Born in France (1846–1916), Gaston Maspero was a French Egyptologist known for popularizing the term "Sea Peoples" in an 1881 paper.
While at school he showed a special taste for history and became interested in Egypt following a visit to the Egyptian galleries of the Louvre at the age of fourteen.
In January 1873 he presented the first doctoral thesis on Egyptology in France.
By the end of the 1870s he was regarded as the leading French Egyptologist of his generation.
In November 1880 Maspero went to Egypt as head of an archeological mission sent there by the French government, which ultimately developed into the well-equipped Institut français d'archéologie orientale
Gaston Maspero succeeded as Director General of Excavations and Antiquities, as well as Director of Boulaq Museum (1881–1886).
The year of his appointment witnessed the reopening of the museum after repairs, as well as the discovery of the Royal Mummies Cachette at Deir el-Bahari.
Maspero left Cairo to work in Paris between 1886–1889, before returning to Cairo and his directorship of the Egyptian Museum in 1899.
Maspero also set up a network of local museums throughout Egypt, including a new larger Cairo facility, to encourage the Egyptians to take greater responsibility for the maintenance of their own heritage by increasing public awareness of it.
