptolemaic.
27:31Most of the kings at this time were named Ptolemy, hence Ptolemaic.
27:39This courtyard is the location for one of the most important rituals performed in this temple.
27:45This was the cult centre of the Egyptian's god Horus.
27:49And Horus' consort, his wife, if you like, was Hathor.
27:53Her cult was celebrated at Dendara.
27:59Every year, an image of Hathor, a statue, would be brought here to commune with the image of Horus.
28:12These festivities performed here were among the most important in the whole of the country.
28:22There was a point in history when, eventually, all this came to an end.
28:27There was probably a moment during the Roman period, a few centuries after the temple had been built,
28:34when Rome converted to Christianity, slowly the population of Egypt,
28:39which was a part of the Roman Empire, converted to Christianity.
28:42And then later on, they would use this as a simple dwelling place.
28:46Its religious significance was lost almost entirely.
28:49And that brings us right up to the point at which Mariette arrived here,
28:53took a great interest in the Ptolemaic temple, wanted to see more of it.
29:10The Caribbean part was the desaf Turettu estate family,
29:32In the 1860s, Mariette was supervising work at up to 35 different sites
29:40and he would have maybe a hundred men working at Giza, something like 330 between Abu Sir
29:47and Saqqara. He has about 70 at Memphis. He's working at sites all the way from Alexandria
29:52in the north, all the way down into Sudan. And of course, he couldn't be there himself
29:57all the time.
30:02This area is known as Dra' Abu el-Naga and it's one of the parts of the wider
30:10cemeteries of Thebes. It's like a little district within the necropolis. So all around us, the
30:17lumps and bumps here are pitted with shafts and these are all tombs all around us.
30:32In 1859, on the 5th of February, somewhere here, we're not exactly sure where, but a
30:39shaft was discovered with a coffin in it.
30:45At the time of this discovery, Mariette is in Cairo. In such situations, his teams are
30:52instructed to inform him and suspend excavation work until his arrival. But this time, his
30:58site supervisor betrays him. Instead of waiting for him, he informs the local governor.
31:04The local governor came to the scene, the coffin was opened, and it turned out to contain some
31:11fantastic material. There was a mummy inside, which was identified as belonging to a queen
31:16called Ahotep.
31:21At this point, the local governor is in charge. And of course, he doesn't have the archaeological
31:26skill. He's not really taking the care that we might want. He discarded the bones, the mummy
31:33wrappings, the body itself, but kept the jewels. And he put these inside a special box.
31:39And his intention, it seems, was that these would go directly to the viceroy.
31:46You can imagine, when Mariette found out about this, this incredible discovery has been made.
31:51Nobody told him. Somebody's gone ahead and opened the coffin. He would have been furious.
32:08It's not possible!
32:12Mariette learns that the governor not only discarded the mummy, but also sent the gold
32:17objects found in the coffin to the viceroy. To try to intercept the treasure, he demands
32:25that all boats on the Nile be stopped and their cargo seized. Eight weeks later, Mariette succeeds
32:33in recovering this precious treasure, dating from the 16th century BC.
32:40The material that was found inside this tomb belonging to Queen Ahotep was fantastically valuable,
32:47both in archaeological terms, but also just in the material value as well.
32:56It was an astonishing haul of treasure. It contained weaponry. There were nine axes,
33:04three of them in gold, three in silver. There were daggers, amulets, armlets. There was a lion's head
33:11in gold. There was a black scepter. Maybe the most fantastic piece was a necklace with three flies in gold,
33:21beautifully crafted.
33:27As for the mummy, Mariette secretly hopes to recover it.
33:32He travels to the site of the discovery and roams the necropolis from one end to the other,
33:38exploring dozens upon dozens of tombs.
33:41The mummy, sadly, was lost to us forever in that moment, agonizing moment.
33:51I suppose the frustration, though, in that is that we've got the material from Queen Ahotep's tomb.
33:59We don't have her mummy. In that moment, if only Mariette had been here at the time,
34:04maybe we'd have that mummy. We don't know where Ahotep's tomb was,
34:10so it's exciting to be here, but I'd love to know exactly where to look.
34:19After this episode, Mariette enhances the supervision of his excavation teams.
34:32The treasure of Ahotep becomes part of the collection in the museum that Mariette finally inaugurates
34:39in October 1863 in the Bulak district of Cairo.
34:59The Egyptologist now divides his time between the museum and his excavation sites.
