During my short stay on the Opal Coast, I went to see an interesting exhibit about one of Boulogne-sur-Mer’s famous citizens : Auguste Mariette a.k.a. Mariette Pacha. Anyone familiar with egyptology will know the name. He is the father of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and discoverer of quantity of tombs and sites across all of Egypt. He was a sort of visionary pre-Indiana Jones type, a passionate, fearless egyptologist in the early days of egyptology (1850’s) where there was as much treasure hunting as archaelogy going on. A teacher who becomes an archaeologist, adventurer and first Bey then Pacha makes for a great story and the exhibit entitled Gods, Tombs and a Scholar – in Egypt in Mariette Pacha’s Footsteps tells it well. However it ends next week. The website which is quite informative will hopefully stay up longer.