-
-
- Image provided courtesy
of
- The Freeman Institute™
- Image of today
- Modern Africa's Sphinx. Some
believe that Napoleon Bonaparte ordered his invading and occupying
soldiers to shoot off the nose and lips of the Sphinx.
|
-
- Image provided courtesy
of
- The Freeman Institute™
- Image rarely seen
- In 1798 Baron Dominique Vivant
Denon drew what he saw of the Sphinx of Africa. Some believe
that Napoleon Bonaparte ordered his invading and occupying soldiers
to shoot off the nose and lips.
|
-
-
- The Real Sphinx
- This image is of the
indigenous African
- Sphinx in Africa,
|
- This image is of the
indigenous African
- Sphinx in Africa,
|
-
-
- The European Sphinx
- This image is of today's
imagination of the Sphinx in Las Vegas, Nevada in the United
States.
|
- *Note: See the word
sphinx in the glossary
of terms.
-
 Baron
Dominique-Vivant Denon (1747-1825), was one of the key figures
of the art world at the end of the Ancient Regime and during
the Empire. Diderot, Voltaire, Robespierre, Josephine de Beauharnais,
Bonaparte... all these famous people punctuated his life. Living
through many different regimes, this draftsman, engraver, and
author was also a diplomat, collector, and director general of
museums, including the Napoleon Museum (today the Louvre Museum)
which was deeply marked by his tenure.
-
- In May 1798 Napoleon Bonaparte
left France with a military force of more than thirty-four thousand
men. Their destination was Egypt. Along with the French army
went 167 savants, the most prominent men of science, headed by
the Baron Dominique Vivant Denon. After a series of victories
had secured his position in Egypt, Napoleon founded the Institut
d'Egypte and directed it to study the science, African history
and antiquities of ancient and modern Egypt.
-
- Later in that same year Denon
accompanied General Desaix to Upper Egypt as the French pursued
the Mameluke Murad Bey. Denon used this often dangerous time
to sketch the monumental ruins. These drawings were later shown
to Napoleon who, recognizing their importance, immediately commissioned
the savants to measure and draw the monuments sketched by the
Denon. This work formed the basis of the Description de l'gypte.
-
- In the face of superior British
forces, Napoleon's position in Egypt quickly deteriorated, but
by this time Denon had returned to France and published his Voyage
dans la Basse at la Haute gypte in folio in 1802. Voyage was
so popular that it was translated into English in 1803 as Travels
in Upper and Lower Egypt, running to forty editions. In the meantime
the organization of the Description de l'gypte proceeded slowly
under the direction of Edme Francois Jomard. A work consisting
of more than nine hundred plates with accompanying text was published
from 1809 in nine volumes of text, eleven volumes of plates and
three volumes of grand format.
-
- The Description broke new ground
in thought and technique and heralded a new era for the archaeology
of Africa's ancient Egypt. Considering the background of the
savants it is not surprising that a scientific approach was taken
in the representation and study of the ancient monuments.
- The savants however continued
to have difficulty representing hieroglyphs because the problem
of translation had yet to be solved.
-
- The Description and Denon's
Voyages opened up a new world for European fantasy and
- Europeans making Egypt an exciting,
fashionable and profitable destination. While the Description
was in preparation, Jean Franqois Champollion, later call by
Europeans as the 'Father' of Egyptology, discovered the key to
the decipherment of the hieroglyphic text on the Rosetta Stone
unearthed by Napoleon's army in 1799. In the wake of this came
a new awareness and understanding of Egyptian history.
-
- Men of learning could now read
the ancient language, allowing them to see past the monuments
to the society and culture of ancient Egypt. After the expulsion
of the French from Egypt, the invading British were able to satisfy
their own fascination with Africa's ancient Egypt. Under the
patronage of Henry Salt, the Consul General, and with a firm
in from the Mameluke prince, a number of amateurs were able to
explore the ruins. Perhaps the most extra-ordinary of these amateurs
was Giovanni Battista Belzoni.
