Schiaparelli, Ernesto

SCHIAPARELLI, ERNESTO. - Egyptologist, b. at Occhieppo Inferiore (Biella) on 12 July 1856, d. at Turin on 17 February 1928.

His first work, Del sentimento religioso degli antichi Egiziani, was published in Turin in the same year in which he took his degree (1877). Having completed his training in Paris, he was appointed director of the Egyptian Museum of Florence (1881), for which he compiled the Catalogo generale (Rome 1887). In 1894 he went on to direct the Egyptian Museum of Turin, to which he was to give a very notable increase through the excavations, promoted by him, of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Egypt (1903-13), and of which he gave an account in the Relazione sui lavori della Miss. archeol. ital. in Egitto, I (Turin 1924). Among his studies, an important piece of research in the religious field is still remembered: Il libro dei funerali degli antichi Egiziani (ibid. 1882-90).

A practising Catholic, he carried out a vast work of assistance to the Italian missions through the founding of the Italica Gens (v.) and was particularly deserving of the Franciscan missions of Egypt.