Marcel-Auguste Dieulafoy

Marcel-Auguste Dieulafoy
Marcel Dieulafoy, with his wife, Jane (left, in male dress).
Born	August 3, 1844 Toulouse
Died	February 25, 1920 Paris
Nationality	France
Fields	archaeology, civil engineering
Alma mater	Ecole Polytechnique
Known for	excavations at Susa

Marcel-Auguste Dieulafoy (August 3, 1844 - February 25, 1920) was a French archaeologist, noted for his excavations at Susa (modern-day Shush, Iran) in 1885 and for his work, L'Art antique de la Perse.

Marcel-Auguste Dieulafoy was born in Toulouse into an educated and ennobled family. In 1863, Dieulafoy entered the École Polytechnique where he studied civil engineering. Upon graduating, he joined France's Bureau of roads and bridges, taking up a position in Sour al-Ghozlane (then called Aumale) in Algeria. In 1870, he returned to France, assuming a post in the navigation services on the Garonne. That same year he married Jane Magre (1851-1916), who was also from Toulouse. He was an engineering officer in the French Army during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), posted to Nevers. Upon demobilisation, he became first the head of the supply services for the Department of the Haute Garonne and subsequently, in 1874, of municipal services for his native city of Toulouse.

As a result, both of a cultivated family environment and his time spent in Algeria, Dieulafoy had long had an interest in medieval and Roman archaeology. As a result, he became acquainted with Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, under whose direction he worked for four years in the Commission of Historic Monuments. With Viollet-le-Duc's encouragement, Dieulafoy decided to pursue this interest at a professional level. In 1880, he resigned his post in Toulouse and requested a government assignment in Iran.

Arriving quite ill in Tehran via Athens and Constantinople (Istanbul), he was attended to by a French doctor François Tholozan. Shortly thereafter they embarked upon an expedition to Susa, where Dieulafoy and his wife explored the remains of the palace first uncovered by William Loftus some thirty years previously. During this visit, the Dieulafoys took numerous photographs and made copious notes. His wife, Jane, took on as close to a male appearance as she could during their sojourn in Iran.