-
- Belzoni had been born in Padua
in 1778 but was in England by 1803 when he married. Being a colossus
himself - he stood at 6 feet 8 inches - it is not surprising
that Belzoni played the circus strongman for a time, though by
profession he was an hydraulic engineer. He was contracted by
the Muhammed Ali to construct irrigation works in Egypt, but
when he failed he was assisted by Henry Salt who commissioned
him to organize the transport of the massive basalt head of Ramesses
II from Thebes to the British Museum. Belzoni tackled this task
with a verve and enthusiasm which captured the imagination of
the public and ensured the admiration of his patron.
-
- In the following years Belzoni
was to make a number of other discoveries, perhaps the most notable
being that of the magnificent tomb of the 19th Dynasty Pharaoh,
Seti I, father of Ramesses II. Having entered the tomb, Belzoni's
hopes of treasure were dashed when it was found that the tomb
had been robbed, some say probably in antiquity. Belzoni did,
however, discover the spectacular alabaster sarcophagus of Seti
I, later drawn by Joseph Bonomi in Samuel Sharpe's The Alabaster
Sarcophagus of Oimenepthah I., King of Egypt (1864).
-
- It is curious - and perhaps
a reflection on the wealth of discoveries coming out of Africa
at the time - that when Henry Salt offered the sarcophagus to
the British Museum, the Trustees rejected it and it was sold
to Sir John Soane.
-
- On his return to London, Belzoni
mounted an exhibition based on the tomb of Seti I which was a
resounding success. The publisher John Murray encouraged Belzoni
to produce his Narrative of the operations and recent discoveries
within the pyramids, temples, tombs and excavations in Africa's
Egypt and Nubia which consists of a volume of text and a volume
of magnificent plates. Within the year the Narrative of the operations
was available in English, French and German. Belzoni may have
been vilified as a treasure hunter but there is no doubt that
his enthusiasm and energy intensified the level of inquiry into
Egypt's antiquity.
-
- Not to be outdone by the French
and English, the new Prussian King, Frederick Wilhelm IV, ordered
an expedition to Egypt to research scientifically the ancient
monuments and to collect antiquities. Karl Richard Lepsius was
appointed by the King to lead the expedition which arrived in
Egypt in 1842 and remained for three years. The expedition toured
through Egypt and Nubia and introduced a new rigour to the excavation
and recording of archaeological sites. Almost nine hundred illustrations,
based on Lepsius's work, were published between 1849 and 1859
as Denkmiiler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien in twelve folio volumes.
-
- Denkmtiler is the largest work
of its kind and, along with Jomard's Description de l'gypte,
continues to be an important record of ancient Egyptian antiquities
and sites. The copy in the State Library of Victoria was presented
by the King of Prussia himself to Redmond Barry in 1864. Barry
had it bound in England for £150 before sending it to Melbourne.
-
- Early in the nineteenth century
Africa also attracted artists such as David Roberts who visited
in 1838. Roberts portrayed Egypt's ruins with great romance and
a touch of mysticism, but his work was often criticized for its
unscientific and often inaccurate rendering. The now famous image
of the "Approach to the Simoon" was labeled theatrical
but when Roberts presented the image to Charles Dickens the latter
thought it wonderful and inspiring.
-
- The popularity of Roberts' work
no doubt contributed to the European and European American
- fantasies of Africa's ancient
Egypt. "Egyptomania" of the time, a cult movement which
influenced all including the poets Byron, Shelley, Keats and
the satirist Horatio Smith. The following lines from Shelley's
'Ozymandias' were inspired by the colossal images depicted in
Richard Pococke's Description of the East (1743-45):
-
- I met a traveller from an antique
land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in
the desert...
-
- From the multitude of drawings
published between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, Europeans
gained an insight into the society of ancient Egypt. With the
advent of photography in the mid-nineteenth century the number
of images multiplied exponentially. Du Camp, Abney, Frith and
others opened a new world in which the viewer saw with clarity
the grandeur and decay of that great African civilization. As
Samuel Sharpe pointed out, drawings suffered from the inaccuracies
of man but not so photography: Here we have all the truthfulness
of nature, all the reality of the objects themselves, and, at
the same time, artistic effects which leave us nothing to wish
for.
-
- Ancient Africa's Egypt
continues to capture the imagination of the world.
|
.jpg)
