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PORTRAIT. Commissioned by the Louvre, the archaeologist excavates, in Sudan, the ruins of a fascinating ancient empire, a neighbor of powerful Egypt.
By Violaine de Montclos
Vocation. Marie Millet, archaeologist at the Louvre Museum for ten years, expert in ceramics, took part in her first excavation site at the age of 15.
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EShe became an Egyptologist starting with the field and is today, with her director Vincent Rondot, one of the only two archaeologists in the Egyptian Antiquities department of the Louvre Museum. In her vast office overlooking the Seine, she happily lays out the plans for the excavations she is directing in Sudan: since 2013, Marie Millet has been exploring there, on the sites of Mouweis and El-Hassa, what remains of the fascinating empire of Meroe (4th century BC-4th century AD), this kingdom with 80 pyramids which maintained mimetic and complex links with the Egyptian world. “The Meroitic language has not yet been completely deciphered, and there is still so much to discover about the pantheon, daily life, the chronology of Meroe, she enthuses. But this civilization…
Vincent Boisot/Riva Press FOR “LE POINT” – Alamy Stock Photo