Napoleon’s invasion made Egypt accessible to Europeans in ways never before possible. The resulting military conflict meant that the country became a source of interest to many different sorts of people who could engage with it through common-place means, such as newspapers and periodicals. Similarly, famous objects, such as the Rosetta Stone, and collections of antiquities, brought to Europe by both the French and British armies, provided tangible manifestations of the country and aroused further interest in it. Interest was also piqued by publications stemming from the Napoleonic invasion, such as Dominique Vivant Denon’s Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte, published in 1802. Stemming from their military presences in the country, both France and Britain launched unprecedented missions of exploration in the early 1800s. Between Henry Salt, appointed British Consul-General in 1815, and Bernardino Michel Maria Drovetti, appointed French Consul-General in 1811, Egypt was rapidly divided into geographic spheres of influence in which archaeological investigations and the accumulation of collections took place. Despite the overbearing presence of France and Britain, other countries and individuals engaged with the exploration of ancient Egypt in significant ways. It was amidst this environment, for example, that the Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt undertook his extensive travels in Egypt, becoming the first European to visit Abu Simbel (Bierbrier 1995b: 74). Burckhardt recommended the Paduan-born Giovanni Battista Belzoni to Salt, which, in turn, facilitated a brief but famous career in archaeology yielding some of the most famous pieces of Egyptian culture now in British institutions. During this period British Egyptology was brought forward by the works of John Gardner Wilkinson. Both his 1835 Topography of Thebes and his 1837 Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians were the direct result of the 12 years he spent living and working in Egypt (Thompson 1992: 133-42; Bierbrier 1995b: 443-4). As the nineteenth century progressed, the Description was not forgotten, with Franz Christian Gau’s Antiquites de la Nubie, published between 1821 and 1827, meant as a supplement to the Napoleonic corpus (Bierbrier 1995b: 164). In keeping with many elements of the Description, Karl Richard Lepsius undertook the best prepared expedition ever to have gone to Egypt. His findings were published in twelve massive folio volumes of plates that comprised the Denk-maler in 1859. The text to the work was later published under the guidance of Edouard Naville between 1897 and 1913 (Bierbrier 1995b: 249). The face of Egyptian archaeology was also forever changed by the work of Francois Auguste Ferdinand Mariette (1821-1881) who, along with a long list of accomplishments, discovered the Serapeum, founded the Egyptian Antiquities Service (now the SCA), and established the first national museum in the Near East (Bierbrier 1995b: 275).
Along with many wondrous archaeological discoveries, the groundwork for reconstructing the ancient Egyptian language was set during the nineteenth century. A systematic approach to studying Hieroglyphic signs was established by George Zoega (1755-1809), even though he himself never made attempts at translation (Bierbrier 1995b: 457). Significant efforts at decoding the language were undertaken early in the century by, amongst others, Thomas Young (1773-1829), Johan David jAkerblad (1763-1819), Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy (1758-1838) and Jean Francois Champollion (1790-1832). In 1822 Champollion published his famous Lettre a M. Dacier, which proved to be a watershed moment in the history of translation. His Precis du systeme hi'eroglyphique, published the following year, expanded this work. It was not until his Grammaire (1836-41) and Dictionnaire (1841-4) were published, however, that the full extent of his ideas was realized (Bierbrier 1995b: 93). Despite the validity of much of his work many of his ideas were disputed into the mid and late 1800s (Ceram 1954: 80). Other scholars capitalized on these successes and greatly contributed to the understanding of ancient Egyptian civilization during this time. Charles Wycliffe Goodwin’s Hieratic Papyri, published in 1858, is a case in point, as were the numerous text-related discoveries made by Francois Joseph Chabas (1817-1882) (Bierbrier 1995b: 90, 171).
Yet each of these advances in the study of ancient Egypt were part of much larger developments in Europe. The nineteenth century, after all, witnessed not only the professionalization of Egyptology, but also that of the sciences in general (Bednarski 2005: 41). Historical studies directly benefited from the resulting refinement in theories and techniques that accompanied this professionalization. The best example of this fact is the birth of what we now recognize as archaeology: a system of observation and analysis that stems from advances made in the field of geology. New mental tools such as this led Europeans to develop new ideas on the antiquity of the planet and mankind’s presence on it. In turn, an increasingly better understanding of geological strata was complemented by new discoveries of ancient texts and languages, which challenged older conceptions of mankind’s history and place in the world.
World History
