The Description of Egypt from Napoleon to Champollion (War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850) 9783031156052, 9783031156069, 3031156056

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WAR, CULTURE AND SOCIETY, 1750–1850

The Description of Egypt from Napoleon to Champollion Tamar Sarfatti

War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850 Series Editors

Rafe Blaufarb Florida State University Tallahassee, FL, USA Alan Forrest University of York York, UK Karen Hagemann University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC, USA

The series aims to the analysis of the military and war by combining political, social, cultural, art and gender history with military history. It wants to extend the scope of traditional histories of the period by discussing war and revolution across the Atlantic as well as within Europe, thereby contributing to a new global history of conflict in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. For more information see: wscseries.web.unc.edu

Tamar Sarfatti

The Description of Egypt from Napoleon to Champollion

Tamar Sarfatti Independent Scholar Oxford, UK

ISSN 2634-6699     ISSN 2634-6702 (electronic) War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850 ISBN 978-3-031-15605-2    ISBN 978-3-031-15606-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15606-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Image courtesy of the New York Public Library Digital Collections This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To my children, Shlomit, Avishay and Abigail

Preface

This book is about the Description of Egypt, the multi-volume-state-­ sponsored publication of texts and images about Egypt that followed the 1798 French invasion of the country. It is also a book about the men that created the publication, about the intellectual and political worlds in which they operated, and about the traditions that informed them. The volume closely examines the often-neglected rich mine of texts and images of the Description of Egypt and the process of their publication, to portray a stage in the non-linear journey of the social sciences becoming full-fledged disciplines in nineteenth-century France. The initial research for this book was conducted almost twenty years ago as part of a dissertation, written at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). It has since been trimmed, reworked, expanded, and trimmed again. Between the dissertation and this book, I have been the academic advisor for the Hebrew translation of Abd al-Rahman al-­Jabarti’s early nineteenth-century chronicle of the French occupation; I have also begun research on the life and works of Volney, which is still in progress. These studies have informed the present work, whether implicitly or explicitly. Throughout this very long process, that at times threatened to be as long as the process of publication of the Description of Egypt itself, I never lost my admiration of the historical protagonists, the Egyptians of year VI as they were called at the time, or my enthusiasm about their work. It was

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a privilege to be able to surround oneself with texts and debates of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, a time in which one may find some political optimism and a belief in Man, in education and in knowledge. These texts, more often than not, were a place of relief from debates, vocabularies, and the political realities of the present. Oxford, UK

Tamar Sarfatti

Acknowledgements

In the first seminar I took with my UCLA dissertation advisor, Professor Carlo Ginzburg, he spoke of the benefits of experiencing a moment of ignorance when facing the sources and of the opportunities it may provide in the process of research. He has since guided me through many such moments, probably more than he thought possible, and I have learned a lot from them all. As I look again at the notes I have taken during our long conversations through the years—the importance of some I understood only long after the event—I am ever more grateful for the many venues he has opened for me to explore, for his generosity and for his never ending patience. Perry Anderson showed unremitting interest in my work. He provided challenging conceptual remarks, alongside minutiae observations. But even more, he was generous in sharing his knowledge and always approachable. Both Professor Ginzburg and Professor Anderson have become an important part of my life. Their friendship and that of their families made this work a wonderful experience during all its stages. Many friends, some of them unknowingly, became an informal academic community when I was in Israel. I thank Dror Zeevi, Nimrod Horovitz, Orit Yekutieli, Ehud Toledano and Moshe Ron, some for reading parts of the work and providing helpful suggestions, and others, for their general advice and encouragement, and all for their friendship. Yoni Mendel and Yehuda Shenhav invited me to be the academic editor of the translation into Hebrew of al-Jabarti’s chronicle. They thus not only provided an additional perspective on the French practices in Egypt, ix

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but they also made me part of the important political and scholarly project they head, the Maktoob series, the translation of works in Arabic into Hebrew. I am very grateful. Orit Sarfatti’s help with the illustrations facilitated their inclusion in the book; I could not have done it on my own. I wish to thank Palgrave Macmillan’s anonymous reviewers for insightful recommendations that improved the final version of the book. It was a pleasure working with Emily Russel and Steve Fassioms, whose quick responses, professionalism and unfailing courtesy did much to smooth the transition from manuscript to book. The mistakes, as always, are my own.

Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 An  Eighteenth-Century Ordinary Reader: Napoleon Bonaparte 19 3 Colonial Policies and Revolutionary Ideas 45 4 A  Short History of the Making of the Description of Egypt 71 5 Literary Genres and Scholarly Traditions103 6 Engineer  Training in Eighteenth-Century France: “From the World of More or Less to the Universe of Precision”125 7 Egypt Engraved147 8 Texts About Ancient Egypt and Their Predecessors189 9 Describing Modern Egyptian Society215

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10 Jomard  and Champollion: A Rivalry at the Birth of Egyptology251 11 Conclusion277 Selected Bibliography281 Index291

List of Figures

Fig. 7.1

Fig. 7.2 Fig. 7.3  Fig. 7.4 Fig. 7.5 Fig. 7.6 Fig. 7.7 Fig. 7.8 Fig. 7.9 Fig. 7.10 Fig. 7.11 Fig. 7.12

Memphis et ses environs, “Poignet d’un colosse à Memphis; plan, coupe et détails d’un tombeau de momies d’oiseaux à Saqqãrah; vue des carrières de Torrah; vue d’un mur antique”, Antiquités, vol. V, plate 4 Thèbes, Memnonium, “Vue des deux colosses”, Antiquités, vol. II plate 20 Thèbes, Memnonium, “Détails du colosse du sud”, Antiquités, vol. II plate 21 Arts et Métiers, État Moderne, vol. II plate XXIII Le Kaire, “Vue perspective de la porte appellée [sic] Bab el Nasr”, État Moderne, vol. I plate 46 Île de Philae, “Vue perspective intérieure, prise sous le portique du grand temple”, Antiquités, vol. I. pl. 18 Île de Philae, “Vue perspective du second pylône et de lecour qui le précède”, Antiquités, vol. I pl. 17 Thèbes, Karnak, “Coupes transversales en avant des appartements de granit et dans la galerie du palais”, Antiquités, vol. III, plate 28 Île de Philae, “Vue des monuments de l’ile et des montagnes de granit qui l’environnent”, Antiquités, vol. I pl.4 Île de Philae, “Plan et coupe générale des principaux édifices. Coupe longitudinale du grand temple”, Antiquités, vol. I pl. 5 Ile de Philae, “Chapiteaux et corniche du portique du grand temple; corniches des deux pylônes; chapiteaux et corniche de la galerie de l’est”, Antiquités, vol. I, pl. 7 Edfou, “Élévation du pylône du grand temple”, Antiquités, vol. I, pl. 51

154 155 155 159 162 163 164 166 169 170 173 173 xiii

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List of Figures

Fig. 7.13 Thèbes, Memnonium, “vue Générale du tombeau d’Osymandyas et d’une partie de la plaine de Thèbes, prise du nord-ouest”, Antiquités, vol. II, pl. 23 Fig. 7.14 Thèbes, Memnonium, “Vue du tombeau d’Osymandyas et d’une partie de la chaine libyque, prise du nord-est”, Antiquités, vol. II pl. 26 Fig. 7.15 Île de Philae, “Vue générale prise du côté du nord-ouest”, Antiquités, vol. I pl.2 Fig. 7.16 Île de Philae, “Vue générale prise du côté du nord-est”, Antiquités, vol. I pl. 3 Fig. 7.17 La Kaire, “Vue générale de la ville des tombeaux”, État Moderne, vol. I, pl. 61 Fig. 7.18 Alexandrie, “Vue de l’esplanade ou grande place du Port Neuf et de l’enceinte des Arabes, seconde partie”, État Moderne, vol. II, pl. 98

178 179 180 181 184 185

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

On July 1, 1798, a French fleet arrived at the port of Alexandria, Egypt. It brought with it a military force of approximately thirty-six thousand men of which some five hundred were civilians. The French force was led by Napoleon Bonaparte, at the time, a twenty-nine-year-old celebrated general of the successful Italian campaign. There followed a three-year occupation of Egypt, one of the richest Ottoman provinces; an occupation that ended when a British force, supported by an Ottoman one, defeated the French and dictated the terms of their evacuation. The French invasion of Egypt was an aggressive venture that brought about the destruction of many lives and ways of life of ordinary people in Egypt. It changed long-­ familiar modes of social organisation and systems of patronage while trying to impose new ones on an often-resisting society. It was a French colonial project imposed on Egypt, and even though some Frenchmen believed, or at least claimed, that it was done for the benefit of its inhabitants, one may doubt whether those who had to pay the cost of sustaining the French military force and the future French colony ever came close to experiencing any benefit. Within a few days of the landing, one hundred and fifty-six of the five hundred civilians attached to the military force formed the Committee of Arts and Science. This group was given the task of surveying the country, its geography, agriculture, industry and population for the immediate

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Sarfatti, The Description of Egypt from Napoleon to Champollion, War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15606-9_1

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benefit of the French occupation. The elaborate survey had an additional aim: it was to weigh the possibility and prospects of establishing a French colony in Egypt and to assess its capability, once established, to replace the colonies in the Caribbeans and their exports to the French metropole. The encounter with the monuments of Egypt’s ancient past slowly changed the focus of interest of the members of the group. While the original surveying mission continued, it was ancient Egypt that gradually dominated their sketches and notes, observations and discussions. The study of Egypt was made possible by the French military invasion and the three-year military presence in Egypt. Yet, in the aftermath of the occupation, with the defeat of the forces, and as colonial aspirations ground to a halt, Bonaparte, by that time, the new ruler of France, decided to publish the collective research under the auspices of the state. The survey of Egypt was adapted to a new goal. It was now to provide the European educated public with a full and definitive description of the country, its history—mostly as expressed in its architectural manifestation—its geography, ancient and modern; its industry and culture; and its contemporary social and political organisation. But most important, this definitive description was to be based on learned observation. Some scholars have argued that the lavish state-sponsored publishing enterprise was meant to reassure the public that though it had lost its hold on Egypt, France “had snatched a cultural and intellectual victory from the jaws of the defeat.”1 Whether or not this was the intention of the government, the contributors to the work and the public that read the Description of Egypt as it was published in five instalments from 1810 to 1829, regarded it a disinterested project of erudition and science. This work, the intellectual and political worlds in which it was created, and the process of its formation are the subject of this book. The first complete edition of the Description of Egypt (1829), its full title—Description de l’Égypte, ou Recueil des observations et des recherches qui ont été faites en Égypte pendant l’expédition de l’armée française (Description of Egypt, or the collection of observations and researches conducted in Egypt during the expedition of the French Army)—comprised twenty-one books bound in twenty-three volumes. Eight books bound in nine volumes consisted of texts and were printed on 38x51cm paper. These included four volumes of texts about ancient Egypt, two of which 1  Ian Coller, Arab France, Islam and the Making of Modern Europe, 1798–1831 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2011), p. 23.

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were defined as descriptions (Antiquités-Descriptions, AD) and two as memoirs (Antiquités-Mémoires, AM). There were two volumes of texts about modern Egypt, of which the second volume appeared in two parts (État Moderne, ÉM) and two volumes of texts that dealt with Egypt’s natural history (Histoire Naturelle, HN). Another volume which contained the historical introduction to the work and the explanation of its engravings was printed on Grand Atlas paper (54.1  ×  70.4  cm). Nine volumes in this size contained most of the engravings of the work. Five of these volumes were dedicated to ancient Egypt, two to engravings of modern Egypt, and two books bound in three volumes depicted Egypt’s natural history. Some of the engravings in these volumes were printed on paper named Aigle or Moyen Égypte (70.4  ×  108.3  cm) and had to be folded to fit the volume size. Two additional volumes contained engravings of ancient and modern Egypt of exceptional dimensions. These were printed on paper named Grand Égypte (70.4  ×  135.4  cm) and Grand Monde or Elephant (81.2 × 113.7 cm) that was manufactured for the first time for the publication. A separate oversized volume included the engravings that made up the map of Egypt. This first edition of the Description of Egypt was printed in one thousand copies whose quality (and price) were defined by the type of paper used and the number of coloured engravings within the volumes. The most expensive version of this first edition was printed on vellum paper, and its coloured engravings were retouched individually by pencil. Most of these were given out as presents by the French government. A second edition, published by Charles Louis Fleury Panckoucke, began to appear in 1821, before the first edition was completed; both editions were fully published in 1829. The substantially smaller size of the thirty-seven volumes of the second edition made it more affordable and easier to consult but the engravings lost much in quality. The invasion of Egypt was a historical event whose components have provoked wide historical research and intense debate to which this work is in debt. Topics such as the revolutionary wars, Napoleon Bonaparte, the first modern-age occupation of an Ottoman province whose population was mostly Muslim by a European power and the discovery of the Rosetta Stone—to mention but some of the topics related to the invasion—solicited research in diverse areas of study and disciplines. Some scholars saw the short French rule in Egypt an episode that held the key to understanding Bonaparte’s future mode of government of France. Scholars of the modern Middle East saw the invasion of the Ottoman province as a

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watershed moment in the region’s and the country’s modern history and in the history of its relationship with the West. Whether understood as the incentive that put Egypt on the path to modernity, however defined, or as the moment it had fallen into the European orbit of exploitation, the event was portrayed as a dramatic encounter, the first of future encounters with a predominantly Muslim society. It was seen to have shaped the relations and perceptions of East and West and as a prelude to the occupation of Algeria and the race for colonies and European dominance of the nineteenth century. The abundance of scholarship, while helpful, also calls for a sustained effort to maintain a distance from studies that have anachronistically assimilated knowledge of future events and practices into their interpretation when studying the world in which the Description of Egypt was created. One example is from current scholarship on Napoleon Bonaparte. The Orient was the stage on which exceptional figures had achieved glory in the past, and thus, for the ambitious Bonaparte—to quote but one of his better biographers—it was “a place of infinite possibilities.”2 Other scholars placed emphasis on Egypt as the site where Bonaparte gained experience in state administration and developed some of the traits he would display when ruling France and the European Empire. In chronological terms, this is a convincing idea. Napoleon returned from Egypt to Paris, where, within a few months, the coup d’état of the eighteenth Brumaire would elevate him to the position of First Consul, and then, to absolute power. “The form of government to be established [in Egypt] could prefigure another form of government—that of France itself” wrote Nicole and Jean Dhombres in a study of the relationship between the sciences and state power.3 Nonetheless, it is problematic that the chronological proximity led scholars to project onto the young general of 1798 the political power he would later assume, and to attribute to his practices in Egypt a deliberate intent that would culminate in his coronation in1804. The invasion of Egypt is often portrayed as the starting point of the modern European colonial project, the prelude to French Algeria and to the future European scramble for Africa. Though obvious, it is still 2  Patrice Gueniffey, Bonaparte 1769–1802 [English edition translated by Steven Rendall] (Cambridge, Mass.; London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2015); see pp. 387–394. 3  Nicole Dhombres, Jean Dhombres, Naissance d’un pouvoir: Sciences et savants en France 1793–1824 (Paris: Payot, 1989), p. 104.

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important to emphasise that this perspective is of no relevance to the world of the protagonists who planned and participated in the invasion of Egypt. The intellectual and political milieu responsible for planning and supporting the invasion of Egypt, those who conducted the research about it, as well as the public that applauded it operated in a very different world, a world that did not question the legitimacy of European expansionism. Many of the individuals who planned and participated in the invasion were aware (and critical) of the atrocities that accompanied the Spanish conquest of the Americas, and of the crises of the East India Company; many of them were members or supporters of societies for the abolition of slavery. Some were part of the French political milieu that was adjusting to American independence from the British Crown and to its effects on French interests. These were the contexts in which and against which the invasion of Egypt was planned by the political and intellectual republican elite of the Directory years and will be further elaborated in Chap. 3. It is also important to emphasise that in the eighteenth century, the Egyptian-Ottoman and the European worlds were not two separate civilisational entities, as they were later perceived and portrayed. Rather, they were profoundly interconnected by trade, politics, cultural exchange and political geography throughout the early modern period. As the scholar Ian Coller states, the ease with which a Napoleon-led army arrived in Egypt was “a marker, not of a European miracle of progress but of a Mediterranean proximity that must have seemed even more immediate to a young general from Corsica.”4 Even more, Egypt was not a blank slate, so to speak, in the minds of educated Europeans of the eighteenth century. Those who set out to describe it were in a very different position from those who wrote descriptions of the New World and its peoples. Whether imagined as the country celebrated by Greek and Roman historians, geographers and philosophers, or as figured in any of the multiple descriptions in the Bible—a land of plenty, a place of refuge or the oppressor of God’s chosen people—its changing image a product of intellectual speculations and political configurations, Egypt held a prominent place that informed the cultural traditions and educational practices of Europe. The country’s image and the knowledge about it were constructed from a mixture of myth, empirical realities and learned speculations accumulated 4  Ian Coller, Arab France, p. 27. For some recent studies about the connectedness of the two worlds, see his note 12.

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over time. Bearing in mind this multilayered proximity rather than, or alongside, the perception of cultural distance enables us to understand that it was possible for the group that went to Egypt to believe that France should establish a colony there, a colony that if rightly governed could, in time, become a sister republic. In 1978 Edward Said published Orientalism, a study of the culture of modern western imperialism. The influence of this work, and later, of his 1993 collection of essays Culture and Imperialism, on the then forming fields of colonial and postcolonial studies cannot be overstated.5 Said considered the 1798 invasion of Egypt the cornerstone of modern Orientalism. According to Said, it was determined by Bonaparte’s quest for glory, his adolescent readings and his visions encoded first by classical texts and then by orientalist experts. The invasion of Egypt became the very model of a truly scientific appropriation of one culture by another, apparently, superior one. The role of the Description of Egypt, in Said’s rendering, was crucial: Quite literally, the occupation gave birth to the entire modern experience of the Orient as interpreted from within the universe of discourse founded by Napoleon in Egypt, whose agencies of domination and dissemination included the Institute and the Description […] After Napoleon, then, the very language of Orientalism changed radically. […] The Description became the master type of all further efforts to bring the Orient closer to Europe, thereafter to absorb it entirely and—centrally important—to cancel, or at least subdue and reduce, its strangeness and, in the case of Islam, its hostility.6

The volumes of the Description of Egypt became in Said’s somewhat circular argument, both the model for and the result of a textual appropriation of a country: [The Description of Egypt] served a multiple role: to feel oneself as a European in command, almost at will, of Oriental history, time and geography; to institute new areas of specialization; to establish new disciplines; to divide, deploy, schematize, tabulate, index, and record everything in sight 5  Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Book, 1978). The citations that follow are from the republished (Vintage Books Edition, 1979); Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage Books (Random House), 1993). 6  Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, Vintage Books Edition, 1979), pp. 86–88.

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(and out of sight); to make out of every observable detail a generalization, and out of every generalization an immutable law about the Oriental nature, temperament, mentality, custom or type; and above all, to transmute living reality into the stuff of texts, to possess, (or think one possesses) actuality mainly because nothing in the Orient seems to resist one’s powers; these are the features of Orientalist projection entirely realized in the Description of Egypt, itself enabled and reinforced by Napoleon’s wholly Orientalist engulfment of Egypt by the instruments of Western knowledge and power.7

Thus, the Description of Egypt was a starting point that both shaped and encapsulated the culture, language and iconography of the impending nineteenth-century European colonial enterprises in the Middle East. To illustrate his argument, Said made considerable use of quotations from Joseph Fourier’s 1809 historical preface to the work. This introduction, as set out in the documents of the editorial committee, had two functions. Firstly, it was to establish a chronology of Egypt’s history, culminating in the French invasion. Secondly, it was meant to provide the work with a certain coherence and to impose retroactively a structure that would correlate texts and images in a manner that would render them intelligible. The preface was written in 1809 before most of the texts of the work were available, and published in the first of the five instalments of the texts and engravings in 1810. Unlike what Said’s work leads us to believe, the preface bore little relation to the representations of Egypt as they actually appeared in the volumes of the Description of Egypt. To criticise Said’s work for regarding Joseph Fourier’s text an adequate representation of the Description as a whole, or to point to other factual mistakes that one encounters in his work is, in some sense, a futile academic fastidiousness for it fails to address and counter Said’s general argument. Said, as he clearly acknowledged, was employing Michel Foucault’s notion of discourse as set forth in The Archaeology of Knowledge and in Discipline and Punish, in constructing his concept orientalism.8 This notion works only at a certain distance from the contingencies of historical evidence, a distance from details that makes it possible to point to internal

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 Ibid., p. 86.  Ibid., p. 3.

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cohesion of different discursive systems.9 The discourse-bound intellectual concept—in Said’s case, Orientalism—is suggestive and forceful, and it sometimes provides an explanatory input, but, more often than not, it leaves out the complexities of human experiences, the multifaceted existence of the historical protagonists and the unintended consequences of their choices and actions. Said, following Foucault, substituted historical realities with a concept and used historical evidence to illustrate the overdetermined model he had built. The result was often a reductive, one-­ dimensional portrayal of the historical protagonists and their world. In this reading, Joseph Fourier was nothing more than a colonialist, writing within the culture and language of Orientalism that would continue and reproduce itself throughout the century. A closer look at Joseph Fourier, at his full body of texts and his experiences, studies and the traditions that had informed him, an examination of the complex realities within which he operated—revealed by a wider consideration—would have blurred the cohesiveness of the concept of Orientalism. Said’s work provoked an important debate and a renewed interest in the Description of Egypt, especially among scholars of the Middle East, but it also narrowed the contours of the debate and came to be a problematic blueprint to follow in historical research. Many of the scholarly works written following Said looked at the French invasion and the Description of Egypt as mere affirmations of the concept orientalism, practically ignoring the work, the individuals and the contexts in which they operated when creating it. It is understandable that the intentional coming together of power and knowledge in the invasion of Egypt and its outcome, the Description of Egypt, lend themselves to the Foucauldian argument, and scholars have shown the ways in which eighteenth-century scientific discoveries, be it in medicine, geography, physics or administration, all worked well in the service of Empire. In the case of the invasion of Egypt, the Foucauldian construct of power and knowledge was symbolically and practically expressed in Bonaparte’s order to General Caffarelli du Falga to assemble a scholarly library, and in the recruitment of scholars and professionals, and following the landing, in the establishment of the Institute of

9  For a good exposition of Foucault and the discipline of history, see Willem Frijhoff, “Foucault reformed by Certeau: Historical Strategies of Discipline and Everyday Tactics of Appropriation”, in John Neubauer (editor), Cultural History after Foucault (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, c1993), pp. 83–101.

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Egypt that was to direct the systematic survey of Egypt for the benefit of the occupation and for the future colonial project. This intention to plan and prepare the colonial enterprise in a scholarly manner cannot be ignored,10 though it was not as scholarly as is often described. Savant, the word often used for the members of the Committee of Arts and Science, indicated “a man of learning” in the eighteenth century rather than “scientist” as is often mistranslated in later studies, thus bestowing on eighteen-year-old engineers more academic accolades than they deserved at the time. When interpreting the merging of power and knowledge in a concrete historical context, it is important to remember that the invasion of Egypt and the planned colonial project were intentionally designed to mark a clear departure from some more chaotic colonial enterprises of the Ancien Régime and their dire consequences. One may mention two grand-scale failures in 1764–1765 in Guyana where lack of preparation and understanding of the local conditions brought about the death of the majority of the 10,000 settlers sent there by Choiseul, and the unsuccessful and bloody attempts in the eighteenth century to take Madagascar, led by Baron Bengowsky in 1773. These spectacular failures were in living memory at the time of the invasion of Egypt. Knowledge was to be a tool for responsible colonial policy. But whereas the power element as embodied by the conquest failed, and no French colony was established in Egypt, the knowledge project, so to speak, continued, with unintended consequences. This book follows a different path altogether. It approaches the Description of Egypt as a case study, both broad and eccentric, but also contextually bound and limited in its scope. The historical moment of the creation of the work; the people and institutions involved in its making; the exceptional and, at times, tumultuous circumstances of its production; 10  It is interesting to note the practice was applied in Italy as well. A recently published letter from Bonaparte to General Calon of March 3, 1796, a day after Bonaparte received from the Directory the nomination to head the Army of Italy lists his requirements. In addition to maps, he asked for books he believed would help him prepare for his new role: «…citoyen général, vient de me faire passer les livres suivants…..: Mémoire pour servir à la vie, de Catinat. Histoire du prince Eugène, 4 volumes in 12 Batailles du prince Eugène, 3 volumes in fol. Guerre des Alpes par Saint-Simon, 1 volume in fol. Campagne de Maillebois, 8 volumes in 4….. » See https://www.napoleonica.org/collections/correspondance.

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and the often contradictory content within its volumes and its idiosyncratic material expression all account for its singularity. Its distinctiveness points to the need to reconsider available interpretations, to avoid overly smooth accounts and to the necessity to rethink and then narrate its discrepancies and the ways in which it diverges from expectations. This study therefore follows the approach of “thinking by-case”11 and examines closely the rich repository of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century documents related to the creation of the work, which have habitually been ignored. It looks in-depth at texts and illustrations of the published work, at the deliberations of its editorial committee and at the correspondence between its contributors first in Egypt and then in France and between them and the governments that sponsored the project. It examines private journals, school curricula, public debates, published sources and scholarly traditions that informed the world of the group that created the Description of Egypt. It tries to depict, as best as it can, the web of references and associations that made up the intellectual context shared by the authors of the texts and images of the work and their readers.12 Examining these in and for themselves, rather than anachronistically, as sources or clues to future European colonialism. This approach, rather than the one that classifies and orders human experiences into external categories such as orientalist discourse, may pave the way to a richer and more nuanced understanding of the period. The limitation of the case allows for a thick description,13 a description that can reveal accepted modes of argumentation and scholarly organisation. It may allow a fine balancing act between a group-history and individual variations and idiosyncrasies. It allows, by accumulation of details, to depict the environment—political, ideological, social and intellectual—from which the Description of Egypt emerged. A close consideration of the sources reveals a coexistence of what are usually considered contradictory scholarly or political positions. Some examples may clarify this point. In 1761 Edward Gibbon wrote of the intellectual divide embodied in the attack of the philosophic historians on 11  The expression is in Jean-Claude Passeron, Jacques Revel (éds.) Penser par cas (Paris: EHESS, 2005). For a useful review of the book, see Philippe Lacour et Lucie Campos, “Thinking by cases, or: how to put social sciences back the right way up”, EspacesTemps.net, Livres, 31.05.2005. 12  Carlo Ginzburg, “Conversations with Orion” (trans. By Giovanni Zanalda), Perspectives on History (May 1, 2005). 13  The reference is to Clifford Geertz, “Thick Description: Towards an Interpretive Theory of Culture”, in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 3–30.

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the erudite which was exemplified in D’Alembert’s depiction of the two as irreconcilable opposites in the preliminary discourse to the éncyclopédie.14 By the time of the Egyptian campaign, this “irreconcilable opposition” had been overcome, possibly, noted Arnaldo Momigliano, with the contribution of Gibbon’s six-volume masterpiece The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It is true that most of the participants in the expedition were far removed from Gibbon’s intellectual concerns, and many of them were graduates of education institutions that incorporated ideas and beliefs of the philosophes. However, in many of the texts written by these individuals, one can encounter references to both érudits and philosophes. Even more, the library of the Egyptian Institute compiled by General Caffarelli du Falga comprised an eclectic collection of books that did not simply reflect a forward-looking scientific community as described by scholars who emphasised the revolutionary divide.15 It contained, on the one hand, the collections of memoirs of the Académie des Inscriptions et belles-lettres (often ridiculed by the philosophes), and the very influential theological approach to universal history by the Catholic bishop Jacques Bénigne Bossuet Discours sur l’Histoire universelle (1681); on the other hand, it contained the whole range of quintessential texts of the philosophes among others, Montesquieu’s De l’esprit des lois, the volumes of the Encyclopédie that included D’Alembert’s preliminary discourse (mentioned by Gibbon), Voltaire’s Essai sur les moeurs and Helvétius’s De l’esprit, a work considered extremely radical by Voltaire. The library held the work of Lavoisier in chemistry and transcripts of the lectures at the école normale de l’an III—the up-to-date statement of the intellectual elite as to what should be taught in the newly established écoles centrales of France, alongside sixteenth- and seventeenth-century books in chemistry, physics and agriculture. The young engineers that surveyed the land of Egypt followed the most advanced methods of calculation they had been taught at the Polytechnic School, and then verified the calculations with the work of classical authors and armchair geographers sometimes preferring the textual 14  Edward Gibbon, Essay on the study of literature (à Londres: T. Becket & P.A. de Hondt, 1761; Paris: Chez Duschesne, 1762), cited in Arnaldo Momigliano, “Ancient History and the Antiquarian”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 13, No. 3/4 (1950), pp. 285–315). For D’Alembert’s Discours préliminaire, see University of Chicago’s ARTFL project edited by Robert Morrissey: https://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/node/88. 15  Charles C. Gillispie, Science and Polity in France, the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Years (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 695.

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information to on-site observations. They reconstructed the monuments of Upper Egypt with the help of classical texts and verified the texts against the measurements and observations they had recorded in the field. These young men, outstanding students of Gaspard Monge, the founder of the Polytechnic School and a leading member of the committee that had introduced the metric system to France, were still taking their measurements using pieds, toise and lieu. Some of them were well acquainted with the work of the philosophes, and they combined in their texts their knowledge and understandings of these works with the skills of the engineers which were always close at hand. Others followed closely philological texts of the erudite. What at times may seem to a twenty-first-century reader a contradiction or deviation from scientific requirements was accepted and transparently reported in the texts of the Description of Egypt. The contributors to the work, many of them with an engineering background, wrote texts that dealt with topics that fell well outside their field of expertise. These included essays as well as engravings relating to Egypt’s history and geography, agriculture and trade, its music, its languages— ancient and modern—its coins and contemporary monetary systems, its archaeology and its contemporary architecture, the manners, costumes and beliefs of its inhabitants and their laws and social and political organisation. While it may seem surprising nowadays, the invasion of Egypt, its failure so often explained by religious differences, and associated in public memory with Bonaparte’s proclamation to the Egyptians upon landing in which he claimed he respected God, his Prophet and the Quran, and with General Menou’s conversion to Islam, did not produce independent texts about the tenets of the religion. At the time, such inquiries were left to armchair orientalists. On the pages of the Description, Islam was studied as a social institution, one of many, a collection of practices that were reported in an essay about contemporary Egyptian society. There was no hierarchical order in the topics dealt with—the Rosetta stone received as much attention—in terms of pages dedicated to it—as a one-line text of a mawwal sung in colloquial Arabic in the marketplace. In this systematic survey of Egypt, the findings were ordered and classified according to different criteria of which chronology was but one. The approach, based initially on material evidence and observation, was well within the antiquarian tradition and method of research described by Arnaldo Momigliano. The contributors to the work combined close study of details and direct inspection of material evidence (to which the engineers added an emphasis on

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measurement, and the geographical engineers, spatial coordinates), combined with sensitivity and imagination. They were trying to understand the land and its history and its customs and manners, in human terms.16 The inclusiveness of the antiquarian tradition was well demonstrated in both the texts and engravings of the Description of Egypt, and especially in the internal organisation of the volumes of engravings which will be elaborated in Chap. 7. Thirty-one years passed from the landing in Egypt until the publication of the last instalment of the Description of Egypt. Many of the participants in the expedition and contributors to the published work had developed careers, changed fields of interest and social affiliations and adapted their social and political views as well as their aspirations to the political transformations in France. But this group—the Egyptians of Year VI17—emphasised their commonality rather than their differences in relation to the work and to each other. Having been in Egypt meant, in scholarly terms, possessing the empirical knowledge needed to assess the validity of classical texts, and it provided the basis for their authority on all things Egyptian. It also meant an obligation to their fellow égyptiens that was beyond political affiliations, social structures, professional interests or personal successes and failures. It meant a certain familiarity with the Emperor and therefore, an ability to negotiate and modify his dictates, and an abiding loyalty to the publication of the project. In these respects, these individuals formed a community that diverged from the larger social political contexts within which they otherwise operated. But this community was not an alternative, somewhat secluded “web”. It was well integrated within the Parisian circles of power, opinion and debates.18 The group of égyptiens were 16  For a study of the antiquarian method at the time of the Revolution in Britain and France, see Rosemary Hill, Time’s Witness, History in the Age of Romanticism (Allan Lane, Penguin Random House Group, 2021). Rosemary Hill addresses the ways antiquaries contributed to changes in the historical method and its areas of interest between the fall of the Bastille and mid nineteenth century. I argue, away from Hill, that in the volumes of the Description of Egypt what she calls “the grand narratives of the Enlightenment” coexisted with the usual concern of antiquarians. 17  The expression follows Honoré de Balzac. « Les soldats appellent ceux qui survécurent à l’expédition d’Égypte, des Égyptiens … Tous ceux qui en sont revenus sont un peu frères » Honoré de Balzac, Le colonel Chabert (1832). 18  While antiquarianism and the existence of a close “web” are common features, this study describes a very different experience from the one described by Laurence Brockliss. Laurence Brockliss, Calvet’s Web: Enlightenment and the Republic of Letters in Eighteenth-Century France (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002).

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working on their scholarly production under the auspices of the state with the most advanced methods at their disposal. They developed strategies to cope with censorship, budget restrictions, political interventions and the ongoing war. They did it as a group of diverse individuals that followed very different traditions and affiliations which were able to coexist under the overarching umbrella of the Description of Egypt. Many of the égyptiens received their education and training in the newly established professional schools of post-Thermidor. Their older colleagues, those behind the planning of the invasion, and those behind the publication of the Description of Egypt were central figures in the new educational institutions of the Republic. Some of them were part of a loosely defined intellectual-political milieu that held in common a belief in progress and in the perfectibility of man as defined by the mathematician Nicolas de Condorcet (1743–1794) in his Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humaine. The essay was written in 1793 when Condorcet was in hiding and edited posthumously by his widow, Sophie de Condorcet, and Pierre Claude Daunou. Three thousand copies were bought by the Convention and distributed among the students of the École normale de l’an III and the Polytechnic School. The progress of the human spirit, wrote Condorcet, would occur through the diffusion of enlightenment and knowledge. The methods of the mathematical sciences would be applied to new fields of knowledge, thus paving ways for the political and moral sciences to arrive at truth.19 These views, usually identified with the Idéologues, were shared by a wider circle of progressive intellectuals, among whom was the mathematician Gaspard Monge. Monge was at the centre of the political and intellectual networks that brought about the publication of the Description of Egypt. Though more radical politically, he did share Condorcet’s views about the progress of the human spirit by way of enlightenment and about the role the mathematical sciences could play in arriving at true knowledge. He was the founder of the new Polytechnic School whose first graduates were the dominant contributors to the published work, and he was the person who had devised its curriculum. His importance will be further elaborated in Chap. 6.

19  The essay is available at https://gallica.bnf.fr/essentiels/condorcet/esquisse-tableau-­ historique-progres-esprit-humain. For a fine and still unrivalled exposition and discussion of Condorcet’s ideas, see Keith Michael Baker, Condorcet, from Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1975).

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The neologism Idéologie, the science of ideas, was coined by Destutt de Tracy (1754–1836) to designate a contemporaneous philosophical approach and a method of attaining knowledge about man and society.20 The loosely defined group of intellectuals associated with this approach promulgated an educational and political project that they believed necessary to sustain the republican idea. Contemporary scholars agree the group included the physician Pierre Cabanis, Destutt de Tracy, Constantin François Chasseboeuf (Volney), Dominique Joseph Garat and Pierre Claude Daunou. They shared a belief in the need for scrupulous observation, to be followed by comparison and analysis of the facts observed. They gave expression to this belief in their work, each in his respective field. They also emphasised the need to recognise and be aware of one’s own fallibility, ignorance and prejudice, and therefore, so they argued, all conclusions, even when based on observed facts, were tentative, and subject to critical assessment. This methodological approach was applicable to all branches of human knowledge, but the Idéologues as they were derogatively named by Bonaparte after falling from favour are best remembered for their application to what they called the General Science of Man. After Thermidor, individuals of this group gained positions in the new administration. Some of them found an institutional home in the Class of Moral and Political Sciences of the restructured National Institute that had replaced the royal academies of the ancien régime. Many of them published in the journal La Décade philosophique littéraire et politique that appeared from April 1794 to September 1807.21 They were behind the reforms to the hospital system,22 and the educational reforms of 1794. Their pedagogy of knowledge, so to speak, was the concept behind the 20  The philosophy was elaborated and named in the work of Destutt de Tracy, Eléments d’Idéologie, 4 vols. (1801–1815). But the system was set out earlier in memoirs he read at the Institut National such as « Sur la faculté de penser » and « De la métaphysique de Kant », Mémoires de l’Institut national des sciences et des arts, (, an XI, t. III, IV). See also Sergio Moravia, « Philosophie et géographie à la fin du XVIIIe siècle » (Oxford: Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 67, 1967), p. 940. Destutt de Tracy’s texts are considered the fullest articulation of the elements of this system of thought. For a discussion of the political aspects of Idéologie, see Jean Luc Chappey, « De la science de l’homme aux sciences humaines: enjeux politiques d’une configuration de savoir (1770–1808) », Revue d’Histoire des Sciences Humaines, 2006, 15, 43–68. 21  M. Régaldo, Un milieu intellectuel, la Décade philosophique, 1794–1807, Paris, 1976; et G. Gusdorf, La conscience révolutionnaire. Les idéologues, Paris, 1978. 22  Pierre Cabanis, Observations sur les Hôpitaux (Paris: imprimerie nationale, 1790). This was his first published work.

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creation of the École normale de l’an III.23 These men, often described as the last generation of the Enlightenment and the first republican intellectuals, were imbued with the ideals of social perfectibility and political regeneration by way of science. They were initially attracted to Bonaparte, whom they saw as a young and enlightened general. Disillusioned by the Directory, they saw in him a possible saviour of the republican idea, and therefore supported—whether implicitly or explicitly—the coup d’état of Brumaire. The group and its ideas were later marginalised following Bonaparte’s consolidation of power and the Restoration regime that followed his fall. Many of the contributors to the Description of Egypt were very much a product of this pedagogy of knowledge and of these beliefs. The belated publication renders the published work a place where such views were preserved despite changing political circumstances. A close study of the Description of Egypt, of its texts and engravings, of the men who produced them and the world in which they operated, makes it possible to try and answer the often-raised question as to why Bonaparte decided to take with him to Egypt this group of scientists and engineers alongside the army. Beyond the reasons mentioned above—knowledge as a tool for an effective occupation and as a means of assessing the prospects of establishing a colony—it is necessary, in order to understand the nature of the political project with which this group was involved, to see it in connection with the prominence of the Ideologues at the time. The invasion of Egypt, but especially the vocabulary used for its justification, was a product of the post-Thermidor world. It was an invasion and an intended colonial project whose justifications were not religious, as in the case of the Spanish conquests, or purely mercantile, as in the case of the Dutch. The 1798 invasion of Egypt was the first instance when the Rights of Man were coupled with colonial conquest; it was rationalised and justified as a mission to enlighten and civilise (a justification that is still shaping our world). The invasion may be seen as a product of that historical moment in which the belief in the perfectibility of man and society was to be applied universally. The changing ways in which legitimacy was constructed after Thermidor found expression on the pages of La Décade philosophique 23  E. Guibert-Sledziewski, « Les idéologues, une approche de l’homme un et indivisible: le cas Volney », Pensée, 1985, n° 246, p. 102–112; B. Schlieben-Lange et F. Knapstein, « Les idéologues avant et après Thermidor », Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 271, janvier-mars 1988, p. 35–59; Pierre Macherey, «L’Idéologie avant l’idéologie: l’École normale de l’an III », F Azouvi (éd.), L’institution de la raison. La révolution culturelle des idéologies (Paris: EHESS, éd. Vrin, 1992), pp. 41–49.

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where it was first advocated and then enthusiastically reported. Edward Said described the invasion as an illustration of the European desire to use knowledge as a means to subjugate a passive Orient. Divorced in this way from the historical moment in France and from the intellectual-political project of the Ideologues, Said’s position in fact reaffirms the ontological distinction between Occident and Orient which Said set out to challenge. The Description of Egypt was a product of the world that followed the fall of Robespierre, its contributors educated in the most advanced academic institutions of the Republic and trained in the latest methods of research and demonstrated unprecedented technical achievements in the area of engraving and publication and many of its texts introduced progressive ways of observing and reporting on ancient monuments and contemporary societies. But it was also a work that faced backwards, so to speak, following scholarly traditions of erudition that were sometimes granted more authority than the on-site observations and calculations. The work, in many of its texts and in the organisation of its images, tried to make sense of the ancient world by describing it and ordering it in endless categories. This Janus-like quality of the Description of Egypt possibly accounts for its absence from historical narratives, whether those concerned with the history of the book, the origins of anthropology and archaeology. In the field of Egyptology, it is usually dismissed, while studies in art history tend to confuse its artistic production with the orientalist school of painting that came much later. The eccentricity of the work, both in size and in content, is perhaps the reason it is usually studied on its own. This present book, by way of close examination of the sources, is an effort to recreate the experiences of the historical protagonists and the ways they were interpreted. It attempts to recapture the vocabularies and categories of the historical actors rather than classify and order their experiences from the outside in categories that are expository devices not intrinsic features of the past. By reconnecting the Description of Egypt to its wider contexts, and by demonstrating the ways its eclecticism points to the artistic, literary and intellectual conventions of its time, I hope the book will contribute but a little to the unveiling of the world in which it was created and will enhance our sense of the sheer complexity of the past.

