Father Claude Sicard (1677–1726) was a French

Jesuit The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

priest, and an early modern visitor to

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

, between 1708 and 1712. Sicard was a scholar and at the age of 22 was a professor in the seminary at

Lyon Lyon (Franco-Provençal: ''Liyon'') is a city in France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of the French Alps, southeast of Paris, north of Marseille, southwest of Geneva, Switzerland, north ...

.Thompson, Jason. (2015). ''Wonderful Things: A History of Egyptology''. ''1: From Antiquity to 1881''. American University of Cairo Press. pp. 77-78. He was well educated in Latin, Greek, Coptic and Arabic. He was also skilled in cartography. His aim was to convert Egypt's Coptic Christians to

Roman Catholicism The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

. Sicard was Supervisor of the Jesuit Mission in

Cairo Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...

. He ate only vegetables and conformed to the Egyptian way of living for nine successive years. He was the first European to locate Thebes. He identified the ruins of

Karnak The Karnak Temple Complex, commonly known as Karnak (), comprises a vast mix of temples, pylons, chapels, and other buildings near Luxor, Egypt. Construction at the complex began during the reign of Senusret I (reigned 1971–1926 BC) in the ...

and

Luxor Luxor is a city in Upper Egypt. Luxor had a population of 263,109 in 2020, with an area of approximately and is the capital of the Luxor Governorate. It is among the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest continuously inhabited c ...

as those of ancient Thebes.La Farge, Henry Adams. (1980). ''Museums of Egypt''. Newsweek. p. 165 Sicard commented that "Its remains are magnificent and more extensive than it is possible to imagine." Sicard died of plague from nursing the afflicted in 1726.

Works

* ''Extrait de la Carte de l'Egypte ancienne du P. Sicard présentée à L. XV. Au Kaire l'an 17 ..'' (1722)

References

1677 births 1726 deaths 18th-century French archaeologists 18th-century deaths from plague (disease) People from Aubagne French Egyptologists 18th-century French Jesuits French cartographers French Roman Catholic missionaries Roman Catholic missionaries in Egypt French expatriates in Egypt Jesuit missionaries French missionary linguists Thebes, Egypt {{Egyptologist-stub