The Rape of the Nile

by Brian Fagan

  The demand for Egyptian antiquities inevitably outstripped the supply, so prices rose, more people bought antiquities in Cairo and in auction rooms, and a new and lucrative trade came into being. For the first time, there were full-time collectors. European countries were gradually forming their own national museums, repositories for their own cultural heritages as well as those of other nations. One of the first was the British Museum, established by an act of Parliament in 1756. The vast agglomeration of artifacts and curiosities collected by Hans Sloane, an eminent physician and one of the founders of the museum, formed the nucleus of its collection. Some Egyptian lamps, papyri, and other small artifacts formed part of Sloane’s collection, acquired, like all early collections, through extensive travel and purchases from dealers.

  By this time, it had occurred to some visitors that it would be worth digging for antiquities on their own account. They obtained permits from the Turkish authorities to empty tombs and excavate around temples in search of inscriptions and statuary. The excavations were sometimes richly rewarded with mummies and fine grave ornaments, but were fraught with peril. The Arabs were convinced that Europeans had special magical spells under their command, which enabled them to locate the richest caches of gold and jewels. In at least one instance, reported by English traveler William George Browne, a Moroccan and a Greek were murdered in a temple at Thebes, simply because the Arabs suspected that they had brought spells for treasure hunting with them.20 When any “treasure” was found, there was fierce rivalry for possession and profit. Collectors, dealers, local authorities, and the government all claimed their stake in any important discovery. When the French vice-consul at Alexandria shipped three statues to Paris in 1751, local envy was so intense that even the indifferent authorities claimed the finds by fiat. Only by the use of tact, maneuver, and money was he able to remove the statues. These types of transactions were to become common as the local people cashed in on temple and tomb with a brazen neglect for historical tradition and a thirst for profit, fueled by a persistent and growing foreign demand.

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  Napoléon on the Nile

  Soldiers, forty centuries of history look down upon you!

  NAP OLÉON BONAPARTE,

  before the Battle of the Pyramids, quoted in Nicholas Reeves,

  Ancient Egypt: The Great Discoveries

  By the early eighteenth century, Egypt was better known to travelers. Some of them spent extended periods of time in the Nile Valley wandering from temple to temple admiring the inscriptions and beautiful frescoes that highlighted the dramatic architecture of Egyptian temples. King Christian VI of Denmark was so interested in Egypt that he sent a special expedition out to the Nile. Frederick Lewis Norden (1708–1742), an artist and marine architect, served as leader and traveled deep into Upper Egypt. He tried to reach the Second Cataract, but was forced to turn back at Derr in Nubia. Norden was a thoroughly sober and hardworking observer of the Nile scene who recorded a mass of information on Egyptian monuments. His Voyage d’Égypte et de Nubie appeared in 1755 and was widely read by both scholars and the general public. His English translator commented that “the reader seems to accompany the author in his voyage, and to share all his pleasures without undergoing the fatigue and dangers.”1 For the first time, the public at large had access to a corpus of plans and drawings of Egyptian monuments that were both vivid and relatively accurate.

  Norden was interested in the details of ancient life, a departure from earlier preoccupations with legend and fantasy. He admired the magnificent frescoes of the Battle of Kadesh executed in the temple at Luxor by order of Rameses II and examined fine tomb paintings that were as fresh as the day they were painted, preserved by the dry atmosphere of the Egyptian climate. Norden found the Arabs preoccupied with treasure and magic. “Travellers must think themselves happy in being allowed to contemplate the ancient edifices, without daring to stir any thing. I shall never forget what a crowd of people was assembled, while we were mooring at Aswan, in order to see, as they said among themselves, expert sorcerers in the black magic art.” His advice to prospective travelers was to the point: “Begin by dressing yourself in the Turkish manner. A pair of mustachios, with a grave and solemn air, will be very proper companions by which you will have a resemblance to the natives.” The “sober and continent” antiquarian is advised to steer clear of prostitutes, for they will give him a memento “indelible by time, place, or mercury.”2

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  Norden’s magnificent descriptions and fine drawings were all very well, but they threw almost no new light on the history of the ancient Egyptians themselves. They remained a shadowy people, known only from their spectacular monuments and the writings of Herodotus and other classical writers. No one knew how old the Egyptians were, nor had anyone been able to decipher their mysterious hieroglyphs. Clearly, the decipherment of ancient Egyptian writing would unleash a cascade of information about what was still considered to be the world’s oldest civilization.