CHAPTER 2

An Eighteenth-Century Ordinary Reader: Napoleon Bonaparte

The figure of Napoleon Bonaparte dominates the scholarship about the 1798 French invasion of Egypt as well as its image in the public at large. The twenty-nine-year-old general had led the military campaign and designed, with the help of his chief dragoman, Venture de Paradis (1739–1799), the initial efforts to impose a French administration on the country during the first of the three-year French occupation there. Bonaparte left Egypt at the end of August 1799 and landed in France some weeks later. In November, he overthrew the French government of the Directory to establish the Consulate in a bloodless coup of the eighteenth Brumaire (November 9, 1799). Scholars of Bonaparte have searched for ways to explain the French occupation of Egypt and its mode of governing, in the life story and reading choices of the young Bonaparte. The sources about young Bonaparte’s reading vary. They range from notes he had taken of books he had read, through book referred to in his correspondence and military dispatches throughout his career, to his late memoirs dictated when in exile on the island of Saint Helena.1 Studies 1  Notes and military dispatches are in Napoléon Bonaparte, Œuvres littéraires et écrits militaire, édition établie, annotée et préfacée par Jean Tulard (Paris, 2001), 3 volumes; letters in: Napoléon Bonaparte, correspondance générale (Paris: Fayard, 2004); Bonaparte’s late memoirs: Emmanuel Las Cases, Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, ou Journal où se trouve consigné, jour par jour, ce qu’a dit et fait Napoléon durant dix-huit mois (Paris, 1823).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Sarfatti, The Description of Egypt from Napoleon to Champollion, War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15606-9_2

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about Bonaparte and his readings often mention the influence of two main literary sources. The first source of inspiration is vaguely titled “classical authors”. The young Bonaparte, so goes the argument, imbued in the reading of Plutarch, Livy and others, was following his heroes of the ancient world—Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar—and their path to glory, when invading Egypt. This venue of interpretation is often used to support a nonprofessional personality analysis of the young Bonaparte. It makes use of Bonaparte’s allusions to antiquity in military dispatches, letters and speeches to soldiers, and in his end-of-life reflections on his career and his role in history. It also makes use of some general knowledge about what people of his generation have read, either in school or in private. However, it is important to emphasise, as Alan Forrest reminds us, that Napoleon, quite early in his public career, fully appreciated the power of the word and used it to telling effect.2 His memoirs, dispatches and public addresses were meant to form an opinion, to provide justification for his actions and to polish his image in the eyes of his contemporaries and in those of posterity. While there are allusions to Roman antiquity in his dispatches from Egypt, one cannot take these references literally. It is safer to assume that General Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1798, was leading a military campaign with concrete military, political and economic goals, and not an exotic fantasia imagined and fuelled by early readings of the classics.3 The second source of influence thought to have shaped and inspired the campaign was Bonaparte’s acquaintance with Constantin François de Chassebœuf, known by his pen name, Volney (b. 1757), and the account Volney had written of his travels to Ottoman Egypt and Syria in the years 1783–1785.4 This belief was widespread at the time as can be read in an entry in the journal of Lady Elizabeth Holland, a celebrated hostess of political salons in London, and an admirer of Bonaparte to the end of his life. In an entry from November 5, 1798, she wrote: “Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign has brought every book of travels into those countries into requisition. I have again read with pleasure Volney’s account of Egypt  Alan Forrest, Napoleon (London: Quercus, 2011), Introduction.  These arguments appear in biographical accounts as far apart as Walter Scott Life of Napoleon Bonaparte (1876) to Patrice Gueniffey, Bonaparte (2013). For accounts dedicated to the Egyptian campaign, see among many others Juan Cole, Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Paul Strathern, Napoleon in Egypt (London: Vintage Books, 2008). J.J. Brégon, L’Égypte de Bonaparte (Paris: Perrin, 2006). 4  C.F.  Volney, Voyage en Égypte et en Syrie pendant les années 1783, 1784 &1785 (Paris: Volland; Desenne, 1787). 2 3

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and Syria. His work is the more interesting as it is imagined that his ­information has been chiefly relied upon by the French and that his observations serve as guides to the expedition. He finishes his account of Egypt with a wish that a revolution may take place there under the Government of a nation friendly to the fine arts and expressly implies that such an event may not be so remote as we may possibly imagine…”5 This view that assumed a simple straightforward relation between Volney’s account and the Egyptian campaign was perpetuated by many of the campaign’s participants. From extensive citations from Volney’s account in the French journals that were published when in Egypt to Napoleon’s autobiographical reflections dictated to General Bertrand when on Saint Helena, it was cultivated and sustained well into the future and is still expressed in modern scholarship. John Holland Rose, to cite but one example, wrote in his often cited biography of Napoleon, written in the early twentieth century that “…Bonaparte's desire for the eastern expedition … seems to have been aroused earlier by Volney who saw a good deal of Bonaparte in 1791.”6 A.J.  Oconnor argued that “At all events, with the arrival of Volney in Corsica there began a friendship which, on Napoleon’s side at least, never completely ceased … Steeped in the spirit of the times, sharing a common outlook on politics and religion, they quickly became close friends. Fascinated already by Rollin’s Histoire ancienne, Marigny’s Histoire des Arabes, Baron de Tott’s Mémoires, and by this traveller’s own Voyage, how eagerly must the young officer have questioned his friend and thrilled to his description of climatic, social and military conditions in the Middle East!”7 Edward Said’s seminal work Orientalism was one of the most influential in this line of argument among modern scholars especially those of the Middle East. Said wrote—combining the two sources of inspiration mentioned 5  The Journal of Elizabeth Lady Holland (2 volumes), Vol. I (1791–1799); Vol. II (1799–1811) (London, New York: Longmans, Green, 1908). The entry is in volume I. 6  For example, Courier de l’Égypte, No. 33, 3 thermidor an VII; Ibid. No 34, 12 thermidor an VII; General Berthier, Relation des campagnes du Général Bonaparte en Égypte et en Syrie (Paris: Didot, an VIII); the text of General Bertrand is available in Napoléon Bonaparte, Campagnes d’Égypte et de Syrie, 1798–1799: Mémoires pour server à l’histoire de Napoléon (Paris: Comou, 1843), Vol. I, p. 211; J. H. Rose, Life of Napoleon I (London: George Bell and Sons, Ltd, 1913), vol. I, p. 18. 7  A.  J. O’connor “Volney and the Egyptian Expedition”, French Studies (1950) IV (3): 252–255; see also, among many others, Vincent Cronin, Napoleon (London: HarperCollins publishers, 1971), pp. 144, 149.

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above—that after the Treaty of Campo Formio Napoleon had nowhere to turn for additional glory but to the East. “…[he] wanted nothing less than to take the whole of Egypt, and his advance preparations were of unparalleled magnitude and thoroughness. Even so, these preparations were almost fanatically schematic and—if I may use the word—textual…”8

Said discussed the two sources from which Bonaparte derived the idea to invade Egypt—classical texts and Volney. Bonaparte was attracted to the East since adolescence, wrote Said, and was steeped in the memories and glories that were attached to Alexander’s Orient in general and to Egypt in particular. “Thus the idea of reconquering Egypt as a new Alexander proposed itself to him…”9 Said then continued and pointed to Volney as the other main source of influence on Bonaparte whom he anachronistically addressed as “the Emperor”. Describing Volney’s work as “an almost oppressively impersonal document … canonically hostile to Islam as a religion and as a system of political institutions…”,10 Said continued and depicted Volney the person as “… a canny Frenchman … he eyed the Near Orient as a likely place for the realization of French colonial ambition.”11 It is beyond the purpose of this chapter to address Said’s problematic description of Volney’s text, his questionable depiction of Volney’s style and views of colonialism and of his personality.12 However, it is important to notice that Said’s notes demonstrate he had based his claims of the influence of Volney on Bonaparte’s late reflections on the Egyptian campaign dictated to General Bertrand when in Saint Helena. Volney’s account of Egypt was considered at the time as the most accurate and reliable among the accounts of Ottoman Egypt. Part of this reputation was due to what seemed to be a sober account, not taken to fantasy or to the charms of antiquity. It was also the only available account of Egypt written by a living French intellectual who was part of the new revolutionary elite. Volney was very close to the milieu that formed the core of the civilian group that took part in the Egyptian campaign. He was a friend of Jean-Michel Venture de Paradis, Bonaparte’s chief dragoman— though not Bonaparte’s first choice—whose knowledge of Egypt Volney  Edward Said, Orientalism, 1978, p. 80.  Ibid. 10  Ibid., p. 81. 11  Ibid. 12  A discussion of Volney’s work will be in Chap. 9 in the analysis of texts about modern Egypt in the Description of Egypt. 8 9

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had used when compiling his account in 1786,13 and a teacher at the école normale of 1795 where he gave lectures on history alongside those who would later play a central role in the Egyptian campaign, among them, Gaspard Monge and Claude Louis Berthollet. Joseph Fourier and many of the students of the first class of the Polytechnic School that sat in on his lectures would be the main contributors to the Description of Egypt. He was friend of many of the editorial body of the Décade philosophique, also closely associated with this group, and he frequently contributed to the journal. For these reasons as well as for his knowledge of the language and the land, Volney would have been an obvious candidate to be recruited to the civilian group that formed the Commission of Arts and Sciences in 1798, but Volney had travelled to North America in late 1795 and was on his way back to France at the time the French flotilla set sail to Egypt. There is no evidence that Bonaparte had read Volney’s work on Egypt before the 1798 campaign. Most scholars based their assumption that he did on a letter written in mid-February 1792 by Bonaparte to his friend, the army commissioner in Valence, Antoine de Sucy. In 1792, Bonaparte was in Corsica on a fourth leave of absence from his regiment, immersed in the political scene on the island. “I am in Corsica”, he wrote de Sucy, “Mr. Volney is here. … Mr. Volney, known in the republic of letters for his Voyage in Egypt, for his dissertations on Agriculture, for his debates, both commercial and political, on the Treaty of ’56, for his Meditations on the Ruins, and also, in recent patriotic history, for his constant support for the right cause at the Constituent Assembly. He wants to settle here and live in tranquillity among us, a simple people, on land that is fertile, and in the perpetual spring of our country.”14 13  Jean-Michel Venture de Paradis served as dragoman in many French consulates in the Levant. He was in Egypt in 1768–1776. Venture de Paradis and Volney had common interests, among them the need to teach oriental languages as living languages, Egypt and the Ottoman world. When in Paris they frequented the salon of Jean Baptiste Antoine Suard; see Jean Gaulmier, «Une Grande figure oubliée: Venture de Paradis» in Autour du Romantisme de Volney à J P. Sartre (Paris: Éditions Ophrys, 1977), pp.  81–88. See also Tami Sarfatti, “Lost (and Gained) in Translation: Reflections on Translations and Translators”, Journal of Levantine Studies, Vol. 9 N 2 (Winter, 2019). 14  Napoléon Bonaparte, correspondance générale (Paris: Fayard, 2004), vol. I, p.  103 (February 17, 1792). The Treaty of ’56 Bonaparte mentions in the letter is the Treaty of Compiègne, signed between France and the Republic of Genoa, the latter being the formal power ruling Corsica. According to the Treaty, France was to provide military power and subsidies to help Genoa fight the Corsican independence movement led by Pasquale Paoli. Volney was critical of the role France had played in suppressing the independence movement.

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It is reasonable to assume that Corsica rather than Egypt was the topic of conversation between Volney and Napoleon Bonaparte at the time. Volney had arrived in Corsica on February 1, 1792, more than two weeks before Bonaparte’s aforementioned letter. In September 1791, just before the dissolving of the Constituent Assembly of which he was a member, he had worked in collaboration with Christophe Saliceti, a deputy for Corsica, to promote the decree that would align the laws and special property privileges in Corsica with the reforms implemented in France. Volney has been holding the title of Director of Agriculture and Commerce in Corsica for some time, but had not visited the island before.15 In 1803, he wrote that he had understood early on that France would have to give up her slave colonies in the Caribbean and that Corsica could provide mainland France with the same agricultural products. In order to demonstrate this, he had bought a large estate on the island planning to experiment in agriculture. It turned out to be a failed project which he left within a year, riddled in debt.16 In March 1793 upon returning to France from the island, Volney published a highly critical account of the island’s social and political composition and of its leader Paoli. In the article, he expressed his doubts regarding Corsica’s ability to be a French department like any other in the foreseen future.17 It is important to highlight the circumstances in which the meeting between Volney and Bonaparte took place so as not to engage in teleological interpretations regarding the relations between the meeting and the Egyptian campaign. Bonaparte was in Corsica since mid-September 1791 on his fourth leave of absence from the army. From the time he had graduated from military school in 1786 until his final break with the island’s politics at the end of May 1793, Bonaparte spent nearly four years in Corsica during which he attended to family matters and was highly involved in  local politics. It is all the more plausible that when he met Volney at the beginning of 1792, the topics at the centre of their exchange were Corsica, its factional politics and the nature of the island’s relations with revolutionary France. They might have also included discussions of 15  On Volney and Corsica, see André Fazi, « Volney et la Corse », Bulletin de la Société des sciences historiques et naturelles de la Corse, n° 718–719, 2007, pp. 27–95. 16  Volney, Tableau du climat et du sol des États-Unis (1803), p. 372. 17  Volney (1793), « Précis de l’état de la Corse », in Volney, Œuvres, t. I, textes réunis et revus par Anne et Henry Deneys (Paris: Fayard, 1990). The text was first published in the Moniteur, 20 & 21 mars 1793.

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the estate Volney intended to purchase, La Confina.18 The often cited letter shows the twenty-two-year-old Bonaparte was impressed with his new acquaintance and that he probably took pride in the interest this well-­ regarded man of letters from Paris was taking in Corsica. But it is hard to see the connection between this meeting and the Egyptian campaign of 1798. To put it bluntly, it is reasonable to assume the young Bonaparte was more interested in shaping Volney’s views about Corsica and its politics than in exploring the possibility for a future Egyptian invasion. Whether Bonaparte had read Voyage en Égypte et en Syrie or not before the campaign, it is quite safe to say that the connection between Bonaparte’s reading Volney and the Egyptian campaign was not as simple as scholars like to present it. On the contrary, much of the planning of the campaign was done in contradiction to, or while ignoring Volney’s assessment regarding the prospect France could successfully colonise Egypt. Be it Volney or the authors of antiquity, the discussion brings to the fore wider questions regarding books, the ways they were read and the relations they hold with the course and shape of future actions. The wealth of evidence related to Bonaparte’s readings before the Egyptian campaign presents an opportunity to further explore these questions. Though one cannot write of Bonaparte as an ordinary figure—he was extraordinary in his Corsican origins, his upbringing and his family’s ties to the place, and most probably, in other character features, it is still helpful to see Bonaparte’s reading as part of an intellectual history of a wider generation group; a group that was coming of age during the final years of the ancien régime, one that shared through reading, ideas and interests about good government, political economy and justice. As Erich Auerbach had written about Rousseau and the use, in Rousseau’s case, of psychiatric categories: “These never tell us anything about the particular intellectual form that these pre-existing psychological factors took on when they realized themselves historically in him. … Such categorization also reveals nothing to us about his historical location or about his relation to other historical figures and to history overall. … we must illuminate contexts that are purely intellectual, contexts that are in principle independent of the contingent and existential factors that either enabled or hindered a specific 18  For the details of the purchase of La Confina and of the involvement of the Bonapartes, see André Fazi, «Volney et la Corse »; see also Jean Gaulmier, L’idéologue Volney, 1757–1820. Contribution à l’histoire de l’orientalisme en France (Genève/Paris, Slatkine Reprints, 1980) (1ère éd.: Beyrouth, Imprimerie catholique, 1951), p. 260.

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intellectual outcome in this or that individual.”19 Rather than explaining connections between Bonaparte’s readings and his actions using psychological interpretations about dreams of grandeur, we should put him back into history, so to speak, and see him, with all his complexities and uniqueness, as a man of his times. A close scrutiny of Bonaparte’s youthful well-documented readings can shed light on the imagination and ideas that formed the world views of many of the officers and civilians that went with him on the Egyptian campaign. Seeing him as part of a wider generation group provides a way to avoid imposing the political powers of the Emperor of later years on the twenty-nine-year-old army commander, already the hero of the Italian campaign, who led the French forces into Egypt in 1798. It offers an understanding of the possible ways in which his early readings interacted with his intentions, expectations and ways of imagining the French invasion into Egypt once he was in a position to plan it.

From Corsican Patriot to French Republican: A Brief Overview In September 1785, at the age of sixteen, Napoleon Bonaparte passed his exit exams at the military school in Paris and left for Valence, as a commissioned officer in a royal artillery regiment. Four months later, in April 1786, he produced his first known written essay, Histoire de la Corse. It was a sketchy essay, imbued with Rousseauian ideas, and one that voiced a strong indictment of the French occupation of Corsica.20 In the years that followed, the young officer gradually moved from devotion to Corsican patriotism to an increasing commitment to the evolving French Republic, a move made decisive when he was rejected by the Paolist faction of Corsican politics and when shortly after, he was called by Paul Barras to defend the Convention from the royalist forces on October 5, 1795 (13 Vendémiaire year IV). The event and its many casualties led the Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle to accuse Bonaparte of ending the Revolution 19  Erich Auerbach (1932) “On Rousseau’s Place in History” in James l. Porter (editor), Selected Essays of Erich Aurbach, Time, History, and Literature (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2014), trans. Jane O. Newman, p. 249. 20  Napoléon Bonaparte « Histoire de la Corse », Œuvres littéraires et écrits militaire, édition établie, annotée et préfacée par Jean Tulard (Paris, 2001), 3 volumes. For Rousseau’s ideas about Corsica, see below.

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“in a whiff of grapeshot”.21 His successful defence of the Convention brought him to the attention of the Parisian political elite. Corsica had played an important part in continental politics of the eighteenth century. Its location was seen as strategic for any nation interested to control Mediterranean commerce making it one of the points of contentions between Great Britain and France. It was controlled, with partial success, by the Republic of Genoa since mid-sixteenth century. In 1755, one of its insurgent factions, supported by Great Britain and led by Pasquale Paoli, was able to proclaim an independent Corsican Republic and provide it with a constitution written under enlightenment principles. Genoa turned to France for help and gradually, through a series of treaties, it handed Corsica over to the rule of France.22 After the treaty of 1767, the French had to fight Paoli’s guerrilla forces to realise their gain, and were able, in May 1769, at the battle of Ponte Nuovo, to defeat Paoli’s forces, and bring an end to the fourteen-year-old Corsican Republic. Paoli and some of his closest followers took refuge in Great Britain. Carlo Buonaparte, Napoleon’s father, came from a small landowning family in Ajaccio. He was an educated man who had studied law in Pisa, served for a while as Paoli’s secretary and, following the Treaty of Versailles (1767), joined Paoli’s guerrilla forces to fight the French. Married to Letizia who was pregnant with their second child, Joseph, the first, was one year old at the moment of the defeat at Ponte Nuovo, Carlo Buonaparte did not follow his leader to exile in England in May 1769, but returned to Ajaccio. Three months later, on August 15, 1769, Napoleon was born. Faced with the irrevocable reality of French dominance, Carlo Buonaparte chose to accept the loss of independence and align with France. He worked closely with General Marbeuf, the commander of the French troops on the island, and this political decision, along with his ability to support his claim for nobility with documentation from Florence, allowed him to send Joseph and Napoleon to the educational institutions of the French monarchy. Thus, in December 1778, at the age of nine and four months, Napoleon Buonaparte and his slightly older brother Joseph left Ajaccio, a town of 3500 inhabitants of which many belonged to the Bonaparte extended family, for the Royal College of Autun. Within four

 Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution, Vol. III, book 3, VII (1837).  In 1756 and then again in 1764, two Treaties of Compiegne granted France military presence on the island, and in 1767, the Treaty of Versailles actually sold the island to France. 21 22

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months, Napoleon continued on his own to the military school at Brienne leaving Joseph to pursue in Autun a career in the Church.23 Some of Bonaparte’s biographers plausibly argue that homesickness and the social and intellectual hardships he had faced in those years in France made Corsica seem like a lost paradise and were expressed in his interest in the island’s history and in his first written essay mentioned above.24 This homesickness/patriotism, they say, had framed much of his readings at the time. In September 1784, as his time in Brienne was coming to an end, and before entering the Military School in Paris, he asked his father to send him from home Boswell’s work on Corsica and any other reading available about the island’s history.25 There was much to read. The short-lived Republic of Corsica had caught the imagination of enlightened Europe. Rousseau praised it in The Social Contract, following, almost to the word Diodorus of Sicily’s depiction of the island as a land of plenty whose inhabitants respected rules of humanity and justice. Upon the invitation of Paoli to compose a constitution for Corsica, Rousseau engaged in a year-long work that produced in 1763 the unfinished text known as Projet de constitution pour la Corse.26 Voltaire, Mably, and Raynal all commended the island and its inhabitant’s quest for liberty, its independence and its republican institutions. In 1765, James Boswell came to Corsica for an extended stay during which he met and befriended Paoli. His account published in 1768, An Account of Corsica, the journal of a tour to that island and memoirs of Pascal Paoli, enjoyed immediate success, went through numerous editions and was translated into German, Dutch, French and Italian within twelve months of its publication. Its depiction of Corsica as an ancient Greek democracy on the Mediterranean of the eighteenth century caught the imagination of his many readers and did much for the legendary reputation of Pasquale Paoli in eighteenth-century Europe. The young Bonaparte’s view of his

23  For a very good account of Corsican politics and the history of the Bonapartes which I follow here, see Luigi Mascilli Migliorini, Napoléon (2001), French translation (Paris: Perrin, 2004); see also Patrice Gueniffey, Bonaparte, 1769–1802 (Paris: Gallimard, 2013), English translation by Steven Rendall (Cambridge Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2015). 24  Luigi Mascilli Migliorini, Napoléon (Paris: Perrin, 2004), chapter 1. 25  Napoléon Bonaparte, correspondance générale (Paris: Fayard, 2004), vol. I, p.  45 (Brienne, September 12 or 13, 1784). 26  The title was adopted by the first editors of the text in 1861.

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homeland and of Paoli were thus shaped by enlightenment writers rather than by experience. These readings inspired his first essay of April 1786. Having graduated from military school in 1785, and stationed in Valence, Bonaparte found very few professional obligations to fulfil. Provincial social life did not attract him, and was not, in itself, so open-­ minded as to receive a young Corsican into its salons. Bonaparte spent the long empty hours reading and writing.27 Very much like Julien Sorel, Stendhal’s protagonist in Le rouge et le noir, determined to improve his social and writing skills, the autodidact then came into his own. Napoleon read widely, took notes of his readings and tried his hand at writing. These were common practices at the time for aspiring autodidacts determined to make a name in the Republic of Letters.28 As said above, much of his reading was inspired by his interest in and longing for Corsica. He now read Abbé Germanes, whose book, published following the French takeover of the island, was very different in its approach from the accounts of Boswell or Rousseau.29 Germanes emphasised the island’s strategic location and its importance to any nation that wanted to expand its commerce to the Ottoman Levant and North Africa. Germanes believed there was no advantage in the island’s “natural” existence, as did Rousseau and Boswell, and that its path to development would be by exploiting its strategic position and by engaging in international commerce. The French conquest was legitimised by Germanes by referring to a common past Corsica had shared with Marseilles, first as colonies of Cartago and then of the Roman Empire. He argued that the French would regenerate this past for the society that had fallen into barbarism—a figure of speech to be used time and again when discussing colonising Egypt. Another author read by Bonaparte was François René Pommereul.30 Pommereul had been part of the French force that was sent to conquer Corsica in 1769. His work refuted Rousseau and others who had applauded the cause of independence and saw in it the victory of ancient liberty over modern despotism. Even more, it portrayed Paoli as a dictator (as opposed to a Lycurgus in Boswell’s telling) and described the French victory and 27  Jean Tulard, “Preface” in Napoléon Bonaparte, Oeuvres littéraires et écrits militaire, édition établie, annotée et préfacée par Jean Tulard (Paris, 2001), 3 volumes. 28  Keith Thomas, « Working Methods », London Review of Books, Vol. 32, No. 11 (June 10, 2010), pp. 36–37. 29  Abbé Germanes, Histoire des révolutions de Corse depuis les premiers habitans jusqu’à nos jours (1771–1776). 30  François René Pommereul, Histoire de l’isle de Corse (1779).

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its legitimacy as being the result of military superiority. Bonaparte would try when writing his versions of the history of Corsica to contradict Pommereul and Germanes and to portray Corsica as a land in which the desire for liberty had been strangled throughout its history by foreign rule. But though he portrayed the rule of France since 1769 as oppressive as all others, he did incorporate into his writing some of these authors’ ideas about the role of international commerce. Bonaparte read well beyond histories of Corsica during those years. Joseph sent him books from his father’s library that ranged from plays of Corneille, Racine and Voltaire to the works of Plutarch, Cicero, Tacitus and Titus Livius.31 He also read the more political writers of the time, but as Luigi Mascilli Migliorini wrote, his points of reference in those years were mostly Corsica and Rousseau. Within these parameters, wrote Migliorini, Bonaparte thought about concepts such as patrie, liberty and death.32 As written above, in 1786 Bonaparte received a leave of absence from his army unit to attend to family affairs following his father’s early death. He would stay in Corsica for almost two years until June 1788, but for a few months in Paris.33 Arriving in Corsica after eight years of absence, the eighteen-year-old Bonaparte would gradually confront Corsica as a reality and not only the ideal of his longings as articulated by Rousseau and Boswell. But the frustrating inability to resolve the family’s financial situation without constantly asking favours of the representatives of the French rulers was still made sense of, by Bonaparte, in patriotic terms. Back in Auxonne from June 1788 to September 1789, his reading list and his writings expanded to include a wider criticism of monarchy in general and the French monarchy in particular. Rousseau was no longer just a source for Corsican patriotism but also provided a rational critique of monarchical sovereignty. Bonaparte read ancient history, but, as his notes show, not as a source for images of heroism, but as a source for the study of ancient republics. He took notes from Rollin about the constitutions of Sparta and Athens, and of the role of commerce in the Persian

 Luigi Mascilli Migliorini, Napoléon, pp. 34–35.  Ibid., p. 37. 33  Bonaparte was in Paris from October 1787 to January 1788 to further argue for his family affairs. Following another permit from his unit in December 1787, he returned to Ajaccio in January 1788. 31 32

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Empire, Egypt and Cartago.34 He believed Cartago to be the Great Britain of the ancient world for its maritime dominance. Britain interested Bonaparte for its economic expansion and this was the focus of the notes he took from the work of Baron de Tott,35 but also for its political system in which he saw a healthy balance between parliament and monarchy.36 He was attentive to the fate and criticism of the East India Company and admired the political debate about it in the English parliament. In October 1788, Bonaparte wrote the Dissertation sur l’autorité royale, in which he tried to reveal the lack of legitimacy behind twelve European monarchies.37 This was his clearest, Rousseau-inspired, republican declaration. But though universal in its criticism of monarchy, it was fuelled with Corsican patriotism. It is hard to determine the reasons Bonaparte had read the memoirs of the Abbé Terray who was the controleur général at the time of Louis XV38 and Necker’s account to Louis XVI from 1781.39 Whether the reason was a general interest in France’s financial situation or, more plausible, in order to understand the contribution, or lack thereof, of Corsica to the French state’s coffers, for these were read at the time he was collecting information for his work on Corsica. Necker supported Louis XVI’s decision not to seek an increase in revenue from Corsica, whether in relation to this or not, Bonaparte dedicated an early and fragmentary version of his Letters on Corsica to Necker at the very moment the Estates General were convened in Versailles. In May 1789, he wrote his brother Joseph that he had 34  Charles Rollins, Histoire ancienne des Egyptiens, des Carthaginois, des Assyriens, des Babyloniens, des Mèdes et des Perses, des Macédoniens, des Grecs (Paris, 1740), 8 volumes. For Bonaparte’s notes, see Napoléon Bonaparte, Oeuvres littéraires et écrits militaire. 35  François baron de Tott, Mémoires du baron de Tott, sur les Turcs et les Tartares (Amsterdam, 1784), 4 volumes. 36  Notes to John Barrow, Histoire nouvelle et impartial d’Angleterre; Bonaparte’s essay Compte d’Essex, written following Barrow, was an anti-tyranny text. His positive view and sympathy for England during those years may also be attributed to the shelter its government had given Paoli. 37  Napoléon Bonaparte, Œuvres littéraires et écrits militaire, édition établie, annotée et préfacée par Jean Tulard (Paris, 2001). 38  Joseph-Marie Terray, Mémoires de M. l’abbé Terrai, contrôleur général, contenant sa vie, son administration, ses intrigues et sa chute, avec une relation de l’émeute arrivée à Paris en 1775 (Paris: Chancellerie, 1776). In the annex to the 1776 edition that Bonaparte read were the protocols of the last assemblies of the French Compagnie des Indes that was liquidated in 1770. 39  Jacques Necker, Compte rendu au roi au mois de janvier 1781: imprimé par ordre de Sa Majesté (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1781).

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finished his work on Corsica; however, since public attention was elsewhere, he decided to let the Estates General convene for at least a month before giving it to the public.40 Bonaparte was a lonely reader; neither part of an intellectual social circle that would serve as a point of reference, nor part of a salon that discussed the latest publications, reinforced certain attitudes and dictated a certain taste. His reading lists, live discussions and interactions at the time were limited to those he conducted with the local librarian who provided the books he read. He did share his readings with his family and used quotes from his notes to adorn his correspondence in what probably seemed to him the manner of the educated. His readings, so it appears, gave him confidence and standing. “You know, I have been studying particularly everything related to administration”, he wrote his uncle, “I have made myself quite a distinguished reputation in this small town, by speaking about it on different occasions.”41 At the initial phases of what was to become the French Revolution, Bonaparte was a cautious observer, wondering whether the scattered uprisings would amount to anything meaningful.42 After describing to his brother occasions of unrest in Auxonne, he wrote he believed that within a month, all will settle without a trace.43 But after a month came the understanding that something of great importance was happening. “Everywhere in France, blood has been spilled”, he wrote his brother, “but almost everywhere it has been the impure blood of the enemies of Liberty, of the Nation.”44 He followed the events closely and with enthusiasm but his focus remained the possible influence these would have on the Corsican patrie. For a time, Bonaparte contemplated becoming a man of letters. This was a time, wrote Jean Tulard, when the great men were not men of arms 40  The early draft is lost but is assumed to be not very different from the seventy-three handwritten pages later dedicated to Abbé Raynal. In the same letter, he described the work “Il y a 140 pages d’impression ordinaire in-12. C’est plus long que je ne l’avais projeté, mais j’y ai fait l’histoire de la Nation qui m’a conduit loin. Je n’ai traité des révolutions que pour détailler les causes et donner une idée nette de la situation actuelle. » (Correspondance, Vol. I mai 1789). 41  Correspondance (28 mars 1789). 42  Correspondance, mai, to Joseph; 10 mai, to his uncle; 15 juillet to his uncle; 22 juillet, to Joseph. 43  Correspondance, 22 juillet, à Joseph. 44  Correspondance, août, 1789, à Joseph. (no date).

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but men of letters. David Bell added that in the eighteenth century, pursuing the two ambitions, the military one and the literary one, was not perceived as contradictory as is well illustrated in the careers of Choderlos de Laclos (1741–1803), Jean François de Saint-Lambert (1716–1803) and the Marquis de Sade (1740–1814), to name but the better known literary figures among army officers.45 But Bonaparte’s attempts to write did not receive the public acclaim for which he had wished. Paoli discouraged his plans to write a history of Corsica; his Discourse on Happiness did not win the competition at the Académie de Lyon. Only a political pamphlet, letter to Matteo Buttafuoco,46 was acclaimed by the patriotic club in Ajaccio and was even put into print in 1791; another short story Le Souper de Beaucaire received some attention; all in all, a very mediocre balance. In 1792 Napoleon wrote his brother Joseph from Paris: “I no longer have an ambition to become an author.” He was now thinking of becoming an astronomer.47 Looking back at his reading list, one can see in the choices he had made a spirit that was open to the problems of the time, concerned with understanding the ways societies worked, what constituted the wealth of nations and the evolution of political institutions. In the terminology of the time, he showed deep interest in France’s political economy. He also read and commented about the histories, manners and customs of societies of the contemporary East and the great civilisations of antiquity. In 1788, Bonaparte read and took notes from Abbé Raynal’s Histoire philosophique et politique des établissemens et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes in its extended edition of 1780.48 It is interesting that his readings seem to show lack of interest, or more precisely, the lack of documented interest, in the literature about the New World and its civilisations.

45  Jean Tulard, « Introduction », in Napoleon Bonaparte, Oeuvres littéraires et écrits militaire, p. 14; David A. Bell, “A Grub Street Hack Goes to War”, Charles Walton, (editor) Into Print: Limits and Legacies of the Enlightenment, essays in honour of Robert Darnton (Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press, 2011), pp. 141. 46  Matteo Buttafuoco was a Corsican politician whom Bonaparte criticised strongly. 47  Correspondance, Vol I. (7 aout, 1792). 48  Guillaume Thomas Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique des établissemens et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (Genève, chez J.-L.  Pellet, imprimeur, 1780), 10 volumes.

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Bonaparte and Abbé Raynal Guillaume Thomas François Raynal was the publicly known author of the Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes.49 The book, first published in 1770, was put on the Index in 1774 and in 1779, its introduction into France was forbidden and an order was given for the arrest of its author, whose name did not appear on the first edition, but was widely known.50 Raynal left France to avoid arrest returning only with state permission in 1787. He was still banned from entering Paris, and therefore, settled in Marseilles. With the Revolution, he enjoyed public acclaim. The Histoire and the progressive views expressed in it as well as the persecution of its author by the ancient régime contributed to this popularity. The seventy-eight-year-old became a much sought-after and respected public figure, and the young Bonaparte was among the many who visited him in Marseilles, or so he wrote in June 1790.51 In 1790, an artist working in Marseilles carved an allegorical work for the town hall that portrayed Raynal awakening France from its slumber on a tomb. The Histoire de deux indes was one of the widely read publications of the last decades of the eighteenth century.52 At its heart was the history of commerce, from what the book saw as its Mediterranean discovery in antiquity to the eighteenth century. The work portrayed oceanic commerce as the motor-force of enlightenment and civil society; these were expected to guarantee that neither ancient and medieval empire and papacy nor early modern universal monarchy and religious warfare would return. Its narrative of the rise of the seaborne empires over three centuries begins with the voyages of the 1490s and the encounters of the Europeans with civilisations they had already known: the Muslim, the 49  There were many collaborators in the work. Diderot’s contributions of more than eight hundred pages to the 1780 edition transformed the book significantly. However, to Bonaparte, and most readers at the time, the book was read as Abbé Raynal’s work. 50  Girolamo Imbruglia, « The Histoire des deux Indes and the Roman Congregation of the Index »Studies in Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, (SVEC), 2003:07 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2003), pp. 175–201. 51  Napoléon Bonaparte, Correspondance générale, Vol. I, p.  86, , à abbé Raynal, juin 24, 1790. 52   See Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink, “Introduction générale”, Guillaume-Thomas Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (Centre international d’étude du XVIIIe siècle, Ferney-Voltaire, 2010). Augmented editions were published in 1774 and 1780.

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Hindu and the Confucian. It then turns West, and tells the story of Europe’s encounter with the savage, and the story of slavery.53 The declared intention of the work, as elaborated in the introduction to the 1780 edition, was to examine and question the creation of a European-­ dominated global system and the ways it had transformed Europe and the world. The book questioned whether these transformations have been beneficial to mankind, whether “…they would help Man achieve, one day, more tranquillity, happiness, pleasure? Will his situation be better or will it only be different?” 54 The work was first published in 1770, seven years after the end of the Seven Years’ War and the Treaty of Paris that had depleted France’s role in North America and its Caribbean possessions. France’s influence on the Indian subcontinent was reduced to but a token presence. This context of clear British hegemony and a debate in France about its role in the world in the face of this hegemony colours the book’s universalism with a touch of French patriotism. The 1770s were the years in which the British East India Company’s abuses came under increasing criticism that culminated in the Regulating Act of 1773 that gave the British parliament a measured control over the company’s activities, making it somewhat accountable to the British government. There were also influential attacks on the company by some of its former servants in books by Joseph Holwell, Alexander Dow and William Bolts, all translated into French enabling the French enlightened public to follow closely the debates in England. These were also the years of unrest and later the war for independence of the British colonies in North America. The influence of these can be seen in the Histoire and its consecutive editions. They will result in a dual perspective that for a modern reader may seem contradictory. The work surveyed in its ten volumes forms of exploitation, slavery, religion and despotism, and strongly criticised the results of European expansionism. It described the exploitive and monopolistic nature of European commerce, conducted through chartered companies, whose debts posed a threat to European society. But it 53  For a very good analysis of the Histoire, see J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, Volume IV: Barbarians, Savages and Empires (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). The above is from the introduction, p. 6 and pp. 229–231. 54  HDI (1780), I pp. 1–2. As Pocock points out, the Histoire develops the obsession of the late eighteenth century with happiness of Man, and the book’s aim was to survey the globe to investigate whether commerce, a creator of happiness, was not equally the creator of unhappiness (Pocock, pp. 232–233).

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also sought to accommodate these realities of geopolitical power struggles with universal principles of freedom, tolerance and secular rationalism, and above all, it was a written tribute to commerce as an enlightening and liberating force: Who is it that has dug these canals? Who is it that has dried up these plains? Who is it that has founded these cities? Who is it that has collected, clothed, and civilised these people? Then I have heard the voice of all the enlightened men among them, that have answered: it is [the effect of] commerce, it is commerce.55

Scholars often commented on the importance of Abbé Raynal and his work for the young Bonaparte. Most argued that Bonaparte had read the Histoire des deux Indes as an anticolonial book, and therefore believed its author would support Corsica’s independence from French rule.56 However, the anticolonial perspective seems to be an anachronistic imposition on the world of the eighteenth century. It is true that the Histoire called on the subjugated peoples of the world to stand up in defiance of their exploiters,57 but it also described the world of fraternal union drawn together by the benefits of free trade promoted by enlightened policies of the European powers. In book 4, after having described the misery suffered by the Indian population because of British oppression, it called on the indigenous powers to rally to the French who would turn their strategic possessions in the Indian Ocean into bastions from which the movement of liberation would begin.58 The French, argued the work, would be able to maintain their leadership and possessions as long as they would be

55  HDI (1780), I p. 3 [written by Diderot]: « Qui est-ce qui a creusé ces canaux? Qui est-ce qui a desséché ces plaines? Qui est-ce qui a fondé ces villes? Qui est-ce qui a rassemblé, vêtu, civilisé ces peoples? Et qu’alors toutes les voix des hommes éclairs qui sont parmi elles m’ont répondu: c’est le commerce, c’est le commerce. » 56  For this common view, see, for example, Steven Englund, Napoleon Bonaparte: a political life (New York: Scribner-Lisa Drew, 2004); Andy Martin, Napoleon the Novelist (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000); Philip G. Dwyer, “From Corsican Nationalist to French Revolutionary: Problems of Identity in the Writings of the Young Napoleon, 1785–1793”, French History (2002) 16 (2): 132–152. 57  HDI (1780), tome I, p. 398. 58  After the Treaty of Paris, the French still retained five trading posts in Pondicherry, and the Ile de Bourbon, and Ile de France [today’s Ile de Reunion and Mauritius] in the Indian Ocean.

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a moderate and enlightened force.59 Anticolonialism in the twentieth century sense of the concept was very different from the views expressed in the Histoire. Bonaparte took his notes from the Histoire in 1788, mostly from its first volume. His notes were brief and informative and dealt with the societies of the East Indies. He commented, away from Raynal’s text, that the Indies were already known and traded with. Under the Ptolemaic Kingdom, he wrote, probably following his reading in Rollin, Egypt had conducted the commerce by way of the Red Sea.60 Bonaparte listed the specific components of exchange in the trade between Egypt and India mentioned in Raynal, and almost copied Raynal’s sentence that portrayed the central role Egypt had played in mediating the commerce between India and the civilisations of the Mediterranean.61 The Histoire emphasised this had been commerce in luxury goods, for the Roman Imperial elite, one whose effect was decadence, not the kind of commerce the Histoire was promoting.62 Following the notes, one gets an impression Bonaparte was almost reading the Histoire against its grain. A work of philosophical history which Gibbon judged for its absence of quotations, an argument that Pocock described as “the érudit’s complaint against the philosophe who will not give his sources”,63 and whose acclaim was for its enlightened ideology, was read by Bonaparte for the information it presented. The Histoire explained the reason Egypt had lost its central position in commerce with 59  “Alors les français, regardés comme les libérateurs de l’Hindoustan. … deviendront l’idole des princes & des peuples de l’Asie, si la révolution qu’ils auront procurée devient pour eux une leçon de modération. Leur commerce sera étendu & florissant, tout le temps qu’ils sauront êtres justes. » HDI (1780) I, p. 544. 60  All quotes from Bonaparte’s notes are taken from Napoleon Bonaparte, Oeuvres litteraires et ecrits militaries, Tome I, p. 314 « Les Indes étaient déjà connues et les commerce s’en faisait de plusieurs manières. Sous les Ptoléméens, l’Égypte fit le commerce par la mer Rouge… » In his notes from Rollin, Bonaparte wrote: « C’est sous les Ptolemees que ce commerce vint enrichir L’Egypte. » Though this is a very common sentence, it does not appear in Raynal and demonstrates the active reading and use of previous knowledge by Bonaparte (Bonaparte, Oeuvres litteraires, t. I. p. 95). 61  HDI (1780), t. I p.  91: « Toutes les nations maritimes et commerçantes de la Méditerranée, allaient dans les ports de l’égypte, acheter les productions de l’Inde. » Bonaparte’s note is as follows: “Toutes les nations commerçantes allaient dans les ports d’Égypte prendre les merchandiseuses des Indes.” If one considers how little he did copy in full, this is outstanding. 62  HDI (1780), t. I p. 74. 63  Gibbon’s view and Pocock’s comment are in Barbarisim and Religion, Vol. IV, p. 229.

