Georges Legrain

Georges Albert Legrain (4 October 1865, in Paris – 22 August 1917, in Luxor) was a French Egyptologist.

[1] From 1883 to 1890 Legrain was a student at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, but he also studied Egyptology at that time, attending lectures at the Sorbonne by famous scholars like Gaston Maspero.

In 1892, he was offered the opportunity to go to Cairo as a member of the local Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale (IFAO) under Urbain Bouriant to work as archaeological draftsman and illustrator.

So Legrain was in charge of the rebuilding of this part of the Temple, where the workers now had to construct new solid foundations for the columns.

In 1903, Legrain made a momentous discovery at the Temple—he discovered a cache of nearly eight hundred stone statues and seventeen thousand bronzes, as well as other artifacts.

It is generally believed that the hoard was ritually buried by temple priests in the Ptolemaic period to relieve the crowding of private offerings given over the centuries.