35:07In fact, he has returned to the place where everything began for him in Egypt, Saqqara.
35:14But his health is growing increasingly fragile.
35:17He suffers from diabetes and eye problems, irritated by the wind and sand.
35:26He has also been hit by personal tragedy,
35:30with the deaths of his wife Eléonore and three of his children.
35:36After all this suffering, Auguste buries himself in his work and makes more remarkable discoveries.
35:55We're here inside the courtyard of the tomb of T, a massive tomb of the fifth dynasty,
36:03around 2500 BC, that was discovered by Auguste Mariette in 1865.
36:14He was a very important man.
36:19He was in charge of some of the royal pyramid complexes.
36:23And as a result, he was powerful and wealthy enough to construct a massive tomb like this one.
36:33And in the center of the court, we have stairs going down to a burial chamber where his sarcophagus of
36:41stone was located.
36:42And within that, his mummy would have been placed, although his body was not found in this case.
36:49I'm here inside the innermost part of T's tomb.
36:53And I'm speaking quietly because the high ceilings and stone walls reverberate here so much that I want to respect
37:02the space.
37:07Behind here is a two meter high statue of T, a copy of the original one Mariette found in 1865.
37:17And it's not so much for us to look in, but for T to look out and to receive the
37:24goods and the good wishes that were being offered to him.
37:44There's another lesser known side to Auguste Mariette's personality.
37:48The rigorous Egyptologist absorbed in his work was also an artist.
37:54At the Pasha's request, Mariette works on the story, the sets, and the costumes for an opera.
38:03My dear brother, imagine this. I've written an opera, a grand opera for which Verdi is composing the music.
38:12The Viceroy is spending a million.
38:14Don't laugh, it's very serious.
38:16I have to go to Paris for the staging, the sets, and the costumes.
38:21This opera, now known all over the world, is named Aida.
38:27Its story is inspired by those of the pharaohs and was commissioned for the inauguration of the Suez Canal in
38:331869.
38:57Mariette's objective for this opera will be not only to create the storyline, but also the sets and costumes.
39:03The plot is inspired by a historical event, the Egyptian conquest of Ethiopia.
39:09And he will have a love story, two women in love with the same man, Radames, and one of them
39:16is Aida.
39:21Mariette's aim will be to use historical sources and what he was able to see in the tombs to create
39:26a truly archaeological opera.
39:32The paradox of this opera is that Mariette wants to create something authentic with regard to the archaeological reality.
39:40But what works beautifully in stone, or on a barra leaf, can look completely ridiculous on a living performer.
39:49A king may look magnificent in granite, with an enormous crown on his head.
39:54But once you have to dress him in the flesh and make him walk and sing, it becomes awkward.
40:00And you have to worry about making people laugh.
40:06But these fears prove unfounded. The opera whose story Mariette conceived, and whose sets and costumes he designed, is an
40:15immense success.
40:28Even though his work is praised unanimously, Mariette's final years are particularly difficult.
40:36As he continues his excavations, he sees local inhabitants continue to plunder temples and reuse the ancient stones to build
40:44their homes.
40:46Even the ruler, Ismail Pasha, offers the second Alexandrian obelisk to the United States to secure American support.
40:55Mariette protests, but to no avail.
40:57And for the Frenchmen, the run of bad luck is not over yet.
41:26In October 1878, disaster struck.
41:30The Nile experienced the biggest flood of the century, and the museum and Mariette's residents were completely flooded.
41:39All the notes, all the drawings, documents, books that he had amassed over the decades were completely destroyed.
41:46They might as well have been used as mops to clean the floor.
41:51You can't imagine how hard it is to see everything I struggled so hard to build collapse.
41:59As a consolation, Mariette was given the title Pasha, and he was really, really proud of this, saying this title
42:08alone is the triumph of French archaeology in Egypt.
42:17He had his museum rebuilt, this time with the basement at a higher level to protect it from further flooding
42:23in the future, but he wasn't going to see much of that future.
42:32On January the 18th, 1881, Auguste Mariette dies in Cairo.
42:38In this country, he loved so deeply.
42:41The Egyptians give him a state funeral and pay him the ultimate honor of building him a magnificent tomb in
42:48the garden of his museum.
42:50And if the country possesses one of the world's greatest collections of Egyptian art today, it owes much of that
42:57to him.
43:00Mariette's death doesn't mark the end of the world's passion for the land of the pharaohs, quite the opposite.
43:07Other archaeologists will soon take over and make new, extraordinary discoveries.