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the Indies to be the result of its invasion by Muslim warriors. It argued that the invasion by religious zealots had made one of the first empires of antiquity into a country languishing in nothingness.64 Bonaparte’s notes ignored these claims that impressed on the reader a sense of ongoing decline that was a result of religion and the barbarism of its believers, and just stated the events in a matter-of-fact way. He noted the rise of the Muslim Empire as the cause for the commerce with India to have taken alternative routes,65 and added that later on, the Venetians were able to come to agreement with the Muslim rulers to resume the commerce. In Bonaparte’s notes, religion in itself played no part in the decline. He used the same seemingly ideology-free attitude when summarising the character of the Indian subject. While the Histoire presented quite elaborately a relationship between India’s climate and the people’s world views and characters,66 Bonaparte ignored the climatic theories and simply listed the character traits provided by Raynal.67 However, as Francis Bacon warned long ago, “One man’s notes will little profit another,”68 and we may not come to conclusions regarding Bonaparte’s ideas and views just from his note-taking. He took notes from Raynal’s work in the same way he did from books in history or geography, and even in the same manner he did from the somewhat satirical work, L’Espion Anglais, some twenty-­ six notebook pages of informative notes.69 He did not necessarily adopt the explanatory narrative or the ideas put forward by the authors he was reading, nor did he necessarily reject them. His note-taking does not disclose identification or adherence to this or that author, only an accumulation of facts. These pieces of information dealt with a variety of topics he wanted to know; be they historical or political, about ways of governments or about custom, manners and religious institutions, about political economy or about commerce, he recorded the information in a way that scholars, at times, found it impossible to trace his sources if he did not name  HDI (1780), t. I p. 92.  Bonaparte, Œuvres littéraires, p. 315. 66  HDI (1780), t. I p. 42. 67  See especially in Raynal, t. I pp. 39–42 and Bonaparte’s corresponding notes in Oeuvres litteraires, p. 315. N. Tomiche who had worked on Bonaparte’s writings commented on his precise, value-free factual method of note-taking (N.  Tomiche, Napoléon écrivain) (Paris: Armand Colin, 1952), p. 80–83. 68  Cited in Keith Thomas, “Working Methods,” London Review of Books, Vol. 32, No. 11 (June 10, 2010). 69  Bonaparte, Œuvres littéraires, pp. 277–298. 64 65

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them. Ideas and explanations of individual authors seemed to be but a distraction. This style of note-taking was very different from his style when writing of reflections, fiction or political essays. In these he adopted a rather passionate style, his essays full of exclamation marks and expressions of adoration or wrath. However his writings reveal he had registered and agreed with many of the ideas put forward in the Histoire des deux Indes. In June 1790, Bonaparte sent a letter to Abbé Raynal to accompany the first chapters of his work on Corsica which he now titled Lettres sur la Corse à M. l’abbé Raynal. The letter was presented by Bonaparte’s brother, Joseph, who was part of a delegation that went out to greet Paoli, the Corsican leader, about to return from exile in England.70 It was a polite cover letter that indicated Bonaparte had paid a visit to Raynal about the time he was reading the Histoire des deux Indes, that Corsica was a topic of their conversation and that he wanted Raynal’s approval to his work about the island. The decision to style his history of Corsica in the form of letters to Abbé Raynal certainly demonstrates an admiration of the author of the Histoire. The introductory letter and the question around which Bonaparte formed his work indicate he had read in the Histoire more than lists of goods and of important trade routes. Bonaparte addressed Raynal in the opening letter as a “Friend of Free Men”, and stated the question to which his work would offer an answer. Incorporating the views of Rousseau and Boswell as well as those of Pommereul, Bonaparte wrote that while the character of the island’s inhabitants could only support freedom, its geographical position, the number of its ports and the fertility of its land were very supportive to commerce. Yet Corsica, he wrote, has never been neither a free nor a commercial nation. This inexplicable contradiction was what his work will try to explain. The work then becomes a historical survey of all those that have deprived Corsica of its natural destiny, from taking its place in the modern world as a free and commercial nation. This framing of the history of Corsica was very much in the spirit of the Histoire des deux Indes and the connections it made between commerce, progress and liberty. The Histoire enabled Bonaparte to articulate his Corsican patriotism in terms common to the French circle of which he would soon be part. In August 1792, Bonaparte wrote his brother Joseph that though his work on the history of Corsica was ready, these weren’t the proper  Correspondance, Vol. I. 24 juin 1790 (from Ajaccio).

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circumstances to have it published. His objection to the political road Paoli was taking against revolutionary France has turned his youth hero into a political rival, a rivalry that ended a year later with the flight of the Bonaparte family from Corsica in June 1793. As mentioned before, he informed his brother he no longer had that small ambition to be a man of letters and was now taken by astronomy, a science he believed he could master with but little investment. At the end of 1792 after a failed effort to influence Corsican politics, Bonaparte did not see a military or a political career as engaging options.71

Egypt As is well known, the military successes and conquests in Italy brought Bonaparte fame, popularity and political power. In 1797, the members of the new French political elite were deliberating the country’s colonial policies. Bonaparte’s victories in Italy and the possession of the Ionian Islands made Egypt into a concrete option. Bonaparte’s letters to the Directory, and especially his correspondence with Talleyrand, the new foreign minister, discussed the possibilities opened to France. Bonaparte wrote of the historical importance of Egypt, and its position in Mediterranean commerce as the centre through which all commerce with India has gone in the past. This position, he believed, could be restored. And he added: “If it so happens that for the purpose of our peace with England we will be obliged to secede the Cape of Good Hope, we will have to invade Egypt. The country has never belonged to a European nation. Only the Venetians had some presence there many centuries ago; but a very precarious presence. … I would like you, citizen-Minister, to conduct some inquiries in Paris for me so that I know in what way the [Ottoman] Port might react to our expedition to Egypt.”72 Talleyrand’s responses favoured Bonaparte’s ideas but were less historical in their references; they pointed to the advantages the taking of Egypt would bring in the current international situation. In March 1798, the Directory agreed to the plan to invade Egypt. Bonaparte embarked on the plans that were to make this into more than a military expedition. It was to be a colonial enterprise, one worthy of revolutionary France: a new kind of colony that will not be based on slave 71  Correspondance, 7 août, 1792. Bonaparte was in Paris since May, after a few months stay in Corsica. 72  Correspondance, 13 septembre 1797.

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labour. The teachers, recent graduates and students of the Polytechnic School, as well as progressive officers like Caffarelli du Falga, General Andreossy, General Menou and General Horace Say73 would build its roads and bridges, reopen and maintain its canals and its ports and promote its commerce. Bonaparte was no longer an isolated reader. He was now part of a social-political milieu that had read Raynal and believed commerce to be the engine of progress and civilisation. In April 1798, Eschasseriaux ainé, member of the Council of Five Hundred, submitted a report to the Council in which he discussed the option of an Egyptian colony. Eschasseriaux was the son-in-law of Gaspard Monge, director of the Polytechnic School, and by then, Bonaparte’s very close friend and admirer.74 The report argued that with a colony in Egypt, France would become “maîtresse du commerce de la Mediterrannée” and of the Red Sea. It will have her unite the commerce of the East with that of the West; Mediterranean ports will become the centre of world commerce and navigation, like they had been in the past. And the report 73  General Andreossy (b. 1761; d. 1828), an officer of artillery who Bonaparte met in Italy; General, Horace Say, the brother of Jean Baptiste Say, the political economist, and editor of the Décade philosophique, littéraire et politique, and author of Traité d’economie politique (1803). Horace Say (b. 1771; d. 1799) died during the siege of Acre; General Louis Marie Joseph Maximilian Caffarelli du Falga (b. 1756; d. 1799) was a military engineer, graduate of the school of engineers at Mézières, where he was one of the first students of Gaspard Monge. He was considered a général-philosophe, and had published his views on education in journals. Bonaparte who met him through Monge put him in charge of the civilian recruitment process and the organisation of the Cairo Institute. He too died in Acre. All three generals were made members of the Cairo Institute from its beginning. General Jacques François (Abdallah) de Menou (b. 1750; d.1810) was commander of the army of interior in 1795; he chose to negotiate with the royalists insurgents in Paris, but when he did not achieve their disarmament, he was relieved of command and arrested for a short time. Barras then put the young and relatively unknown officer Bonaparte in charge of the situation, resulting in the “whiff of grapeshot” of 13 vendémiaire. Their ways crossed in Italy where Bonaparte learned to appreciate Menou’s extraordinary administrative talents. Bonaparte took him to Egypt for that reason. Menou married a local woman and converted to Islam. He commanded the French forces in Egypt following Kléber’s assassination, but never received the appreciation of his soldiers. Once back in France, Menou fulfilled administrative positions for the rest of his career. He became the administrator general of Piedmont and later was placed in charge of the departments from the Alps to Marengo. In 1808 he served as governor general of Tuscany, and in 1809 he fulfilled the same position in Venice. All four generals were of the aristocracy, but joined the Revolution. 74  General Caffarelli du Falga, mentioned above, was the only non-family participant at the small wedding of Eschasseriaux and Monge’s daughter at Monge’s residence, demonstrating again the close social-political network.

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c­ ontinued to elaborate on the bridges that would be built and the canals that would be restored. Egypt, Eschasseriaux wrote, will be a colony that is not based on exploitation and slavery but on liberty, humanity and commerce.75 Though there was no direct reference to Raynal’s book, his ideas and the opening paragraph of Diderot seem to loom in the background. The Histoire des deux Indes was part of the library organised by General Caffarelli that the French took with them to Egypt. Papers presented at the Cairo Institute and in the Décade Égyptienne made direct references to the work.76 General Menou kept this vision of an Egyptian commercial colony until evacuation. But though the rhetoric and vision were common to the group that led the invasion, realities dictated a very different French presence in Egypt from the kind of colonialism portrayed by Diderot and Raynal.

Early Readings and Late Practices In the essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent”, T.S. Elliot wrote: …what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all works of art which preceded it. … the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new. Whoever has approved this idea of order. … will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. … But the difference between the present and the past is that the conscious present is an awareness of the past in a way and to an extent which the past awareness of itself cannot show. 77

The idea expressed in T.S. Elliot’s essay offers a way of looking at the influences of previous readings that avoids the pitfall of a teleological explanation. Rather than looking at early readings as influencing decisions and 75  Eschasseriaux aîné, Rapport au nom de la commission charge d’examiner l’ouvrage présenté au Conseil par le Citoyen Wastrom, relative à l’établissement de Sierra-Léona, Boulama et à la colonisation en général, et de quelle utilité peut-être cet établissment pour le commerce français, (germinal, an VI). 76  See Coutelle Nectoux, “Projet d’établissement d’agriculture en égypte”, La Décade égyptienne, Vol I, pp. 104–109. 77  T.S. Elliot, “Tradition and the individual Talent” The sacred wood: essays on poetry and criticism (London: Methuen & Co., 1920).

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actions made later in life, one may look at the ways late concerns gave early readings meaning and importance they did not hold before. As Bonaparte’s career evolved, his past readings assumed new significance. As he took hold of the Ionian Islands, the former Venetian possessions, the history of Venetian commercial activities in the Mediterranean possibly came to mind, and Egypt became a concrete plan to follow. The question of the relations between the Ottoman centre and its most important province brought back the readings and notes he had taken from Baron de Tott’s book. This possibly brought about the numerous requests Bonaparte sent to the Directory and Talleyrand to engage in diplomatic negotiations with the Ottoman government regarding the French in Egypt. When planning the future French colony, Raynal provided the common world view and rhetoric Bonaparte could share with his political, social and military milieu. Bonaparte did not plan the Egyptian campaign following his reading of Raynal, but the Egyptian campaign and the process of its planning, retrospectively, gave new meanings to his reading of Raynal. Admittedly, these arguments are speculative in their nature and thus difficult to prove; it becomes even more so when the protagonist, Bonaparte, seems to have preferred the teleological explanation. According to Countess de Montholon’s diary account of a conversation she had with him when in exile on the island of Saint Helena, he said: “I have never learnt but what was useful for me. When you want to know if I have the knowledge of something, you simply have to ask: “this learning, would it have served him well?”78

78  Albine de Montholon, Journal secret (Paris: Albin Michel, 2002) « Je n’ai jamais appris que ce qui m’était utile. Quand vous voulez savoir si je sais une chose, il faut seulement vous faire cette question: cette étude a-t-elle pu lui servir ? »

CHAPTER 3

Colonial Policies and Revolutionary Ideas

The invasion of Egypt in 1798 by a French force led by general Napoleon Bonaparte is most often explained as either initiated by a power-hungry Bonaparte, his quest for glory and his fascination and identification with the heroes of antiquity or as being an expression of Orientalism, in the meaning ascribed to the word by Edward Said.1 According to this last view, the representations of the Orient in the western imagination enabled the invasion of Egypt; the Orient, its religion and its population were not included in the Revolution’s universalism. The Declaration of the Rights of Man, so goes the argument, was essentially Eurocentric and was not meant to apply to the peoples of the non-European world.2 This chapter offers to broaden the perspective—both chronologically and geographically—from which the invasion of Egypt is observed and explained. It will examine France’s colonial policies in light of the results of the Seven Years’ War, the recent success of the rebellion of the American colonies against the British Crown, the ongoing debates within French political circles regarding France’s Mediterranean interests—events and debates that date back to the ancien régime—and in light of eighteenth-century ideas about the Spanish conquest of the Americas, abolition of slavery and the belief in  This was discussed in Chap. 2.  See, for example, Juan Cole, Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 13–16. 1 2

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Sarfatti, The Description of Egypt from Napoleon to Champollion, War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15606-9_3

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the progressive role of commerce. It will argue that imposing an anticolonial perspective on the world of the eighteenth century is anachronistic and not very helpful to understand the world in which the Directory, France’s governing body following the fall of Robespierre, had sent the young general Napoleon Bonaparte at the head of a French army into Egypt. On July 3, 1797, as the Army of Italy led by Napoleon Bonaparte was taking over Venetian possessions in the Mediterranean, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord presented a paper at the National Institute in Paris. Its title was “An Essay on the Benefits to be withdrawn from New Colonies in the Present Circumstances”, and it was the second of two papers Talleyrand delivered at the Institute since his return in September 1796 from a self-initiated exile in England and America. He had been elected to the section of Sciences morales et politiques of the Institute in April 1797 and on that occasion presented the first paper that dealt with the commercial relations between the United States and England.3 The enduring Anglo-American commercial relations—irrespective of the war of 1776— had puzzled French public opinion. Talleyrand explained those relations as being a result of language and common interests the two countries shared. Should France establish itself in America, he wrote in that first essay, referring to Louisiana, it might be able to influence the still developing American character. Talleyrand’s interest in Louisiana can be traced to his days in America and to his friendship with Moreau de St. Méry.4 The two planned to purchase land in Louisiana, assuming France would take possession of the territory. Talleyrand believed it was an essential step for France to take so as to restore order and productivity to the West Indies. However, always attuned to what was politically possible, he wrote St. Méry from Paris, in February 1797: “They are still so little advanced here on sane ideas relative 3  Mémoires de l’Institut National des sciences et arts. Sciences morales et politiques (Paris, 1798–1804), vol. II. The first essay: « Mémoire sur les relations commerciales des États Unis avec l’Angleterre » pp. 86–106; the second one: « Essai sur les avantages à retirer de colonies nouvelles dans les circonstances présentes », pp. 288–301. 4  Médéric Louis-Elie Moreau de St Méry was born in Martinique and later settled in Saint Domingue. He served as a deputy from that island to the National Assembly in 1789, but fled Paris to Philadelphia when he fell out of favour in 1793. Talleyrand was in Philadelphia between 1794 and June 1796 when the two became friends. (For more on Talleyrand and Moreau de St Mery, see Francois Furstenberg, When the United States Spoke French, Five Refugees who Shaped a Nation (New York: Penguin Books, 2014).)

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to the colonies that I have abandoned everything we have projected together on this subject; the Louisiana question has not seized sufficiently the diplomats of the day.”5 Talleyrand tried again to test the attitudes towards such a venture in his first essay of April 1797, making some references in passing to the advantages of possessing Louisiana, but avoided pushing the topic any further or even standing behind it. His initial impression of which he wrote to St. Méry was probably confirmed. The second essay presented in July used a similar rhetorical strategy. In a seemingly disengaged way, Talleyrand advocated an active colonial policy for France. The essay first asserted that the colonies in the West Indies were doomed and that their separation from France was inevitable. He could not predict the exact time, he wrote, but believed France should find an economic and social alternative for these colonies. It was not for him to suggest the exact location, just to put forward some necessary components those locations should enjoy. Talleyrand then mentioned Egypt as a possible—but not the only possible—location where the new colonial policy should take place. The final decision, he said, would be taken by the political class after consulting men of science and men of experience. The colonies in the West Indies were France’s most important colonial possession. The Duc de Choiseul who saw sugar as the central article of commerce believed that in keeping Guadalupe and Martinique while surrendering Quebec to the British at the end of the Seven Years’ War, he had struck the better deal.6 However, the Seven Years’ War also exposed some difficulties in handling the long sea routes between France and the West Indies and obliged the French government to modify the exclusif, the trade system established by Jean-Baptiste Colbert in the seventeenth century. Colbert had secured French commercial firms’ exclusivity in trade with the French colonies, a prerogative constantly contested by the colonists.7 It was at that time, with the end of the war, and shortly after 5  Letter quoted in Carl Ludwig Lokke, France and the Colonial Question, a Study of Contemporary French Opinion 1763–1801 (New York, 1932), p. 169. 6  Mémoires de M. le Duc de Choiseul, Ancien Ministre de la Marine, de la Guerre &Affaires étrangères; écrits par lui-même et imprimés sous ses yeux dans son cabinet en 1778 (Paris: Buisson, 1790). From pp. 52 the book addressed the time the Duc de Choiseul was Foreign Minister and Minister of War and Marines. See also Arthur Girault, Principes de colonisation (Paris, 1921), vol. I, pp. 118–120. 7  Christopher L. Miller, The French Atlantic Triangle: Literature and Culture of the Slave Trade (2008), especially pp. 24–28; Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: the Story of the Haitian Revolution, (Harvard University Press, 2004)

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explaining to the king the advantages of taking Corsica, a holding easier to defend than “an island in America”, that Choiseul brought up Egypt as a possible colonial option that could provide the same commercial commodities while being closer to home.8 The war in North America and the example it set of independence of the colonies from the metropole increased the feeling of insecurity regarding the future of the colonies in the Antilles and their relationship with France. At the same time, it opened up commercial options for the settlers there and the exclusif had to be modified again to meet their demands and to try to avoid smuggling that generated no income for the French state. The exploration of possible alternatives continued but no decisions were taken. The strong lobby of merchants of Bordeaux, as well as the expectations that once things settle down, the state would continue and profit from its colonies in the Antilles, made sure no unnecessary changes were made in the commercial relations from which all benefitted.9 The 1770s and 1780s were also the years in which France was re-­ evaluating its policies towards the Ottoman Empire, a re-evaluation that 8  Charles Roux, “La politique Française en Égypte à la fin du XVIII siècle”, Revue historique 91 (1906), pp. 225–252; Fatma Muege Goeçek, East Encounters West: France and the Ottoman Empire in the Eighteenth Century, (New York and Oxford, 1987); Thomas Kaiser, “The Evil Empire? The Debate on Turkish Despotism in Eighteenth Century French Political Culture”, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 72, No, 1 Special issue in honour of Francois Furet (March 2000), especially pp. 24–26. Volney’s agricultural mission in Corsica mentioned in the previous chapter, as well as the name he gave his estate—Les Petites Indes— is better understood in this context. Choiseul’s views regarding the Ottoman Empire and the conquest of Egypt strongly differed from those of his ambassador to the Port, the Comte de Vergennes, and were probably the reason Vergennes was replaced by the Comte de Saint Priest. 9  Abbé Raynal’s popular book in its first edition provided information regarding the income the Caribbean colonies, and San Domingue in particular, contributed to the French economy. Thomas Guillaume Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique des établissemens et du commerce des Europèens dans les deux Indes (Amsterdam, 1772), vol. II, p. 335. Necker, in “L’Administration des finances” published in 1784 wrote that the King derived no revenue from Cayenne, St. Lucia, or from the Ile de France and Bourbon, as opposed to the income from San Domingue, Martinique and Guadalupe. (Œuvres complètes de M. Necker, publiées par M. le Baron de Staël, 15 vols. (Paris, 1820–1821), vol. IV pp. 370–375.) From these two very popular accounts, it is quite clear that the colonies in the Antilles and especially San Domingue came to be regarded as the pivot of the colonial system, rendering discussions about the colonial question actually discussions about San Domingue. For the importance of the merchants of Bordeaux, Nantes and La Rochelle in defining policies before the Revolution, see Alex Dupuy, “French Merchant Capital and Slavery in San Domingue”, Latin American Perspectives (1985), 12, pp. 77–102.

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intensified following the Ottoman-Russian wars.10 Two opposing views were vying for dominance in the French court, both associated with former French ambassadors to the Port. The one associated with the Ministry of the Marines headed by Antoine de Sartine and influenced by the Comte de St Priest advocated for the invasion of Egypt; the other, associated with the Foreign Ministry, whose head was the Comte de Vergennes, advocated preserving the alliance with the Ottomans and the status quo. De Sartine sent François Baron de Tott on a mission to check the viability of an invasion adding to his group some men of science to give the mission a scientific rather than political air.11 A series of reports were sent home from April 1777, all emphasising the ease with which Egypt could be conquered and held. These accounts were later published as part of the four volumes of memoirs of the Baron de Tott.12 Vergennes, the Foreign Minister, rejected the recommendations and was possibly behind Volney’s departure to Egypt and Syria and his opposing recommendations.13 The two reports, while clearly addressing policies towards the Ottomans, should also be read in the larger context of reassessment of colonial policies following the uncertainties in the Antilles. These colonies, their products and their problems set the example of what to look for when surveying possible alternative colonial projects. Baron de Tott’s account found Egypt to be “At once the richest and the most populous country in the world.”14 Climate, production and population that had rendered her so celebrated in the past—he wrote—were not advantages to be destroyed by time or 10  The wars of 1768–1774 ended with the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainar and Russian dominance of the Crimean Khanate and major ports on the Black Sea; in 1788 Catherine II in alliance with the Austrian Emperor Joseph II launched another war. These wars and their outcome worried the French court and provoked ongoing discussions about the time to abandon the policy that supported the Empire’s integrity and to begin taking part in its spoils. 11  The Baron de Tott was a French military officer, descendant of a Hungarian noble. De Tott was secretary to the Comte de Vergennes (to whom he was related) when the latter was ambassador in Istanbul. He was involved in reforms in the Ottoman army and its fortifications. His practices always involved gathering information, though not always clear to which patron. 12  Francois de Tott, Mémoires du Baron de Tott sur les Turcs et les Tartares (1785). 13  Constantin François Volney, Voyages en Égypte et en Syrie pendant des années 1783, 1784 et 1785, suivi des Considérations sur la guerre actuelle des Turcs (Paris, 1788). Jean Gaulmier: Volney: un Grand témoin de la Révolution et de l’Empire (Paris: Hachette, 1959), pp. 30–42. 14  François de Tott, Mémoires du Baron de Tott sur les Turcs et les Tartares, Contenant les observations critiques de M. de Peyssonnel, & la réponse du Baron de Tott (Maestricht: Dufour et Roux, 1786), pt. 4 p. 20.

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political changes. True, now, Egypt was very much in disarray but it “only waits to be tempered by some beneficent hand.”15 Volney, more straightforwardly, did not dispute the view that Egypt was a land of plenty that could become the source for France’s sugar and coffee. However, though he believed the land to be possibly conquerable, he concluded that due to its complex political situation, and especially due to its religion, Egypt could never be subjugated and therefore not fit to be a French colony. The 1780s were also the years when slave trade and the colonial system of slave labour were strongly criticised. The writings and societies that advocated these views were never in themselves a policy-changing movement, but they provided the vocabulary and justifications that were later used when the political situation required changes to be made. The 1780 third edition of Raynal’s Histoire des Deux Indes, with the help of entries by Diderot and Jean de Pechmeja, transformed the book into an antislavery document.16 Bernardin de St. Pierre published Paul et Virginie17 that described slave mastering through love not coercion, and Condorcet’s Réflexions sur l’esclavage des nêgres,18 promoted the gradual emancipation of slaves after they had been “cured” of slavery, and discussed a vision of a colonial society unmarred by racial or religious barriers. In 1787, the Société des Amis des Noires was founded, among its members Condorcet, Lafayette, Brissot, Sieyès and Mirabeau. In the autumn of 1789, Thomas Clarkson, one of the foremost British abolitionists, brought with him to France five hundred copies of engravings of slave ships that portrayed the inhumane conditions that the slave trade imposed on Africans. These were the work of the Swedish abolitionist Carl Bernhard Wadström, who had been to Guinea in 1787, one of the few abolitionists to actually go to Africa and witness the brutalities of the slave trade. The engravings were published in London, but Clarkson hoped that the new political realities and atmosphere in France of 1789 were such that would favour the abolitionist cause.  François de Tott, ibid., p. 35.  It is now well established that Diderot’s entries amounted to approximately 800 pages, and it is assumed that Jean de Pechmeja had composed the history of slavery that appeared in the eleventh book. For the history of the publication, see Yves Benot, “Diderot, Pechmeja, Raynal et l’anticolonialisme”, Europe (N. 41 1963), pp. 137–153; Michèle Duchet, Diderot et l’Histoire des Deux Indes, ou l’écriture fragmentaire (Paris,1978); Sankar Muthu, Enlightenment against Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), pp. 72–122. 17  Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Paul et Virginie (Paris, 1787). 18  Condorcet, Réflexion sur l’esclavage des nêgres (Paris, 1784). 15 16

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Revolutionary politics changed the ways in which the colonial system was discussed. Deliberations over how to calculate the number of representatives from the colonies created an opportunity for Mirabeau and Condorcet to voice their opinions at the National Assembly regarding slave labour and the colonial system, but these ended with a compromise that was testimony to the will to preserve the status quo in the Antilles, and to the importance of Saint-Domingue and the plantation system to the French economy.19 The question of trade constantly intermingled with that of the Rights of Man, the Assembly willing to concede on principle to maintain its dominance in trade.20 However the ongoing sociopolitical upheavals in the Antilles and the problems of navigating the seas during the war brought a significant reduction in the steady flow of colonial products and the profits derived from them. Though both the Committee of Public Safety and later the Directory tried to maintain order in the Caribbean, it was quite clear that the old colonial system was coming to its end. France in 1797 was in no position either to enforce the observance of a new colonial system in the Antilles or to restore the old one. Thus, when Talleyrand presented his essay in July 1797, he was articulating what had become a consensual opinion regarding the Antilles. Like many of his contemporaries, he thought commercial strength to be an important component of a state’s power on the international stage, and believed colonies to be a prerequisite for commercial strength. In his essay, he first introduced the situation in the West Indies. The process of separation between the colonies and the metropole, according to Talleyrand, was inevitable. Like the American colonies, the West Indies will soon follow this natural tendency he said; the process could be delayed or hastened but could not be stopped altogether. He acknowledged the injustices in the colonies and said that “humanity, justice and even 19  Condorcet admitted that tropical commodities had become necessities, see Condorcet, “’L’influence de la revolution de l’Amérique sur l’Europe Œuvres complètes, Vol. XI, p. 267; quoted in Lokke, p. 91. A decree of March 8, 1790, conciliatory in tone towards the planters of San-Domingue, stated that “although the Assembly considered the colonies as part of the French Empire and wished them to share the fruits of its happy regeneration, it had no desire to subject them to laws incompatible with conditions overseas” (Archives parlementaire, vol. XII, pp. 68–73 quoted in Lokke, France and the Colonial Question, p. 129). 20  Robespierre was an exception. In May 1791, in a debate regarding the citizenship of the men of colour, he is quoted as saying: “perish the colonies rather than our principles”, but once in power, he did not make this statement into policy.

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politics, demand we take firm and wise measures to finally make an effort to repair these.” In the time left before complete separation took place, the French should prepare an alternative and do so by establishing new colonies “whose ties with us will be more natural, more useful and more durable.”21 Pursuing a colonial enterprise had more than commercial advantages according to Talleyrand. Colonialism, he wrote, would offer social stability to post-revolutionary France. “What remains for us is to terminate a revolution that by changing all that was before has created more discontented people than enemies. Would new colonies not be one of the surest ways to achieve this goal?”22 Revolutions, wrote Talleyrand, especially those in which everyone takes part, leave behind agitated spirits, spirits with a vague disposition for uncertain undertakings, and ambitions in the world of ideas that tend relentlessly to change and destroy. This is especially true, he wrote, when the revolution is done in the name of liberty. “Such turmoil when cannot be suppressed, must be controlled, it should be practiced not at the cost but for the benefit of the public good.”23 The terminology was from the realm of commerce but the contents show Talleyrand thought these passions should be dealt with in the realm of politics. He had witnessed during his stay in America, he wrote, how the passions were channelled constructively shortly after their Revolution. “The need for agitation could be satisfied … in such a vast new country, where adventurous endeavours inspire people, where a huge quantity of uncultivated territories offer them the ability to go … to a new activity and to place their hopes in distant speculations; to throw themselves into a frenzy of uncertain experiments … to learn to doubt their strengths … to

21  Talleyrand, «Essai sur les avantages à retirer de colonies nouvelles dans les circonstances présentes » Mémoires de l’Institut National des sciences et arts. Sciences morales et politiques. « L’humanité, la justice, la politique même commandent impérieusement que par des mesures fermes et sages on s’efforce enfin de réparer ces ruines. Mais en même-temps ne convient-il pas de jeter les yeux sur d’autres contrées; et d’y préparer l’établissement de colonies nouvelles dont les liens avec nous seront plus naturels, plus utiles, et plus durables. » 22  Talleyrand, «Essai ». « Il nous reste à terminer une révolution qui en déplaçant tout ce qui fut, a suscité plus de mécontens encore que d’ennemis Des colonies nouvelles ne seroient-­ elles pas un des moyens les plus sûrs d’atteindre à ce but» 23  Talleyrand, “Essai…” “Et cela est vrai sur-tout quand la révolution s’est faite au nom de la liberté … une telle agitation ne pouvant pas être étouffée, il faut donc la régler, il faut qu’elle s’exerce non aux dépens, mais au profit du Bonheur public.”

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finally grow tired from moving … and to muffle in themselves the revolutionary passion.”24 Twentieth-century social theories of colonialism often stated that overseas empires provided a safety valve to the metropole and eased the strain and social upheaval that were the result of economic growth and technological advancements.25 These theories referred to the results of the Industrial Revolution, but Talleyrand articulated this aspect of colonialism early on. The Revolution ignited political passions; these, like other uncontrolled passions, could be destructive to society as the events in France have demonstrated, he wrote, echoing the rhetoric of first the Thermidorians, and then the Directory. The passions should therefore be harnessed and redirected to new colonial enterprises. Albert Hirschman has shown that the idea of engineering social change by setting one passion, otherwise destructive, to tame and redirect the other, was fairly common among intellectuals in the eighteenth century.26 Hirschman wrote about political economy and saw in Adam Smith’s publication of 1776 a break with the long train of western thought. Adam Smith, he said, chose to stress the economic benefits of the pursuit of private gain rather than the political dangers it would avert. Talleyrand elaborated a variation on the same theme. The language of commerce and social equilibrium prevailed, but for Talleyrand, the purpose was to tame political passions. Talleyrand, however, did not see in Smith the break of which Hirschman wrote. He understood Smith to be supportive of his thesis of colonisation as an outlet for social unrest. Talleyrand wrote that it was his stay in America that had brought him these insights, but it was probably Madame de Staël’s book De l’influence des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des nations27 that had shaped the 24  “Ce besoin d’agitation a pu se satisfaire autrement dans une pays vaste et nouveau, où des projets aventureux amorcent les esprits, où une immense quantité des terres incultes leurs donnent la facilité d’aller employer loin du théâtre des premières dissensions, une activité nouvelle, de placer des espérances dans des spéculations lointaines, de se jeter à-la-fois au milieu d’une foule d’essais, d’apprendre à douter de leurs forces par des entreprise qui ne réussissoient pas, de se fatiguer enfin par des déplacemens, et d’amortir ainsi chez eux les passions révolutionnaires. » 25  See among others: Studies in the Theory of Imperialism, Roger Owen and Bob Sutcliffe (eds) (London 1972). 26  Albert Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism Before Its Triumph (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977). 27  Germaine de Staël, De l’influence des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des nations (Lausanne, 1796).

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way and provided the vocabulary with which he described the American situation. Germaine de Staël began writing her book in early 1792, and wrote most of it when in England where she spent many social hours in Talleyrand’s company.28 De Staël’s book was to deal with the influence of passions on the individual and on nations, claiming that unrestricted passions were an obstruction to both personal happiness and to that of nations. But the political part of the book was never written and her discussion of the topic was restricted to the book’s introduction. Political passions were a topic deliberated within the social circles of French émigrés and exiles in England, at Juniper Hall, where she stayed with her lover Louis Marie de Narbonne, the son of Louis XV’s mistress. The unfolding political situation in France was looked upon in horror. The daily news of political developments were seen by many in this social circle, that inhabited many supporters of constitutional monarchy, to be the result of passions rather than of educated political reasoning. The right government, wrote Madame de Staël, would be able to provide order, liberty and grandeur to a nation. It would emulate ingenuity, would heal fractions and would offer great people goals worthy of their dignity. “Its effort would be aimed at redirecting the passions not at defeating them altogether.”29 Talleyrand employed a similar vocabulary and ideas in his essay on France’s colonial policies. He surveyed European emigration and its reasons. These varied, he wrote, from those escaping political or religious persecution to those hoping for adventures or economic gains; but the circumstances in a new destination created new goals and common interests. He envisioned the same for post-revolutionary France. “In a new land … [there will be] common obstacles to overcome; the need to help each other will replace the desire to harm … work will calm the spirit, hope will console it.”30 A new colonial enterprise was portrayed as an ideal remedy for the social and political problems of France. Failed colonial initiatives in the not-so distant past brought Talleyrand to emphasise time and again the need to plan, to survey the options and to consult travellers and men of science when deciding the location for the new colonies. It was not for him to decide the location, he said, but he did outline what he 28  Maria Fairweather, Madame de Staël (London, 2005). See especially part three, “Juniper Hall”. 29  Germaine de Staël, De l’influence des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des nations (Lausanne, 1796), p. 50. 30  “… une terre nouvelle … des obstacles communs à vaincre, la nécessité de s’entr’aider remplaçant le désir de se nuire, le travail qui adoucit l’âme, et l’espérance qui la console … »

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believed were necessary components of such a place: it should not be too far from France, it should be a place “that produces that in which we are lacking and desire what we have” and it should be in warm climate because “warm countries are the only ones who give an advantage to those who provide from their labour.”31 Talleyrand brought forward an option the Duc of Choiseul had suggested. Choiseul’s visionary qualities were exposed when he predicted in 1769 the separation of the American colonies from England, wrote Talleyrand, he had since tried to negotiate with the Ottoman ruler the transference of Egypt to France, “…so that France will be ready to replace with the same products and with commerce more extended, its American colonies when they break away.” In the same way that Choiseul was right about the American colonies, implied Talleyrand’s essay, he was right about the Egyptian option. As for the question of slave labour, Talleyrand said, sooner or later a new system to cultivate colonial food produce will be introduced. The most favourable idea at the moment he said, one which was wise to follow, was the idea “to cultivate in the same places that the cultivator was born.”32 The idea of cultivating where the cultivator was born as opposed to slave trade, articulated in these very words, was forcefully argued earlier by Carl Bernhard Wadström, the abolitionist whose engravings of the slave ships were brought to the attention of the French public in 1789.33 Carl Bernhard Wadström’s most famous work was his two part Essay on Colonization, particularly applied to the Western Coast of Africa, with some Free Thoughts on Cultivation and Commerce.34 The work not only exposed the cruelties of slavery as did his previous work and engravings but also argued that the slave trade has impeded the benefits of colonisation. Africans, Wadström argued, were worth much more as trading partners 31  « Je pense qu’on sentira le besoin de s’établir dans les pays chauds, parce que ce sont les seuls qui donnent des avances à ceux qui apportent de l’industrie. » 32  « …d’essayer cette culture [des denrées coloniales] aux lieux même où naît le cultivateur. » 33  Wadström was a member of the Swedenborgian Church that followed the writings of a Swedish mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). A central tenet of the writings was that the Africans were the most enlightened of the human race and held god’s truth. Wadström joined the church when in England, in 1788, and with other Swedenborgians, he signed a proposed constitution for a colony in Sierra Leone, which was to be run in accordance with Swedenborgian doctrines. This was published as A Plan for a Free Community upon the Coast of Africa under the Protection of Great Britain; but Entirely Independent of All European Laws and Governments (1789). Central to the argument here was the eventual abolition of slavery. 34  The essay was published in London in 1794–1795, and translated into French in 1798.

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and wage labourers than they were as slaves. He further suggested that sugar cane was possibly native to Africa rather than to the West Indies. “Be this as it may, it was surely preposterous to drag the Africans to the west Indies, there to drudge amidst whips and chains, in cultivating a commodity which had they been prudently and humanely dealt with, they might have been induced to raise as an article of commerce upon their own soil, and that much nearer to the European markets than the nearest of the West Indies.”35 It is important to emphasise that while slavery was unequivocally denounced, the right to colonise was not at all questioned by Wadström. Talleyrand’s essay received very favourable reviews in the press,36 but one can assume that had he not been called by the Directory—two weeks after its presentation—to take the post of foreign minister, the essay would have been forgotten like many others in the Institute’s collection. His nomination in such proximity to the presentation of the essay lent itself to the interpretation that the Directory favoured his colonial programme: establishing new colonies, based on free labour, and closer to home. The question of location remained opened; the answer could possibly be found in the correspondence between Bonaparte and Talleyrand that followed. The two did not know each other personally but were corresponding in their respective capacities as commander of the Army of Italy and the new Foreign Minister. It is safe to speculate that once Talleyrand’s advocacy for a new colonial policy was looked upon favourably by the Directory, the decision to practice it in Egypt evolved out of Bonaparte’s victories in Italy. On August 16, 1797, a little over a month after Talleyrand’s presentation at the Institute, and two weeks into his role as the new Foreign Minister, Bonaparte wrote the Directory from his headquarters in Milan. He was about to join his forces in Corfu and asked the Directory to send reinforcement there. He elaborated why he thought the Ionian Islands were an important possession for France. They were a source of riches and prosperity for French commerce, he wrote, but even more, “…the Turkish Empire is falling apart … The possession of these islands will enable us to 35  C.B. Waldström, Essay on Colonization, particularly applied to the western coast of Africa (London, 1794–1795), vol. I, p. 4. 36  The Redacteur reported it received well-deserved applause, because of the justice of its views and the pungent wording with which he expressed them. The Miroir found the “ingenious discourse” to be a welcome relief from the ordinary run of papers at the Institute, the others being “perfect narcotic”. See F. V. A. Aulard, Paris pendant la réaction thermidorienne et sous le Directoire (Paris, 1898–1902), vol. IV, p. 199.

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support it as long as possible, or to take our share when it collapses. It will not be long before we understand that in order to truly destroy England, we have to invade Egypt. The vast Ottoman Empire which is perishing by the day, obliges us to consider, sooner rather than later, taking steps to preserve our commerce with the Levant.”37 Bonaparte wrote Talleyrand, on the same day, a letter conveying the same idea but without mentioning Egypt or England: “It is in vain that we try to sustain the Empire of the Turks. We will see its collapse in our times. Holding these four beautiful islands will enable us to sustain it [the Empire] or to take our share [in the event of its collapse]. The fanaticism for liberty that has already begun in Greece will be more powerful there than the religious one. … the islands will render us masters of the Adriatic and of the Levant.”38 Negotiations for a peace treaty between the French Republic and England were ongoing in Lille.39 The propositions put forward by the English aimed at restoring to each country the possessions it had held before the war had begun. It is not clear whether Bonaparte knew the details of the negotiations and whether his letter hinted to a possible treaty that will have France give up some of its new possessions, but he definitely believed France should establish itself and its commerce in the Mediterranean. Talleyrand replied to Bonaparte’s letters in the name of the Directory. He praised the possession of the islands and even recommended taking Cerigo, an island that was south to the group of islands Bonaparte had mentioned and advised Bonaparte to get on good terms with the Ottoman Mediterranean provinces that “might one day be of great value to us.”40 A month later, on September 15, 1797, Bonaparte wrote Talleyrand to report of his negotiations with the court of Naples. Here, for the first time, he explicitly put forward a plan to conquer Egypt and mentioned the 37  Bonaparte to Directory, Milan, 29 thermidor an V [August 16, 1797]. Napoléon Bonaparte, Correspondance générale, vol. I (Paris: Fayard, 2004), p. 1118. 38  Bonaparte to Talleyrand, Milan, 29 thermidor an V, [August 16, 1797]. Napoléon Bonaparte, Correspondance générale, vol. I (Paris: Fayard, 2004), p. 1119. 39  The negotiation began in July, when Delacroix was still foreign minister for France. The parties failed to reach an agreement and negotiations ended in October 1797. Lord Malmesbury represented England. See the reports to Lord Grenville and the various drafts proposed during the negotiations: http://www.archive.org/stream/officialcorrespo00greaiala/officialcorrespo00greaiala_djvu.txt. 40  Talleyrand to Bonaparte, August 23, 1797, quoted in David Lawday, Napoleon’s Master: a Life of Prince Talleyrand (London: J. Cape, 2006).

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relevance of holding Corfu and Zante for that purpose. The court of Naples wanted the islands and was willing to concede Elba in their place. Bonaparte believed that not only should the Republic solidify its hold of the four islands, but it should also take Malta. These islands, he wrote, will provide great advantages for commerce and for future plans. If it so happens that as part of our peace with England we would be obliged to cede the Cape of Good Hope, we will have to invade Egypt. This country was never held by a European nation. Only the Venetians enjoyed a certain preponderance there many centuries ago, but a precarious one. We can depart from here with a force twenty five hundred men strong, escorted by eight or ten boats or Venetian frigates, and take over the country. … I ask you, citizen minister, to please conduct from Paris some enquiries on my behalf so that I know what will be the reaction of the Port to our expedition to Egypt. With armies like ours, for whom all religions are equal, Muhammadians, Coptes, Arabs, Idolaters, etc. we are indifferent to them all, we will respect the ones as we would the others.41

It is interesting to note that Bonaparte here suggested taking Egypt as a result of a peace treaty with England and not as a way to attack it indirectly. It might also be worth noting that the precedent of the Venetians and their commercial prowess was the one Bonaparte used here and not the precedent of Alexander the Great or Louis IX and his crusade. Bonaparte, very much in tune with his times, believed a nation’s glory was in its commerce and not in its military conquests.42 In September, Talleyrand replied positively to Bonaparte’s ideas and promised to discuss them further. He believed, he wrote, that taking Egypt would check the Russian and English intrigues regarding the Ottoman Empire, and would render the Ottomans so grateful they would give France exclusive trading privileges.43 Talleyrand ended his letter with 41  Bonaparte to Talleyrand 27 fructidor an V [13 September 1797] in Correspondance générale, vol. I, p. 1171. The relation between this letter and Bonaparte’s early readings was discussed in the previous chapter. 42  The need to indirectly attack England is the common strategic explanation given by scholars for the Egyptian campaign. This was probably true as is indicated in the letter of Bonaparte to the Directory mentioned above, but in September 1797, Bonaparte thought differently. 43  This misconception of the relations between the Ottoman centre and Egypt under the Mamluke Beys, as they were called by the French, goes back to the Baron de Tott and to the French Ambassador to the Port. This view would prevail at the initial phases of the Egyptian campaign, and the French were caught by surprise when they discovered the Ottoman Sultan Selim saw the Egyptian campaign as an offense against the Ottoman Empire.