  The speculations that surrounded hieroglyphs were quite extraordinary. Many people had tried to decipher the script, but their efforts had been in vain, largely because they assumed that Greek writers were correct in assuming that hieroglyphs were picture writing and that the symbols expressed mystical concepts. In 1419, a Greek manuscript titled Hieroglyphica written by an author named Horapollo in the fourth or fifth century appeared in Italy. One hundred and eighty-nine sections dealt with individual hieroglyphs. Unfortunately, Horapollo knew only a little about hieroglyphs and indulged his taste for fantasy on them, even inventing some symbols. Hieroglyphica appeared in print in 1505 and went through numerous printings. Many intellectuals seized on Horapollo’s fantasies with avidity and proclaimed that their symbolic meanings held the secrets of true knowledge. The idea that hieroglyphs had symbolic meanings muddied the decipherment waters for many generations. Theories were legion. One worthy scholar believed that the Egyptians had founded a colony in China and that hieroglyphs were developed from Chinese script. Bishop William Warburton of Gloucester argued more soberly that the Egyptians used their script for day-to-day purposes and not for mystical objectives.3 He showed how the script had evolved from a form of picture writing into a simpler hand used on a daily basis. But to study ancient Egypt was to become intensely frustrated. The hieroglyphs were apparently unintelligible; most of the principal monuments that were still above ground had been visited and reported upon by more than a few scholars. Large-scale excavation was beyond the resources of any one traveler, and no foreign government had thought to organize such investigations. The serious scholar was baffled, and the treasure hunter still unaware of the tremendous riches that awaited discovery at Thebes, in the Valley of the Kings, and elsewhere.

  Only the philosophers flourished, not least among them ConstantinFrançois Chasseboeuf, Comte de Volney (1757–1820), who spent four years in Egypt and Syria studying the history and political and social institutions of both countries. He paused to admire the pyramids and deplored the extravagance of the despots who built these and other massive structures at the expense of the slavery of their fellow countrymen. “While the lover of the arts may wax indignant when he sees the columns of the palace being sawn up to make millstones,” he wrote, “the philosopher cannot help smiling at the secret malice of fate that gives back to the people what cost them so much misery, and that assigns to the most humble of their needs the pride of useless luxury.”4 Chasseboeuf was more than a moralist, or even an intellectual revolutionary, for his book was an excellent campaign handbook for generals and a prized possession of one of history’s greatest adventurers, Napoléon Bonaparte (1769–1821), who organized the first massive assault on the ramparts of ancient Egypt.

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  By the late eighteenth century, Europe and the United States were feeling the effects of accelerating technological innovation. The discovery of steam power and the use of coal were transforming industrial production. On the political scene, the American and French Revolutions had excited
the imagination of intelligent observers on both sides of the Atlantic. But Egypt remained an obscure and half-forgotten country on the fringes of the Mediterranean. Ruled in name by the Turkish sultan in Constantinople, it was controlled in practice by the Mamluks, aristocratic mercenaries interested in little but the proceeds of harsh taxation. Their country remained an area of negligible political importance—hot, dusty, and entirely alien to European eyes. Yet even in the eighteenth century, Egypt was respected for its original contributions to civilization and for the high antiquity of its institutions. And its geographical position was of key importance, for to control Egypt was to threaten the busy land routes to rich British possessions in India.

  Twenty-nine-year-old General Napoléon Bonaparte was the man who pushed Egypt into the center of the world stage. French interest in the Nile had been on the increase since the 1770s, partly because of lobbying by French merchants in Egypt, foreign exiles in a hostile country. Many government officials in Paris also believed that Egypt had tremendous commercial potential and feared a British takeover of the strategically important Nile Valley. They had good reason for apprehension, for the Ottoman Empire was weak and corrupt—so much so that nineteenth-century statesmen called it “the sick man of Europe.” Ambitious nations were already chipping away at outlying portions of the sultan’s territories. Egypt, under only nominal rule by the sultan, was a natural candidate for annexation by an expanding European power.

  The French were slow to contemplate any political initiatives, partly because of domestic upheavals and also for financial reasons. But when Napoléon concluded his bloody conquest of Italy with the Peace of Campo Formio in 1797, his restless mind turned to new projects whose boldness and success would further his political ambitions. He became obsessed with the East, a fascination that was to grip many politicians of the next century, among them Benjamin Disraeli and Napoléon III. General Napoléon’s ruthless mind turned toward ideas of worldwide conquest, toward the creation of a great French empire centered on the Orient and ultimately on India, where the British had expelled the French in the mid-eighteenth century.

  By April 1798, Napoléon had been authorized to mount an expedition to seize Malta and Egypt and to build a canal at the Isthmus of Suez. The government approved the campaign to get the ambitious Napoléon out of the way. The general was convinced that glory beckoned, that an empire awaited him in the East, as if he were the second Alexander the Great. On May 19, 1798, he sailed from Toulon with a fleet of 328 ships and an expeditionary force of 38,000 soldiers and 10,000 civilians to conquer Egypt, landing at Abukir Bay near Alexandria on July 1. The special Scientific and Artistic Commission carefully selected by Napoléon accompanied the expedition to provide a cultural and technological background to his ambitious plans for the colonization of the Nile Valley. The commission consisted of 167 scientists and technicians, soon contemptuously nicknamed “the Donkeys” by the military. Napoléon’s Scientific and Artistic Commission had been set up on the general’s own initiative, although the French foreign minister under the directory, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754–1838), at the time a supporter of Napoléon, had espoused the general idea years before. In the spring of 1798, the young general had attended a meeting of the Institute of France attended by the leading scientists of the Republic. He had harangued them on the importance of Egypt to contemporary scholarship and intellectual life, and pressed for a strong intellectual backing for his new campaign.

