François Auguste Ferdinand Mariette was a French scholar, archaeologist and Egyptologist, and the founder of the Egyptian Department of Antiquities, the forerunner of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The Supreme Council of Antiquities was a department of the Egyptian Ministry of Culture from 1994 to 2011. It was the government body responsible for the conservation, protection and regulation of all antiquities and archaeological excavations in Egypt, and was a reorganization of the Egyptian Antiquities Organisation, under Presidential Decree No. 82 of Hosni Mubarak.