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the same ideas he put forward in his essay at the Institute: “Egypt as a colony, would soon replace the products of the Antilles, and as route would give us [control of] the trade with India; for everything in commercial matters depends on time, and time would allow us five voyages as against three by the ordinary route.”44 After signing the Treaty of Campo Formio in October 1797, a treaty that left the Ionian Islands in French possession, and following the breakdown of the talks in Lille, the Directory nominated its most popular general to be commander in chief of the Army of England. Given the state of the French fleet, Bonaparte was reluctant to take any direct action against England. He expressed his views in a very long and detailed letter to the Directory on February 23, 1798. Having examined the situation at the French ports, he wrote, no matter how much effort the French would put into this, it would take many years before they could reach superiority on the seas. France should weigh its options, he said, and it should either take Hanover and Hamburg from England, which he believed would be relatively easy, or, even better, conduct an expedition to the Levant which would threat the commercial routes from India. If all three options— investing in the navy, taking Hanover and Hamburg or conducting an expedition to the Levant—were not feasible, he saw no other way but to make peace with England.45 Bonaparte, in this letter, has entered the world of politics. It is not clear whether this letter was already part of a plan of Bonaparte and Talleyrand to convince the Directory to take on the Egyptian campaign while creating the illusion it was the Directory’s decision to make. There is no further correspondence between the two on this topic, and they were both in Paris now and had many occasions to discuss or advance their plans by other means. Talleyrand had been working at it independently for some time. On February 9, he received a long memoir on Egypt from Charles Magallon, former Consul General in Cairo, and a French merchant at that time. The memoir described, among other issues, the peril of the French merchants of Alexandria due to the unstable political situation.46 Talleyrand then prepared a proposal to the Directory openly  Talleyrand to Bonaparte, September 23, 1797. Quoted in Lokke, p. 186.  Bonaparte to Directory, 5 ventôse an VI [February 23, 1798] Napoléon Bonaparte, Correspondance générale, vol. II (Paris: Fayard, 2004), pp. 36–38. 46  Charles Magallon, “Mémoire sur l’Égypte », 21 pluviôse an Vi [February 9, 1798], Revue d’Égypte, vol. III (September 1896), pp. 205–224. Charles Roux argues this memoir was probably solicited by Talleyrand an opinion that seems plausible. See Charles Roux, Les Origines de l’expédition D’Égypte (Paris: Plon-Nourrit et Cie, 1910), p. 271. 44 45

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based on Magallon’s memoir. He painted a glowing picture of Egypt as a trade centre and a source of raw materials, among them sugar. He explained how opening the Suez route could be fatal to England and the way it could form a base from which the Republic could attack the British in India.47 There was a public effort to lobby for Egypt as well. The idea was advocated openly in the Council of Five Hundred and Charles Bernhard Wadström, the abolitionist mentioned above, unintentionally, provided the occasion. Wadström who was also aware of Talleyrand’s presentation at the Institute saw, in Talleyrand’s new role, an opportunity to persuade him and the Council of Five Hundred to establish a colony based on free labour on the coast of Africa. In December 1797, a short while after the collapse of negotiations between France and England in Lille, Wadström, by then an honorary citizen of the Republic, sent a letter to Talleyrand.48 In the letter, he complimented Talleyrand on his presentation at the National Institute in July, which he thought was full of large and fresh views. He again asserted his views that justice was the most powerful means of prosperity and that new colonies should and could be established in the interest of trade without injuring the rights of humanity. England and France should set the example by abolishing the slave trade he wrote. England had already begun by establishing colonies on the Coast of Africa, and France, he suggested, should follow in Cape Verde.49 Wadström addressed the Council on the topic and in hope of reaching a wider audience, also published his address on Sierra Leone and Bolama as a short essay, to which he added the letter to Talleyrand.50 The Moniteur of February 17, 1798, printed the title page of the publication as well as

 The plan was presented to the Directory on February 13.  Wadström relocated to Paris in 1795 after some financial losses in a cotton factory in Manchester. He published an Adresse au Corps Législatif et au Directoire Exécutif de la République Française (1795), in which he called on the Directory to work in collaboration with Britain for the abolition of slavery. He became a leading member of the Société des Amis des Noires. 49  The letter is published in the introduction to his short essay addressed to the Council of Five Hundred.See C.B. Wadström “Précis d’ Adresse au Conseil des Cinq-Cents, lue dans la séance du 28 pluviose. [February 16] relative aux établissemens de Sierra-Leona et de Boulama. » 50  Carl Bernhard Wadström, Précis (pp. v–viii). 47 48

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informed its readers of the previous books by the distinguished author.51 The Council of Five Hundred did not only vote a motion of honourable mention of the essay but also appointed a committee to examine Wadström’s ideas with respect to West Africa. Joseph Eschasseriaux was to head the committee and bring its recommendations before the Council.52 Joseph Eschasseriaux who had married Gaspard Monge’s younger daughter Louise a few months before53 took quite a while to prepare his report, and on the very day he read it to the Council, 23 germinal an VI [April 12, 1798], Bonaparte was appointed by the Directory Commander in Chief of the Army of the Mediterranean. The decision on an expedition to Egypt had already been taken and preparations have begun.54 By the time it was read, the report was no longer a tool to influence policy; however, it is an indication of the way public opinion was shaped in favour of the Egyptian campaign by a very small and closely knitted network. The report was far from being a commentary on Wadström’s little book and seems to owe more to Talleyrand’s essay of some months before than to Wadström’s ideas about philanthropic colonies on the west coast of Africa. 55 Eschasseriaux briefly paid tribute to the generous minded men who had conceived the idea of founding a philanthropic colony in Sierra Leone, based on the principle of abolishing the slave trade. The French Republic will pray for the success of such a project, the report said, but it will not follow it at the present. The memory of Freetown, the British settlement in Sierra Leone and the ease with which it was attacked in  Le Moniteur Universel, 29 pluvoise (February 17, 1798).  Joseph Eschasseriaux was the radical of the two brothers Eschasseriaux. Of aristocratic origins, he voted in favour of the King’s execution. On October 16, 1795, he signed, as member of the Committee of Public Safety, the arête that promoted Bonaparte from general of brigade to general of division. The two brothers Eschasseriaux were members of the Council of Five Hundred. His report is briefly mentioned in the previous chapter. 53  For details about the family, see François Pairault, Les “Mémoires” d’un grand notable bonapartiste: le Baron Eugène Eschassériaux de Saintes (Introduction). The work of Pairault is about Eugène Eschassériaux, the grandson of Joseph Eschassériaux, and great grandson of Gaspard Monge. 54  The Directory sanctioned the Egyptian expedition already in March, but did not appoint Bonaparte to command it until April 12. Napoléon Bonaparte, Correspondance générale, Tome deuxième, 1798–1799 (Paris: Fayard, 2005), p. 77 (Letter 2384). 55  Rapport au nom de la commission charge d’examiner l’ouvrage présenté au Conseil par le Citoyen Wastrom, relative à l’établissement de Sierra-Léona, Boulama, et à la colonisation en général, et de quelle utilité peut être cet établissement pour le commerce français, par Eschasseriaux aîné, Séance du germinal an VI. 51 52

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September 1794 were too close to ignore.56 A French colony on the coast of Africa might be exposed to a similar fate, the report stated. Like Talleyrand before, Eschasseriaux emphasised the social advantages of establishing colonies. Republics, he wrote, unleash the abilities of man more than absolute regimes do. This new order of things that unleash the passions of the new citizens must be cleverly managed by the government in order to save the state from instability caused by these passions.57 It is for the sake of this multitude and their passions that the government should open opportunities in the arts, industry, speculations and settlements. The ideas were those of Eschasseriaux (and Talleyrand) and were not related to Wadström’s essay. From here on the report continued, independent of the book on which it was supposed to comment, to promote the idea of Egypt, not mentioned at all in Wadström’s little book. The Republic would do better to direct its attention to a region even closer to France than the shores of West Africa, Eschasseriaux wrote, a region that offered great advantages to its possessors, a region fertile and inhabited by semi-civilised peoples, a region whose climate is moderate, a place in which both nature and politics invite France to establish a colony. Its name, wrote Eschasseriaux, was Egypt.58 A colony in Egypt will make France “the master of commerce of the Mediterranean” and of the Red Sea. It will have her unite the commerce of the East with that of the West; it will resume the commercial activities in all Mediterranean port cities and make them into the centre of world commerce and navigation in the same way they had been in times past. The end of the century, wrote Eschasseriaux, will witness the creation of a colony that is not based on slave labour and tyranny, but one that is based on principles of liberty and humanity, on true social ties and on reciprocal needs.59 Eschasseriaux wrote of the engineering projects that await the Republic in Egypt; French engineers will renovate its canals of antiquity and create a new one in the Isthmus of Suez. This will be a very 56  The British experiment in cultivation of tropical products by indigenous population was attacked by a French fleet in September 1794. The attack was detailed in Wadström’s book Essay on Colonization particularly applied to the Western Coast of Africa with some Free Thoughts on Cultivation and Commerce (London 1795), 2 volumes. By the time news of the attack reached France, there was a change of government, and the new one (the Thermidorian) sentenced the commander that conducted it to prison (Lokke, p. 176). 57  Rapport, p. 5. 58  Rapport, p. 18. 59  Rapport, p. 19.

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different project from previous European colonisation projects that have resulted in depopulation and destruction. The French project will benefit Egypt; it will make it again the cradle of civilisation, by bringing it science art and industry. France will lay the foundations for “a new Thebes and another Memphis.”60 The report was read to the Council of Five Hundred by Eschasseriaux and was received with enthusiasm. The vocabulary, reminiscent of Raynal, and already present in Bonaparte’s letters, would then be repeated in many of the reports about the expedition in Le Moniteur and in the Décade Phylosophique; the vocabulary would also be similar in the advertisements to the Description of Egypt, written by its editor Jomard, and in its introductory volume written by Joseph Fourier. Commerce, arts, industry and sciences brought back to their historical cradle by the French Republic. The ideas of regenerating Thèbes and Memphis, of renovating the canals of antiquity, of connecting the two seas appeared time and again in the writings about the Egyptian campaign. These were the proof that the torch of enlightenment and reason was passed on from Egypt’s past to France’s present. The possibility of Egypt was openly discussed during those weeks in similar ways in the Council of Elders,61 or on the pages of the Décade philosophique. It is therefore quite surprising that the British, who had invested much in informers from France and actually had all this open information available, still believed the French attack of the British islands would be by way of Ireland. The author of the commentary read at the Council of the Elders, Lecouteulx, went as far as saying that though he had no knowledge of what was actually transpiring in Toulon, he had heard rumours that the hero about whom everyone was talking had been called to lead the French to this new glory.62 Joachim Lebreton published a two-part article in the Décade phylosophique in which he discussed the importance of establishing a French

 Rapport, pp. 19–20.  J.B. Lecouteulx, Observations sur le rapport d’Eschasseriaux l’ainé, member du Conseil des Cinq-Cents sur les colonisations. Commentary read at the Council of Elders, April 24, 1798 (Published in the Moniteur 18 floréal an VI [May 7 1798]). 62  F. Charles Roux, L’Angleterre et l’expédition française en Egypte (Cairo, 1925), vol. I, pp. 13–26. 60 61

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colony in Egypt.63 The strategic advantage of Egypt in the struggle against France’s major opponent, England, was obvious, according to Lebreton. But establishing a colony there had more than strategic reasons, he wrote; it should also be seen as a debt owed and now paid by Europe to the ancient world. Colonising Egypt would be very different from the Spanish practices in America. It would be an attempt to regenerate Egypt’s past by bringing back the sciences, industry and commerce to their place of origin. In Lebreton’s view, three important groups would play a role in restoring the place of Egypt in the world: the French engineers who would go there temporarily to renovate its canals, irrigation and transportation systems and to connect the two seas; the recently disenfranchised nobility would follow, permanently, for the sake of restoring the sciences rather than conspire against the Republic; the Jews would then emigrate from all parts of the world, to end their history of persecution and to regenerate Egypt’s dominance in commerce. Lebreton was translating Talleyrand’s vague ideas of individuals who were left irritated by the Revolution into suggestions for concrete policies. It is worth noting that while in the first part of the article Lebreton clearly positioned France in opposition to England, when he wrote of the enlightened project to be done in Egypt, he wrote of Europe. The new kind of colonialism, as in Raynal more than twenty years before, was portrayed in opposition to the Spanish one. The similarities in views and arguments are not surprising. The Décade pilosophique was a journal that began its publication two months before the fall of Robespierre and was written and read by an intellectual milieu dominated by those later named the Idéologues.64 Its editorial board and many of its writers were made up of members of the Class of Moral and Political Sciences of the 1795 reformed National Institute and enjoyed close relations and shared political views with many of the more mature

63  La Décade Philosophique, N. 20 20 Germinal an VI; second part N. 21 30 Germinal an VI [9th and 19th April, 1798]. Joachim Lebreton (B. 1760) [his name was spelled in both ways] was professor of rhetoric in Toulon before the Revolution. At the time of the Directory, he was in charge of Beaux Arts at the ministry of interior, was a strong supporter of Bonaparte to the end and left for Brazil during the Restoration. 64  Marc Regaldo, Un Milieu Intellectuel: La Décade Philosophique 1794–1807; thèse présenté devant L’Université de Paris IV, 24 Janvier 1976.

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participants in the Egyptian campaign.65 The journal portrayed itself as continuing the philosophes; it supported the Directory’s foreign policy and followed closely Bonaparte’s career and the Italian campaign which it described as an enlightened project. Articles about Bonaparte and his achievements as well as suggestions to buy his portrait appeared in almost every publication from the Italian campaign and up to 18 Brumaire. During the Egyptian campaign, the journal published the minutes of the Egyptian Institute’s meetings. It later shifted its support from the Directory to Bonaparte and many of its contributors took part in the preparations for the coup of Brumaire. However, this intellectual milieu would form, within years, an opposition to the First Consul turned Emperor. As said above, the decision for the Egyptian campaign had already been taken before the article was published and even before Eschasseriaux had presented his report. It does not seem plausible that Joseph Eschasseriaux, Gaspard Monge’s son-in-law, or many on the editorial board of La Décade philosophique were ignorant of Bonaparte’s appointment by the Directory on April 12. General Caffarelli, René Nicolas Desgenettes and Gaspard Monge were already deep in preparations, making lists of possible members, recruiting the engineers, scientists, surgeons and equipment for the campaign. Though superfluous for the purpose of lobbying the decisionmakers, the article and the report do provide a view of the spirit and excitement that surrounded the Egyptian campaign. They also give us the sense of power and belief in the ability of the French Republic to restructure the world that this milieu of “Republican philosophes” shared after the fall of Robespierre and more concretely, following Bonaparte’s victories in Italy. Three weeks after disembarking in Egypt, and following the triumph over the Mamelukes, Egypt’s military elite, at the Battle of the Pyramids, Bonaparte wrote the Directory of the plenty of the land of Egypt. He wrote of abundance of rice, cereals, vegetables and beasts. “The Republic could not have gained a better colony or one whose land is richer. … I will shortly send you a report with all the information regarding the economic, 65  General Caffarelli du Falga, already mentioned, was a close friend of Jean Baptiste Say, the political economist, of the editorial board. General Horace Say, future contributor to the Description, was Jean Baptiste’s brother. René Nicolas Desgenettes and the four years younger Dominique Jean Larrey who headed the medical corps of the expedition also played a part on the journal’s editorial board. Some weeks after landing in Egypt, Desgenettes began editing what was called a sister publication, La Décade égyptienne.

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moral and political situation of this country.” Bonaparte ended the letter reminding the Directory to take care of diplomacy at the Ottoman court.66 Bonaparte never deserted the idea of establishing a French colony in Egypt, but he had the military aspect to take care of in Egypt, and political aspirations in France. General Kléber, who succeeded him as commander in chief of the French forces in Egypt,67 was no supporter of the colonial project and was only interested in a respectable exit strategy.68 It was General Jacques-François Menou, who succeeded Kléber after the latter was assassinated, and who was originally selected by Bonaparte to join the campaign because of his exceptional administrative capabilities proven in Italy, who was devoted to the project of transforming Egypt into a French colony. Menou was a strong believer in the idea of an enlightened Egyptian colony and worked towards the goal from the start. His efforts to stay within the native Egyptians’ favour are echoed in the letters home of the young engineers that were assigned to work with him in the Delta district.69 He promoted the idea that Egypt had many advantages as a substitute for the colonies in the West Indies in an elaborated memoir which he sent Kléber, then commander in chief of the French in Egypt. The letter dated January 6, 1800, just days before the signing of the Treaty of El Arish that was hoped to bring the evacuation Kléber wanted. The Mémoire 66  Bonaparte to Directory, 6 thermidor an VI [24 juillet 1798] Correspondance générale, vol. II pp. 193–195. The following day, he sent a letter with similar descriptions of the country to his brother Joseph. This is also the letter in which he tells him he heard of Josephine’s love affair. The letter was intercepted by the English navy and published in the press. 67  The Directory sent orders for Bonaparte to return on May 26, 1799. These never reached him. His decision to leave in August came after his assessment of the military situation in Europe and the political circumstances in France. The timing, following a victory at Aboukir, seemed right. 68  Kléber was probably chosen by Bonaparte to succeed him because he believed there were still military goals the campaign needed to achieve. Kléber’s view was very much in tune with that of most of the French in Egypt, members of the military and members of the Commission of Arts and Sciences. See next chapter. 69  See Prosper Jollois, Journal d’un ingénieur attaché à l’expédition d’Égypte, 1798–1801 (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1904), especially his account of the first days in Rosetta. For a discussion of the compilation of the journal for the 1904 publication, see M. Dewachter, « Les manuscrits de l’ingénieur Jollois et la correspondance relative à sa première année en Égypte (1798–1799) », Revue d’égyptologie, 40, (1989), 201–215. For Menou’s investment in the welfare of the local population and in agriculture and his efforts to promote commerce, see George Rigault, Le Général Abdallah Menou, et la dernière phase de l’expédition d’Égypte, 1799–1801 (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1912).

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militaire et statistique sur Égypte70 was an effort to balance the prevailing notion that Egypt would not be a base from which the English would be driven out of India. The memoir demonstrated Egypt held value for France in itself, not only as a strategic post or even when it was not one. Menou first presented statistic details regarding the old colonies. The overseas empire, he wrote, generated in 1789 an annual profit of 201 million livres. As a result of the situation there since, France has been losing 100 million livres annually despite its continental trade. The Antilles, he wrote, were lost forever, but France could set its hopes on Egypt. The memoir then demonstrated the ways this new possession could substitute the old ones. Menou reminded Kléber that that was the wish of the government; otherwise, it would have not invested in such a costly expedition and promised that within ten years, under French administration, Egypt would become the most advanced and profitable colony in the world. The replacement of the West Indies by Egypt had a concrete aspect as well, according to Menou’s memoir. The former colonists of Saint-Domingue would come and settle there, transferring their experience and industries to Egypt, and developing factories to refine sugar and indigo.71 The concept of an Egyptian colony to replace the ones in the Antilles prevailed to the end. In France the expedition to Egypt was initially received with great enthusiasm. On September 14, 1798, the Directory announced in a long message to the Council of Five Hundred the safe arrival of Bonaparte and his forces there. It was the first official mention of the subject in public and the Directory elaborated the background to the expedition and its purpose.72 The message mentioned that the idea to take Egypt was brought up under the Ancien Régime, but that it was ultimately realised by the French Republic. It made a distinction between the Ottoman centre, allies of the French State, and the Mameluke beys in Egypt, rebels against both  The memoire is quoted in Rigault, pp. 25–29.  Members of the Commission of Arts and Science also expressed their views about the value of Egypt as a substitute for the Antilles. They presented their papers at the Institut de l’Égypte, and they were later published in the Décade égyptienne. See Citoyen Nectoux, “Projet d’un établissement d’agriculture en Égypte” in which he compared Egyptian methods of refining sugar to those in the Antilles, La Décade égyptienne, vol. I, pp. 104–109; and Citoyen Girard, « Mémoire sur l’agriculture et le commerce de la haute Égypte », La Décade égyptienne, vol. III, pp. 27–96. This last paper was reworked into a memoir in the Description. 72  The message was printed in Le Moniteur universel, 30 fructidor an VI [September 16, 1798] and in pamphlet form. See also Lokke, p. 218. 70 71

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French merchants and the Ottoman centre. The message tried to explain why the invasion should not be considered an act of war against the Ottomans. It ended with a vision of the future of Egypt as a rich country that would contribute to the welfare of the whole world by becoming a centre of commerce. Within a year from the landing in Egypt, as France encountered problems in the wars with the Second Coalition, the public mood and opinion changed against the Directory.73 On July 12, 1799, Rewbell, one of the Directors, was called before the Council of Elders to explain the decision taken in spring 1798 to send Bonaparte and his army to Egypt leaving France in such a precarious military situation without its most talented general. The following day, Talleyrand submitted his resignation, probably in a desire to distance himself from a failing Directory. The resignation was followed by an article in the Moniteur in which Talleyrand denied being the driving force behind the expedition and claimed the initiative went back to Delacroix who preceded him as foreign minister.74 It would take Bonaparte’s return to France to restore the public’s confidence in the wisdom of the Egyptian campaign and the enthusiasm to all things Egyptian. The right and need to colonise was not debated by the revolutionary elite and it’s supporting intellectuals and publicists. Even Volney, who had openly opposed the colonisation of Egypt in his 1787 account, expressed his strong support for the invasion once it had happened. The invasion of Egypt and the intentions of its colonisation and the plans to invest in its infrastructure and restore its centrality in world commerce were seen by contemporaries as both revolutionary and progressive. In their eyes, these new colonial plans were another aspect that distinguished revolutionary France from reactionary colonial practices based on slave labour and the annihilation of indigenous populations. As argued before, scholars in the field of postcolonial studies failed to see this aspect and often wrote about the invasion as demonstrating prevailing orientalist world views that excluded non-European civilisations from the universal proclamations about the Rights of Man. Juan Cole wrote of the foreign expansion policies of the Revolutionary era as “a repudiation of the arguments of the 73  Lokke argued that it was at that period that sending Bonaparte to Egypt came to be understood as a way of the Directory to keep its most popular general away from the political power centre in Paris. See Lokke, p. 222. 74  Moniteur, 29 messidor, an VII [July 17, 1799]; in pamphlet form: Éclaircissements donnés par le Citoyen Talleyrand.

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Enlightenment philosophers—who had decried the inequalities of colonialism…” Cole also argued that Talleyrand had “rejected the principled Jacobin argument for an end to colonialism, rooted in the Rights of Man, which they had marshalled in support for the abolition of slavery in 1794.”75 But neither Diderot, on the pages of the Histoire de deux Indes, nor contemporary intellectuals and policy makers saw a conflict between what they saw as progressive colonial practices and the ideas of the philosophes and the declarations of the Revolution.76

75  Juan Cole, Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 13–16. 76  For Diderot’s view, see Chap. 2.

CHAPTER 4

A Short History of the Making of the Description of Egypt

In March 1798, General Napoleon Bonaparte sent the Minister of Interior François Letourneux a list of nineteen men of science and letters he wished to take part in the Egyptian campaign, thus beginning the recruitment process of civilians to the Commission of Arts and Sciences.1 The commission’s civil engineers, most of them recent graduates and teachers of the newly founded Polytechnic School in Paris, set up plans for roads and bridges, surveyed and suggested improvements to the Egyptian irrigation system and worked to produce an up-to-date geographical map of the country. Others on the commission surveyed the country’s flora and fauna, its minerals, its agricultural produce and its demography. The medical teams collected information regarding food consumption, prevailing disease, family habits, belief systems and more. These were minutely recorded to be exploited for the sake of taxation, for the army’s immediate needs and for the sake of efficient control over the population. They were also evaluated for their potential to answer France’s commercial needs. On July 1, 1798, the French forces landed in Alexandria, and on August 22, a month after the occupation of Cairo, and only three weeks after Nelson destroyed the French fleet at anchor at the bay of Abukir, Bonaparte issued a decree that declared the establishment of the Institute of Egypt  Bonaparte’s letter to Letourneux in Napoléon Bonaparte, Correspondance générale, vol. II, page 56. For the minister’s letter to the savants, AN F17/1100. 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Sarfatti, The Description of Egypt from Napoleon to Champollion, War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15606-9_4

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and called for its first meeting the following morning at 7 a.m.2 The Egyptian Institute, modelled on the recently reformed National Institute in Paris, adopted one of the latter’s role as a state advisory body, a place where the state presented concrete questions to which the most capable individuals were expected to provide answers.3 The protocols of the Egyptian Institute’s sessions demonstrate that at first, this was seen as its primary role rather than the more abstract role of being both a repository of knowledge about Egypt and the place where scientific innovations were discussed, approved and disseminated. The recruitment of the savants, the creation of the Egyptian Institute and, later, Bonaparte’s decision to send two groups of scholars to systematically survey the antiquities of Upper Egypt were certainly not common practices of military invasions and can be (wrongly) regarded in retrospect, as premeditated milestones on the way to the publication of the Description of Egypt. But in order to understand the publication project, its problems, its inconsistencies and contradictions as well as its enormous achievements, it is important to follow the ways in which engineers and naturalists, medical personnel, orientalists and officers were drafting and drawing the sites of ancient and modern Egypt on their own initiative, well before any official decision was taken to do so. Decisions taken by Bonaparte and decrees proclaimed by General Jean-Baptiste Kléber (1753–1800), who replaced him in August 1799, were only formalising and articulating a reality that was happening since landing in Egypt, at various degrees of intensity, according to the military situation and the missions to which the people were assigned. These systematic and not so systematic researches were the material that informed the volumes of the Description of Egypt.

2  The decree of August 22 reads as follows: “1. Il y aura en Égypte un institut pour les sciences et arts lequel sera établi au Caire. 2. Cet établissement aura principalement pour objet: le progresse et la propagation des lumières en Égypte; le recherche, l’étude et la publication des faits naturels, industriels et historiques de l’Egypte; de donner son avis sur les différentes questions pour lesquelles il sera consulté par le gouvernement.” 3  Two years after the Royal Academies were abolished by the Convention (August 1793), the Institut national des sciences et des arts was created to include the previous academies structured somewhat differently (August 1795). See Maurice P.  Crosland, Science Under Control; The French Academy of Sciences, 1795–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

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Collecting the Material: Egypt4 The ways information was collected in Egypt varied. In private, many of the civilians filled their journals with notes in which they recorded daily experiences, events and rumours, as well as interesting things they saw or experienced. Some of them followed in their writings the genre of travel literature, possibly having in mind a future publication. There were notes written for a defined purpose such as the reports of the medical corps, or the notes taken by the geographers trained in conducting cadastres that were to provide information about the country. There were also less-­ structured and somewhat open-ended accounts presented at the Cairo Institute or intended to be published in the learned journals that appeared in Egypt.5 These accounts followed their respective forms of writing and emphasised subjects relevant to their purposes. But then there was Egypt, its unfamiliarity to the French eye, its colours, the clear and seemingly endless blue skies, the vast horizons, its inhabitants, the unfamiliar ways of life, and most of all, the history, remarkably preserved in the monuments of antiquity. The unexpected encounter with these, brought on an enthusiasm to record and report which defied all plans, and penetrated many of the more formal reports, often overtaking many of the missions that were decided upon in advance. One such well-documented example is the work done by the three young engineers, Prosper Jollois, Dubois-Aimé and Edouard de Villiers.6 The three were part of a hydrographical mission led by the more established engineer, Pierre-Simon Girard,7 who set out to Upper Egypt in March 1799 to carry a general study of the influence of the Nile on the fertility of the entire country. They were expected to collect comprehensive information on the Egyptian systems of irrigation and to assemble as complete documentation as possible on commerce, agriculture, trade,

4  An elaborate account of the work of the commission in Egypt is in Yves Laissus, L’Égypte, une aventure savant 1798–1801 (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1998). 5  The two journals printed in Egypt were La Décade Égyptienne and Courier de l’Égypte. 6   Prosper Jollois (1776–1842), Jean-Marie Dubois-Aimé (1779–1846), Edouard de Villiers du Terrage (1780–1855). They were Polytechnic graduates, Jollois of the first class and de Villiers du Terrage and Dubois-Aimé still students upon recruitment who passed their exit exams in Egypt. 7  Pierre-Simon Girard (1765–1836) graduated from the école des ponts et chaussées, before the Revolution.

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natural history and geography.8 They fulfilled the formal mission but, overwhelmed by the monuments of antiquity they encountered, the three young engineers set out to explore and sketch them, meticulously copying into their notebooks structures and wall paintings, hieroglyphs and a Zodiac.9 They did this on their own initiative, often to the pronounced discontent of Pierre-Simon Girard. Others were recording what they saw as well. The assignment of the geographical engineers was to take topographical measurements for the purpose of composing an up-to-date map of Egypt, based on observations and measurements to replace the 1765 map compiled by the armchair geographer, Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville (1697–1782). Colonel Pierre Jacotin,10 the director of the group of geographical engineers, kept elaborate notes of the missions of this group, and it is possible to see the ways in which many of the drawings and memoirs that individuals of the group produced on other topics correspond to their topographical missions.11 Edmé-François Jomard’s text on Lake Moeris and the Fayoum was based on notes and drawings taken when on such a mission. Dubois Aimé’s description of the Red Sea and his memoir about the flight of the Israelites were unintended results of his sojourn in that region.12 There were other more centralised initiatives, but these did not have a vision of publishing a cooperative work as their end. On August 9, 1798, a few weeks after landing in Egypt, René-Nicolas Dufriche Desgenettes, the army’s chief surgeon, circulated a letter to his subordinates titled “A 8  This mission resulted in an account by Girard: “Mémoire sur l’agriculture, l’industrie et le commerce d’Egypte”, in Description de l’Égypte, État Moderne, tome II. 9  For a description of the mission and the archaeological initiative, see E. de Villiers du Terrage, Journal et souvenirs sur l’expédition d’Égypte (1798–1801) mis en ordre et publiés par le baron Marc de Villiers du Terrage (Paris: Plon, 1899), pp. 94–224 and Prosper Jollois, Journal d’un ingénieur attaché à l’expédition d’Egypte (1798–1802) (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1904), pp. 90–125. Their work will be discussed in Chaps. 7, 8 and 9. 10  Pierre Jacotin (1765–1827), a geographical engineer who had received his training before the Revolution as an apprentice to his uncle Dominique Testevuide (1735–1798), at the cadastre of Corsica. Testevuide headed the corps of geographical engineers in Egypt and had taken Jacotin as his deputy. When Testevuide was killed during the Cairo Revolt of October 1798, Jacotin replaced him as head of the group. 11  The documentation of Jacotin is reproduced in Paul Pallary, « Le corps des ingénieurs géographes de l’Armée d’Orient » in La Géographie: Terre-Air-Mer (Paris: Société de Géographie, octobre 1936), pp. 137–165. 12  Edmé-François Jomard (1777–1862) was a graduate of the first class of the Polytechnic and continued his studies to become a geographical engineer. In 1807 he became the editor in chief of the Description of Egypt. His contributions will be discussed throughout the book.

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proper plan to draft the physical and medical topography of Egypt”.13 The information was for the purpose of securing the health of the soldiers and of the local inhabitants. The elaborate form he introduced was to facilitate the task of recording the observations of the medical personnel in the localities they were stationed, and to neutralise subjective impressions as has been recently done in France.14 The topographical mapping of disease was related to the reforms in the medical profession in France, in which Desgenettes had played an active role, and to the notion that the causes of disease are unhealthy environments.15 Within a short while the Décade égyptienne, of which he was editor, published the reports as they came in from different parts of Egypt.16 They were written in laconic bureaucratic language, closely following Desgenettes’ instructions, and often mentioning the inability to collect information for one or more of the categories. Noting the inability to provide full information was almost as important as the facts provided. These were the signs of an objective scientific account as opposed to the more impressionistic accounts of travel literature. The understanding that unsupervised studies, so to speak, were being conducted by the rank and file of the commission, and in an effort to assert the Cairo Institute’s authority over the study of Egypt, a centralised research initiative was put forward by one of the Institute’s members. The Décade Égyptienne reported in June 1799 that the Cairo Institute decided that the French engineers and scientists who resided in different parts of Egypt and were appointed to carry specific projects should, at the same time, conduct research that would enhance the knowledge in geography, commerce and agriculture of the country and would serve to introduce its ancient monuments. They would send their research to the Cairo Institute where it 13  René-Nicholas Dufriche Desgenettes (1762–1837) in addition to his medical role served as editor of the journal La Décade Égyptienne, and would become, following Gaspard Monge’s return to France with Bonaparte in August 1799, the secretary of the Cairo Institute. 14  The plan appears in full in the Décade Egyptienne, vol. I N.1, p. 29. 15  For more on this pre-germ concept of disease, see M F Rofort and J. P. Besancenot “Aux sources de la géographie de la santé: les topographies médicales en France aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles” Geographica Medica 21, 7–14. For the medical revolution in France, see Martin S. Staum, Cabanis: Enlightenment and Medical Philosophy in the French Revolution (Princeton New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980); Elizabeth Williams, The Physical and the Moral: Anthropology, Physiology, and Philosophical Medicine in France 1750–1850 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 16  See, for example, La Décade égyptienne Vol I N.3, for description of Menouf province; N5 for the inhabitants of the Said; Vol II N.4 for Damietta.

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would be discussed by a committee that would initiate and direct further research in the different localities. The committee, made up of members of the Cairo Institute, all professionals in their respective fields, never fulfilled its task, possibly because the suggestion was brought up only a short while before some of them joined Bonaparte on his trip back to France.17 In August 1799, on the eve of his departure for France, Napoleon Bonaparte ordered two research commissions to be sent to Upper Egypt to systematically record its monuments of antiquity. This was to be a well-­planned and well-financed enterprise with concrete goals. It was clear to all participants that their findings would receive some kind of public attention, though the talks about a cooperative publication were only then beginning to form. The work of the two commissions produced material of diverse quality because of the very different abilities of their participants and of the two men who headed them: Louis Costaz and Joseph Fourier.18 Costaz’s group was to draw the ancient monuments, and that of Fourier was to provide the details of the bas-reliefs, the interiors and the wall paintings. They took precise measurements of the monuments, sketched them briefly and planned to follow-up with elaborate drawings when conditions allowed. Wall paintings, scriptures and signs were to be copied meticulously. This division of labour between the two groups and within the groups themselves, with the addition of the drawings individually done by the artist André Dutertre19 and by Jollois and de Villiers on their own, made up most of the descriptive texts and the engravings of the volumes of Ancient Egypt in the final publication. With the growing understanding that some form of collaborative publication of the material gathered in Egypt would take place, General Kléber 17  La Décade égyptienne, vol. II N. 5. The fields of expertise of the committee members were Claude Berthollet (1748–1822), chemistry; Gaspard Monge (1746–1818), geometry; Nicolas-Antoine Nouet (1740–1811), astronomy; Louis Costaz (1767–1842), mathematics; and Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772–1844), natural sciences. Monge and Berthollet returned to France in August. 18  The letters of the two heads of the mission are in Desgenettes, Souvenirs d’un médecin de l’expédition d’égypte (Paris: Calmann Lévi éditeur, 1893), pp. 64–68 for Costaz’s letter; pp. 69–75 for that of Fourier. 19  André Dutertre (1753–1842). An artist and engraver, member of the Cairo Institute, Dutertre did not belong to the immediate circle that made up the Commission of Science and Arts. His contribution to the work will be discussed in Chap. 7.

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tried to systemise research about modern Egypt. In October 1799, he chose a committee and provided it with a place to work and a budget. The archives show that stationary with a letterhead was printed, and work was divided between different areas of study. The initial choice of people, all members of the Institute of which only Fourier had participated in the commissions sent to Upper Egypt, did not produce the required results, and new ones were selected, among them Pierre Jacotin, head of the unit of geographical engineers, and Pierre Simon Girard who headed the unit of engineers that covered irrigation and water supplies. But aside from forming an elaborate scheme for collecting the material, a scheme celebrated on the pages of the Courier de l’Égypte as a demonstration of the systematic and scientific research that was initiated by Kléber, the research was never accomplished, and at the end of February, Jacotin reported its failure.20 The reasons were many. With the departure of Bonaparte, and with the inspiration of General Kléber who saw no point in staying in Egypt, the ongoing resistance of the local population, the heat, the diseases and deaths of colleagues, all brought about a change of mood among many of the civilians. Geoffroy Saint Hilaire—initially, among the more enthusiastic members of the expedition—wrote in a letter to George Cuvier words that captured the change of mood: “Yes my friend, it will so happen that the work of the Committee of Arts will excuse in the eyes of posterity, the light-headedness with which our nation has, as it were, rushed to the East.”21 At the end of December 1799, an Ottoman army, supported by a British one, occupied the fortress of el-Arish leading to the convention of el-Arish and an evacuation agreement between the French forces and the 20  See Courier de l’Égypte N. 52 and 54 for the general plan for research on etat modern; N.56 for an elaborate description of the Tableau by Jacotin and Girard. Jacotin’s report of failure is misplaced in the archives. It appears in NAF 21959 p. 67 among memoirs submitted to the editorial committee. 21  Geoffroy Saint Hilaire to George Cuvier, Cairo, 6 frimaire an VIII [27 November 1799], in Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Lettres écrites d’Égypte, recueilliées et publiées par E-T Hamy (Paris: Librairie Hachette 1901), p.  147. Étienne Geoffrey Saint Hilaire (1772–1844), a naturalist from the Jardin du plantes, alongside his then friend and later professional rival, George Cuvier. Saint Hilaire was at the beginning of his professional career at the time of the expedition, and would become a member of the National Institute only after Egypt.

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British Admiral Sir Sidney Smith. Paris seemed closer. The savants gathered their material and boarded a ship named L’Oiseau which was to take them home. They waited for one whole month for clearance of passage from the British, which never arrived.22 The occupation was reinstalled in full by the end of March. The savants were to stay eighteen more months in Egypt. In June 1800, General Kléber, the biggest supporter of withdrawal, was assassinated adding to the overall distress that took over the group. Though they continued to work, take notes and measure sites around them, it was not with the enthusiasm and coordination that characterised the work in Upper Egypt. General Jacques-François Menou (1750–1810), who replaced General Kléber following the assassination of the latter, failed to harness the savants’ enthusiasm to his aspirations regarding Egypt. From the initial stages of the French occupation, Menou was the most devoted adherent to the idea of transforming Egypt into a model enlightened colony, with good relationship between the French and the local inhabitants.23 Menou’s personal life—he married the daughter of a local merchant, converted to Islam and was renamed Abdallah—gained him more ridicule than favour among the French. He did initiate some research, but this was local and no longer had the pretension of covering the whole country. One such project was an in-depth study and precise measurements of the pyramids of Gizeh. In scholarly terms, the time in Egypt was now spent in preparation for a future publication. Those of the savants who did not have other obligations were organising their notes, turning them into memoirs and comparing what they saw with what had been written about Egypt in the books available at the Institute’s library. A brief look at the topics of the

22  The agreement reached between Sir Sidney Smith and General Kléber was not accepted by London. On the fallout between Smith and his superiors, see John Barrow, The Life and Correspondence of Admiral Sir William Sidney Smith (London: R.  Bentley, 1848) (2 volumes). 23  See AN F17/1100 for Menou’s letters to the Minister of Interior requesting books to build a big library in Alexandria. The list he sent contained 5380 titles. See also his letters to the Museum of Natural History asking for plants and trees for the purpose of planting a jardin des plants in Egypt for the purpose of agricultural experiments and instruction.

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memoirs read at the Cairo Institute shows the change of focus from memoirs based on observation to ones based on texts.24

The Library of the Egyptian Institute The library taken to Egypt was assembled by General Caffarelli du Falga upon Bonaparte’s request, its books brought from the depots confiscated by the Revolution from aristocratic households.25 Bonaparte listed some of the titles he wanted to be included in the library, among them: Entretiens sur la pluralité des Mondes by Fontenelle (1701), Lettres à une Princesse d’Allemagne sur divers sujets de physique by Leonhard Euler (1668), Les cours de l’école normale de l’an III and treaties about artillery and fortifications. He asked for les Voyages de Cook and Abrégé de l’histoire générale des Voyages by la Harpe, (1780). Under books of history, his list included unspecified titles by Titus Livius, Tacitus, Plutarch, Polybius and Thucydides, Mémoires des maréchaux des France, Abbé Raynal’s Histoire de deux Indes, Voltaire’s Essai sur les mœurs des nations and books about Fréderic II; Pierre le Grande; Prince Eugene of Savoy, Condé; Villars,

24  The two French journals published in Cairo reported the readings of memoirs. See, for example, Courier de l’Égypte N 32 and N. 36 about Denon’s findings in Upper Egypt; N37 Girard about the believed “pieds de Memnon” N. 52 report about Cecile’s drawings; and N. 53 report about Balzac’s drawings. But from October 1800: N 83 a discussion of Paul Lucas’s book and N. 84 reports of Fourier’s memoir read at the Institute titled: “Tableau des revolutions et des moeurs de l’Égypte … jusqu’après la conquête de Selim”. The same change in focus can be seen in the Décade égyptienne: N.1 An essay on fabrication of saltpetre; Description of the route between Cairo and Salekhiyah; N2 Monge on the Mirage; and observations of the medical officers sent to Desgenettes. Later issues have mostly works translated by the orientalists from Arabic. 25  Alexandre Keller, (éditeur), Correspondances, Bulletins et Ordres du Jours de Napoléon Bonaparte (Paris: Albert Mericant, 19 ??), IV, 122–122. The list is also mentioned in M. de Bourrienne, Mémoires de M. de Bourrienne, ministre d’état sur Napoléon, le directoire, le consulat, l’empire et la restauration: avec des notes ajoutées des mémoires de Napoléon écrits á St. Hélène, des mémoires du duc de Rovigo, de celles du général Rapp, de Constant, et des plusieurs autres sources authentiques. (Paris: Colburn et Bentley, 1831), 10 volumes.

