Auguste Mariette is an outstanding figure among the pioneers of Egyptology. Discoverer of the Serapeum of Memphis, founder of the Antiquities Service, and the Boulaq Museum, he also wrote the intrigue of Aïda. Designing the Egyptian pavilions of the World Fairs of his time, he worked in exciting times for Egyptology, one generation after Champollion, when the discipline was gradually becoming institutionalised and developing its methods. The best material to study his legacy is the contemporary documents in which the peculiar world of 19th-century Egyptian archaeology still appears vividly to us. Among them, the letters are of the utmost importance: they give us a discourse often immediately contemporary to the facts, with little distance or reinterpretation. The writer also uses his own voice in them, obviously adapted to the issue at stake, which is not without interest. Nevertheless, scholarly discussions often compile the same sources since Mariette’s death, while many other documents lie in the archives or have been discovered since that time. However, we are now benefiting from the willingness of most institutions to open their archives, and from the new publishing and sharing possibilities offered by digital technology. In the wake of Auguste Mariette’s bicentenary, we have set up an ongoing free digital edition of his letters. The paper will present this project; we also hope to attract the interest of all those who wish to share historical documents and to present our methodology and the tools we have used for this purpose.