SIR GASTON MASPERO. 



{Read November 3, igi6.) 



In the death of Sir Gaston Maspero on June 30, 1916, France 

 has lost one of her most distinguished scholars — perhaps the most 

 distinguished — and the world one of the leading Egyptologists, 

 whose range of learning, however, extended far beyond the borders 

 of Egyptological research. 



Born in Paris in 1846 of parents who were of Italian descent, he 

 received his early education at the Lycee Louis le Grand, famous 

 for the long roll of great scholars that passed through its portals. 

 From the Lycee he went to the Ecole Normale and while in that in- 

 stitution began to study Egyptian without the assistance of any mas- 

 ter. At the age of nineteen he was able to translate Egyptian texts 

 that had been submitted to him by Mariette Bey — at the time the 

 leading Egyptologist of France. The feat, though remarkable for 

 a young man, was not so astonishing as that at the age of twenty- 

 three he was appointed to a professorship of Egyptology at the Ecole 

 des Hautes Etudes — the graduate school of the Paris University. 

 Four years later he had established his reputation for eminent 

 scholarship so firmly as to be chosen to fill the chair of Egyptology 

 at the College de France, created for the famous Champollion, who 

 by the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone did for Egyptology in 

 1827 what a quarter of a century earlier the German scholar Grote- 

 fend had done for the Cuneiform inscriptions — establishing the de- 

 cipherment on a secure basis. At twenty-seven he had thus at- 

 tained to the highest scholarly post in the gift of the French gov- 

 ernment — the youngest person to have achieved the distinction. 

 The story goes that a visitor came one day to see the already famous 

 professor. The door of his apartment was opened by Maspero, who 

 explained to his visitor that he was M. Maspero, whereupon the 

 visitor insisted, " Oh, no ; I want to see your father." 



His first larger work appeared within two years after he had 



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