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Turenne and others, their titles not specified.26 He asked for Ossian’s poetry, Ariosto, Homer, Virgil and the Adventures of Telemachus by Fenelon. He added a general request for the works of the masters of French theatre, novels by Voltaire, Rousseau and Goethe and works by Marmontel, presumably his Tragedies, and “des Romans Anglais”. It is interesting to note that under the title of political and moral works, Bonaparte included the Old and New Testaments, the Koran, the Vedas, a work he titled Mythologies and Montesquieu’s Esprit des Lois. Bonaparte’s wishes were granted but the library included much more. The list of the books in the cases that arrived back from Egypt upon evacuation holds some five thousand volumes that made up the Institute’s library to be used in its reading rooms or to be lent out for research or leisure.27 The list of books taken provides some indication as to what Caffarelli du Falga and most probably, a wider milieu, thought would be relevant information for a colonial project in general, and more specifically, for surveying Egypt. It is also an indication of what he thought would be desired reading for pastime of a diversified group of Frenchmen. Given the size of the library and the variety of books it included, it would be misleading to emphasise one intellectual tradition over another or to make far-reaching claims about the beliefs, colonial intentions and views of the group. A close look at which of the available books were actually used and referred to in the texts may provide a more productive way to address these questions. 26  There were some accounts in French of Eugene, prince of Savoy available, some translated from English, others abbreviated compilations from different works; one may assume that in regard to Pierre le Grand, Bonaparte was referring to Voltaire’s Histoire de l’Empire de Russie sous Pierre le Grand (1759–1763); regarding Louis Hector Villars, the reference may be to his memoires published in 1735 or to an account of his military campaigns published in 1715; the reference to a book about Frederic II opens up a few possibilities as well. Bonaparte had read and took notes from a book about him but scholars failed to identify the book which he had read. The book referred to as Condé is probably Essai sur la vie du Grand-Condé, written by Louis Joseph de Bourbon-Condé. 27  The contents of the cases that returned to France from the library of the Cairo Institute are in AN F17/1100 (file 8). Inventories made by Fourier of contents found in houses of members of the Commission of Arts and Science who have died in Egypt demonstrate individual reading habits and the lending function of the library. See, for example, AN F17/1099 (file 3). The inventory at the apartment of Saint Simone, an engineer who died during the Syrian campaign, included, among other books, Norden’s Travels in Egypt and Nubia (in English), Vocabolario Maltesa (Italian) as well as unspecified miscellaneous Italian poetry, Virgil (not specified) and Milton’s Paradise Lost (English). Norden is said to have belonged to the Institute’s library.

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The eclectic collection included works in political economy that ranged from books about the mercantile policies of Louis XIV through the assembled works of the physiocrats28 to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and William Robertson’s work on the commerce of the Spanish colonies in the Americas. There were the expected works regarding Egypt, among them those of travellers of the eighteenth century—Volney, Savary, Pococke, Lucas, Nordon and Niebuhr and the work of the Baron de Tott about the Ottoman Empire. There was a History of the Arabs, and Williams Eton’s, Tableau historique, politique et moderne de l’empire Ottoman, and the seventeenth-­century collection under the title Relation de divers voyages curieux qui n’ont point esté publiées ou qui ont esté traduites d’Hacluyt, de Purchas et d’autres voyageurs anglois, hollandois, portugais, allemands, espagnols et de quelques persans, arabes et autres auteurs orientaux published in Paris between 1663 and 1696. There were works in chemistry, astronomy and physics and Buffon’s Natural History, as well as Histoire naturelle de l’Égypte from 1581 to 1584 and Traduction de l’ancien ouvrages latins sur l’agriculture, possibly an indication of an assumption that ancient ways of cultivations would be relevant in Egypt. Books in philosophy ranged from Aristotle to Hobbes, Blaise Pascal to Helvetius and Baron d’Holbach. There was Bougainville’s geographical Atlas of Egypt, but also of other continents, and many works on India, among them the recent work by William Bolts, État civil, politique et commerçant du Bengale, ou Histoire des conquêtes et de l’administration de la Compagnie angloise dans ce pays and Quentin Craufurd’s Esquisses de l’histoire, de la religion, des sciences et des mœurs des Indiens, avec un exposé très court de l’état politique actuel des puissances de l’Inde published in French in 1791. The library held Wadström’s work on Sierra Leone as well as Clermont-Lodève’s De l’État et du sort des colonies des anciens peuples. There were the recently published Voyage pittoresque ou Description des royaumes de Naples et de Sicile (four volumes, 1781–1786), a collective work edited by Saint Non and Piganiol de la Force’s Introduction à la Description de la France et au droit public de ce royaume of the mid-eighteenth century, Bossuet’s Histoire universelle as well as biographies among them La vie de Turgot. There were numerous books of 28  Collection of essays titled: Physiocratie, ou Constitution naturelle du gouvernement le plus avantageux au genre humain (A Yverdon: Fortunato Bartolomeo de Felice, M. DCC. LXVII). Éditeur: De Felice, Fortunato Bartolomeo (1723–1789), Quesnay, François (1694–1774). Éditeur scientifique: Dupont de Nemours, Pierre-Samuel (1739–1817).

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leisure, novels and poetry from ancient times to the present, the very popular Monument du costume physique et moral de la fin du dix-huitième siècle ou tableaux de la vie, of 1789 by Jean Michel, that was brought for leisure but possibly inspired those who were drawing the inhabitants of modern Egypt. There was also the expected Mille et un Nuits. The wide range of works enabled those stationed in Cairo to begin to work on transforming their notes into more scholarly memoirs. It was clear to all that some form of collaborate publication was imminent. They also knew that any deliberations and power struggles as to the form the publication should take were futile. Napoleon, now First Consul, would have the final word.29 The evacuation of Egypt finally began in September 1801.

In France Only with their return to France, and upon leaving quarantine, at the beginning of 1802 did the members of the Commission of Arts and Sciences sense and understand the impact the expedition had had on the French imagination. They knew that some of those who took part in the expedition have published anecdotes from Egypt; they were aware of (and actually participated in) reports from Egypt published in the Parisian journal la Décade philosophique, but the degree of public interest for anything Egyptian generated with Bonaparte’s arrival in France in October 1799— an interest Bonaparte did to enhance—was not understood from afar. The failure of the colonial project changed the conversation about Egypt. It was no longer discussed as a strategic asset, at least not in public discourse, but as an object of study. The research of the group would now take central stage at the National Institute and in learned journals. As the interest from learned societies and from the reading public at large to read about Egypt was constantly growing, it was time for Bonaparte to provide his authoritative version of the expedition. In December 1801, Antoine François de Fourcroy,30 in his role as conseiller d’état, and probably following Bonaparte’s request, presented him 29  Michel Ange Lancret to Jollois [1 ventôse an IX] February 20, 1801: « il faut ne parler de rien avant que l’on soit en France. Là, le Petit Caporal saura bien se faire obéir, et il n’aura, pour cela, qu’à dire: Je désire. », in Prosper Jollois, Journal d’un ingénieur attaché à l’Expédition 1798–1802 (Introduction). 30  Antoine Francois de Fourcroy (1755–1809), chemist, professor at the Museum of Natural History and teacher at the école polytechnique, before his nomination to the role.

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with a paper about the ways and means to assemble and publish with exactitude the monuments of science and arts that were collected in Egypt.31 It was important, wrote Fourcroy, for the government to promptly collect the vast research conducted and publish it together, so that it won’t be lost or published in fragments by individuals. Fourcroy proposed to create a commission of twenty four members, chosen from the scientists of the expedition, to plan and execute the work on ancient and modern Egypt. This was the only way, he wrote, to overcome the unauthorised versions that seem to be flooding the world of letters. Antoine Fourcroy’s proposal began the deliberations regarding the work, its contributors and the ways to achieve the publication. Behind the scenes discussions were taking place as to the form the work should take, and whether it should include research by men of science that did not participate in the expedition, and as to who the members of the editorial committee would be.32 The young Polytechnic graduates expressed their fear that the project would be overtaken by renowned scientists and orientalists, but this never materialised. The editorial committee was made up strictly of égyptiens, the name now used for those who had been there. The two beloved Polytechnic teachers who had previously joined Bonaparte in the Italian campaign, Gaspard Monge and Claude Berthollet, kept the central roles they had held within the group: Monge’s apartment was the place the committee met every week and Berthollet was president of the committee for publication, his signature present on all texts before they were cleared for print. But the executive power of the editorial committee moved quite quickly to the hands of the young graduates of the Polytechnic. First, Michel Ange Lancret, Monge’s favourite student, served as assistant to Nicolas Conté, the project’s first editor in chief.33 When Conté died in 1805, Lancret became editor and made Edmé-François Jomard secretary. In 1807, following Lancret’s early death, Jomard took the role of editor in chief, and Jollois became secretary, positions the two held to the end, in 1829. They were all engineers,  AN AFF IV 1050, pièce 1.  Prosper Jollois, Journal d’un ingénieur attaché à l’Expedition 1798-1802, Letter from de Villiers to Jollois, January 9, 1802. 33  Nicolas-Jacques Conté (1755–1805), an exceptional figure, whose work will be discussed in Chap. 7. He was an artist by training who had also studied chemistry and physics and had gradually made a reputation during the Revolution as an inventor. Conté was the director of the short-lived school at Meudon for aerostatic experiments; he collaborated closely with Monge and the Polytechnic School. 31 32

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graduates of the first class of the Polytechnic, friends and loyal students of Gaspard Monge and Claude Louis Berthollet now working together to provide a description of Egypt. Monge and Berthollet enjoyed easy access to and some influence on Bonaparte, and Berthollet who revived the use of his aristocratic title with the Empire was an important asset in negotiating the continuation of the project when the Bourbons returned to power in 1814 and again in 1815. A formal decree issued by Bonaparte on February 6, 1802, stated that the expenses of the publication were to be borne by the government and the profits were to go to its authors.34 Jean-Antoine Chaptal (1756–1832)— at the time, Minister of Interior—was to provide the finances and establish the working process. In March, he sent out a letter to all members of the Cairo Institute and those of the Commission of Arts and Sciences to submit an inventory of the material they proposed to include in the Ouvrage sur l’Égypte. It is worth noting that Chaptal, the industrial chemist, was also a teacher at the Polytechnic during its first years, alongside Monge, the founder, Berthollet and Fourcroy. It is important to bear in mind that the letters of Monge and Berthollet to the minister, explaining delays in the project or asking for budget increase, were actually a negotiation between colleagues, close friends who have worked together since 1795 at the school, and have served on different committees that were to find solutions to the needs of the young Republic for arms and ammunition even before. It was a milieu that shared a common background and a common language developed while working at the Polytechnic School. Chaptal’s decree of April 21 established the working process. The publication of the Description of Egypt would follow the processes of peer review as in the publications of learned societies. The texts would be read at a general assembly of contributors and examined according to the interest of their subject, the precision of the facts and the consistency of the composition. The drawings will follow the same process. They will be evaluated for being exact and well executed. The general assembly of contributors will decide whether a work will be included in the collection. A permanent committee would then further examine it and recommend corrections when needed. Should the author refuse, he will be referred to the general assembly. If the assembly’s opinion will differ from that of the committee, the Minister of Interior will have the final word.35 This ­working  AN F17/1101 and a copy at BN NAF 3577 (MF 15281).  AN F17/1101 (Decree dated 1 floréal).

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process was generally observed; the archives show the committee rarely suggested substantial amendments and that the assembly had—without exception—accepted the recommendations of the committee. It is possible that significant comments or disputes were dealt with in an informal manner. The decree further said that all material had to be approved by the president of the committee before going to print, that expenses will be approved by the minister and that the committee was authorised to consult and seek help of any expert it wanted regarding the memoirs. The members of the committee who did not hold other salaried jobs were paid a salary by the government.

Visions for the Published Work It is difficult to conclude from the published work what its original plan was. The final product of 1829 was a result of the original intentions and plans influenced and modified when confronting realities and the constraints these imposed through the years. It is not even clear if one can write of one original plan, because this too was a result of the interactions between the different players, their respective professional traditions, their personal talent and their relative strength and persistence in the editorial committee. However, some documents in the archive indicate the main components that the members of the group believed a description of Egypt should include. Chaptal’s initial circular asked to submit proposals to be included in the future publication under four categories: geography, natural history, ancient Egypt and modern Egypt. While very general categories, and different in kind, the letters received from future contributors indicate they were commonly understood. Once responses from the future contributors arrived in Paris, the editorial committee tried to insert them into a more elaborate outline they had prepared which was to have a parallel structure for texts about ancient and modern Egypt.36 An introduction was to include two works, one by Fourier and the other by Costaz, the two that had headed the commissions to Upper Egypt. The committee gave but a general idea of what it believed the sections of natural history, physical state of the country and geology should include. It recommended a division into species and expressed a wish for this section to be set according to geographical environments (i.e. fish of the Nile, a mineralogical  BN manuscrits, NAF 21957.

36

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­ escription of a certain valley, etc.), but emphasised this would be decided d by the experts in these subjects among the égyptiens. All through the working process, the material in natural history and mineralogy was seen as a work for professionals. Memoirs on these topics were not read at the assembly of contributors, and there are no reports of them in the committee’s papers, only discussions of deadlines and proofreadings. The orientalists of the group too wrote in the area of their expertise, translating Arab sources or writing of the different languages used in Egypt and the religions practiced there.37 As for writing about Egypt, both ancient and modern, having been there was the only required qualification. Thus, one could read in the proposals sent to the minister of interior a suggestion of Raffeneau Delile, a naturalist, to write about the Rosetta Stone and its Greek inscriptions, or a proposal from the mineralogist Rozière to write “Observations on the Hieroglyphs” to give but two examples.38 Very similar to the organisation of Richard Pococke’s travel account, A Description of the East,39 a book that presented its descriptions of the monuments of ancient Egypt “as if he had seen them all when he went up the Nile”,40 the editorial committee of the Description of Egypt organised its textual descriptions in a geographical arrangement, though they followed the flow of the Nile from Upper Egypt to the Delta region. The geographical arrangement, though similar to travel accounts from which they wanted to distance their work, was a common antiquarian method of

37  Delaporte explained in his reply to the Minister of the sources of his and his fellow orientalists work: “C’est en traduisant plusieurs auteurs arabes qui sont en notre profession que nous avons tiré ces renseignements dont nous avons vérifié la certitude sur les lieux qui ont été le théâtre des événement même … . » Even in works based on philological expertise the verification of the facts was done by ‘being there.’ It is interesting he referred to the Arab chroniclers as sharing the same profession as the Orientalists. BN NAF 21939 letter of 4 germinal an X [March 25, 1802]. 38  The engineers suggested the largest number of topics that were beyond their professional skills. 39  The French translation: Voyages de Richard Pococke en orient, dans l’Égypte, l’Arabie, la Palestine, la Syrie, la Grèce, la Thrace, etc. trad. de l’anglois par une société de gens de lettres [par de La Flotte] (Paris: J. P. Costard, 1772–1773). Fourier had the English version first published in 1743. 40  Pococke, introduction, p. IV.

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organisation.41 It also enabled the committee to side-step questions of ancient chronology and its architectural style that they were unable to answer at the time. The parallel structure of the memoirs on ancient and modern Egypt was to include memoirs about legislation, administration, habits customs and manners, religious systems, languages (including inscriptions), demography, chronology, music and musical instruments, dance, astronomy, arts and crafts, agriculture, architecture and commerce. The sources for ancient Egypt were to be, in addition to orientalist texts, the wall paintings the group copied from ancient monuments. The sources for modern Egypt were mostly to be taken from their observations. The chronology part for modern Egypt, a period defined by the group to have begun with the Arab conquest of 638, included suggestions to write about the mid-thirteenth century failed seventh crusade led by Louis IX of France (Saint Louis) who tried to use Egypt as a base from which to attack Jerusalem, and the answers given by a mid-eighteenth-century Danish expedition to questions proposed by the Biblical scholar Johann David Michaelis.42 The appendix was to include a military history of the expedition written by Bonaparte, papers read at the Cairo Institute, memoirs and notices from the two journals published in Egypt and a few memoirs that did not fit into any of the proposed categories. The initial response to Chaptal’s circular was dominated by those defined as orientalists, antiquarians and men of letters. Twenty of the forty-one memoirs about ancient Egypt and twenty of the forty-two memoirs were suggested by those who were listed as such in the lists of the Commission of Arts and Science. The other texts were suggested by contributors of which some were listed as engineers. At the time, the main contribution of the engineers was their drawings and some occasional comments and reflections that derived from them. This changed 41  Rosemary Hill writes of the early English antiquarians of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, who were telling its story geographically, county by county, as well as chronologically, speaking to a readership whose sense of the past was more closely tied to location than date. She mentions the series The Beauties of England and Wales; or, Delineations, topographical, historical, and descriptive (London, 1790…) whose volumes, dedicated to different counties, are an example of Romanticism rediscovering the idea of history as landscape. Rosemary Hill, Time’s Witness, History in the Age of Romanticism (London: Allen Lane/ Penguin Random House Group, 2021), pp. 15–16. 42  The expedition of 1761 whose only survivor was Carsten Niebuhr will be addressed in Chap. 9.

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completely in the published work. The engineers dominated the memoirs, those on antiquity as well as those on modern Egypt.43 Of the seventy-four memoirs about ancient and modern Egypt, only ten were written by those defined as men-of-letters almost all the others were written by the engineers. These numbers demonstrate the deteriorating commitment on behalf of the men of letters to the project, but also it appears to suggest a shift in the relative importance of the source of knowledge about Egypt from one derived from texts and manuscripts to one derived from “having been there”. The proposed introductory essays were to offer together the history of the work of the Commission of Arts and Sciences. Fourier was to write « Précis historique du voyage littéraire et de l’expédition » and Costaz an essay titled « Rapport historique des opérations présidées par M. Costaz dans la Haute Egypte ». The idea of writing a history of the work of the commission persisted and was considered an essential part of presenting the research about Egypt. It was to contribute to the distinction between the work and its scientific qualities and common travel accounts. This part, written as a descriptive journal, was not to address the country but the research project taken when there. It was to be an account of the circumstances that either favoured or impeded the research carried out, and in that it was intended to be closer to an account of a scientific experiment than to a travel account. For that purpose, said the committee’s report, it would have to be included only after all memoirs and engravings were submitted, for its contents had to be related to those very memoirs and engravings. In other words, this part was to have the appearance of a journal written in Egypt but would actually be composed, possibly according to notes taken when there, but only after the fact.44 This plan never materialised. There was never a time when the committee held together all the memoirs and engravings before publication. In 1806, it became clear to the editorial committee that they would have to publish the work in instalments. Fourier’s préface historique had now to achieve two goals. It was to narrate the history of Egypt up to the French

43  They dominated the engravings as well, especially those of ancient Egypt and the geographical atlas, the explanation of engravings and the descriptions of antiquity. 44  All through the work the documentary style is kept though the texts were often written many years later.

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invasion as well as to provide an account of the scholarly project.45 The task was impossible to follow as intended for only a small part of the work was ready for publication in 1809 when Fourier was composing his introduction. He did tell the story of the expedition but was able to report in detail only the circumstances in which books published by individuals upon their return to France were created. Fourier noted the events in Upper Egypt that were happening, while Vivant Denon, whose account was published independently, took his notes and sketches46; he mentioned the medical accounts that were the source material to the book by the army surgeon Dominique Jean Larrey47 as well as the military operations that provided the material for the book published by General Berthier.48 As for the circumstances in which the memoirs, engravings and descriptions that would appear in the Description of Egypt—the work for which he was writing his introduction—were created, these were mentioned in a very general way, reproducing the general categories cited above, and commenting in a nonspecific manner about the obstacles encountered and the benefits of being part of the French expedition force.49 In individual published texts, one can read references to the circumstances in which drawings were made,50 and there are even drawings that offer the viewer the circumstances in which they were drawn.51 The histories of the scientific expedition as well as the history of the editorial committee were documented throughout the texts. Everything the committee did, wrote and discussed was seen as important information to be provided to the general public. 45  See BN NAF 21940, p. 123 letter of Fourier from September 1808 to the editorial committee in which he reminds its members they had agreed to provide his introduction only after reading all the texts of the first instalment. On February 6, 1810, Fourier submitted the final version of the historical preface. 46  « Ces circonstances … ont eu pour témoin un homme de goût, digne de les apprécier »Préface historique, p. 49. 47  Dominique Jean Larrey, Relation historique et chirurgicale de l’expédition de l’armée d’Orient en Egypte et en Syrie (Paris: Demonville, an XI). 48  Général Alexandre Berthier, Relation des campagnes du général Bonaparte en Egypte et en Syrie (Paris: Didot, an VIII). 49  Joseph Fourier, « Préface historique » pp. 854–886. 50  One example is Jollois and de Villiers text dedicated entirely to the drawing of the zodiac, see Edouard de Villiers and Prosper Jollois “Description des monumens astronomiques découverts en Egypte”. Antiquités, Descriptions, Tome I, appendice. 51  See, for example, Pyramides de Memphis, Antiquités, vol V pl. 13 « Vues de la galerie haute de la grande pyramide, prise du palier supérieur et du palier inférieur. »

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The Editorial Committee at Work Once formalised the Commission began its work immediately. Responses to Chaptal’s letter were quick to arrive, and future contributors provided long lists of material they actually held or planned to produce. There was scholarly interest in the topic, and prestige that could be gained in participating in such a project; there was also hope for economic benefits, and possibly, for a way to stay in France, and avoid the ongoing recruitments to Bonaparte’s army. Those whose work was essential to the publication were paid a salary and authors—so promised Bonaparte’s decree—would be paid according to the material published. The one to respond first to Chaptal’s circular with the longest list of topics was the enthusiastic geographical engineer Edmé-François Jomard.52 The committee was first located at the Louvre, whose director was now the artist Vivant Denon, a former member of the Cairo Institute.53 Its members met approximately every two weeks first at Monge’s house, and after his death in 1818, at that of Berthollet. The committee summoned the large assembly of contributors to hear presentations of memoirs and drawings as they were made available by their authors. At the beginning, the focus was on the engravings which the committee believed were the more complicated and time-consuming part of the work. In spring 1803 in order to better supervise and coordinate the work of the engravers, a workshop directed by the engraver Pierre Gabriel Berthault was installed at the Louvre.54 It was in this workshop that two of Nicolas Conté’s engraving machines were put to work. They were designed to help overcome the difficulties the drawings from Egypt presented both in their size and in their nature. At the same time, at the Dépôt de la Guerre, the work on the general map of Egypt had begun. Jacotin was the geographical engineer in charge of the work. He was helped by only two of his subordinates when in Egypt, Schouani and Lathuile, for the others were serving

 BN NAF 21941, p. 229. Jomard’s list included 143 items.  Denon’s account of Egypt and the subtle rivalry between his travel account and the more scholarly work of the group will be discussed in Chap. 5. 54  P.M. Grinevald, « La Description de L’Égypte, un monument éditorial » in L’expédition d’Égypte, une entreprise des Lumières1798–1801, Actes du colloque Paris, 8–10 juin 1998 (Paris: Académie des sciences, 1999), pp. 300–301. A book-length account of the editorial process of the Description de l’Égypte, by Grinevald is much awaited. 52 53

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Bonaparte’s war machine in various parts of Europe.55 The actual engraving of the map began on June 25, 1804.56 All notes and protocols taken during the meetings of the Cairo Institute, the memoirs presented there as well as copies of the two journals published in Egypt, La Décade Égyptienne and Le Courier d’Égypte, were joined to the relevant books, documents and notes from Egypt, and made available to the contributors to consult when preparing their drawings and writing the memoirs at the editorial committee’s rooms at the Louvre. This concentration of resources and the ability to meet and consult with fellow égyptiens did to encourage and facilitate the work of the future contributors. Initially, things seemed to be advancing quickly, and on April 21, 1804, Berthollet sent a long and optimistic report to the Minister of Interior in which he wrote that one hundred engravings have been completed, half of which represented the monuments of Upper Egypt much anticipated by the public.57 In January 1805, the committee reported that the number of engravings either done or were in the course of doing was 240.58 But the mood and pace changed quickly. In March 1805, the editorial committee had to leave its place at the Louvre and move to a much smaller space and therefore not very convenient for work.59 Conté was quite ill for some time and died on December 6, 1805, at the age of 50. Lancret, who served as secretary, replaced him as editor in chief and Jomard became 55  Jomard, to his great regret, was sent to Bavaria to survey and compose a map of the Palatinate. He sent numerous letters to his superiors in an effort to return to Paris “ma presence est nécessaire à la confection de l’ouvrage” he wrote General Sanson, the director of the dépôt de la guerre. Only in February 1803, thanks to the intervention of Monge and Berthollet, he was called back to Paris. See Yves Laissus, Jomard, le dernier Egyptien, pp. 71–75. 56  Jacotin, « Mémoire sur la construction de la carte de l’Égypte» in Description de l’Égypte, État Moderne. 57  The report appeared in Le Moniteur, n. 244, 4 prairial an XII (May 24, 1804). 58  AN F17/1103 17 nivôse an XIII (January 7, 1805) « Rapport fait à Son Excellence Le Ministre de L’intérieur par la Commission chargé de diriger l’exécution de l’Ouvrage sur l’Egypte ». 59  They moved to cul-de-sac Saint Thomas, later named rue de Doyenné, which is today the site of the place du Carrousel. In 1810 they moved again, this time, to better accommodations at the Institut de France. This accommodation was already planned and designed by Jomard to meet the needs of the work. Along the walls of the rooms were file drawers, where each finished plate was stored, its size large enough to hold a thousand copies. The cabinets were six drawers deep, and every Egyptian site had a bank of drawers to itself arranged in the order of the finished work.

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secretary of the editorial committee. The process of printing the texts, coordinating between them and the engravings and among themselves was not as quick and as easy as initially assumed. Proofreading was a long and tedious process especially since some of the contributors were no longer in Paris. Many now held roles in Napoleon’s administration. Joseph Fourier became prefect of Isère within a few weeks from landing in France and resided 575 kilometres away from Paris; Costaz was prefect of La Manche from 1804 and resided more than 300 kilometres away from the capital; Delaporte was sent to Tripoli as an interpreter to the French consul there; and Samuel Bernard, became sous préfet of Rochefort some 470 kilometres away, to name but some of the contributors. Some examples will demonstrate the way these circumstances delayed the work. Costaz, now in La Manche, corresponded with Jollois, from the end of 1807 to mid-1809 regarding his contributions to the first volume.60 He asked for certain engravings to be sent to him for consultation and to forward some questions to his fellow égyptiens pertaining to his texts. He then demanded to see the first, second and third proofs off-print before giving his final approval. All the while, he had to fulfil his obligations as prefect. In March 1808, he was instructed to intensify the recruitment to the army from his region.61 The texts he provided were but a minor contribution to the first volume: a memoir about Elythyia of twenty-nine pages and a note on Tuphium of one and a half pages that was an addendum to a chapter by Jomard on the description of Hermonthis. Costaz’s description of the Tombs of the Kings was but a short section of eighteen pages in a Description générale de Thèbes, a text of nearly four hundred pages written mostly by de Villiers and Jollois, and of which about eighty pages were written by Jomard. The editor had to insert Costaz’s text within a larger description, adding in footnotes references to plates that were to be published elsewhere. An additional memoir on

 All letters by Costaz are in BN manuscripts, NAF 21938.  The fourth coalition against France was defeated at the end of 1807. In February 1808, General Murat was assigned to be commander of the French forces in Spain. These recruitments were not for a specific war but in order to fill the rank and file. During the year and as the situation in Spain deteriorated after May 2 uprising in Madrid, there was an ongoing need to recruit. 60 61

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Nubia was of nine pages.62 Though these were very short essays in comparison to works by other contributors, they took about two years and numerous adjustments and delays to produce. Samuel Bernard’s correspondence demonstrates additional problems created by distance but also shows that the cooperative nature of the publication meant more than just an assembly of material from many contributors. It was also a cooperative endeavour at the level of writing. Samuel Bernard was an engineer of roads and bridges. Born in 1776, he belonged to that group of young engineers that came into their own with the progression of the publishing process. His nomination as sous préfet of Rochefort kept him away from Paris and the work of the committee.63 In the letters he sent to the committee, Bernard complained that the local library did not answer his needs. He needed Parisian libraries and the documents of the general administrator of finances in Egypt. But most of all, he wrote, he needed to consult his fellow collaborators.64 Initially he had offered to write a history of Egyptian coinage from the time of the Caliphs until the present and a memoir about the customs manners and ceremonies of the Egyptian Arabs, but the change of circumstances made it impossible for him to fulfil his commitment. Having planned to base his memoir about the Egyptian Arabs on the drawings of his fellow égyptiens, and unable to do it from Rochefort, he decided to give up on that memoir and write only about Egyptian coins, but that work too was constantly delayed. When pressure from the Restoration regime to complete the publication was mounting, Bernard suggested he would send his manuscripts to Jomard so that the latter would fill-in the missing parts of his work, “a service you have already rendered to some of my colleagues who 62  See the note on Tuphiam, the description of the Tombeaux des Rois in Antiquités Description, Tome I, on Nubie in État Moderne, mémoires Tome I, and on Elythyia in Antiquités, Mémoires, Tome I. [The pagination in the Description is internal to the text and does not signify its place within the volume, and therefore, is not indicated here.] 63  Samuel Bernard seemed to have escaped many of the scholars working on the Description of Egypt. He is not mentioned in the important work of Jean-Edouard Goby “Composition de la Commission des Sciences et des Arts d’Égypte” Bulletin de l’Institut d’Égypte, tome XXXVIII, 1957, and probably therefore, is not mentioned in those that followed. See Robert Solé, Les Savants de Bonaparte (Paris, éditions du Seuil, 1998). Bernard authored two essays in the Description, one of them close to 150 pages long “Notice sur les poids Arabes anciens et modernes” ÉEtat Moderne, tome II pp. 229–248)”; Mémoire sur les monnaies d’Egypte » (État Moderne, tome II pp. 321–468). Jomard called him to produce a table analytique des matières on which he worked between 1825 and 1829 but it was never published. 64  Bernard’s letters are in BN manuscripts, NAF 21937.

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were in a similar situation,” he wrote. In May 1818, more than eight years after he had begun corresponding with the editorial committee to explain the delays, and sixteen years after he had sent his suggestions to Chaptal, then Minister of Interior, Bernard received the first proofs of his memoirs, and in May 1821, they had gone through all the stages of production and were approved for publication. The delays in proofreadings created problems at the printing press. The arrangement of letters was held for long periods, and this was especially problematic in the memoirs that used Arabic fonts which were scarce. The frequent changes and corrections by the authors, the inconsistencies in transliteration of Arabic words by the contributors and inconsistencies as a result of debates and decisions by different schools of orientalists made the printing press a chaotic environment. Demange, the letter-setter and corrector at the printing press, who had studied Arabic with Jean-Joseph Marcel65 for the purpose of the job, wrote Jomard, the editor, in February 1816, a telling letter, in which he referred to a memoir by Marcel: “The frequent and recurring changes in this memoir, and the proof-readings done at times so distant from each other, have resulted in a disorder and a [difficulty] to classify the pages, that was very hard to repair. You will find at the end a table and fragments of texts that we did not know where to place.” 66 In 1806, the work was far from done and Bonaparte grew impatient and demanded to begin publication in small instalments of ten pages at a time. The members of the committee tried to resist the demand. By publishing the work in small portions, the work would lose its impact, they argued in a letter to the now two-year emperor and his minister; it would not reflect the grandeur of the expedition it was meant to represent. But their real worry was the impact of publication by instalments on the contents. They feared that the relations between textual descriptions and imagery would become unclear and that some memoirs written by different authors offering different points of view on the same topic would no longer have the nature of a scholarly debate.67 However, well aware the work was far from completion, they offered a compromise, to publish the 65  Jean-Joseph Marcel (1776–1854), an orientalist by training, went with the group to Egypt as interpreter and directed the printing press in Cairo. Upon return, Bonaparte nominated him the director of the National (later) Imperial Printing Press, a role he held until 1815. 66  BN NAF 21941, Letter of February 1816. 67  AN F17/1102 September 15, 1806.

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work in five instalments, beginning in July 1807—almost a year from the date of Bonaparte’s demand—and to publish an instalment every six months. The project was to end by July 1809.68 Bonaparte wanted the whole work, engravings and texts, to be printed in a “grand format de-lux like that of Mosaïque d’Italica, or Vivant Denon’s Voyage dans la haute et la basse Egypte.”69 This the committee resisted successfully, arguing that though the size was remarkable, it did not suit a work whose text might amount to ten or twelve volumes and whose learned contents required thoughtful consideration. It was not a book of leisure, they wrote, but one of serious scholarship, stating clearly a distinction between their work and that of Vivant Denon.70 These last negotiations were already conducted by Edmé-François Jomard. Michel Ange Lancret died in February 1807 but had been ill for some time before. Jomard became the editor of the work, a nomination he held until its completion. Prosper Jollois was nominated to be his secretary staying almost to the end as well. In 1823, when Jollois received a senior nomination to the corps des ponts et chausses, his contribution was reduced to a bare minimum.71 The delays continued as did the editorial committee’s dialogue with Bonaparte. They failed to persuade him to authorise the use of the map of Egypt to accompany the publication of the first instalment though it was ready for print. Bonaparte, who did not give up on the idea of a French colony in Egypt, saw the map as a valuable strategic asset to be kept secret rather than put in the public eye. This refusal created more problems for the editorial committee. As shown above, geography was one of the four categories that were to make up the work. The memoirs of geography were intended to form part of the essays of the volumes of modern Egypt. Most contributors put under the category of geography those of their proposals that dealt with descriptions of regions, villages, their inhabitants  AN F17/1102 October 17, 1806. These deadlines did not materialise.  Denon’s work and its popularity were always very close at hand. See Chap. 5. The Mosaïque d’Italica, or as its full title Description d’un pave en mosaïque découvert dans l’ancienne ville d’Italica, aujourd’hui le village de Santiponce près de Séville; suivie de recherches sur la peinture en mosaïque chez les anciens, et les monuments en ce. It had 103 pages of which 23 were plates and was published on paper 75 cm in length. Denon’s book was published in 1802 as well as by Didot, in two volumes containing 323 pages of text and 143 of plates. 70  AN F17/1101 February 28, 1807. 71  The last letter from Jollois in the archives is from 1826. 68 69

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and their agriculture. The map was to form the visual part that demonstrated the information in the texts in the same way that the drawings of monuments, insects or flowers were related to the textual descriptions and memoirs of antiquity. The materials for the map were separated from the rest, disposed at the dépôt de la guerre, and Pierre Jacotin and the team of geographical engineers with which he worked were under the authority of the Ministry of War. But the editorial committee had no reason to believe the three-page general map of Egypt would not be printed and ready to be placed at the head of the first instalment. In March 1808, the only question raised was about the number of pages of the topographical map that would be ready.72 On March 8, Berthollet informed the Minister of Interior of the circumstances that had prevented the publication of the first instalment.73 “Thinking of the benefit of our readers,” he wrote, “we wanted to wait for the map of Egypt to be ready. … The committee believed it will have the time to enrich the first instalment with the plates of Thèbes.” The letter accompanied an example copy of the fifty-page atlas for the minister to see. However, on October 6, 1808, the minister informed Jomard of the Emperor’s final decision not to allow any parts of the map to be published. The refusal included even Jomard’s more specific request for the hydrographical map that was to accompany the memoir about the canal between the two seas. For this purpose, suggested the minister in the name of the Emperor, they should use the map of D’Anville. The map of D’Anville was already engraved and ready for print. According to a report sent by Pierre Jacotin to the editorial committee in August 1803, its inclusion in the work would illustrate its inaccuracies and by comparison, the advantages of the work of the geographical engineers.74 Jacotin also elaborated about the text he would provide to accompany the map, indicating the wide range of topics expected from a geographical text. Its four parts were to include chronology of the main events and revolutions of Egypt, its ancient geography derived from texts 72  See correspondence between the committee and the Minister of Interior and that between General Samson, director of the Depot de la guerre, in AN F17/1104-1105 letters of January 27, February 18 and March 8. 73  AN F17/1104-5 March 8, 1808, Berthollet to Minister of Interior. The reader is reminded that the first of five livraisons was to appear in July 1807. 74  Jacotin’s report about the map is from 13 fructidor an XI [August 31, 1803]. The report is about the expected scale of the modern map of Egypt and suggests adjusting the engraving of the map of D’Anville. Jacotin wrote he expected the map to be ready by March 1804.

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and descriptions of modern Egypt, derived from observations. The fourth part would include military events. Chronology ranged from time immemorial to the rule of Cambyses, an indication that Egyptology, as a field of knowledge, had yet to wait for Champollion. It continued through the more known reigns of Alexander the Great and the Ptolemaic rulers, through to Roman rule, the Muslim conquest, the Ottoman conquest, Bonaparte’s conquest and the period from the French evacuation to the Treaty of Amiens.75 The text, wrote Jacotin, would constantly link the facts about Egypt to the history of the rest of the world by mentioning the countries and rulers that existed during each period. Jacotin never published but a long memoir about the construction of the map of Egypt. It took him many years to complete and it was published only in 1825.76 However, his work on the chronology of Egypt found its way—without being acknowledged—into Fourier’s préface historique.77 The map of Egypt was authorised for publication only by the Restoration regime. Bonaparte now scheduled a new deadline: the first instalment should be published for the celebrations of ten years to 18 Brumaire. The committee tried to fulfil the request. Some suggestions for a frontispiece that would celebrate the Emperor’s glory were put forward for him to approve, his choice was adopted, and the title of the work was now to include the words: “published by order of Napoleon the Great.” However, the delays continued, the 18 Brumaire deadline was missed, and Bonaparte expressed his dissatisfaction in a decree from December 4, 1809. In clear language, the decree put forward a rigid timetable according to which the first instalment was to be published by the end of the month, and the project as a whole was to end within two years. A sanction added announced that from January 1, 1812, the public treasure will no longer provide any funding to the commission. The decree added another sanction. Profits from the selling of the work received after 1812 would no longer go to the contributors but towards reimbursing the treasury and would serve to buy the copper plates of Piranesi’s engravings, thus linking the antiquities of Egypt to those of Rome. Further profits would go to the Ministry of Interior and would serve for the purpose of buying objects relative to arts and sciences  BN NAF 21958, p. 264.  BN NAF 21941 documents 113–154. 77  The historical part in Fourier’s introduction follows the description given by Jacotin, including the diachronic part of it. Jacotin supplied Fourier with additional material for the introduction. See BN NAF 21941 document 121. 75 76

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and their encouragement.78 Even this deadline was not met, and only on March 1, 1810, some four months after the celebrations, the Ministry of Interior scheduled a ceremony for the presentation of the first instalment to the Emperor to take place on the first Sunday that Bonaparte will be either in Paris or at Saint Cloud. The committee continued and worked at its own pace. Napoleon would only see one more published instalment. On April 1, 1813, as he returned to Paris from the disaster in Russia, he held an audience with the editorial committee at the Tuileries, to receive the first exemplar of the second instalment.79 “His Majesty prepared a very impressive reception for us,” wrote Jomard to Larrey, the surgeon and veteran of the expedition, “I was told that since the presentation, the Emperor consults his great voyage to Egypt, whenever he can.”80 Subscribers to the work received their copy of the second instalment only in May 1814. This time the delay was due to the war in the Vosges with the armies of the Coalition. The committee was unable to receive the necessary paper from its manufacturer.81 What was named in decrees and in advertisements “the third instalment” was actually published in three parts in 1817, 1822 and 1825 with an addendum in 1829. Thus, the publication of the Description of Egypt outlived the reign and life of Bonaparte. When one reads these exchanges between the committee and Bonaparte and his Ministers of Interior, one is struck by the complete absence of the dramatic events that were happening in France and its Empire, but especially, by the lack of awe towards the First Consul turned Emperor on the side of the editorial committee. The work on the Description of Egypt seemed to be happening in a world to itself, detached from the dramatic circumstances within which it was embedded. In spring 1803, as the Treaty of Amiens was clearly falling apart leading to the renewal of war, General Berthier, then Minister of War, preceded over a series of sessions at the dépôt de la guerre that debated the transcription of Arabic names the

 AN F17/1104-5 Emperor decree December 4, 1809.  BN manuscripts NAF5180 and the Magazin Encyclopédie, avril 1813, p. 446. 80  The letter is in Laissus, Jomard, le dernier Egyptien, p. 138. 81  BN manuscripts NAF21939. 78 79

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work should follow82; the decision not to authorise the inclusion of the map or any of its parts was taken in Bayonne, where Bonaparte was camped to oversee the bloody suppression of the Spanish Revolt83; he received Fourier’s draft of the préface historique to examine and comment on while he was at camp, preparing for the battle of Wagram, his comments being mostly of a geopolitical nature; and less than a week before the politically calculated divorce from Josephine, Bonaparte issued the decree that set the dates and funding for the Description and he revised it in April 1812 as the sixth coalition was being formed, and Bonaparte was organising the army in Poland in preparation for the invasion of Russia.84 These are but a few examples of Bonaparte’s close involvement in the work as he was changing the map of Europe. These demonstrate not only the high value with which Bonaparte held the publication of the work and his personal abilities to handle all these things at once, but also the access the editorial committee enjoyed to him and to his ministers which I believe were the result of the informal relations that were formed in Egypt between Bonaparte and the savants-égyptiens. For the members of the editorial committee, those closely involved in the project of publication, the Description of Egypt had become a virtual timeless world. The changing nature of Bonaparte’s government that culminated in the crowning at the Notre Dame Cathedral was echoed in their internal notes and correspondence only through the letterheads of the committee’s papers, and in the ways they addressed Bonaparte and his ministers.85 Those contributors that became administrators, préfets of the restructured France and Empire, would send their memoirs and carry the proofreadings in between recruitment tasks to the grand armée with no sense of urgency that might compromise their memoirs. They continued to do so even when the armies of the coalition forces were about to enter 82  This is reported in Pierre Jacotin, “Mémoire sur la carte de l’Égypte”, Description de l’Égypte, État Moderne, vol. II. The dépôt de la guerre was working to provide the French army with topographic information of the areas into which it ventured. But it found the time and manpower to first engrave the Atlas of Egypt, and then engrave it again following the imposition of the mode of transcription Volney suggested. (This will be briefly discussed in a following chapter.) 83  The revolt against General Murat’s troops in Madrid began on May 2, 1808. General Clarke, the current minister of war, asked the Emperor for instructions regarding the map of Egypt and received his decision in a letter of May 19, 1808, from his camp in Bayonne. 84  The decree was issued on December 4, the divorce took place, after some negotiations, December 15, 1809. 85  From citoyen Bonaparte, to S. M. l’émperor.

