CALL. 30.09.2019: International Conference "Mariette, deux siècles après", Boulogne-sur-Me
FECHA LÍMITE/DEADLINE/SCADENZA: 30/09/2019
FECHA CONGRESO/CONGRESS DATE/DATA CONGRESSO: 20-21/05/2021
LUGAR/LOCATION/LUOGO: Centre Universitaire du Musée, Univ. Littoral Côte d’Opale, Boulogne-sur-Mer (France)
ORGANIZADOR/ORGANIZER/ORGANIZZATORE: Jean-Louis Podvin (Univ. Littoral Côte d’Opale); Didier Devauchelle (Univ. de Lille)
INFO: jean-louis.podvin@univ-littoral.fr, didier.devauchelle@univ-lille.fr
CALL:
Auguste Mariette was born in Boulogne on the 11th of February 1821,one year before the rediscovery of the hieroglyphic system by Jean-François Champollion. He is fascinated by Egypt according to family events and the purchase of a coffin by the city museum. He gives up his job of teacher in Boulogne in order to get a junior job at the Louvre Museum in Paris. As he is thirty years old, he goes to Egypt in charge of a purchasing Mission of papyrus for the French museum, but he can’t so he decides to organize excavations. He discovers the Serapeum of Memphis, and places nascent Egyptology in a dynamic of excavations and discoveries, that has never stopped since. His temporary return to France does not make him forget Egypt. He comes back, gets Viceroy the opportunity to create an Antiquities Department: placed at his head as an Egyptian official, he multiplies the sites of excavation and accumulate the discoveries, which he strives to publish. To highlight them on the spot, he becomes the director of an ambitious museum that must be moved because of the floods of the Nile. At the same time, he is in charge of representative missions, organizes the Egyptian pavilions to the universal exhibitions, the visits during the inauguration of the Suez Canal, and participates in the editing of the opera Aïda. He goes off prematurely at 60, worn out by illness, family tragedies as well as by the travels, the innumerable tasks and worries caused by administrative and political harassment. Two centuries after his birth, we want to devote an international conference to Mariette in his hometown, where he spent the first half of his life and where he then regularly returned to relax during periodical stays in France.
This conference is organized jointly by the University Littoral Côte d’Opale (ULCO, UR H.L.L.I., EA 4030) and the University of Lille (UdL, HALMA, UMR 8164). The main subjects are the following:
-- Mariette as a precursor: digging methods, mode of public financing...
-- Mariette as a discoverer: archaeological sites (Serapeum)...
-- Mariette as a museograph and a populariser: creation of the Boulaq Museum, universal exhibitions of 1867, 1878, but also of 1862, contribution to Aïda...
-- Mariette as a protector of antiquities: creation and direction of the Service of Antiquities, organizing of a legislation on antiquities…
-- Mariette, an inquiring mind: journalist, politician and « diplomat » …
-- Mariette and Boulogne: his origins, his regular returns, the visit of Saïd Pacha, the exhibitions, the relations with the museum, his memory in his native town...
-- The place of Mariette in Egyptology…
-- Mariette as an editor of monuments (Karnak, Denderah, Abydos…)
-- Other subjects according to the proposals given to the scientific committee. We expect papers focused on the role of Mariette, on original documents… For the examination by the scientific committee, please send your proposals for the 30th of September 2019 with a title, even temporary, and a short sum up (ca 10 lines), your name and address, and a short CV.