  The chief recruiter of the savants was Claude-Louis Berthollet, a physician and chemist who succeeded in assembling a remarkable group of talented men around him, with an average age of twenty-five. There were artists, agronomists, botanists, chemists, engineers, even musicians and a master printer. None of the savants were Egyptologists—such a discipline did not exist. But many of them returned as enthusiastic students of ancient Egypt. Jean-Michel de Venture was a distinguished Orientalist, Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire a zoologist and lifelong friend of the celebrated paleontologist Georges Cuvier. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire’s ideas foreshadowed some of Darwin’s evolutionary theories. Gaspard Monge, a mathematician and chemist, was a fervent republican and a steel and gunpowder expert; his most recent appointment had been to a different body, the Government Commission for the Research of Artistic and Scientific Objects in Conquered Countries. This commission had followed in the wake of Bonaparte’s armies in Italy and examined art collections, museums, and libraries, deciding which objects were to be ceded to the French Republic under the terms of peace treaties. One has only to tour the Louvre to see how efficient the commission was—the expropriated works include the Mona Lisa. Monge was obviously a highly qualified recruit for the commission.

  Then there was fifty-one-year-old Baron Dominique-Vivant Denon, a diplomat and artist extraordinaire. Denon had been the supervisor of a collection of antique gems under King Louis XV and had also, it was rumored, been a favorite of Madame de Pompadour. For a while he filled a post at the French Embassy in St. Petersburg, Russia, and was much admired by Catherine the Great. His career as a diplomat gave him a wide experience of the world and a broad knowledge of the arts of eighteenthcentury Europe. He was fond of women, a sparkling conversationalist, and a member of the French Academy.

  FIGURE 4.1 French savants measure the Sphinx at Giza. From Description de l’Égypte.

  At the time of the French Revolution he was living in Florence, pursuing a leisured life among art treasures and friends whom he enjoyed. Immediately upon hearing the news of political upset, he returned to France only to find that he was on a list of proscribed names and that the revolutionary authorities had confiscated his real estate and financial holdings. Denon was reduced to poverty almost overnight. He vegetated in the Paris slums, eking out a bare existence by selling drawings and the eighteenth-century equivalent of picture postcards. Fortunately, however, he came to the notice of a well-known painter of the French Revolution, Jacques-Louis David, who employed him as a minor functionary in his studio. Through this connection, he won the goodwill of a number of revolutionary leaders. Denon’s diplomatic skills soon came again into public view and, indeed, were remembered from an earlier time. The revolutionary government eventually restored Denon’s properties at the direct order of the notorious Robespierre. The artist-cum-diplomat soon met Napoléon and the Empress Josephine and was high in the favor of senior French scientists.

  Denon’s reputation was not only firmly based in scientific circles, however. His Oeuvre Priapique, a collection of vivid pornographic etchings, highly explicit even by French standards of the time, was popular reading among the intelligentsia. A major portion of the illustrative responsibility of the commission’s work fell to Denon. Fortunately for Egyptology, a rapturous enthusiasm for the antiquities of the Nile and everything Egyptian guided his skills.

  The commission’s work was the most lasting result of one of Napoléon’s most unsuccessful military campaigns. Its members accomplished an immense amount of scientific research in twenty months of work. Fortunately, the members were well prepared for their huge task, bringing with them from France a library of more than five hundred works that contained a copy of practically every book ever published about the Nile, many crates of scientific apparatuses and measuring instruments, as well as printing presses with Arabic, Greek, and other fonts.

  The work of the Scientific and Artistic Commission started soon after Napoléon reached Cairo on July 21, 1798. He took immediate steps to set up the Institut de l’Égypte in the capital, housed in an elegant Cairo palace. Napoléon himself took an active interest in its activities and attended many of the institute’s regular meetings. His instructions to the savants were simple: study all of Egypt, spread enlightened ideas and habits, and furnish information to the occupying authority.

  Months of astonishingly prolific and fruitful scientific activity ensued. Scientists from totally different academic disciplines worked harmoniously together, united by a common fascination with a new and virtually unknown
country. They exchanged local knowledge and stimulated one another’s creativity by chance conversations and regular seminars. The scientists were deeply involved in the administration of Egypt, too, serving on committees and medical commissions, or answering the myriad practical questions thrown at them by Napoléon and his generals. Yet pure research held pride of place, with important papers read at regular seminars—on the technical processes used by Egyptian craftsmen, on experimental agriculture, and, a topical subject, contributed by mineralogist Deodate Gratet de Dolomicu, on the “selection, conservation, and transportation of ancient monuments” to be shipped to France.

  The commission’s greatest discovery came not at the hands of one of its members, but from an accidental find made by a soldier named D’Hautpoul, part of a squad erecting coastal defense works just north of the town of Rosetta (el-Rachid) in the Nile Delta. He stumbled across an inscribed granite stela in one of the piles of boulders once used as ballast by ships that had moored in the nearby medieval port that were being recycled into his fortifications.5 (Experts believe the stone probably originated in the delta town of Sais.) His commander, engineer Lieutenant Pierre François Xavier Bouchard, reported the find to his superiors, who in turn passed the find on to the institute.