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 Early Travelers and Explorers
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One of the first great scholars, widely held to be the greatest Egyptologist after Champollion, was Karl Richard Lepsius (1810-1884). He first studied classical archaeology in Germany, but went on to study Egyptology in Paris. King Frederick William IV of Prussia ordered a survey of Egypt and
Nubia, and
it was Lepsius who he appointed as leader of this expedition. At the time
Lepsius was a lecturer in philology and comparative languages at Berlin.
However, he prepared himself for this massive undertaking by first spending four
years touring the Egyptian collections of Europe, recording details of artifacts
and copying inscriptions. He not only studied the Egyptian language, but also
developed practical skills such as lithography and copperplate engraving.
Finally, in
Lepsius
investigated many of
Egypt's pyramids, including
Djoser's
Step
Pyramid at Saqqara. From it, he removed from the southeast part of the
substructure a door lintel and frame inscribed with the name of the king,
together with some of the blue faience tiles from the wall. In 1843, his team
conducted excavations at Hawara in the
Fayoum. The site, known as the
Labyrinth,
had been described by Herodotus and
Strabo. Herodotus even regarded it as a
wonder of the world greater than the Giza pyramids. Of course, this was
the largest of all mortuary temples,
The contributions that Lepsius made to Egyptology are many, but without doubt his greatest was the 12 volume work published after his death known as Denkmaler which documented the monuments of Egypt. It contained 894 folio plates, and five volumes of text, appearing between 1897 and 1913, were prepared from his notes. In addition, Lepsius also published a personal account, called Discoveries in Egypt. Today, the 15,000 casts and antiquities that Lepsius brought back from Egypt form the core of the Berlin Museum collection. One of the most influential scholars to find his way into Egyptology was
Auguste Mariette (1821-1881). After reading the papers of one of his relatives,
Nestor l'Hote, who had been a draughtsman on the Egyptian expedition of
Champollion and Ippolito Rosellini, Mariette's fate
However, in 1858, Ferdinand de Lesseps, who was in charge of the
Suez Canal
project, pressured the ruler of Egypt, Said Pasha, into naming
Mariette as the
head of all Egyptian antiquities. Thus, Mariette was placed in charge of the new
national Antiquities Service, a position that would be held by a Frenchman until
1952. It was he who founded the
Egyptian Antiquities Museum, first located at Boulaq but now in the heart of
Cairo, to gather and display the ancient works of
the Egyptians. For the next two decades he carried out field archaeology at 35
sites throughout Egypt. His work practices and methods were criticized by some
of the next generation of
Egyptologists, but they were advanced for his time and
his output
After the Serapeum, Mariette's second major discovery was the valley temple of Khafre, which was visible at the time as only a series of pits and stones. He partially excavated the interior of the valley temple in 1853 and completed its clearance in 1858. Unfortunately, he published almost nothing about his findings within the temple, which was a problem also with several of his other excavations. During the last year of Mariette's life, the foreman of the Antiquities Service, Mohammed Chahin, opened the pyramid of Pepi I at Saqqara. It was the first in which Pyramid Texts were found. Afterwards, the pyramid of Merenre was entered just before Mariette's death, and others were penetrated by his successor, Gaston Maspero. As Maspero explained: "The discovery of the Pryamids of Pepi and of Merenre at the place
where the theory affirmed that they would be found, decided me to direct the
attack on the entire front of
Of course, one of the greatest of the early Egyptologists was about to also make his grand appearance. William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853-1942) was not just a hard worker in the field. He was a child prodigy. He learned the hieroglyphic alphabet before the age of six and later, encouraged by his father, combined his interests in mathematics and measurement with archaeology. In 1866,
Petrie read
Charles Piazzi Smyth's Our Inheritance in the Great
Pyramid, and became excited by the possibility of
reconciling science and religion. He did not subscribe to
However, in 1880, he also became convinced that there was a need for another survey of the Great Pyramid, and it would be Petrie's meticulous survey of the pyramid that would in fact prove the death of many of Piazzi Smyth's theories, at least among scholars. With debris banked against the sides of the Great Pyramid, Petrie measured its exterior through an elaborate set of triangulations that encompassed all three pyramids at Giza. These measurement disputed those of Smyth, though his theories would be popular for some time to come among the general populous.
Petrie went on to investigate a number of other
pyramids. During 1888 and 1889, he followed up on the work
of
Lepsius
by investigating the site of Hawara, where he excavated what
Between 1887 and 1888,
Petrie excavated
the pyramid of
Senusret II at Illahun, but failed to find the entrance
and passage to the burial chamber until the following year.
he also searched unsuccessfully for a passage or chamber
beneath the subsidiary "Queen's Pyramid" of Senusret II,
even though he carved out two crossing tunnel systems and a
deep vertical shaft,
Petrie continued his pyramid investigations at Meidum, where he uncovered the small limestone temple next to the pyramid of Snefru, with its two uninscribed stelae. he also examined the two anonymous pyramids of Mazghuna, south of Dahshur. But scholars were not the only ones to visit the pyramids during the late 1800s. The first pyramid postcards began to appear around the end of that century. A year before the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, an elevated road was built from Giza to the pyramid plateau to facilitate visits by attending royalty, most notably the Empress Eugenie. At the same time, the Mena House Hotel was developed at the base of the plateau, and a roadway led from the hotel to the foot of the pyramids. Modern tourism was now in full swing. See also:
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It was a gradual process, but fortunately for us today, the exploration of
Egypt and particularly
1842, he and his team set out for Egypt, where they would spend
three highly productive years characterized by careful, methodical analysis,
meticulously recording the details of their outstanding finds. 
belonging to the
was sealed. A bright young
man with varied interest, he studied art, history, and ancient Egyptian language
including Coptic. After writing a number of articles and papers, he finally
secured a post with the Louvre museum. In 1850, that institution sent him to
Egypt to buy Coptic manuscripts, but he began excavating instead. During this
period, he was responsible for finding and excavating the
has never been equaled. 
the Memphite Necropolis, from Abu Roash to
Lisht. Rapid success followed. Unas was opened on the 28th February, Pepi
II, Neferirkera [Neferirkare] on April 13th, and that of Teti on the 29th
May. In less than a year, five of the so-called "dumb" pyramids of Saqqara
had spoken..."
Smyth's extreme idea that Britain was a lost tribe of
Israel, but he fully accepted the idea of the
remained of the
directly under the pyramid. It does
seem strange that there are apparently no passages or
chambers under this small pyramid, despite Petrie having
found the remains of a chapel on its north side.