Eugène Grébaut (1846 – 8 January 1915) was a French
Egyptologist
Egyptology (from ''Egypt'' and Greek , '' -logia''; ar, علم المصريات) is the study of ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, architecture and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end of its native religiou ...
. Grébaut made significant discoveries in the complex of
mortuary temples and tombs located at
Deir el-Bahari
Deir el-Bahari or Dayr al-Bahri ( ar, الدير البحري, al-Dayr al-Baḥrī, the Monastery of the North) is a complex of mortuary temples and tombs located on the west bank of the Nile, opposite the city of Luxor, Egypt. This is a part o ...
including several
Egyptian mummies of the
twenty-first Dynasty.
In 1883 he succeeded
Eugène Lefébure as director of the ''
Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale
The Institut français d'archéologie orientale (or IFAO), also known as the French Institute for Oriental Archaeology in Cairo, is a French research institute based in Cairo, Egypt, dedicated to the study of the archaeology, history and language ...
'' in
Cairo
Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metr ...
. Three years later, he succeeded
Gaston Maspero
Sir Gaston Camille Charles Maspero (23 June 1846 – 30 June 1916) was a French Egyptologist known for popularizing the term "Sea Peoples" in an 1881 paper.
Maspero's son, Henri Maspero, became a notable sinologist and scholar of East Asia ...
as director of the ''
Département des antiquités égyptiennes'', a position he maintained up until 1892. Afterwards, he worked as a lecturer of
ancient history
Ancient history is a time period from the beginning of writing and recorded human history to as far as late antiquity. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with the Sumerian cuneiform script. Ancient history cove ...
at the
Sorbonne in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...
.
He was the author of "''Hymne à Ammon-Ra des papyrus égyptiens du Musée de Boulaq''" (1874).
Hathitrust Digital Library
Hymne à Ammon-Ra des papyrus égyptiens du Musée de Boulaq
Grébaut was one of the people working on clearing the sands from around the Great Sphinx
The Great Sphinx of Giza is a limestone statue of a reclining sphinx, a mythical creature with the head of a human, and the body of a lion. Facing directly from west to east, it stands on the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile in Giza, E ...
. "In the beginning of the year 1887, the chest, the paws, the altar, and plateau were all made visible. Flights of steps were unearthed, and finally accurate measurements were taken of the great figures. The height from the lowest of the steps was found to be one hundred feet, and the space between the paws was found to be thirty-five feet long and ten feet wide. Here there was formerly an altar; and a stele of Thûtmosis IV was discovered, recording a dream in which he was ordered to clear away the sand that even then was gathering round the site of the Sphinx."
References
External links
Image of Eugène Grébaut, on Science Photo
{{DEFAULTSORT:Grebaut, Eugene
1846 births
1915 deaths
French Egyptologists
19th-century French historians
University of Paris faculty
French male non-fiction writers
Members of the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale
Place of birth missing