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Paris. This “virtual timeless world” so to speak, both bureaucratic and academic, could easily move and survive the changing French political landscape of 1798–1829.86 And it did. The change of regime did not stop the work of the committee. The letterhead of its corresponding paper changed—it changed again during the Hundred Days—but otherwise, the transformation went quite smoothly. The new regime was quite favourable to the project. In 1820 a contract for a second edition was signed with the publishing house of C.L.F.  Panckoucke. Jomard tried to resist this enterprise or at least to postpone it until the first edition was completed and distributed, but failed. This edition—it appeared between 1821 and 1829—was dedicated to Louis XVIII and had the original frontispiece substituted and references to “the Hero” removed from the historical preface.87 Panckoucke constantly urged the committee to bring the project to completion, thus adding his pressure to that of the government. The last correspondence between Jollois and Jomard was an account of Jomard’s audience with the King from January 6, 1826. The last committee session to have its minutes recorded in the archive was held on June 22, 1827. There is no archival evidence to the dissolving of the committee, and it is not clear whether letters to the minister with the committee’s letterhead from 1830 represented anyone other than Jomard. He had wished very early on to create a work that was closely tied together, its different parts corresponding with each other, and tried to achieve this with an analytical and alphabetical index. This task was assigned to Samuel Bernard and then, when he was overwhelmed by its enormity, the part of histoire naturelle was assigned to the naturalist Rouyer, both former égyptiens. But though they worked for almost four years, the index was not completed in time to be included in the final instalment. In September 1829, a laconic note on a combined letterhead of the Ministry of Interior and the Dépôt de l’Ouvrage sur l’Égypte announced to the subscribers the completion of the project.88

86  The changing academic landscape was more difficult to adjust, and will be discussed in Chap. 10. 87  The contract with Panckoucke is at BN manuscripts, NAF 21950 June 23, 1820. The Panckoucke edition and format was more manageable in size, and had consistent pagination. It is probably for this reason that most scholarly works about the Description use it as their source. 88  AN F17 1104-5.

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One might wonder why the project took as long as it did. There was an organised and clear working process from the start, a big budget as well as support of consecutive governments. There were more than enough contributors, many of them talented, and all interested in publishing. There was much support and interest on behalf of outside experts, and there was a dedicated committee to organise it all. Some of the explanations were given early on by the members of the committee in a letter to the Minister of Interior: “For four years now our continuous efforts have been aimed at unifying, classifying and ordering the parts of this huge monument that seemed at first to lack any connection between them be it because the materials were not collected under a common plan, or because the diversity of age, of talent and of the studies of the individuals that participate in it.”89 There was an ongoing effort to coordinate the diverse materials, both textual and visual, into a cohesive whole. Many of the future contributors proposed similar topics of memoirs and descriptions. Obviously, some wrote better than others, especially on topics that were beyond the expertise of any of the participants, and ancient Egypt was beyond the area of expertise of them all. The editorial committee was determined not to reject those of their fellow égyptiens who wanted to take part in the work. Similar drawings from slightly different angles appeared on the same plates, while a textual description of an area was many times composed from sections written by different contributors. This required extraordinary coordinating, especially when many of the contributors did not meet deadlines. The work was carried on in a changing political situation when some of the contributors were sent away on either military or administrative projects. The state of war caused changes in priorities and later the change of regime required an ability to manoeuvre between different interests to maintain the support of the state for the project. But some of the problems were of a different quality and were intrinsic to the project from its very conception. There was no genre to follow just a mixture of traditions that were at times serving as a model to imitate and at others as one to keep a distance from. There was an effort to impose a chronological dimension, to divide the memoirs into those that dealt with modern Egypt in one part and those that dealt with ancient Egypt in another, but the memoirs (and their authors) resisted this organisation 89  The letter to the minister from September 16, 1806, appears both in the collections of the committee at BN manuscripts, NAF3577 (MF 15281) and at the AN F17/1101.

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and most of them did not follow the chronological divide. The geographical structure was kept for the most part in the section of descriptions and monuments of antiquity, following the flow of the Nile from south to north. But those descriptions that did not fit into this structure were added as appendices at the end of all volumes sometimes in similar length to the main text. There was not a clear distinction between descriptions and memoirs though the many footnotes that Jomard added to some of the essays tried to point to the difference. In 1810, having sent the final version of the introductory text to print, Joseph Fourier wrote the Minister of Interior: What is important in a literary work is that it is good and is done with care. Once published it will not be asked whether it has appeared at the beginning or the end of the month. … In war and in administration one is usually obliged to act promptly, but the products of art demand maturity and long meditation. Not all works that took a long time to produce are good, but all those that are solid and of real merit, have taken a long time. There is not one example to the contrary in the history of letters and beaux-arts. These principles are applicable to all practicing these works; all the more they should be followed by authors committed to provide a work of reflection.90

According to Fourier, the delays in publication were not to be seen as a problem; rather, they were a testimony of the project’s scholarly quality.

 BN NAF 21940, letter to Minister of Interior, February 6, 1810.

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CHAPTER 5

Literary Genres and Scholarly Traditions

At the end of the previous chapter, I argued that the editors of the Description of Egypt lacked a clear scholarly model to follow when they were putting together what they believed to be the definite and scientifically accurate description of Egypt. While this is true, the claim is somewhat anachronistic for there was no expectation, neither from the scholarly community nor from the educated public that the work would fit into a formal disciplinarian model for it to be received as a work of scholarship. This chapter and the following one will present some of the scholarly traditions and literary genres available to the authors of the Description of Egypt as they engaged in describing a land and its society so different from their own but also one whose (mostly) imagined ancient history was part of their cultural heritage. It is almost stating the obvious to say that the framework of presentation and tradition of research behind the Description of Egypt is the antiquarian tradition as practiced in the eighteenth century. This informal tradition and amateur practice was concerned, mostly, with civilisations of the past in the diversity of their manifestations. Antiquarians were interested in everyday life and customs which they examined through literary and nonliterary evidence. The methods of research and scrutiny of sources that antiquaries had developed for studying nonpolitical aspects of civilisations were brought to scholarly attention in 1950 by Arnaldo Momigliano

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Sarfatti, The Description of Egypt from Napoleon to Champollion, War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15606-9_5

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in his seminal article “Ancient History and the Antiquarian1”. Momigliano described the antiquarian, a devoted amateur, who studied and collected coins, inscriptions, weights and measures, agricultural instruments and information about customs and manners, some of which he extracted from paintings, in order to describe and classify the products of another, most commonly, ancient civilisation. This depiction of the antiquarian’s work as a compilation of information, without being concerned with disciplinarian boundaries or with accepted notions of what was important— for all was important when describing an early civilisation—is also a good portrayal of the work of many of the contributors to the Description of Egypt.2 The engineers, scientists, men of letters and artists that contributed to the work combined models of observation and classification taken from the natural sciences with antiquarian techniques of sorting and depicting the artefacts and the customs and manners of the society they were observing. They used classical texts when these were available, and at times, chose to work away from the texts and the aesthetic norms of classical studies when they presented their descriptions. The inclusiveness of the antiquarian tradition and the breadth of topics of its inquiry can explain the overall structure and ways of presentation of the Description of Egypt. It also explains the acceptance of such ways of organisation by the reading public. But antiquarianism notwithstanding, it is helpful to look closely at more defined literary genres and fields of knowledge available to the contributors to the Description of Egypt and the ways they were modified and reshaped in the work.

Between the Description of Egypt and Travel Literature Nonfiction travel literature was a popular genre of writing about foreign lands in the eighteenth century. However, the people who created the Description of Egypt went to much length to ensure their work would not 1  Arnaldo Momigliano, “Ancient History and the Antiquarian”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 13, No. 3/4 (1950), pp. 285–315. 2  For a thorough discussion of antiquarianism and of Arnaldo Momigliano’s contribution to the topic, see the collection of essays edited by Peter N Miller, Momigliano and Antiquarianism: Foundations of the Modern Cultural Sciences (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007).

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be read as one of the genre. “The work’s accuracy and agreement with the realities it described would be communally confirmed by thirty enlightened witnesses” announced the Moniteur Universel, the government’s organ, about the planned publication.3 Similar words were used in an advertisement to the first instalment of the Description of Egypt, and in its historical preface written by Joseph Fourier.4 These were not empty declarations. The process of informal peer review was taking place by the group in Egypt, as notes taken there indicate, and in a more formal manner, all through the editorial process in Paris. It was an accepted view in the eighteenth century that the collaborative nature of the scientific project was a way to avoid individual bias and misjudgement, a way to overcome the idols of the cave as presented by Francis Bacon in Novum Organum.5 In the second half of the century, debates about scientific institutions, the nature of scientific research and the best ways to conduct and scrutinise it were publicly conducted and contested with much intensity. These discussions intensified and were publicly visible especially following the Revolution and in the months that preceded the final closure of the Academies in 1793.6 The deliberations, as well as the numerous learned societies that were forming just before and during the revolutionary years, made the practices of the scientific enterprise, and mostly, the verification process by peers, familiar to the educated public.7 It would be clear to most of those who had read the Moniteur Universel, Fourier’s preface, or Jomard’s advertisement that they were expected to read the Description of Egypt as one read a scholarly work. Lorraine Daston pointed to a different but related process that was crystallising during the second half of the eighteenth century.8 She described a shift in scientific activity from the individual scientist who  Moniteur, 25 pluviôse an X (14 février 1802).  Jomard, « Avertissement » p. 2 [text added at the end of the Préface historique]; Joseph Fourier, « Préface historique » Description de l’Égypte, p. liv. 5  Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, XLII. 6  Roger Hahn, The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution: the Paris Academy of Sciences 1666–1803 (Berkley, Los Angeles, London: UC Press, 1971), chapter V. 7  Roger Hahn, chapter IX; Maurice Crosland, Studies in the Culture of Science in France and Britain Since the Enlightenement (Aldershot: Variorum, 1995), especially article VIII; see also Maurice Crosland, The Society of Arcueil. A View of French Science at the Time of Napoleon I (London, 1967). 8  Lorrain Daston, “The Cold Light of Facts,” in EMF, studies in early modern France, vol. 3 Signs of the Early Modern 2—Seventeenth Century and beyond (Charlottesville, Rookwood Press, 1997), pp. 17–44. 3 4

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observed and recorded the marvellous, the monstrous or the strange, to an activity that recorded and observed regularities, common and reproducible facts. Science was now expected to be cooperative, cumulative and largely independent of personal skill. The marvellous or the exceptional were described in the domain of travel literature. The eighteenth century was a period when many well-educated young European [mostly] men travelled, took notes in their journals and wrote letters of what they saw. It was not uncommon to rework these notes for the purpose of publication by supplementing the information the traveller had gathered with information he derived from guidebooks, other travel accounts and books of history and geography. These accounts were read by the public for the information they provided about foreign lands and not least, for pleasure and amusement. Though very popular, travel literature had an ambiguous reputation in the eighteenth century. It was a field with blurred boundaries that ranged from the books of the circumnavigators Bougainville and Captain Cook to imaginary voyages, understood as such by the readers, like Voltaire’s Candide, Swift’s Gulliver or Raspe’s Baron Munchausen. The accounts that were more problematic to assess were those in between these extremes, accounts that were received by their readers as reports of true voyages but whose authors added some incredible tales to increase their popularity.9 Marc-Antoine, the brother of Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, addressed humorously the reputation of travellers and their accounts. He participated in the expedition to Egypt as a military engineer alongside his better-­known brother who was recruited to the group of civilians as a naturalist. In a letter written after the French forces had taken Malta, and the destination of the expedition had been announced to the rank-and-­ file, Marc-Antoine informed his father they were heading to Egypt. He promised he will write a journal, that it will be interesting, and that when standing in front of the walls of Memphis, it will include some reflections on Egypt’s past, present and future. He promised his father that as the dictum of the proverb « a good lie comes from afar » he will be far enough to acquire the title of a narrator and at times, of a liar.10

9  Percy C. Adams, Travelers and Travel Liars, 1660–1800 (Berkley and Los Angeles, UC Press, 1962), pp. 2–4. 10  Marc-Antoine Geoffroy Saint Hilaire in Étienne Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, Lettres Écrites d’Égypte, collected by E. T. Hamy (Paris, 1901), p. 52, Letter dated June 19, 1798.

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Travel accounts were evaluated by the probability of their contents and, even more, by their conformity with the genre’s conventions. A travel account was to include instructive descriptions of the places visited, some philosophical reflections these descriptions occasioned and an organisation of these instructive descriptions in a way that would be pleasing to the reader. Autobiographical narratives of the author’s experiences were a way to order the description and establish the traveller’s character as being truthful, accurate and a perceptive observer. The narrative organisation put the travel account apart from statistical accounts on the one hand and from geographical treatise on the other.11 By the second half of the century, there was an expectation that the “philosophical traveller” would work methodologically. He was to observe and record facts and possibly some reflections that conveyed the significance of the facts observed. Travellers could provide encyclopaedic accounts of a region visited or focus on specific aspects of it. In the 1770s, there were travellers who turned to descriptions of the beauty of nature. In these picturesque accounts, the observations and their description became a form of reflection. Whether an encyclopaedic account or a picturesque one, a good travel account needed his author to have the combination of curiosity to see and the ingenuity to describe. Travel literature about Egypt, even some that had ambiguous reputation, served as guidebooks to the members of the Commission of Arts and Sciences. From the work of Richard Pococke, already mentioned, who had presented his account as being on the informative rather than the amusing side of the spectrum of travel literature,12 to that of James Bruce, whose account enjoyed a controversial reputation,13 these travel books provided the group with some initial assistance upon arrival in Egypt, suggesting what one should seek when there. But even more, the books supplemented, and at times validated, the group’s experiences. Many letters and

11  Charles Batten, Pleasurable Instructions: Form and Convention in Eighteenth Century Travel Literature (Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978). 12  Richard Pococke, A Description of the East and Some Other countries (London, 1743–1745), 2 volumes; French translation : Voyages de Richard Pockocke: en orient, dans l’Egypte, l’Arabie, la Palestine, la Syrie, la Grèce, la Thrace, etc.; trad. de l’anglois par une société de gens de lettres [par de La Flotte] (Paris: J. P. Costard, 1772–1773), 7 vols. 13  James Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile (London, 1790).

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notes of individuals made reference to the books of Volney and Savary.14 These were popular accounts and the most recent to describe Egypt, though these travellers did not go beyond Cairo, Alexandria and the Delta region. For Upper Egypt, the group read Norden, Pococke, Bruce, Lucas and Maillet.15 These books created expectations and the desire to go up the Nile and look at the monuments of ancient Egypt at first hand. The journal entries of some participants reflect the desire as well as some disappointment when realities did not fit the descriptions, or a sense of superiority regarding their own method of documentation. They offered the group a vocabulary and a point from which to begin, and in relation to which to form their descriptions of Egypt. They offered a common point of reference when writing family and friends back in France, or to those of their colleagues in Egypt who stayed in Alexandria or Cairo and did not visit the same places. The letters often described what individuals saw in reference to these commonly known accounts. The guideline of the editorial committee for reviewing the essays to be presented in the Description of Egypt explicitly instructed the reviewers to correct the text they were reviewing when they encountered long discussions of opinions expressed in travel literature.16 Having been in Egypt, the savants were now expected to come to their own, to establish themselves as the new and definitive authority on the country. This rule was mostly followed and references to travel literature were usually relegated to footnotes. The travellers of the ancient world, however, were discussed differently; references to their work could appear in the main text. There 14  Constantin Francois Volney, Voyage en Syrie et en Égypte, pendant les années 1783, 1784 et 1785 (Paris, 1789), 2 vols. Maps; M. Savary, Lettres sur l’Egypte où l’on offre le parallèle des moeurs anciennes et modernes de ses habitans, où l’on décrit l’état, le commerce, l’agriculture, le gouvernement du pays, & la descente de S. Louis à Damiette, tirée de Joinville & des auteurs Arabes: avec des cartes géographiques (Paris: Onfroi, 1785–1786), 2 volumes, maps. 15  Jean Baptiste Benoit de Maillet, Description de l’Egypte, contenant plusieurs remarques curieuses sur la géographie ancienne et moderne de ce païs, sur ces monumens anciens, sur les moeurs … (Paris, Chez L. Genneau et J. Rollin, fils, 1735); Paul Lucas, Voyage du sieur Paul Lucas fait en 1714 … dans la Turquie, l’Asie, Sourie, Palestine, Haute et Basse Égypte. (Amsterdam: Steenhouwer et Uytwerf, 1720) 2 tomes en 1 et carte. From the available lists, it is not clear what editions of the books were taken to Egypt. Norden was taken in its English edition, James Bruce probably in translation, Fourier used Pococke in English but there was possibly a translated version in the library as well. 16  « Règlement pour l’admission des mémoires and descriptions », (undated), BN manuscripts, NAF 21951 #163.

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were some exceptions to the rule. For example, in an essay that described the antiquities of Denderah, Jollois and de Villiers decided to make an exception, so they wrote, for they believed that by summarising all that had been done and written before, the readers would be able to evaluate the extensive research they conducted and the favourable conditions they had enjoyed.17 For Jollois and de Villiers, the two Polytechnic graduates, extensive research meant mainly the ability to measure with precision and not rely on impressions. Paul Lucas’s description, they wrote, depended on vague memories, and his measurements, if any, were also impressionistic in nature. Another example was a text by Edmé Jomard. He began his depiction of the pyramids of Gizeh reminding the readers they were often described by travellers as one of the world’s marvels. But this, he wrote, was not a valuable depiction. His description, he emphasised, was a result of his observations and those of his colleagues.18 In a footnote, he elaborated his method of observation: he had visited the pyramids three times, equipped with topographical instruments, and a journal for taking notes. His narrative, he wrote, is presented in the order in which it was written in his journal without any dramatic considerations that might have improved the style of presentation. Jomard drew attention to the way he reported his findings which he thought was as important as the way they were achieved. A direct correlation between the observations and the way they were reported was a mean to create transparency, like in a scientific experiment.19 He and his colleagues were writing methodologically, he noted, in a way that was in accordance with the seriousness of the work. They were not putting themselves at the centre of the account, a device often used by travellers to substitute for, or obscure the fact that their depiction lacked  The section is titled Résumé des Connoissances que l’on avoit sur les Temples de Tentyris avant l’Expédition Française, in Antiquités, Description, tome II chapter X «Description des Antiquités de Denderah », pp. 52–53. 18  Edmé-François Jomard, « Description générale de Memphis et des Pyramides, accompagnée de remarques géographiques et historiques » i n Antiquités, Description tome II chap. XVIII, p. 56 19  Jomard’s description looks as if it was taken out of the book Essai sur L’Art d’observer et des faires des experiences. Deuxième édition changée et augmentée par Jean Senebier (Genève: J.J.  Paschoud, 1802) [first edition 1775]. The second edition included the following: I.  Qualités générales de l’observateur. De l’observateur pendant qu’il observe; II.  De l’observateur, peintre de la nature. L’observateur, interprète de la nature; III. L’art de faire les expériences. 17

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important facts.20 One may assume Jomard was referring to a concrete travel account, the recently published work of a fellow traveller, Vivant Denon.21

Vivant Denon’s Description of Egypt Vivant Denon joined the expedition to Egypt as a personal acquaintance of Bonaparte. A frequent visitor to Josephine’s salon and already an established artist, he was possibly expected by Bonaparte to provide a documentation of the expedition and of Bonaparte’s role in it, what today would be referred to as “embedded journalism”. He was in his fifties, and had no obligation to contribute to the French occupation or to systematically collect information about the land as did the members of the Commission of Arts and Sciences. Bonaparte made him a member of the Cairo Institute and gave him the freedom to pursue his interests and tendencies when recording his impressions of the country and of the presence of the French there. Denon spent nine months in Upper Egypt with the force led by General Desaix that was chasing Murad Bey and his army. He sketched the monuments of Upper Egypt and in July 1799, returned to Cairo where his portfolio was received with admiration by his colleagues at the Institute. A month later, Denon left for France with Bonaparte and immediately began to work on the publication of his account. The two-­ volume book of texts and engravings published in 1802 was received with enthusiasm by the public. It was quickly translated into German, Italian and English and appeared in 40 successive editions within the first decades of the nineteenth century.22 The members of the editorial committee for the publication of the Description of Egypt and its more dedicated contributors had every reason to worry about Denon’s work. It was indeed a captivating account, the traveller at its centre, as Jomard had dismissively commented. Denon certainly mastered the recommended combination for a worthy travel account. He had the “curiosity to see” and the “ingenuity to describe”; he was also a gifted artist. His account related fantastic adventures and 20  « Description générale de Memphis et des Pyramides, accompagnée de remarques géographiques et historiques. » in Antiquités, Description. Vol. II chap. XVIII, p. 56 note 1. 21  Vivant Denon, Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Égypte pendant les Campagnes du Général Bonaparte (Paris, imprimerie de P. Didot l’aine, An X, MDCCCII) [1802]. 22   Introduction to the digital edition of Égypte et les savants (France: Le Taillan Medoc, 2001).

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personal incidents, or, as the editor of the English translation had described it, with a more positive intention than had Jomard, it had “an agreeable mixture of incident and description.” Denon exploited the glory of Bonaparte and the enthusiasm about the Egyptian campaign in French public opinion. He described his work as dependent on the movement of the army, and therefore, he explained, the descriptions were often a result of a quick and first impression, the drawings, more often than not, made on his knees or on horseback.23 For a whole year, he wrote, he could not use a table positioned in such a way that would enable the use of a ruler, a description very different from the savants who presented their work as being about precise measurements and detailed observations. Denon wrote he had sketched the pyramids of Sakkara in passing, a depiction as far as possible from Jomard’s description quoted above. There was an ongoing sense of movement in Denon’s preface, “I was galloping” from site to site, he wrote time and again, portraying the traveller who was never in one place long enough to measure and systematically observe. The very personal quality of Denon’s account and the centrality of the author are apparent on every one of its pages. The descriptions of the monuments always include the impact the monument had on him, the writer. In Hermopolis he was filled with happiness, facing the stones that have waited, untouched and unaltered, four thousand years to give him an idea of the perfection of Egyptian architecture24; his assumption that what he saw at Denderah was a temple was based on the sensation and awe he had experienced when facing the monument,25 he wrote, avoiding long and tedious scholarly discussions of evidence from the site. His drawings were “souvenirs des sensations” not the recording of facts.26 Denon ended his account with a long reference to the forthcoming work of the Commission of Arts and Sciences. As he was now aware of the favourable conditions in which the group worked and of the generous support they were about to receive from the government, he wrote, he felt free to leave out scholarly discussions, and put on the uniform of an enlightened soldier and share with his readers his first impressions of Egypt.27 Denon took care to avoid any form of comparison with their work by defining, in 23  Vivant Denon, Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Égypte pendant les Campagnes du Général Bonaparte, préface, pp. 2–3. 24  Denon, vol. I, p. 113. 25  Denon, vol. I, p. 135. 26  Denon, vol. I, p. 140. 27  Denon, vol. I., p. 265.

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advance, his work as one with different goals. It is interesting to note that this came only at the end of the work and not in its introduction. Denon kept the fiction of an account that was simultaneous with the unfolding of the events to the very end. References to Denon’s drawings are already present in notes from Egypt. One can sense from these some competition especially on the part of de Villiers and Jollois who were devoted to drawing the monuments of Upper Egypt, often finding themselves drawing the very same monuments a few days after Denon had left a site. The rivalry continued in France, latent and one-sided. In the published work, one can find two explicit references to Denon: the first in Fourier’s historical preface and the second in the description of the zodiac at Denderah by Jollois and de Villiers. Fourier wrote about two recent works about Egypt, that of Denon and an earlier one by Volney. Volney’s work and the truth of its description, wrote Fourier, were confirmed by the research conducted by his colleagues when in Egypt. Denon’s account, he continued, was written by a man of taste (un homme de goût). It gave Europe the first idea of the monuments of ancient Egypt, and it augmented the interest in the country. The work, wrote Fourier, had charm and had surpassed by far what [was expected to] be achieved by the effort and talent of an individual artist and traveller.28 While Denon’s work had charm, a suitable trait of travel literature, that of Volney was not only eloquent but also precise. Even more, while Denon’s work was the best a single person could achieve, Volney’s observations were verified by the research conducted by the savants in Egypt. The charm of a literary work depended on the abilities and talents of its writer, while the true facts of a scholarly work could be reproduced and verified by others. Jollois and de Villiers addressed Denon’s work in a long footnote in their essay on Denderah and its monuments. They first emphasised the accurateness of their drawing and description of the zodiac. These were reproduced independently by others, they wrote, as one describes the ability to repeat an experiment as proof of a true argument. But since Denon’s work had reached a wide audience, they wrote, they felt obliged to refute its faults for the sake of the interpretations that may follow. They do not judge Denon for his errors, they continued, for it was an extremely difficult endeavour to copy the zodiac with accuracy. They would not have insisted on pointing to the errors had these not been reproduced in  Joseph Fourier, “Préface historique” p. xlij.

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another book, and they feared that this reproduction, that was not presented as such, would validate Denon’s errors. The two were referring to the atlas of a work by William Hamilton, Lord Elgin’s private secretary.29 Mr. Hamilton’s work was not validating that of Denon and demonstrating their error, they wrote. It was a result of uncritical reproduction of Denon’s understandable error. Many aspects of Denon’s work would be contested by the group of savants, from his drawings and mis-en-page, to the size of the paper and the publisher with whom he chose to work.30 The results, however, were at times not so different from each other. The Description of Egypt was not as methodological as presented and included many personal stories, exciting events and adventures at the centre of which stood the author and not the monuments.31 At the same time, in Denon’s work, there are places where the phase of the story changes providing precise descriptive details that could have easily appeared in the Description. However, these similarities and modern scholars often referring to the two works as one notwithstanding, it is important to respect the differences the contributors had took so much effort to maintain, and to remember the two works were perceived by the reading public of the time as very different from each other.

Geography and Geographical Engineers in Eighteenth-Century France Geography was another literary genre—less amusing and more scholarly— with which to describe a foreign country. The Description of Egypt, its layout, but even more, its editorial interventions, owed much to the geographical tradition and the ways it was practiced at the end of the eighteenth century.

29  William R.  Hamilton, Remarks on several parts of Turkey: part I, Ægyptiaca, or some account of the ancient and modern state of Egypt, as obtained in the years 1801, 1802 (London, 1809). 30  See above the editorial committee’s reply to the Emperor who suggested to follow Denon’s edition AN F17/1101, February 28, 1807. 31  Some examples: G.  Chabrol et E.  Jomard, « Description d’Ombos et des environs » Antiquités-Descriptions, tome. I; Jomard « Description des hypogées de la ville de Thèbes » Antiquités-Descriptions, tome III. Dramatic stories of near death experiences that could have easily appeared in Denon.

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There were many ways of becoming a geographer in France and many ways to practice geography. There were the foot-soldiers, so to speak, those formed at the school of geographical engineers, established in 1691, who were trained to survey the lands of the realm for tax purposes, but mostly to survey territory in advance of the army. The information they gathered was gradually accumulated and established in a collection of terrain information of general value to military operations at what became the dépôt de la guerre. In addition to being a site of geographical information, the dépôt de la guerre increasingly became a centre of instruction with much overlapping between the roles and expectations of its trainees and the graduates of the school of geographical engineers. Another common and recognised venue of training for geographical engineers was by way of personal apprenticeship during cadastral surveys for administrative purposes.32 But geography was also a field of knowledge that was more than surveying territory. It was earth description and different geographers practiced different aspects of this description by a mixture of methods and to a variety of ends. It was expected by some to produce an inventory of places and peoples, precisely situated in relation to each other, while others emphasised its role to construct models, maps and diagrams. It included natural and human topography, descriptions of oceans and climates and the layers under the earth as well as all that was above. Geographers could seek to explain historical events or to identify families of languages according to geographical distribution. All of the above were acceptable areas of inquiry for the geographer. It was broadly inclusive and expanded its focus in accordance with contemporary interests and understandings of what was important about the earth. “The breadth was enormous”, wrote Anne Godlewska, in a book about the formation of the discipline, “but the approach limited. … Geography was description … earth measurement, sketching, and literary depictions were its primary and most ancient tools.”33 Geography was a central topic at the Jesuit colleges in France, and with the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1762, at the Oratorian colleges that followed their model. It was taught, with much overlap of material, as both 32  Colonel Berthaut, Les ingénieurs géographes militaires 1624–1831 (Paris: Imprimerie du service géographique, 1902), pp. 125–149. 33  Anne Marie Claire Godlewska, Geography Unbound: French Geographic Science from Cassini to Humboldt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 2–3.

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a topic in mathematics and in rhetoric. This model was present at the grandes collèges of the second half of the eighteenth century and persisted, even after the Revolution, in places such as Collège Mazarin (Collège des Quatres Nations), where Edmé Jomard, the Description of Egypt’s editor, had studied.34 Beyond the curriculum in the colleges, French geographers of the eighteenth century readily acknowledged Strabo and Ptolemy as their precursors. Both traditions, the literary one, inspired by Strabo, and the mathematical one, inspired by Ptolemy, though different in approach, shared much, and often worked with the same sources.35 In the eighteenth century, geographers could be respected members of the Academy of Science or of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, testimony to this dual inspiration. Of relevance to the spirit of the Description of Egypt, it is important to note that for a few years, with the establishment of the National Institute of Sciences and Arts in 1795, the second of its three classes, the Class of Moral and Political Sciences, had a Geography section, testimony to the beliefs of its leading figures that the physical environment played an important role in the human sciences. Christian Jacob identified the beginnings of map-drawing in the sixth century BC, with the diagram of Anaximander of Miletus. Jacob described it as an important intellectual endeavour that enabled man to stand apart from the terrestrial environment and to construct, through reason and imagination, a point of view from above and beyond the earth. It was an intellectual endeavour that was a move away from mythical-religious thinking.36 The geometrical charts in the diagram were accompanied by a closely connected treatise bearing on a number of related ideas. The treatise and the chart as two connected and important pillars of the field of geography continued through the centuries. In the seventeenth century, the two, the map and the treatise, were inseparable but also interchangeable. As Père Philippe Briet, a Jesuit geographer of the seventeenth century, wrote: “There would be nothing on the map that I do not describe in my text and nothing in my text unrepresented on my map.”37 In form 34  François de Dainville, La Géographie des humanistes: les jésuites et l’éducation de la société française (Paris: Beauchesne et fils, 1940). 35  Godlewska, Geography Unbound…, pp. 30–34. 36  Christian Jacob, “Geography”, Greek Thought: a Guide to Classical Knowledge, J Brunschwig; G E R Lloyd; P Pellegrin (eds.) English trans. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 2000). 37  Père Philippe Briet, Parallela geographiae, veteris et novae (1648–1649) quoted by de Dainville, Le géographie…, p. 187.

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and function, maps and texts shared a descriptive purpose. Developments in mapping of the eighteenth century, as a result of solution of the longitude and of increasing accuracy in measurement, did not make redundant the written sources available to the geographer. He continued to use them to supplement and critically check the field measurements. This practice of critically evaluating different sources and compiling from them a map or a descriptive essay defined the work of a geographer and his reputation. The act of compilation can also be traced back to Eratosthenes, the first cartographer to work in the library of Alexandria. Christian Jacob warned of a “misleading familiarity” with Greek knowledge of geography and of suggesting a continuity of thought with Herodotus, Eratosthenes, Strabo and Ptolemy. Nevertheless, it is important to note that at the end of the eighteenth century, this—possibly misleading—sense of familiarity and sense of continuity were widespread. The works of Strabo, Herodotus, Ptolemy, Diodorus of Sicily and Eratosthenes were used and addressed by the contributors to the Description of Egypt alongside the work of the armchair geographer Jean Baptiste Bourguignon D’Anville.38 Their systems of measurements and their descriptions and histories were the works with which the contributors compared their experiences and measurements. These authors of antiquity were privileged by the French for they believed their work was a result of direct experience. There were conventions regarding the way a textual description was constructed. The narration would begin at the level of the continent and gradually turn to describe smaller and smaller features of either the physical or the human world. There were also manuals of observation, measurement and graphic representation, meant to facilitate consistency, especially in survey-based large-scale maps.39 A language of representation developed, increasingly so at the end of the eighteenth century, one that included a move away from the figurative towards the geometric and textual terms of universal meaning. It also included agreed ways of conveying a “scientific” lack of knowledge, a way to indicate where one stepped beyond the acceptable boundaries of western science.40  D’Anville’s Map of Egypt, published in 1766 was used by the French army in 1798.  François de Dainville, Le langage de géographes. Termes, signes, couleurs des cartes anciennes, 1500–1800 (Paris: Picard et Cie, 1964), pp. 330–338; Anne Godlewska, « Traditions, Crisis and New Paradigms in the Rise of the Modern French Discipline of Geography 1760–1850», Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 79 N2 (June 1989), pp. 192–213. 40  Godlewska, Geography Unbound…, pp. 38–42. 38 39

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At the turn of the century, the achievements of field cartographers and geographical engineers put them at the forefront of map compilation. But as maps and measurements took central place, the compilation of the erudite geographer lost prestige, and geography was seen more as a field of applied science than as a science in itself. Only well into the nineteenth century the discipline would begin to redefine itself and take its place within the developing social sciences in France. It was at this period in time, when geography was in the process of transformation as a discipline, that the Description of Egypt was composed.

The Geographical Engineers in Egypt: Jomard and His Textual Maps The group that made up the corps of geographical engineers that went to Egypt came from different training traditions. Seven of the group of fourteen came from the School of Geographers. In the 1790s, the school was restructured under the direction of the engineer Gaspard Prony in the hope of improving the quality of its graduates. In 1796–1797 it began receiving new graduates of the Polytechnic, those of them who chose to continue their studies in that area. However, the school was still struggling at the time to provide acceptable level of training and to better its reputation. Three of the group of geographers that went to Egypt were recruited from among those who had conducted the survey of Corsica in the 1780s and four from those trained at the dépôt de la guerre. The group worked under the direction of Dominique Testevuide (1735–1798), and after he was killed in the Cairo Revolt of October 1798, under his nephew, Pierre Jacotin (1765–1827). They were foot-soldiers, expected to collect data systematically and provide their superior with the information with which he would compile the map of Egypt.41 Edmé-François Jomard was one of those recruited to the expedition from Prony’s reformed school of geographical engineers. Jomard was born in Versailles in 1777 to a family of silk merchants that lived off the 41  For the role of the geographical engineers in the Egyptian campaign: P.  Pallary, “Le corps des ingénieur géographes de l’armée d’Orient », La Géographie: terre-air-mer (Nov. 1936), pp.  285–311 (Dec. 1936), pp.  137–159. For Prony and the effort to reform the training of geographical engineers: Margaret Bradley, “A Career Biography of Gaspard Claire Francois Marie Riche de Prony, Bridge Builder, Educator and Scientist”, Studies in French Civilization, vol. 13 (1998).

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royal court and was therefore financially destroyed with the Revolution. They moved to Belleville in November 1789, then, a village at the outskirts of Paris, and Jomard was sent to study at Collège Mazarin, whose faculty remained untouched by the Revolution. Jomard graduated from Mazarin with a solid formation in the classics as well as with good enough knowledge of mathematical sciences to be among those accepted to the first class of the Polytechnic School. In January 1797, whether because of an early interest in geography or because his ranking was not high enough for the more prestigious School of Roads and Bridges, he continued his studies at the school of geographical engineers, and in March 1798 he was recruited to the Egyptian campaign.42 When in Egypt, Jomard’s interests were well beyond the topographical missions he carried, as his letters to his superior Jacotin show and as the list of his proposed contributions to the future publication demonstrate.43 Jomard had a major influence on the shape and contents of the Description of Egypt, first, through his dedication to the project, and more formally, when he became editor of the work in 1807, a role he held to the very end of the publication process. He was a dominant editor, adding footnotes and explanations to texts written by others, writing explanations to his colleagues’ engravings, at times, because he believed they needed corrections, at others, because those who had drawn them had moved on to other occupations. It is probably because of his influence that one can see so clearly the impact of geography as a field of knowledge and a way of presentation on the Description of Egypt. Jomard’s view of geography was probably similar to the geographer Jean Nicolas Bauche de Neuville whose proposal from 1785 for the creation of a geographical society Jomard cited time and again. “To be an excellent geographer”—wrote de Neuville—“a man must be a good mathematician, a good astronomer, know navigation, study the physical sciences, have a perfect knowledge of history, have read prodigiously, have extracted and studied traveller accounts, and is able to master numerous languages. … Geographical maps must, therefore, be the work of a scholarly society rather than merely that of an individual artist. And if a society of artists and men of letters willing to combine their work could be formed,

 Yves Laissus, Jomard, le dernier égyptien (Paris: Fayard, 2004), pp. 22–26.  The letter and Jacotin’s evaluation of his work are in Pallary, (Dec. 1936).

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then geography could be perfected.”44 It is very tempting to imagine that Jomard saw in the Description of Egypt such a scholarly enterprise. The end product was not a map in the narrow sense of the word, but a complete body of observations of the diverse branches of knowledge, which, when assembled in methodical order, formed, as he often wrote, a comprehensive picture, “un tableau complet” of Egypt.45 As said above, the overall structure of the Description of Egypt was discussed and debated by its contributors from the start. The decision taken by the editorial committee was to roughly divide the work chronologically to état moderne and antiquité, and then to organise the material geographically, following the flow of the Nile from Upper Egypt to the Delta. This outline was agreed upon before Jomard became editor in 1807. But when the first instalment of the work was published in 1810, its actual organisation was the work of Jomard, by then, three years the editor in chief. To the south-north line decided on before, Jomard now added the distance of the depicted objects from the Nile, providing an additional geographical method of organisation. As in works in geography, within each location, the scaled information of text and image began with a panoramic view of the location either drawn or described, and continued and “zoomed in” on smaller and smaller details. The location aspect of both the object of depiction and the writer or artist that depicted it was emphasised. The method is well demonstrated when one compares it to two other works describing foreign lands that were published some years before: the first, a geographical treatise by Bourguignon D’Anville, and the second, a multi-participant editorial project in which the artists Vivant Denon, Huber Robert and Jean-Honoré Fragonard took part.46 The influence of Jomard’s geographical training is apparent throughout the work. From those explanations, he wrote for other contributor’s plates that seldom provided more information than could be observed by the reader, in a way, reminiscent of Abbé Briet’s seventeenth-century assertion mentioned above of the relationship between map and text, to 44  Edmé François Jomard, “Note sur une société de géographie projetée à Paris en 1785 », Bulletin de la société de géographie, 2ieume série, t I juin 1834, pp. 409–415; 3ieme série, t XIII, (juin 1850), pp. 375–380. 45  See the advertisement in the introductory volume. 46  J.B.  Bourguignon d’Anville, Mémoires sur L’Egypte ancienne et moderne … (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1766); Jean Claude Richard de Saint Non, Voyage pittoresque ou description des royaumes de Naples et de Sicile (Paris: Clousier, 1781–1786), 4 vols.

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the descriptive nature of many of the texts. His influence is best demonstrated in the opening text of the first volume, Antiquités, Description titled « Description de l’Île de Philæ ». The sixty-page text was attributed to Michel Ange Lancret, but a footnote on page fifteen informed the reader that from that part on, the description was based on Lancret’s notes but actually written by Jomard in the event of Lancret’s death. This provides an opportunity to look at the differences between the two Polytechnic graduates, the first, a civil engineer, and the second, a geographical engineer. Lancret’s text was documentary in style, a personal itinerary that listed places, monuments and topographical phenomena but also a variety of personal impressions, ethnographic information, historical assumptions and present-day inquiries. It very well conveyed to the reader the uniqueness of the Egyptian experience while maintaining detailed observation and measurements, and without falling into the pitfalls characteristic of travel literature. From page 15, as Jomard replaced him, the description became an account that was more geographic than contemplative. The personal thoughts in the text were restricted to historical conjectures and assumptions as for the use of the monuments, but there was no depiction of the awe and bewilderment of the writer nor a sense of the uniqueness of the experience. Even more, Jomard’s description did not pick up where that of Lancret had ended, as might be expected. It practically ignored the previous text and took control by re-entering—so to speak—the depicted location. Lancret’s text described the sudden appearance of the island to the observer travelling on the Nile. But on page 15, the reader “arrived” at the island once again, this time, Jomard’s way. Jomard introduced the measurements of the island from all directions and its location by indicating longitude, latitude and the island’s climatic zone. In Lancret’s description, the impact of the monuments of antiquity on the writer was conveyed by his deviation from the geographical/engineer structure of verbal description. Jomard, however, maintained the rules. Only after he had addressed from different angles the flow of the Nile, the impact of the annual inundation on the area, the composition of the earth and its flora did he continue to describe the monuments of antiquity, describing each monument’s position in relation to the others. This was Jomard, the student trained to systematically survey the land he was depicting. He tried to make sense of the place and its history through the measurement of the monuments and their relative positions. The long list of measurements and coordinates created an effect of an authoritative and

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persuasive account that masked the speculative and often unfounded historical conjectures he made regarding the age of the monuments, their use and more generally regarding Egypt’s ancient history. Jomard developed and built his reputation as a geographer during the years he worked as the editor of the Description of Egypt. He was one of the eight founders of the French Geographical Society, the first geographical society in Europe; he became member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, and in 1830, conservator at the dépôt de géographie of the Bibliothèque royale. In an effort to lobby the Minister of Interior to form a collection of maps and plans of which he would be the director, Jomard published a small book on the advantages of collections dedicated to geography.47 The essay-long book from 1831 presents a mature Jomard, confident in his views about the nature of geography. Adorning the essay with a quote from Voltaire who had complained of the lack of state investment and interstate cooperation in mapping the world and its population, Jomard wrote of the distinctive character of geographical maps.48 Maps, he wrote, offered a representation of multiple scientific facts, collected through observation in an order that was both convenient and clear. This mode of presentation, he wrote, could accommodate all desired information about a country: its topography, its resources, its roads and other means of transportation, its history and its population, its religions, its industries and its political systems. A map was a geometrical projection of the earth—wrote Gaspard Monge’s former student—that could record earth’s histories; it was a graphic description that was different in aim and form from the literary one. Addressing time and again its geometrical nature, Jomard complained about those who read in maps only names of places without knowing how to read its inherent geometrical language and the scientific information it provided. Jomard was actually arguing for a distinct scientific discipline, one that could no longer be practiced by amateurs, nor understood by those who did not have the knowledge of its specific language.49 The primacy of cartography in the practice of geography was well within the prevailing views of the time. But Jomard went further to 47  Edmé-François Jomard, Considération sur l’objet et les avantages d’une collection spéciale consacrée aux cartes géographiques et aux diverses branches de la géographie (Paris: imprimerie E Verger, 1831). 48  Voltaire, “Géographie”, Dictionnaire philosophique (1764), part III. 49  Edmé-François Jomard, Consideration…. pp. 7–8. For Monge and his influence and for Descriptive Geometry, see Chap. 6.

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emphasise the scientific nature of cartography. After having distinguished it from literary forms, he proceeded to make the distinctions between maps and other visual imprints. Maps were before anything else, a mathematical projection of the globe and its parts, an application of Descriptive Geometry, he wrote. Different from paintings, sculptures and other visual imprints, they were not meant to please the observer or to approach his taste and imagination. Their object was much more austere and serious; they were to address the observer’s reason and offer positive information for his use.50 Jomard was defending the status of geography as a science through cartography, the very branch that had made it lose its prestige. He did so by emphasising the mathematical ways maps were constructed, rendering them a mainstay of positivistic knowledge. Monge’s ideas, to be discussed in the following chapter, about Descriptive Geometry being a language capable of precision that also has the advantage of being a method to seek the truth, and to arrive at results both requested and unknown, loom in the background of Jomard’s arguments. Jomard’s concept of geography was inclusive and expanding. As the project of the Description of Egypt was coming to an end, Jomard dedicated much of his time to expand his new territory at the Royal Library. As he succeeded in his efforts to become director of the library’s map section, he started lobbying to include under his rule a section of ethnographic collections. He was competing in this with other institutions that believed the collections should be under their auspices. The occasion when these debates came to a head was when the naturalist Lamare-­ Picquot offered to sell the state the collection he had acquired in India.51 As part of the discussion, Jomard read in February 1832 a report at the Geographical Society in which he argued that while it is important to know the exact location and physical dimensions of a place, it is not enough. The object of our inquiries, he said, should be all that inhabits the earth and first and foremost the human race, in all its diversity. Knowledge of all branches of the human family, wrote Jomard, should be the true goal of the geographical sciences. “It [the field of knowledge] should be called from now ethno-geography.”52 Jomard had completed the transition from  Ibid., p. 16.  E.T.  Hamy, Les origines du Musée d’ethnographie, histoire et documents (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1890); reproduction with preface by Nelia Dias (Paris: J M Place, 1988). 52  Edmé-François Jomard, “Rapport sur la collection ethnographique de M Lamare-­ Picquot », Bulletin de la société de géographie, t. XVII n 106 (fevrier, 1832), pp. 86–96. 50 51

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a geographical engineer to an ethno-geographer, one may say, from Ptolemy to Herodotus possibly by way of the experience in Egypt and his work on the Description of Egypt.

Between the Description of Egypt and a Geographical Treatise The Description of Egypt was a work whose dominant editor was a geographer and whose numerous editorial interventions were mostly in an effort to provide geographical accuracy. In 1815, following the second Restoration, Jomard wrote a letter to the new administration. Once again he emphasised the need to release the atlas of Egypt for publication. It was the natural order of things, he wrote, to combine the geographic and the textual parts of the work, for the textual part added nothing but details to the atlas of Egypt.53 The central place of cartography for Jomard, the Polytechnic graduate turned geographer, is evident in this letter. But it is important to emphasise, again, that he never saw cartography as merely fieldwork. Geography as a scholarly field was inclusive and flexible enough at the time, to accommodate ancient and modern Egypt within its boundaries. Its practices provide us with some understanding as to what was acceptable and what was not in the work. It gives an idea of the writing strategies and of the legitimate sources of knowledge that could be used in producing it. It points to the kind of interpretations and assumptions that could be made and to the overall order Jomard tried, not always successfully, to impose on the work. However, the Description of Egypt was not a work in geography and was not received as such by its readers. Possibly because of the fragmented way it was published, in several instalments, over a very long period of time, or because of the inability to publish the geographical atlas until very late. But the dominant reason was the images of ancient Egypt and the widespread enthusiasm they summoned. Egypt’s ancient past was at the centre of interest of the learned public. This was the topic on which learned journals like the Magazin encyclopédique or the Journal des savants commented, ignoring the volumes of Natural History, and the memoirs or engravings about modern Egypt. In 1822 the decipherment of the hieroglyphs by Champollion further distracted the focus of the public’s attention from the wider scope of the work and from the possible intentions of its editor.  AN, F17/1101.

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CHAPTER 6

Engineer Training in Eighteenth-Century France: “From the World of More or Less to the Universe of Precision”

As written before, the scientific character of the Description of Egypt, its reasoned empiricism and rigorous way of investigating phenomena and even more, its methodical organisation were more often talked about than actually demonstrated. But one can note a scientific mindset, so to speak, an attitude, a settled way of thinking, that was already apparent when in Egypt, even in notes and acts not meant for publication. This is well demonstrated when comparing two ways of relating the story of Sheikh Hardy and the serpent. Sheikh Hardy had died some one hundred years before the expedition. His tomb in Upper Egypt was a site of pilgrimage to the residents of the neighbouring villages, Copts and Muslims, who sought remedy for the sick, fortune for the poor and blessings for others. There was a prevailing belief that a serpent that came out of a cleft in the rock near the Sheikh’s tomb possessed the dead Sheikh’s spirit and was therefore able to provide the cures sought after by the pilgrims. The site was mentioned by many travellers, and the tales of the serpent and its abilities echoed one another to varying degrees of scepticism.

Alexandre Koyré, « Du monde de à-peu-près à l’univers de la précision», Critique, N28 (1948). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Sarfatti, The Description of Egypt from Napoleon to Champollion, War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15606-9_6

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Richard Pococke, the British traveller, related the story attributing the beliefs of the locals and the pilgrims to their ignorance and superstitions.1 He had travelled with the local Sheikh to the grotto of the serpent to show “the folly, credulity and superstition of these people, for the Christians have faith in it as well as the Turks.” Pococke repeated the description of the serpent and its size and colours with which his local host had provided him and added: “It is said that they sacrifice to it; but the Sheik denied it, and affirmed they only brought sheep, lambs and money to buy oil for the lamps; but I saw much blood and entrails of beasts lately killed before the door. The stories they tell are so ridiculous that they ought not to be repeated if it were not to give an instance of their idolatry, in these parts in this respect; though the Mahometan religion seems to be very far from it in other things.” After trying as much as he could “to sift into the bottom of the affair”, he came to the conclusion that “It is probable that they have some serpents here they have bred tame, and it seems to be some remains of the heathen worship of those harmless serpents mentioned by Herodotus, that were esteemed sacred to Jupiter, and when they found them dead, they buried them in the temple of Jupiter at Thebes.”2 Fourier’s notes from Upper Egypt mention the story as well3; however, his description of the pilgrims and interpretation of the story demonstrate a different mindset. His notes were not about ignorance or superstition but about the economic rationale of the village that kept the place. In Fourier’s account, the previous travellers, even the most sceptical ones, were wrong; they were fooled by the locals who were rational in their behaviour. The savants’ position was different; they were observers of a society and its manners and customs. They were not judging the practices as right or wrong, but recording them and demonstrating their inner rationale; to achieve this, they wanted to actually observe the practices that the local informers were relating. Having observed the abilities to tame the serpent, wrote Fourier, they purchased it for money and added it to their collection. It was a breed of a serpent they had not known before and 1  Richard Pococke, A Description of the East and some other countries (London, 1743–1745), 2 volumes. The story of Sheikh Hardy is told in Vol. I, pp. 125–126, from which the following quotes are taken. 2  Pococke, p. 126. 3  Fourier’s notes are in Prosper Jollois, Journal d’un ingénieur attaché à l’expédition d’égypte (Paris, 1904), pp. 177–179. The notes were included in the journal alongside notes of other members of the Committee of Arts and Sciences that were found among Jollois’ papers. The presence of the notes is probably due to the role of Jollois as secretary of the editorial committee.

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therefore needed to be measured, weighed, described and analysed by the French naturalists. In Fourier’s telling, it was not only the pilgrims who came to the site for remedy that were fooled, but Pococke as well. Pococke did not understand the rational behaviour of the villagers, and dubbed them all superstitious. At the same time, there appeared to be a certain affinity between the locals benefitting from the tomb and the French. Both were rational observers of human behaviour and of the role beliefs and superstitions play in human conduct. The ultimate difference between the savants and Pococke was then demonstrated in the last act of adding the serpent to their collections.

From the World of More or Less to the Universe of Precision Measuring and weighing, describing the process of observation in a transparent way, dismissing hearsay, publishing what they had observed and refraining from reproducing what others had so as not to reproduce errors or mistakenly validate existing ones as described in the chapter about travel literature, these were all practices mentioned time and again by the contributors to the Description of Egypt. Be it in the published work or in notes and letters not meant for publication, they were operating in the world described by Alexandre Koyré in an article from 1948 « Du monde de l’ à-peu-près à l’univers de la précision», and even more, in Lucien Febvre’s short article « De l’à-peu-près à la précision en passant par ouï-­ dire »4 which was an extended comment on and addition to Koyré’s article. Koyré wrote that the shift from the world of “more or less” to the world of precision was not a result of accumulated refinement of artisanal practices, but a result of a theoretical shift. “It wasn’t the thermometer that was missing, it was the idea that heat could be susceptible to exact measurement”, he wrote in one of the examples he gave to demonstrate the idea. The change of idea, and the need to convert theoretical intelligence into practice, to apply it to the terrestrial world, has brought about the age of precision. There were machines that could measure before, he wrote, but they were not theoretically calculated and therefore, could not offer universal data. Even more, there was no generalised language in which to express the results. There was an incoherent multitude of systems of measuring, counting and weighing before the theories of Galileo. 4  Lucien Febvre, “De l’à peu près à la précision en passant par ouï-dire”, Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations, Vol. 5 N1 (1950). For Koyre’s article, see note 1.

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Lucien Febvre agreed with Koyré but thought the explanation was not enough. Febvre demonstrated the persistence, even after Galileo, of the world of hearsay, even among the educated who accepted Galileo and Descartes. It was only when the first physiologists began building the edifice of a science based on observation and experimentation, he wrote— dating it to the end of the eighteenth century—that the gradual and never completed march from the known to the unknown could proceed. These two articles, taken together, describe the world in which the group of savants whose contributions made up the Description of Egypt were operating. The individual whose beliefs, theoretical work, academic activities, educational vision and pedagogical practices embodied this world of precision more than anyone else was Gaspard Monge. The influence of his theories and mentorship on engineer training and practice in eighteenth-­ century France, and his involvement in the process of producing the work and the impact of his teaching and personality on the group that created the Description of Egypt, cannot be overstated.

Gaspard Monge: A Short Biography Gaspard Monge was born in 1746  in Beaune to a small Savoyard merchant.5 Having been an excellent student of mathematics and physical sciences at the Oratory colleges of Beaune and Lyon, he was accepted to the  Biographical accounts of Gaspard Monge have appeared after his death by his students, defying the Restoration policies to erase his figure from national memory: Charles Dupin, Essai historique sur les services et les travaux scientifiques de Gaspard Monge (Paris: Bechalier, 1819). Other accounts followed in later years: François Arago, Biographie de Gaspard Monge, ancien membre de l’Académie des Sciences, lue à la séance publique du 11 mai 1846 (Paris: Firmin Didot frères, 1853); Edmé Jomard, Souvenirs sur Gaspard Monge et ses rapports avec Napoléon, suivis d’un appendice relatif au monument qui lui a été élevé par sa ville natale, ainsi qu’à l’expédition d’Égypte et a l’École polytechnique (Paris: E.  Thunot, 1853); Réné Taton, L’œuvre scientifique de Monge (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1951); Paul V. Aubry, Monge, le savant ami de Napoléon Bonaparte 1746–1818 (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1954); François Pairault, Gaspard Monge, le fondateur de Polytechnique (Paris: Tallandier, 2000). Monge’s grandchild the Baron Eugène Eschassériaux (1823–1906) collected all unpublished material related to Monge and published privately a somewhat censored collection he titled Notes chronologiques pour servir à l’histoire de la vie de Gaspard Monge (Published 1870–1880). Eschassériaux’s project was meant to restore Monge’s reputation badly damaged by the Bourbons and not very acceptable during the Third Republic. Monge’s biographers from then on using Eschassériaux’s papers tend to play down Monge’s revolutionary ideology and emphasise his patriotism and his scientific and educational contributions. It seems many found it hard to reconcile the adored teacher, father figure, warm and charismatic professor of Mézières and the École polytechnique with the staunch Jacobin, friend of Robespierre and friend and admirer of Bonaparte. 5

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workshop at the Royal School of Military Engineers at Mézières in 1764 as a draftsman. Though unable to study at the school nor graduate as a military engineer because he was not of the nobility, he was able, within four years of his entrance, to advance and become a professor of physics, mathematics and chemistry to its students of noble families. The irony did not escape Hippolyte Carnot, his student, who commented: “Being very able, he was hired to teach the boys with whom he was deemed too low-born to associate as equal.”6 Monge stayed at Mézières for twenty years during which he began his work on Descriptive Geometry, a systematic mathematical method of representation for which he is known. Among his students at the school, one can find General Caffarelli du Falga, Lazare and Hippolyte Carnot, Prieur de la Cote d’Or, Horace Say and Jean Baptiste Meusnier, whose later fame and achievements contributed to the school’s reputation for scientific excellence.7 Monge became member of the Academy of Science in 1780. He did not publish much, but was an active member who took part in many committees that were formed in response to governmental requests. He enjoyed close working relations with Condorcet, Lavoisier, Berthollet, Laplace and Lagrange.8 Monge joined the Revolution with no hesitation and much enthusiasm. This is often explained by his humble origins and his initial experience at Mézières. But his career until the Revolution is actually an example for the ability to advance by merit even under the ancien régime. Personally and professionally, Monge was very well-off long before the Revolution, and his well thought-out ideology, convictions and political choices should not be reduced to being a quest for personal solutions for individual problems. His Revolutionary views first led him to the moderate club La Société patriotique de 1789, which in 1791 functioned more as a learned society than a revolutionary one,9 and as his political views radicalised, he became member of the Société populaire du Luxembourg, which was thought to be 6  R.R. Palmer, The Year of the Terror: Twelve who Ruled France, first published 1941 third edition (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), p.  8. Hippolyte Carnot was Lazare Carnot’s brother, both studied under Monge at Mézières. 7  Caffarelli du Falga organised the Commission of Arts and Science; Horace Say took part in the campaign. All were linked to the Polytechnic School. 8  Pairault, p. 52. 9  Among its members were Condorcet, Mirabeau, Lacépède, Bailly, Vandermonde, La Fayette, Lamarck, Sieyès, Talleyrand, Hassenfratz and Garat. Lavoisier was the club’s secretary.

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one of the most extreme clubs of the Revolution. Politically radical, he continued to work alongside his Academy colleagues on many of the scientific legacies of the Revolution. He was member of the committee that worked from May 1790 to create a system to unify the weights and measures in France and was one of the three academicians who lasted to the end of the institution’s work and to sign its report in May 1793. On August 1, 1793, the Assembly decreed the adoption of the decimal system. A week later, the Academy was suppressed and on August 27, Monge was given the mission to go through its inventory. In August 1792, Monge was elected Minister of the Marines by the members of the National Assembly and was one of the six ministers of the Provisional Executive Council.10 He was one of those to sign the report to the Convention about the execution of the King, which brought on his forced departure from the National Institute with the return of the Bourbons and the Restoration. The creation of the Committee of Public Safety in April 1793 made redundant the Provisional Executive Council bringing an end to Monge’s short political career. However, he continued to work intensively for the Republic. In addition to being member of the committee on weights and measures, he worked on the Revolutionary calendar and participated in the failed effort to revolutionise the clock, as well as in the experiments conducted at Meudon with flying balloons.11 Answering the call of his former students Lazare Carnot and Prieur de la Côte d’Or, now members of the Committee of Public Safety, he joined the group of scientists engaged in accelerating the fabrication of arms. With Berthollet, Chaptal, Hassenfratz and Vandermonde—individuals who would continue and work with him at the Polytechnic—wrote instructions and taught workers how to produce gunpowder from saltpetre found on French soil. In February 1794, they began teaching the process to artisans and workers gathered in Paris from all over France. These were the first cours révolutionnaires. Within one month they taught, together with Fourcroy, Guyton de Morveau and others, the production of cannons, saltpetre and gunpowder.12 A short while later, after the fall of Robespierre, the very same group of people, now gathered as the Committee for Public 10  The other five were Roland, Clavière, Servan, Danton and Lebrun. It was in this capacity as Minister of the Marines that he first met Bonaparte, then a young officer. 11  It was here that he began working with Nicolas Conté, then director of the unit of aerostation. 12  Many of these individuals continued to work together, in different roles, on the publication of the Description of Egypt.

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Works, began the process that led to the creation of the Polytechnic School at the time named École centrale des travaux publics. They did it with the same sense of urgency, using the same title of cours révolutionnaires, this time in order to revolutionise and accelerate the training of engineers. Monge’s Descriptive Geometry would assume central stage in the school’s curriculum.

Some Notes About Descriptive Geometry With Descriptive Geometry, Gaspard Monge had made the method of representing two planes, horizontal and vertical on the plane of the paper— until then based on a set of “rules of thumb”—into a systematic and exact mathematical method. To this he added a second idea, that of generation that was related to the problem of representing curved surfaces.13 While he had probably arrived at the gist of Descriptive Geometry at an early stage of his teaching at Mézières, it was only thirty years later, years in which he developed its theoretical aspects, that his work was published.14 It first appeared in book form as part of the publication of the lectures given at the école normale—the short-lived educational initiative for training teachers—in 1795, and then, in a more elaborated form in his book of 1795.15 Monge’s career path excluded him at first from the linguistic culture of Enlightenment mathematics of the end of the eighteenth century, mostly associated with Laplace and Lagrange, the reigning mathematicians of the 13  Though very central for the practices of the engineers that went to Egypt, and for their method of recording their findings in order to represent the monuments when conditions allowed, it is beyond the purpose of this work, and of my ability, to analyse Monge’s theories at length. For an elaborate account, see Réné Taton, L’Œuvre scientifique de Monge (Paris, 1951). For a more concise rendering of his work, see Eduard Glas, “On the Dynamics of Mathematical Change in the Case of Monge and the French Revolution”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 249–268 (1986); see also P.J. Booker, A History of Engineering Drawing (London: Northgate Publishing Company, 1963), pp. 5–12. 14  Some of his biographers argue that Monge could not publish his theory due to military secrecy; others believe it was because the school at Mézières wanted to keep its primacy, especially over the école des ponts et des chaussées. It is helpful to remember that throughout his career, Monge did not find publishing his work to be the most important venue to disseminate his ideas. 15  Gaspard Monge, Géométrie Descriptive (1795); also Gaspard Monge: Géométrie Descriptive Suivie d’une Théorie des Ombres et de la Perspective extraite des papiers de l’auteur Par M. Brisson ancien élève de l’École Polytechnique 7ième édition (Paris, Bachelier, 1847); Gaspard Monge, Géométrie descriptive: leçons données aux Écoles normales, l’an 3 de la République [Document électronique].

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day.16 The two regarded analysis as the only true scientific method of mathematics.17 They led a project of linguistic reform that implied abstraction of mathematics that detached it from geometrical imagery which they did not see as proper mathematics.18 Monge insisted there was an extra-­ lingual meaning to mathematics; analysis—he wrote in a sentence that seems to be taken out of Koyré’s article—was not a self-contained language, but merely a “script” of the “moving geometrical spectacle” that constituted reality.19 There was no scientific debate about the truth of particular results between Monge and the analyticians. The differences (and opposition) lay at the tacit level of the perception of the field as a whole and their orientation towards different cognitive aims. Monge too found classical geometry an unsatisfactory foundation for advanced analysis, but it led him to drastically reform it rather than abandon it. His programme was of science-­ based industrial innovation, in itself not a new idea, for mathematics, had impacted industrial development indirectly, via the natural sciences to which it was confined. In Monge’s innovative approach, application of

16  Joseph-Louis Giuseppe Luigi Comte de Lagrange (1736, Turin—1813, Paris), member of the French Academy of Science since 1787. Lagrange was brought into the French national narrative, his twenty years at the Berlin Academy of Science, where he wrote his most famous work, Mécanique Analytique, practically ignored. He received the Legion of Honour and named Count of the Empire in 1808. He is buried at the Panthéon. Pierre-­ Simon Laplace (born in 1749 in Normandie, died in Paris in 1827). Laplace became count of the Empire in 1806 and marquis in 1817 by the Bourbon Restoration. 17  E.  Glas, On the Dynamics of Mathematical Change in the Case of Monge and the French Revolution”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 249–268 (1986), p. 253. 18  P.S. Laplace, Exposition du système du monde (Paris, 1796), cited in Glas, p. 253. 19  Gaspard Monge, Géométrie Descriptive, nouvelle édition avec un supplément par Hachette (Paris, 1811–1812), pp. 16, 75 [The expressions he used were écritures for scripts and spectacle géométrique mouvant for the moving geometric scene.]. He articulated the idea in a very similar way already at his lectures at the École normale: « Ce n’est pas sans objet que nous comparons ici la Géométrie descriptive à l’Algèbre; ces deux sciences ont les rapports les plus intimes. Il n’y a aucune construction de Géométrie descriptive, qui ne puisse être traduite en Analyse; et lorsque les questions ne comportent pas plus de trois inconnues, chaque opération analytique peut être regardée comme l’écriture d’un spectacle en Géométrie. » Gaspard Monge, Géométrie Descriptive, 4ième édition, augmontée d’une théorie des ombres et de la perspective, extrait des papiers de M. Brisson, ancien élève de l’École polytechnique, Ingénieur en Chef des Ponts et Chaussées (Paris, 1820), pp.  13–14. This edition is based on the October lectures at the école normale.

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mathematics (not to be confused with “applied mathematics”) was intended for the modelling of things after pre-assigned goals.20 The historical circumstances provided Monge with the opportunity for his ideas to take central stage though they violated the formalistic standards set by the approved patrons of mathematics. The lectures at the École normale, but even more, the establishment of the École polytechnique, created the conditions for his ideas to be accepted and appreciated beyond their usefulness and efficiency in military engineer applications. Descriptive Geometry was now presented as standard educational material, necessary to answer the urgent needs of the Republic’s schooling, and at the same time, as an accomplished doctrine that set an alternative to the course on which the formalistic official doctrine had embarked. Even more, the Polytechnic provided Monge with a group of talented students, some of whom would continue and explore the field under his guidance and beyond. For Monge, Descriptive Geometry was more than a mathematical doctrine; it was an ideological position: Descriptive Geometry is a necessary common language to the engineer who designs the project, the artisans that direct its execution, and the workers that need to execute it. This language, capable of precision, has also the advantage of being a method to seek the truth, and to arrive at results both requested and unknown. Like all other languages it can only become familiar by regular use; thus during the three years of instruction at the Central School of Public Works, the students will practice it continually.21

Training Engineers in France Before the Polytechnic School There were two schools for training engineers in eighteenth-century France before the foundation of the Polytechnic School in 1794: The Royal School of Roads and Bridges (École Royale des ponts et chaussées), founded in 1747, that trained engineers as state functionaries to plan and

 E. Glas, pp. 260–261.  Gaspard Monge “Développmens…” reproduced in Langins, La République, p. 230.

20 21

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build its roads, bridges and canals,22 and its military counterpart, and the Royal School for Military Engineers at Mézières (École Royale du Génie Militaire de Mézières), founded in 1748, to train engineers to answer the needs of the army.23 The School of Roads and Bridges, mostly associated with its first director, Jean-Rodolphe Perronet (1708–1794), had approximately fifty students, at different stages of their training, from well-off families, but not of noble origins. After Perronet’s death, one of the school’s graduates, Jacques-Elie Lamblardie (1747–1797), was appointed director. He presided over an institution that had lost much of its prestige, and was strongly associated with the Old Regime for its graduates’ practice of using force labour on state projects. The school had no regular faculty, and its curriculum was established by a system of competitive exams set by its director, a system formalised in the early 1770s. The students sometimes taught each other or hired tutors to walk them through the available manuals for geometry, algebra, mechanics and hydraulics. The most important evaluation was given to two final projects, one in construction, and the other in architecture. Accordingly, the students pursued and paid professors to work with them on these projects, their style highly influenced by the professors with whom they chose to work.24 Students had to master the art of representation and to find ways to render their ideas appealing. The projects were to be presented in a certain graphic order, starting from the whole construct, analysed to its fundamental constituencies. Every project, be it a bridge, a canal, a sea port or a public building, was to be

22  On the École des Ponts et Chaussées, see Bruno André Le Corps des Ponts et Chaussées (Paris: CNRS Editions—Histoire de l’administration française, 1982); Antoine Picon, Architectes et ingénieurs au siècle des Lumières (Paris: Editions Parenthèses, 2004); Pietro Redondi: “Along the Water: the Genius Theory, D’Alembert, Condorcet and Bossut” in Mike Chrimes (ed): The Civil Engineering of Canals and Railways before 1850, Studies in the History of Civil Engineering (Aldershot and Brookfield: Ashgate Publishing Company, 1997), vol. 7, pp. 143–176. 23  On Mézières see Roger Hahn « L’enseignement scientifique aux écoles militaries” and René Taton “L’Ecole royale du Génie de Mézières” in Enseignement et diffusion des sciences en France au XVIII siècle (Paris, 1964), pp. 513–545 and 559–615; Janis Langins, Conserving the Enlightenment: French Military Engineering from Vauban to the Revolution (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004); Anne Blanchard, Les ingénieurs du roy de Louis XIV à Louis XVI: etude du corps des fortifications (Montpellier, 1979). 24  In the 1780s, the architect Étienne-Louis Boullée was the most popular teacher with the students of the school. On his style and influence, see Chap. 7.

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accompanied by a written memoir that followed the same sequence.25 The clarity and precision of the writing was judged as severely as were the plates and sketches. The school graduates were of very different abilities, and many did not master the theoretical part of their studies. Few found jobs with the state, some went to work for private families and many lingered on in the school for many years.26 The Royal Military School for Engineers at Mézières enjoyed a better reputation in scholarly terms. It was founded by Nicolas François Antoine de Chastillon in 1748 in an effort to base the training of military engineers on a uniformed and teachable corpus of knowledge. The foundation of the school was a break away from what Janis Langins named “portfolio culture”, in which knowledge and ideas were contained in personal papers, and where personal apprenticeship and the expertise it transmitted often broke down following the death of the expert or at times of war. 27 The rules de Chastillon had laid and the representational conventions he had created persisted in the training of engineers throughout the eighteenth century, and as such, defined the training as a professional one.28 Though the creation of these conventions was an important step towards standardisation, Chastillon continued to refer to concrete objects. It was Monge whose starting point and goal were different who made the leap towards generalisation by refining the geometric models and algebraic formulations. From the 1770s, the years of Gaspard Monge, theoretical knowledge was integrated into the practices of presentation, and the school’s students were known for their precise calculations and presentation. But Monge’s influence was restricted to those he actually taught, and he was unable to make substantial changes to the curriculum. The school had twenty students, of families of the nobility, the average student stayed at the school for two years in which he studied and had to 25  For an elaborate description of the studies and exams at the school, see Bruno Belhoste, Antoine Picon, Joël Sakarovitch, “Les exercices dans les écoles d’ingénieurs sous l’Ancien Régime et la Révolution,” Histoire de l’education, N. 45 (mai 1990), pp. 53–110. The first part about the école des ponts et chaussées is written by Antoine Picon, pp. 55–72. 26  Some indication of the students’ abilities can be seen from their need for intense preparations to succeed in the entry exams for école polytechnique. 27  Janis Langins, Conserving the Enlightenment: French Military Engineering from Vauban to the Revolution (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004). 28  For an elaborate discussion of these conventions, see Bruno Belhoste, « Du dessin d’ingénieur à la géométrie descriptive: L’enseignement de Chastillon à l’école royale du génie de Mézières » Extenso : Recherche à l’école d’architecture (Paris: Villemin, 1990), N13 pp. 103–136; Belhoste, Picon, and Sakarovitch “Les Exercices…”, pp. 72–74.

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demonstrate drawings of abstract geometrical forms in space, and the process of their calculation, ease in using the theories of shadows and knowledge of drawing the five orders of architecture. Students were also trained to conduct surveys of their physical surroundings, and to draft buildings and fortifications to scale. Here too, the representations of their drafts and surveys were accompanied with elaborated memoirs.29 While the school had illustrious graduates, and with Monge, their theoretical knowledge and precision increased, the school remained bound to its conservative agenda and its mode of instruction was still closer to apprenticeship, fluctuating in its quality according to the available teachers. In February 1794, the school was relocated to Metz and reduced to being a school of siege. The following month, the preparations for the establishment of the École Polytechnique began in earnest.

The Polytechnic School: A Very Brief History30 The immediate need of the young Republic for engineers provided the political opportunity to propose a radical change in their training and gain support and budget to implement the change. Gaspard Monge and Jacques-Elie Lamblardie of the School of Roads and Bridges drafted a proposal for a new school that was to serve a common preparatory school to the different fields of civil and military engineering, thus providing a common base of knowledge on which the different branches of the profession were to be built. A Convention decree of 7 vendémiaire an III (September 28, 1794) said the future school was to recruit through exams four hundred able students from all over France who would receive state pension during the three years of their studies. Within a month, examinations were carried out in twenty-two cities of the Republic. The 29  Belhoste, “Les Exercices…”, pp.  88–90 and Langins, pp.  241–43. Langins follows Belhoste in this. 30  For a  history of  the  école polytechnique, see Ambroise Fourcy, Histoire de l’Ecole Polytechnique (Paris, 1828), reprinted by Belin: Librairie du Bicentenaire de la Revolution Francaise, in 1987 with introduction by Jean Dhombres; Janis Langins, La République avait besoin de savants (Paris: Belin, 1987); Margaret Bradley: “A Career Biography of Gaspard Clair Francois Marie Riche de Prony, bridge builder, educator and  scientist” in  Studies in French Civilization, Volume 13, 1998; La Formation polytechnicienne 1794–1994, Bruno Belhoste, Amy Dahan Dalmedico, Antoine Picon, eds. (Paris: Dunod, 1994); L’École Polytechnique: un patrimoine inattendu (Ouvrage édité à l’occasion de l’exposition présenter à la Mona Bismark Foundation Janvier 1998) Avant-propos: Madeleine de Fuentes, conservateur en chef de la bibliothèque de l’École polytechnique.

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examiners—two in every city, one in mathematics and physics, and the other, a representative of the public—were instructed to test the candidates for their acquired knowledge in mathematics and physics but also for the vaguer notion of their future potential. As a revolutionary school, the Polytechnic benefitted from the books, art works and laboratory instruments confiscated by the state from its clergy, aristocracy and old academic institutions. The school library initially contained books in physics and mathematics, but when Francois Peyrard31 took over the library, it was transformed within a few months. It now held travel literature, books of history of antiquity and history in general, treaties in philosophy, political economy, geography and literature.32 More than a hundred books and works of art were added to the school library following the Treaty of Tolentino of 1797 as a result of Monge’s role in the French commission in charge of the confiscations of the Italian cultural patrimony; among the books brought to the school by Monge was Les ruines de Rome by Piranesi, a copy bought rather than confiscated.33 Teaching began on December 21, 1794, with three months of intensive studies, named cours révolutionnaires. They were designed to introduce the new students to the topics to be studied at the school in an accelerated way, each month corresponding to a school year. At the end of the three months, the students were to sit exams that were to designate them, according to their ability to their appropriate year. The intention was to have, within a year of the school’s opening, a graduating class. At about the same time, another intensive educational project was taking place: the ecole normale of Year III.  Its object was to muster qualified teachers and students from all over France and to provide them with advanced instruction in a variety of scientific and liberal arts topics. The 31  Francois Peyrard (1760–1822). He was a self-declared atheist, and Hellenist. He taught mathematics and wrote essays on diverse subjects from “Sur la supériorité de la femme” to “Les invasions de la Grande-Bretagne depuis César”. He translated Euclides and Archimedes as well as Horace. He prepared books for teaching such as an adaptation of Bésout’s commonly used book in mathematics which he entitled “Statique démontrée à la maniére d’Archmède”(1812). His views and quarrelsome character were problematic under the Empire and he had to retire from the polytechnique in 1804. 32  In 1799 Peyrard prepared a catalogue of the library’s holdings that listed more than 7500 titles. (Archives de l’Ecole polytechnique: Y 1/102). 33  Madeleine de Fuentes, conservateur en chef de la bibliothèque de l’École polytechnique « avant-propos » L’École Polytechnique: un patrimoine inattendu, p. 9.

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lectures, given between January 20 and May 19, 1795, by eminent professors, were to introduce to the student body the cutting-edge knowledge in various fields with the aim that they will return to the provinces to train school teachers responsible for the education of republican youth. In many topics, intensive lectures were given at the same time by the same professors at the école normale and at the ecole des travaux publiques—later named the Polytechnic—and were attended by the better students of the Polytechnic. The ambitious plan to provide graduates within a year did not materialise. The teaching staff was not prepared with a programme of studies, and the students found it increasingly hard to follow the intensive courses and demanded their readjustment. The reasons were many: financial perils of many of the students in the very cold winter of 1795 and the shortage of food brought prices up so the state pension did not meet the basic needs; political tensions and events outside the school were difficult to ignore; in many cases, the lack of sufficient previous knowledge of the students was more than could be handled with good will and intelligence. At the end of three months, no group of students was found fit to graduate within a year, and though the division into three groups was kept, those designated for the third year were provided with extra courses that amounted to an additional year of studies.34 The school council, that included faculty and those carrying administrative roles, was the school’s governing body. Chaired in rotation, it was to deal with administrative and pedagogical issues of the school and to do for the perfection of the arts and sciences. The meetings of the council were sometimes reminiscent of those of the academies (that have been shut down the year before). The participants read memoirs, carried out experiments and responded to queries brought forward to them by branches of government. This was not surprising for the group that formed the school council was not very different in its composition from the group of scientists that had advised the Committee of Public Safety, just some months before. The memoirs discussed in its academic meetings were printed in the Bulletin de l’enseignement in three thousand copies and distributed to the students of the école normale, to those of travaux publics and to engineers in all branches throughout France. Within a short while, the council decided to invite known scientists and artists to take 34  A detailed account of the cours révolutionnaires is in Janis Langins, La République avait besoin de savants (Paris: Belin, 1987).

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part in its academic sessions.35 The first full academic school year began in May 1795, and the word polytechnique first appeared on a brochure on 20 pluviôse an III [February 8, 1795] titled “Programmes de l’Enseignement Polytechnique de L’Ecole Centrale des Travaux Publics” and was accepted as the school’s formal name by the Convention on September 1, 1795.36 One of the school’s most revolutionary aspects was the size of its student body, almost four hundred students in its first year. Mézières had but twenty students in two classes, about ten of them graduated every year; the école des ponts et chaussées had forty to fifty students enrolled at various stages of their studies but never all present at a teaching session. But even more, the student body of the Polytechnic was relatively diverse, and many of the students came from families that were not known to the teaching faculty. The government feared the radical potential of such a student body, and Fourcroy reported to the Convention that steps were taken to assure their surveillance. They were lodged in small groups throughout the city, and the pension owners, defined as “virtuous Republicans”, were to report any misconduct to the school administration.37 The large cohort presented pedagogical problems as well. It required different qualities than before to be considered a good teacher, and there was a need to institutionalise the role of teaching assistants, named chefs de brigade. The use of the better students as assistants to a professor—répétiteurs—was quite a common practice in the French schools before. The innovation here was in the institutionalising of the practice. A clear training programme was created with manuals to accompany it. The Polytechnic chef de brigade was expected to follow the contents of the programme as well as its educational methods. This was a very different practice from being chosen by a certain professor to supplement his teaching. A few weeks before the beginning of the cours révolutionnaires, a group of fifty students named “aspiring instructors” was chosen by the school’s  Fourcy, p. 67.  Langins, pp. 22–23. 37   Antoine François Fourcroy, “Report to the Convention, 3 vendemiaire an III” [September 24, 1794]. It is interesting to note that though the fears were of a politically radical student body, it was the faculty—including Fourcroy—that had a history of political radicalism. During June and July 1795, Monge and Hassenfratz went into hiding for fear of being arrested after the uprising of the Montagnards of prairial an III. The school’s future was in danger at the time, old generals seizing the occasion, for they were unhappy about it taking over other schools, about its budget and mainly about the political profile of its professors (Francois Pairault, Monge, le fondateur de l’Ecole polytechnique, chap. 4). 35 36

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future faculty to be trained intensively to exercise the students in small groups in the contents of the lectures. Twenty five of the fifty were elected by their peers to become chefs de brigade.38 Monge, though formally not one of those responsible for their training, dedicated much of his time to their education. They followed him to his lectures at the école normale that were given at the time of their training, and sat, whenever possible, to hear other lecturers.39 Monge believed this group to be the elite of the school, commenting on their progress in study, zeal and dedication as well as their research abilities.40 The importance of Gaspard Monge to the Polytechnic cannot be overstated. As said before, with the help of two of his former students from Mézières, Prieur de la Côte d’Or and Lazare Carnot, he brought about the political support needed for its establishment. He was also the one responsible for the structure of its studies and its practical operation. But most of all, for those who studied at the school while he was there, it was his personality and educational vision that made it Monge’s school more than anything else.41 In September 1794, Monge submitted a forty-seven-­ page document to the Convention that summarised his new vision for engineer training.42 Very detailed and operational, it elaborated the topics 38  Many of the contributors to the Description of Egypt were part of this group. Jomard was one of the fifty students, but was not chosen to be one of the twenty five to teach. Lancret, Saint Genis, Malus and Jollois were all chefs de brigade, as was General Horace Say who joined from the école de génie (Fourcy, pp. 59–61). 39  Ambroise Fourcy, p. 62. 40  « Tous montrèrent le plus grand zèle, et quelques-uns d’entre eux développèrent de grands talens. Non-seulement ils étudièrent avec fruit ce qu’ils étaient destinés à enseigner aux autres ; mais ils s’occupèrent encore de recherches nouvelles, et firent faire à la géométrie descriptive quelques progrès. » Gaspard Monge, Journal de l’école polytechnique, premier cahier. 41  For a depiction of Monge as a teacher, see his former student and follower, Charles Dupin, Essai historique sur les services et les travaux scientifiques de Gaspard Monge (Paris, 1819). See also the journal of Gardeur-Lebrun, the man appointed to see over disciplinarian issues at the school. Charles Gardeur-Lebrun, Journal, 23 nivôse an III (12 janvier 1795). Gardeur-Lebrun’s reports confirm the importance of Monge in the school, beyond his formal roles: « Monge s’efforce d’être partout à la fois. Il s’occupe non seulement de l’enseignement de son cours et de l’administration … mais aussi de l’école des ‘aspirants-­ élèves instructeurs. » See also, Janis Langins, La République avait besoin de Savants (Paris: Belin, 1987), pp. 40–41. 42  The document is titled « Développemens sur l’enseignement adopté pour l’École centrale des travaux publics ». It is reproduced in Langins, La République avait besoin des savants, pp. 226–269 (annexe I).

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to be studied at the school, their distribution through the years, the number of teachers to be assigned to each subject as well as the type of room and instructional accessories needed. The document also addressed pedagogical issues showing awareness of degrees of attention-span at different hours of the day, and the abilities of students to follow abstract topics as opposed to those that provide more concrete evidence in their demonstrations. It emphasised the importance of informal conversation in the laboratory and in small tutorial groups to the process of learning.43 Precision was perceived as an essential quality of the engineer, and the document expressed its belief that precision learned in the mathematical sciences would carry over to other branches of study.44 The programme and its way of presentation were enthusiastically received by the Convention, commentators emphasising its structure as evidence to the triumph of the spirit of rationalism.45 The document also exposed a pedagogical ideology that was different from the one put forward in treatise and manuals used in the schools of engineers before. The needs of the Republic were constantly in the background, but the reasons given for the choice of courses of study and especially for the methods to teach them, had to do with the individual student, his abilities, his attention span and more generally with Monge’s convictions about the process of acquiring knowledge. There was an effort to refrain from rote learning, no mention of books, an emphasis on example and student initiative, conversations and experience, very much in the spirit of Rousseau’s Emile.46 It is important to emphasise the radical difference between the schools of engineers discussed above and the Polytechnic. The topics were similar, though in the Polytechnic, Descriptive Geometry became the central topic,  Ibid., p. 256.  Ibid., p. 257. 45  The document was divided to two symmetrical parts, the one for the mathematical sciences and the other for physical sciences, each providing the same categories and subcategories, down to the last detail. 46  Jean Bloch, in a study about Rousseau’s educational writings and their reputation in France in the eighteenth century, argued that Rousseau was quoted as an educational authority especially in the years 1793–1795. Jean Bloch, Rousseauism and education in eighteenth century France (Oxford, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 1995); D. Higgins, Jean Jacques Rousseau and the Jacobins [unpublished dissertation] (Sheffield, 1952), pages 1400–1459. 43 44

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taught and practiced during almost fifty per cent of the school’s teaching hours.47 It assumed, during these years, a very wide meaning, comprising both the theoretical courses and their application, different applications emphasised every year.48 But beyond the contents, the school was innovative in its structured and coordinated programme, in the way the exercise sessions were organically related to the lectures, and in its very different pedagogical practices. Not only did the chefs de brigade receive preparation from Monge as to the methods and illustrations to use in their exercises, so did many of the other instructors during the regular meetings of the school council. Not all intentions were practiced. Some of the teachers followed the traditions of their respective courses and were unable to make use of Monge’s theories. But many others did, especially those who were his former students. Joseph Fourier in analysis, Horace Say in fortification and Jean-Nicolas Durand in architecture were all followers of Monge’s methods during those years. Hachette and Lacroix taught Descriptive Geometry when Monge was away, either in hiding or in Italy with Bonaparte. The two were his assistants during the lectures given at the École normale, and both followed his lectures to the word as their publications demonstrate.49 As said before, in those first years, whether he was present or not, the Polytechnic was Monge’s school.

A Common Vocabulary Of the 156 civilians that accompanied Bonaparte to Egypt, more than sixty were related to the Polytechnic School. They were students and recent graduates of the school as well as many of its central figures, teachers and examiners: Gaspard Monge, Louis Berthollet, General Horace Say, Joseph Fourier, Louis Costaz, Louis Alexandre Corancez and Jacques-­ Marie Le Père, to mention but the teachers.50 As mentioned before, the contribution of the Polytechnic graduates in essays, and engravings, as well as the central roles they held during the thirty-year-long publication 47  I am referring here to the years 1795–1798 in which the group that went to Egypt studied. Langins, La République…, p. 28. 48  The subject would assume a narrower meaning gradually between 1800 and 1806, when Laplace would be named Chair of Mathematics and Analysis by the Emperor. 49  Lacroix published Monge’s lectures in book form in 1799, and Hachette published his lectures on theories of shadows in 1801. 50  The last three were examiners at the school before going to Egypt.

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process made their imprint on the work more significant than their actual numbers. But even more, the Polytechnic network, so to speak, was extended into government. Jean-Antoine Chaptal, the Minister of Interior, responsible for the budget and other material provisions during the first years of the project, and Antoine François Fourcroy, director of public instruction, who drafted the first suggestion as to the form the publication should take, were teachers at the school and among its founders. Nicolas-­Jacques Conté, the first editor of the work and a central figure when in Egypt and during the publication process, had worked in close proximity with the school before the expedition. These individuals, as well as the students, some already graduates, were not only related to the Polytechnic, but were there at its birth. This common background was mentioned by scholars of the expedition but its significance was not so much addressed. One may point to a bond between the Polytechnic graduates and teachers51 as well as to the network that was extended into the political milieu that made the group’s access to power almost taken-for-granted until the Restoration. At the same time, there is no simple link between a school curriculum or a common school experience and the way one looks at the world. However, it is possible to carefully argue for the existence of certain “Polytechnic characteristics”, a common vocabulary, whose origin was the Polytechnic and was cultivated and reinforced during the Egyptian campaign and the work on the Description of Egypt, especially because of its collaborative nature, in Egypt and in Paris. Michael Baxandall wrote that “Taught skills commonly have rules and categories, a terminology and stated standards, which are the medium through which they are teachable. These two things—the confidence in a relatively advanced and valued skill, and the availability of verbal resources associated with them—make such skills particularly susceptible to transfer

51  Charles Dupin, a student of the class of 1801, wrote of this bond between former Polytechnic students that later served as engineers in all branches of the military and civilian public works. He described how meeting a former Polytechnic student in the outposts of the Napoleonic Empire, or during its difficult times on the Russian front, reinforced in them the spirit of a unified body celebrating a common human spirit. He explained this in their common training before professionalising in the different branches of engineering. “On vit se former entre eux ces amitiés de la jeuneuse. … On étouffa, dès le berceau, les rivalités, les jalousies et les haines de corps… » Charles Dupin, Essai Historique sur les Services et les Travaux Scientifiques de Gaspard Monge (Paris, 1819), pp. 47–48.

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in situations such as that of a man in front of a picture.”52 Descriptive Geometry provided the Polytechnic graduates and teachers who went to Egypt with a common acquired skill. They approached the monuments of Egypt, with a measuring stick and compass, in the very literal sense of the words. They were “measuring Egypt” not only because it gave their work a scientific aura, but because this was the way they were able to draw Egypt. They used the very same skills when drawing the map of Egypt and when drawing its monuments. They were Monge’s best students, hand-­ picked to join the expedition, and Descriptive Geometry was a skill they had all recently acquired. It was their common language and whether geographical engineers or engineers of roads and bridges, they all mastered the same language and probably used it when sharing their impressions and comparing their sketches on site; they could also share their notes and discuss their drawings when preparing them for publication when in Paris. The fact that the school with its hierarchy was transferred to Egypt made the work there, and later on, in Paris, during the process of publication, into an extended exercise where one applied the theory studied at school. This connection between theory and practice was at the core of the school curriculum and the pedagogical scheme Gaspard Monge was so enthusiastically advancing. The influence of the engineering tradition and its mode of presentation are evident throughout the Description of Egypt. In addition to the geographical mode of presentation described in the previous chapter, one that locates the objects observed and their relation in space to each other, and in a complementary way, it is possible to recognise in each section of the Description of Egypt the engineer way of presentation. The volumes of engravings of monuments of ancient and contemporary Egypt present topographic views followed by elevations sections and ornaments. These illustrations have corresponding descriptive texts that not only point to the object described and its location but also record the process of its presentation. These ways of presentation were familiar to the Polytechnic graduates and to those trained in the engineer schools that preceded it. While very dominant in number and contribution, the engineers and the geographical engineers were not the only foot-soldiers, so to speak, 52   Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), pp. 37–38. Baxandall is speaking of a historically defined cognitive style and its relation to a historically defined pictorial style.

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surveying Egypt. There were the medical officers systematically collecting information about the population, natural scientists, mineralogists and astronomers, all following the conventions of their respective fields when gathering information. Some of these overlapping discourses and the ways they informed and modified each other will be discussed in the following chapters. It is safe to state early on that while the authors of the essays and images held in common, to various degrees, a spirit of inquiry that favoured methodological observation over the use of philological expertise, one may also find in their contributions to the work an easy coexistence of methods of research and presentation, at times, within the work and discussions of one author.

CHAPTER 7

Egypt Engraved

The authors of the more than three thousand drawings on the approximately nine hundred plates that made up the engraved volumes of the Description of Egypt were artists, engineers, architects, zoologists, orientalists and army personnel.1 The drawings were diverse in their style and uneven in their quality but taken together, they were regarded by all as a true representation of the country. Joseph Fourier had set the tone in the introduction to the Description of Egypt for the comments and reviews that followed: “…the plates represent existing objects, susceptible to observation and exact depiction and should therefore be considered as positive elements for the study of Egypt.”2 The engravings were expected to transform the knowledge about Egypt from the realm of myth and imagination to that of positive knowledge. The realm of myth was captured in the 1731 publication of Abbot Jean Terrasson’s novel Sethos, histoire, ou Vie tirée des monumens, anecdotes de l'ancienne Égypte, traduite d'un manuscrit grec, and in its popularity 1  This work will not address the plates of Natural History. The hundreds of drawings of vertebrates, invertebrates, botany and mineralogy were presented on 244 plates that formed three volumes. See Charles Coulston Gillispie, “Scientific Aspects of the French Egyptian Expedition 1798–1801”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 133, No. 4 (December 1989), p. 454. 2  Joseph Fourier, “Préface historique” p. 77.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Sarfatti, The Description of Egypt from Napoleon to Champollion, War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15606-9_7

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within French and European literate circles of the eighteenth century. Based on themes available in Diodorus Siculus’ Bibliotheca Historica, Plutarch’ Isis and Osiris, and modelled on Fenelon’s Aventures de Telemaque and Scudery’s Le Grand Cyrus, the book played an important part in reviving the story of the initiation ceremonies that Sethos had to undergo to enter the world of the elect. These depictions, either adopted from or adopted by masonic circles, included imagined Egyptian elements that became part of masonic iconography.3 The influence of the novel was wide, and the myth of Egypt and its wisdom, and its accompanying iconography alongside the cult of Isis, enjoyed numerous artistic expressions. To name but the better known ones: Jean-Louis David’s design for the Fountain of Regeneration, Jean Philippe Rameau’s opera-ballet La Naissance d’Osiris (1751), Erich Neumann’s Opera Osiris (performed in Dresden, in 1781) and Mozart’s The Magic Flute premiered in Vienna in 1791. While these ideas and iconography were available at large, and the myth of Egyptian mysteries often lingered in the imagination (and some texts) of the group that went to Egypt to record its monuments, there were other sources of visual information that enjoyed more authority and which informed their expectations. In the eighteenth century, Egyptian monuments were commented on as part of a broader survey of antiquity. The attitude to the value of Egyptian artistic expression varied. Bernard de Montfaucon (1655–1741), for example, believed Egyptian art was an early and not fully developed phase of artistic expression; Count de Caylus (1692–1765), on the other hand, argued that Egypt was the source from which the ancients drew the principles of taste. Whether valued or not, Egyptian ancient art, as echoed in its monuments, was no longer addressed as a medium for enigma, or as a vehicle through which to interpret Egyptian writing, it was assessed for its immediate artistic value.4 Joachim Winckelmann’s work, History of the Art of Antiquity, whose first edition was published in 1764 (French translation, 1766), devoted its

3  Philippa Faulks and Robert L.D.  Cooper, The Masonic Magician (London: Watkins, 2008), pp. 41–42. 4  Bernard de Montfaucon, Antiquite expliquee et representee en figures (1719–1724), a work based on his studies of private collections during a journey to Italy; Count Anne Claude Philippe de Caylus, Recueil d’Antiquites Egyptiennes, Etrusques, Grecques, Romaines et Gauloises (1752–1764), based on his travels and his personal collection of antiquities.

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first chapter to a reappraisal of Egyptian antiquities.5 His arguments were supported by references to specific monuments. Winckelmann meticulously identified restoration work and corrected mistaken conclusions of previous scholars. But most of all, he criticised Egypt for not being Greece, so to speak, which was the underlying yardstick in his evaluation of its artistic style. Nevertheless, his work was an attempt to recognise the development of style, and to look at the monuments for their formal qualities and not for information of another kind. With its publication, Winckelmann became the greatest authority of the era on the art of antiquity. His work constituted a reference point for those who agreed with him and for those who did not. Antoine Quatremère de Quincy (1755–1849), whose essay De l’état de l’architecture égyptienne won the competition of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1785, wrote in the essay that classical art was completely unrelated to Egyptian art. In his opinion, Egyptian monuments were but “sculpted quarries”, its architecture lacked stylistic value and was devoid of order and proportion. The essay as a whole was a homage to Winckelmann, and its success in the competition reflects the status of Winckelmann’s views and ways of reasoning in France. Another very direct visual presence for those of the group that were trained as architects or engineers was that of the designs of the architect and teacher Etienne-Louis Boullée (1728–1799) who was one of the most influential figures for those who studied at the École des Ponts et Chaussées between 1778 and 1788.6 In Boullée’s architectural vision, emphasis was put on simple geometrical forms, on an architecture of shades and shadows, on regularity and on colossal dimensions. His ideas were also an attack on ornament. Architecture, according to Boullée, needed solidity, practicality and symmetry. Grandeur held the promise of counteracting the ornamental excesses of the late Baroque. His projects, most of them on paper, among them drawings of the pyramids and his well-known project for a cenotaph from 1786, were distinguished by monumentality combined with simplicity. In Boullée’s teachings and drawings, Egyptian 5  Three editions of Winckelmann’s translated work were at the Polytechnic library: J. Winckelmann, histoire de l’art chez les anciens, traduit de l’allemand par Sellius et Robinet (Paris: Saillant, 1766); J. Winckelmann, Histoire de l’art de l’antiquité, traduit de l’allemand par Huber (Leipzig: Jean-Gottl Imman Breitkopf, 1781), 3 vols.; J. Winckelmann, Histoire de l’art chez les anciens, traduit de l’allemand, avec des notes historiques et critiques de differens auteurs (Paris: J.J. Jansen, 1799–1801). 6  Emil Kaufmann, “Three Revolutionary Architects: Boullée, Ledoux, and Lequeu”, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New series, vol. 42 (1952).

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architecture, its grandeur and austerity, what Quatremère de Quincy described as “sculpted quarries”, were an expression of perfect geometries, the underlying forms of a universal order. Boullée expected the information about Egypt from the 1798 campaign to support his architectural vision. An undated note found among his papers said: “I take as example the expedition of Bonaparte. This great general, and the savants that have followed him, will demonstrate to the entire world the art of forming a large structure.”7 The aesthetic preferences and positions of Winckelmann towards classical art and the idea of noble simplicity as a characteristic trait of the art of the Greeks had become the accepted view in French enlightened circles. These coexisted comfortably alongside images of Boullée’s grand and austere geometrical forms to form the imagery of Egyptian architecture with which the French engineers and artists arrived in the country in 1798. They were well acquainted with these views through their studies, and went to Egypt to confirm rather than debate them. These visual imaginings can be seen in the early notes of the group that travelled up the Nile to record the monuments of Egypt. Winckelmann’s ideas formed the point from which their observations began. Joseph Fourier’s notes when heading the commission up the Nile show he was first looking for the familiar. “We have left with regret these places” he wrote when leaving the remains of the Roman city of Antinoë on the way to Upper Egypt, “places where we encountered ancient magnificence with all its clarity. It showed us the beautiful development of art that the sources of the talented Greeks had bequeathed on it.”8 At this point in the journey, Fourier only briefly addressed the Egyptian monuments. He was still within the mindset that equated ancient art and architecture with Greco-Roman architecture. The artist Vivant Denon, whose work and style were usually trying to avoid polemics, could not avoid advancing some questions about Winckelmann’s assertions. After writing in the introduction to his travel account that “Denderah taught me that it was not in the Doric, Ionic, and 7  Ibid, p.  3. Kaufman found the undated comment (Folio 54 BN papiers de Boullée). Boullée died in February 1799, news of Bonaparte’s landing in Egypt reached Paris around September 1798, and the note was probably written sometime in between these dates. 8  Joseph Fourier, “Extraits des notes de voyage” in Prosper Jollois, Journal d’un ingénieur attaché à l’expédition d’Egypte 1798–1802 (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1904), p. 171. As explained before, Fourier’s notes were found within the private papers of Jollois, probably because of Jollois’ role as secretary of the editorial committee. They were published as appendix to the journal.

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Corinthian orders alone, that the beauties of architecture were to be sought; wherever a harmony of parts exists…”9; he articulated his view more directly in another part of the work: “Is it the Egyptians who have invented and brought to perfection such a beautiful art? This is a question that I am unable to answer; but even on first glimpse of this edifice we may pronounce that the Greeks have never devised nor executed anything in grander style.”10 Another visual influence was the work of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) on Roman antiquity. Very popular within educated French circles, it did not need introduction to the contributors of the Description of Egypt. Piranesi’s published works were available at the library of the Polytechnic since the school’s first years, sent from Italy by Gaspard Monge who probably believed they would contribute to the education of an engineer.11 Piranesi’s work was well known in France from quite early on in his career, well before the establishment of the Polytechnic in 1795. In the 1750s, Piranesi had extensive contacts with the members of the Académie de France and its circle in Rome. He debated the views made popular in France by Pierre-Jean Mariette and David Le Roy in the 1750s about the primacy of Greek architecture over the Roman one,12 views and works that preceded Winckelmann. Mariette reviewed Piranesi’s work in

 Denon, Voyage preface, pp. V–VI.  Denon, Voyage, p. 240. 11  The books sent by Monge, as indicated in the school’s catalogue: Giambattista Piranesi, Opere varie di architettura, prospettiva, grotteschi, antichità, inventate ed incise; Giambattista Piranesi, Le Antichità romane, 4 vol. (55cm), (Roma: Stamperia Salomoni, 1784); Piranesi, Vasi, candelabri, cippi, sarcofagi, tripodi, lucerne ed ornamenti antichi disegnati dal cav. (Roma, 1778), 2 vol. de planches gravées ; Diverse maniere d’adornare i cammini ed ogni altra parte edifizi, disunte dall’architettura egizia, etrusca e greca, con un ragionamenta apologetico in difesa dell’architettura egizia e toscana, (Roma: Salomoni, 1769) [The edition has a parallel title in French, and the text is bilingual. The French title: Différentes manières d’orner les cheminées et toute autre partie des édifices, tirées de l’architecture égyptienne, étrusque et greque [sic], avec un discours apologétique en faveur de l’architecture égyptienne et toscane]; Giambattista Piranesi, Campus Martius antiquae urbis,(51 pl.) (Roma: Thomati, 1762); Giambattista Piranesi, Vedute di Roma, 2 vol. de planches gravées. ) [no date of publication]. 12  See Jean David Le Roy, Les ruines des plus beaux monumens de la Gréce (Paris: Guerin, 1758). For a very good account of the difference in opinion and the debate, see Lola Kantor-­ Kazovsky, Piranesi as interpreter of Roman Architecture and the Origins of his Intellectual World (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 2006), chapter I, pp. 19–59. 9

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the Gazette littéraire de l’éurope,13 reviews that served him and the editors of the Gazette as a platform on which to state and debate their opinions. Beyond the questions about the primacy of Roman or Greek architecture, they addressed topics such as the definition of architecture as art (or not), historical methods, archaeology and the use of archaeological artefacts as evidence, and antiquarian use of ancient texts as sources of historical knowledge. Within these debates, Piranesi had articulated his views of Egyptian art as determined by its architecture. By the time of the Egyptian campaign, this debate was well over, and as said above, the aesthetic preferences and positions of Winckelmann were the accepted views. But while Piranesi’s opinions were no longer debated, and possibly not even known to most of the participants of the expedition to Egypt, his reputation as artist and his “unique fusion of visionary designer and committed antiquarian” that transformed his generation’s conception of the Roman past and initiated a revolution in the field of classical archaeology, as John Wilton-Ely argued, did not suffer the same fate.14 His work, especially with the publication of Antichita Romane in 1756, formed a common reference, both implicit and explicit to the recorders of Egypt’s past. Piranesi’s methods of work as elaborated in the preface to the 1756 Antichita Romane, the variety of topics of his investigation as well as their geographical grid appealed to the engineers and architects. It inspired and made it legitimate for the engineers drawing Egypt’s monuments to go beyond the visible, to move from ruins to reconstruction by way of conjectures based on classical texts.15 Piranesi had defended the historical reconstructions he presented as the product of 13  The journal was edited and published by Jean-Baptiste Suard and Abbé Arnaud, and appeared in 1764–1766. It was popular in the philosophes circles and debated works of art and literature. For the reviews regarding Piranesi, see Gazette littéraire, 2 (August 22, 1764), pp. 318–319; Gazette littéraire, 3 (September 26, 1764), pp. 57–58; Gazette littéraire, 3 (November 4, 1764), pp. 233–247; Gazette littéraire, 5 (April 28, 1765), pp. 193–211 and a review of Piranesi’s Antichità d’Albano e di Castel Gandolfo, Antichità di Cora, and Di due spelonche ornate dagli antichi. 14  John Wilton-Ely, The Mind and Art of Giovanni Batista Piranesi (London: Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1978), p.23. 15  Piranesi’s guidelines are in John Wilton-Ely, The Mind and Art of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, p. 48. Some idea of Piranesi’s popularity among the Committee of Arts and Science one can see in the way the decision of his sons to move to Paris with their father’s copper plates was reported in the journals published in Egypt. See also Bonaparte’s decree of December 1809 mentioned in Chap. 4, instructing to use expected revenues from the Description of Egypt, to buy Piranesi’s copper plates [AN F17/1104-5. Emperor decree, December 4, 1809].

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observations combined with reasonable conjecture. “I have portrayed …the ruins, representing more than their exterior facades, but also their plans, their interiors, distinguishing their parts in section and profile and indicating their materials and the manner of their construction— according to what I could derive in the course of many years of exact observation, excavation and research.”16 At the stage of the organisation of the plates of engravings for publication. Piranesi’s work provided a precedent to the way drawings of different scale could be represented on one plate. The popularity of his work in France made this way of presentation of archaeological findings known and acceptable to the contributors to the Description of Egypt as well as to its readers. They had already encountered Piranesi’s way of combining illustrations of various types and scale on the same plate, geometric sections next to an oversized detail or a palpable view.17 In the second half of the eighteenth century, archaeology was not a distinct discipline with clear requirements. The modes of representing archaeological ruins were constantly changing and re-defined by travellers, artists and antiquarians. The balance to be achieved between the aspiration for perfection of the engravings and the hope to offer an authentic representation of the sites visited was often contested.18 Later generations of archaeologists used clear graphic conventions such as dashed lines or different colouring to distinguish what existed at the time of the excavation from what they believed existed in the past, and the assumed plan of the monument from its actual realisation or from what could actually be observed.19 But at the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, these methods were not yet canonised. The Description of Egypt can be located somewhere between the two modes of presentation. Its plates often combined various scales, sections and styles of drawings. The conjectures and reconstructions of the archaeological artefacts were mostly addressed in the 16   The quote from Della Magnificenza ed Architettura de’Romani is translated in S.M.  Dixon, “The sources and Fortunes of Piranesi’s Archaeological Illustrations”, Art History, Vol. 25 N4 (September 2002), pp. 469–487. 17  Travellers like François Cassas and earlier, Jean Laurent Pierre Houël followed Piranesi’s mode of presentation and acknowledged doing so. François Cassas, Collection des chefs-­ d’oeuvre de l’architecture des differens peoples, executés en modèles (Paris, 1806); (Jean Laurent Pierre Houël, Voyage pittoresque des isles de Sicile, de Malte et de Lipari, ou l’on traite des Antiquités qui s’y trouvent encore des principaux Phénomènes que la Nature y offre; du Costumes de Habitans, & quelques usages (2 volumes 1762 and 1787). 18  Stuart Piggott, Antiquity Depicted: Aspects of Archaeological Illustration (London: Thames & Hudson, Walter Neurath Memorial Lecture, 1978), pp. 7–9. 19  For this argument, see S.M. Dixon (2002).

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texts and not evident through a graphical convention. But some drawings did offer different lines to suggest different layers of a building, and different colouring to indicate an assumed underground layer. A reconstructed image of a statue appeared side by side with a view of the way it appeared at the time of excavation, hinting that the first was an imaginary restoration, while other images, completely imagined reconstructions, were displayed without a hint to their situation on site. This seemingly scientific incoherence is evidence to the time of the work’s creation, a time of transition in the conventions of archaeological presentations.20

Fig. 7.1  Memphis et ses environs, “Poignet d’un colosse à Memphis ; plan, coupe et détails d’un tombeau de momies d’oiseaux à Saqqãrah; vue des carrières de Torrah; vue d’un mur antique”, Antiquités, vol. V, plate 4 20  There are multiple examples; these are but some: for various scales and types on the same plate, see, Fig. 7.1; for the existence on consecutive plates, a representation of a statue at the time and its imaginative restoration, see Fig. 7.2 (Andre Dutertre) and Fig. 7.3 (Jollois and de Villiers). There is no graphic indication of the restoration in Fig. 7.3.

Fig. 7.2  Thèbes, Memnonium, “Vue des deux colosses”, Antiquités, vol. II plate 20

Fig. 7.3   Thèbes, Memnonium, “Détails du colosse du sud”, Antiquités, vol. II plate 21

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It is important to note that the way of presentation was a conscious choice made by the editorial committee. The teachers and graduates of the Polytechnic were well acquainted with another mode of presentation of monuments of the past, one that was also accepted as scholarly. Their teacher of architecture, Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand, former pupil and follower of Etienne-Louis Boullée, offered an alternative to Piranesi’s documentation of antiquity.21 Durand’s teachings were not based on the study of particular buildings or styles but on the collection of monuments of the past and their classification. This method aimed to reveal the monuments’ common features.22 The illustrations that accompanied his work, Recueil et Parallèle des édifices, show buildings grouped according to certain classes. Durand used historical classification (Roman, Greek, Egyptian, etc.), functional classification (theatres, palaces, hospitals, etc.) and geometrical classification. The plates, like those of David Le Roy before, presented the different monuments in the same scale, the goal not so much being to give a faithful description of certain monuments, but to illustrate generic principles of architecture.23 The Description of Egypt had different goals. It was to be a survey of all aspects of a civilisation: its landscapes, its monuments and its artefacts, its people and their ways of life, its ancient and near past and its present. The editorial committee’s choice of a way of presentation that was closer to that of Piranesi was possibly a result of their perceived affinity to the artist’s historical project but also because of the diversity of his work. The volumes of plates of the Description of Egypt that accommodated a wide variety of styles from the picturesque to architectural sections and plans in different scales made an implicit reference to Piranesi’s work. The variety was accepted by its editors and contributors as well as by the public, as a coherent description of Egypt. The process of on-site drawings, where attentive observations, careful measurements and sketches that were 21  Werner Szambien, Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand, 1760–1834 De l’imitation à la norme (Paris: Picard, 1984). For his teachings at the Polytechnic, see especially pp. 65–72. For the relationship with Boullée, see Emil Kaufmann, Three Revolutionary Architects, Boullée, Ledoux, and Lequeu (1952), p. 359. 22  Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand, Recueil et Parallèle des édifices de tout genre, anciens et modernes (Paris, 1799–1801); Jean-Nicholas-Louis Durand, Précis des leçons d’architecture données à l’École polytechnique (Paris, 1802–1805). 23  A significant influence on this way of presentation was David Le Roy’s book on Greek ruins especially a table that appeared in its 1770 edition that showed the temples of the past drawn—plan and view—in the same scale.

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compared and discussed with fellow égyptiens, the precision of the illustrations and the quality of the engravings was very much emphasised in all writings and comments about the work. Having been there provided the participants with a level of knowledge and authority that armchair orientalists or other experts whose knowledge was only textual did not possess. Even more, it is possible to argue that the experience of Egypt affected profoundly those who were set to draw it beyond their ability to measure its monuments and artefacts. The direct acquaintance of the authors of the images with the particular features of the land of Egypt affected the ways some of them sketched and engraved the country. The vast horizons, the endless skies without a cloud, the desert, the light, the heat, the enormity of the monuments and their state of preservation were all unique and unexpected aspects of the land that the group set out to describe. These were aspects to which previous readings or early acquaintance with drawings could not prepare them. Their encounter with these features provided the advantage they held over others who had not been there. One can see that while at times, the members of the editorial committee of the Description were willing to adjust the measurements they took on-site to historical accounts they read later on,24 they were uncompromising in their choice of engravers, uncompromising in the choice of method of engraving and uncompromising in their choice of the size of the paper of the volumes of plates.25 They used those very features of the land and its monuments to explain their unwillingness to compromise.

Nicolas-Jacques Conté: Engraving Egyptian Landscape Nicolas-Jacques Conté (1755–1805), the painter and all-round mechanical expert and first editor in chief of the Description, provided the project with the technical knowledge and concrete solutions to draw and engrave Egypt’s monuments and landscape. Born near the city of Sées in  This will be discussed in Chap. 8.  A journal comment of 1821, that addressed the announcement of the Pancouke edition, praised the original edition of the Description but added: « Les artistes qui se sont occupés sur les lieux-mêmes des dessins sembleraient avoir pensé que les proportions analogues étaient nécessaire pour exprimer et reproduire avec fidélité, le grandiose, ou plutôt les formes presque toujours gigantesques qu’ils avaient à nous mettre sous les yeux…. » However, the commentary continued, and this made the work inaccessible to those without financial means (BnF NAF 21951 vol. doc. 78). 24 25

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Normandie, Conté was introduced to painting when assisting a local painter.26 In 1776 he moved to Paris where he studied first with the artist Jean-Baptiste Greuze27 and then with the Swedish miniaturist Pierre Adolphe Hall and lived off portrait paintings and miniatures. However, his interests were elsewhere, and in the years before the Revolution, he studied chemistry and physics. His reputation and main practices gradually turned to inventive mechanics, a talent very much needed during the Revolutionary wars. When in 1793, the import of the metal lead from Britain had stopped; the Committee of Public Safety requested the public to find alternatives that would enable the continued production of pencils. Conté’s combination of clay and graphite powder, both available in France, pressed between two half-cylinders of wood, formed what became the modern pencil and which he presented as a gift to the Republic.28 In the same years, he conducted with Monge aeronautics experiments, and directed the school at Meudon. His technical abilities, inventions and close connections with Monge made him an obvious candidate for the expedition to Egypt. In Cairo Conté headed a workshop where his mechanical expertise was constantly called upon to solve problems and supply instruments that had been lost in battle, and devices and gadgets with which to address the various needs of the army and the scientists, among them an early version of what is now called the Conté crayon, a hard pastel stick used by artists. Conté could not leave the workshop and therefore did not join those who went to explore and record Upper Egypt. His published contribution to the work is made up of drawings done in Cairo and its close environment. The volumes of engravings of État moderne hold his documentation of Egypt’s arts and crafts workshops, very much in the style of the plates of the Encyclopédie, as well as some drawings of houses in the vicinity of his workshop, portraits of individuals and picturesque drawings of the environment of Cairo.29 But his more significant input was to the process of engraving when editor.

26  For a short biography of Conté, see Alain Queruel, Nicolas-Jacques Conté (1755–1805) un inventeur de génie (Paris: Le Harmattan, 2004). 27  Jean-Baptiste Greuze, whose quarrels with the Academy were documented by Diderot, was accepted there as a peintre de genre, and not as a historical painter as he wished. 28  In 1795 Conté received a patent for the invention. His descendants held the rights to the product that was still manufactured in the same way until the 1960s. 29  For example of his arts and crafts contribution, see Fig. 7.4.

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Fig. 7.4  Arts et Métiers, État Moderne, vol. II plate XXIII

Egypt’s landscape with its vast horizons, cloudless skies and empty desert lands created a problem in the process of engraving. Before Egypt, the problem of colours gradually shading off one into another was usually dealt with in landscape engravings by the use of clouds. But a correct representation of the Egyptian scenery did not allow the use of such a device, and therefore, the contributors were asked to avoid framing their work in a way that left wide area of sky and open horizons of empty desert land.30 Conté addressed the problem by creating a large-scale machine that made it possible to engrave lines in wanted intervals and width and thus create desired intensities of tone over large areas. Egypt’s skies could now be engraved without clouds. In recognition of his contribution, the editor Jomard added his portrait and a number of plates that demonstrated the 30  BnF NAF 21959 (vol. 26 n 263) « Cette mesure parait nécessitée par la forme de la plupart des dessins, dont la plus grande dimension est sur l’horizontale. Le sol de l’Égypte étant aplati, a naturellement déterminé les artistes à choisir ce mode, pour ne pas faire à leurs tableaux une trop grande étendue de ciel. Quelque uns, mais un petit nombre font cependant exception à cette règle. ».

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work and possible shadings of colours of the machine à graver at the end of the second volume of Modern Egypt.31

Architects and Engineers Documenting Egypt When in 1867, the German-born French architect Jakob Ignaz Hittorff died, and a collection of drawings he had possessed were given to the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne. Two of them, Vue de la Porte des Conquêtes and Vue de la mosquée de Sultan Hasan, were mistakenly attributed to Hittorff’s late father-in-law, Jean-Baptiste Lepère (1761–1844), one of the architects who had taken part in Bonaparte’s expedition to Egypt. The drawings were actually the work of Louis-François Cassas (1756–1827), also an architect of the same generation, and one who had travelled to the East in 1785, but whose itinerary in Egypt included only the Delta region and Cairo.32 The reasons for the mistaken attribution were many. First, there was the obvious assumption that due to family and professional connections, Hittorff would have held Lepère’s unpublished drawings. There was also the fact that both Cassas and Lepère had travelled to Egypt at the end of the eighteenth century. But another reason might have been the topic of the drawings that represented monuments of Islamic Egypt. The Bab al-­ Futuh, one of the gates of the Fatimid city, built in the eleventh century, and the Sultan Hassan mosque, built in 1256, were both unusual objects of depiction for eighteenth-century travellers whose interest was in the monuments of ancient Egypt and the possible influences of Egypt’s architecture on that of Rome and Ancient Greece. True, some early travellers recorded the local inhabitants and their manners, and Frederik Norden provided an analytic drawing of the hydraulic facilities in Cairo; but there 31  For the products of Conté’s engraving machine, see https://archive.org/details/dr_ produits-de-la-machine%2D%2Dgraver-antiquites-tome-premier-10404008. 32  Some of Cassas’ drawings were published in Voyage pittoresque de la Syrie, de la Phénicie, de la Palestine, et de la Basse Égypte (Paris: Imprimerie de la République, an VI (1799), 2 vol. in-fol. After the publication of two volumes, the Description of Egypt took its place as a state-­ sponsored project at the imprimerie nationale. Cassas was well learned in Greek and Roman antiquity but found the Egyptian ancient monuments enigmatic. His representations were more in the realm of the mythic. However, he was of the first artists that found interest in recording the Muslim architecture. See A.  Gilet, « Le voyage dans l’Empire Ottoman », Egyptomania, p. 164; A. Gilet, « L’Égypte », Cassas, catalogue d’exposition (Tour, Cologne), pp. 188–206.

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was no systematic attempt to draw and analyse the architecture of the Islamic period. Before the publication of the Description of Egypt, the Islamic period was imagined rather than documented. The first European translation of A Thousand and One Nights by the French orientalist Antoine Galland published in 1704–1717 had no illustrations. But the success it enjoyed brought to many translations into other European languages and to several pirate editions published in The Hague.33 Each of the Hague volumes had a frontispiece by the Dutch artist David Coster. The images depicted characters in the stories in a European setting; the vague notion of the Orient was represented by turbans on the characters’ head.34 Other European drawings of scenes set in the Islamic Orient depicted figures in turbans against a background of antiquity or a landscape with hints of a sketchy minaret in the background.35 Cassas’ work was probably the first in which an architect set himself to draw Islamic monuments as a topic on its own. The drawings, engraved in 1799 but not included in Cassas’ published work, were probably unknown to the architect Jean Constantin Protain when he was preparing his representations of the Islamic architecture of Egypt for the Description of Egypt.36 Jean Constantin Protain (b. 1769) was slightly younger than the two other architects Jean-Baptiste Lepère (b. 1761) and Charles-Louis Balzac (b. 1752) who have authored some of the engravings discussed here. Not much is known about their early studies in architecture, though it is known that Jean-Baptiste Lepère went to Saint-Domingue in 1787 were he designed houses to some French planters, and in 1796 to Istanbul to build a cannon factory for the Sultan. Following the expedition to Egypt and the proximity to Bonaparte, Lepère gained two prestigious projects, the redesign of Palais de Saint-Cloud and that of Malmaison.37 He was one of the architects who worked on raising the Colonne Vendôme, and designed the church of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul in Paris, a project largely revised by his son-in-law Jakob Ignaz Hittorff during its protracted execution. The  These were published in 1714–1730.  For the illustrations of the many versions of Arabian Nights, see David Irwin, Visions of the Jinn: Illustrators of the Arabian Nights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 35  See, for example, the drawings by Jean Baptiste Vanmour (1671–1737) or Jean-Étienne Liotard (1702–1789). 36  Protain’s drawings appear in ÉM, vol. I, pl. 29–38; pl. 46–49; 54–56. 37  Jean-Baptiste Lepère, Biographie Universelle ou Dictionnaire Historique (2ieume édition, 1871). 33 34

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two other architects continued to careers of less glamour. Balzac joined the section of public works at the Seine department, and Protain became a scenic artist at the opera in Paris. Protain contributed most of the architectural drawings to the volumes of État moderne, drawings that were very technical and almost appear to be illustrations to a book for students about perspective and chiaroscuro techniques. However, they were innovative in their choice of topic and in their analytical approach to Islamic architecture.38

Fig. 7.5  Le Kaire, “Vue perspective de la porte appellée [sic] Bab el Nasr”, État Moderne, vol. I plate 46

 Figure 7.5, Le Kaire, « Vue perspective de la porte appellée [sic] Bab el Nasr ».

38

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Fig. 7.6  Île de Philae, “Vue perspective intérieure, prise sous le portique du grand temple”, Antiquités, vol. I. pl. 18

Jean-Baptiste Lepère’s contribution to the Description of Egypt of the inner court of a temple at the Ile de Philae would become one of its most famous images.39 He was not the only one to draw the inner court and a comparison between his reconstruction of it and that of the young engineers, Jollois and de Villiers,40 shows some difference in the self-restraint the two Polytechnic graduates practiced when restoring or “improving” the objects they were representing. Both drawings cleared away, so to speak, the debris and sand that stood between them and the object they were set to draw. However, the result was quite different. Jollois and de Villiers presented a sober reconstruction of the site, and added an explanation to 39  Figure 7.6, Le Père, Île de Philae, « Vue perspective intérieure, prise sous le portique du grand temple ». 40  Figure 7.7, Jollois and de Villiers, Île de Philae, « Vue perspective du second pylône et de le cour qui le précède ».

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Fig. 7.7  Île de Philae, “Vue perspective du second pylône et de lecour qui le précède”, Antiquités, vol. I pl. 17

the plate, written in careful and tentative language, sharing their assumptions with the readers.41 Their image was a skilful work of the young engineers who followed what they had learned at school about light and shadows, perspective and the use of human figures to provide scale. Lepère’s imaginative restoration was more daring and probably meant to provide more than a representation of the assumed inner court. It also provided the reader with an idea of the state of conservation of the drawings on many of the monuments the group had encountered. It conveyed their lively colours as well as the visual effect of the ornaments and hieroglyphs of ancient Egyptian architecture. The explanation to the drawing was written by Jomard, opening with concrete geographical coordinates of the point from which the otherwise imaginary drawing was taken. Jomard wrote of two Egyptian priests in the drawing “represented in antique gear” without explaining their role as scale leaving the reader to  Jollois et Devilliers, explication de planche 17, Antiquités, vol. I.

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decide whether they were there or not. The most striking feature of the drawing was its colourful ornaments. Jomard explained them as having been present on one of the columns and reproduced by Lepère on the site he had reconstructed. “We have used ornaments we have collected and copied on many sites”, he wrote, “in all the places that the colours are preserved, they have the same freshness and brightness as in this engraving.”42 The members of the |Committee of Arts and Sciences that went to Upper Egypt were surprised and taken by the colourful ornaments of the monuments and their state of preservation. At the beginning of the journey, they held to their Boullée-inspired knowledge and expectations discussed about Egyptian architecture as being austere, without ornamentation. “In general, the architecture of these small temples presents very little ornamentation. It pleases by its simplicity and the regularity of the distribution of its columns”, wrote Joseph Fourier of his initial impressions of the views he saw from the boat going up the Nile, almost citing Boullée’s thoughts about Egyptian architecture.43 But in the following weeks, Fourier’s notes changed and were now describing the ornamentation time and again.44 By the time the group arrived at Edfou, Fourier reached a more general conclusion: “The Egyptian temples were painted; there is not one monument of those we saw that did not show in various locations remains of colours that had been applied to the walls. The cornices, friezes, ceilings, columns, capitals, finally, all the surfaces of the walls, both internal and external, were painted in various colours.”45 In Esneh he wrote: “There was not one stone of the temple which was not painted in various colours, decorated with carved figures and covered with hieroglyphic signs.”46 Boullée’s visions of Egyptian architecture, so well-known to the members of the Committee of Arts and Sciences, had to be adapted to the new findings. Working in Upper Egypt, the architects and engineers saw the colossal monuments, the grandeur of the geometrical forms; they also saw and sometimes envisioned the long colonnades, the repetition and the architecture of shadows and shades as described by Boullée and these  Jomard, explication de planche 18, Antiquités, vol. I.  Joseph Fourier, “Extrait des notes de voyage de Fourier » in Prosper Jollois, Journal p. 170. This note was written at the beginning of the journey going up the Nile. 44  See, for example, “Extrait”, pp. 186; 187; 189; 191–193. 45  Fourier, “Extrait” p. 196. 46  Fourier, “Extrait” p. 198. 42 43

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Fig. 7.8  Thèbes, Karnak, “Coupes transversales en avant des appartements de granit et dans la galerie du palais”, Antiquités, vol. III, plate 28

appear in some of their engravings.47 But they also saw something else; they saw the persistence of ornamentation, the variety of the capitals and the colours often preserved in all their brightness. When Lepère presented the inner court of the Great Temple at Philae, he was expressing the understanding of the group regarding Egyptian architecture as expressed in Fourier’s general conclusion about Egyptian architecture quoted above. The addition of the figures dressed as ancient priests, following the drawings they saw on the walls, was acceptable to the group and the editorial committee as a drawing of a restored monument based on learned and legitimate conjectures. The figures were also in line with another commentary of Fourier from Asyut in which he wrote of the local inhabitants: “We cannot help but recognise [in them] the same features as in the figures drawn on the Egyptian monuments.”48

Polytechnic Graduates: Archaeology avant-la-lettre In the descriptive text that opened the first volume of the Description of Egypt, Michel Ange Lancret wrote: “In front of the tower, the obelisks and red granite lions are overturned, broken and almost completely buried; it is 47  For example, Fig.  7.8, Thèbes, Karnak, « Coupes transversales en avant des appartements de granit et dans la galerie du palais » 48  Fourier, “Extraits” p. 172.

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for the imagination to draw the dust, to place them on each side of the door of the tower, and thus make the first entrance of temples one of the simplest and most admirable architectural compositions that men have imagined.”49 In this paragraph, Lancret articulated the distance between our notions of positive knowledge and those of the eighteenth century. In an article about prescientific archaeology, Susan Dixon argued that for eighteenth-century scholars such as Francesco Bianchini, reason and imagination, two seemingly antithetical mental processes, worked together to reveal historical knowledge.50 Dixon wrote that this belief in the power of imagination to synthesise fragmented images into meaning may have been known to others, but it was Piranesi who used it as a tool to operate on artefacts to create a clear idea of the historical past.51 The four volumes of Antichità Romane show Piranesi’s various modes of illustrations for the first time: ichnographic plans and sections of monuments, ornamental and construction details, vedute, capricci and all types of their combinations. Dixon argued that Piranesi articulated in his work of those years his belief regarding the role of the visual in the recovery or discovery of historical knowledge. This knowledge of the past, often embodied in deficient objects, involved the subjective input of the historian and of the artist. Piranesi, like Bianchini, held the belief in the place of imagination in the pursuit of historical knowledge, but unlike Bianchini, insisted on the general geographic setting as a necessary step in understanding the history of the monument.52 In his dual role as artist and archaeologist, Piranesi attempted to understand Rome’s ancient topography but also by way of the artefact, interpreted in context, he attempted to reveal aspects of the culture’s rites, costumes technology and commerce. In their work in Upper Egypt, the architects and engineers of the Committee of Arts and Sciences were trying to recover and interpret Egypt’s ancient past. The two young Polytechnic graduates, Prosper 49  Michel Ange Lancret, « Description de l’Ile de Philae », Antiquités-Descriptions, vol I., p. 6. 50  Susan M.  Dixon, “Piranesi and Francesco Bianchini: Capricci in the service of pre-­ scientific archaeology” Art History, Vol. 22 No. 2, June 1999, pp. 184–213. 51  Dixon established Piranesi’s exposure to Bianchinni’s ‘l’istoria universale provata coi monumenti e figurate coi simboli degli antichi (1697) and argued that his publications from 1748 to the early 1760s reflected his turn to archaeology and his turn to more scholarly audiences. 52  This may be explained by the difference between their projects. While Bianchini was writing the history of mankind and its cultures by reconstruction of ancient objects, Piranesi’s interest was in a specific Roman history. Another obvious difference was their skill as artists.

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Jollois and Edouard de Villiers, were doing it more than others. Their drawings make up most of the engravings of the volumes of ancient Egypt. Jean-Baptiste Prosper Jollois (1776–1842) was of the school’s first students. He was of the selected group of the first chefs de brigade, with whom Monge had worked closely. Jollois entered the Polytechnic when he was seventeen after graduating from the military school in Auxerre. He was recruited to the Egyptian campaign as he was continuing his studies at one of the Polytechnic’s schools of application, the école des ponts et chaussées. Edouard de Villiers (1780–1855), four years younger, began his studies at the Polytechnic in 1796, at the age of sixteen, and passed his exit exams in much ceremony in Cairo, with Bonaparte being both examiner and the representative of the State granting the diploma. Like the other Polytechnic graduates who took part in the campaign, the two were hand-­ picked by their teachers to join the expedition, and one may assume they were of the school’s best students and graduates, excelling in their abilities as engineers. They were very young and hadn’t yet experienced working on their own, and their trip to Egypt was the first time they had left France. Jollois and de Villiers became close friends and collaborators during a common mission as engineers in Upper Egypt under the direction of Pierre-Simon Girard. They were to survey the region and to provide a detailed report of the state of irrigation and agriculture in the villages of Upper Egypt. Taken by the monuments they saw, the two began to record them with enthusiasm, first on their own, and some months later, with the members of the two commissions that went up the Nile for that purpose. The result of their intensive work can be seen in the five volumes of plates of antiquity. Jollois and de Villiers co-signed almost half of the drawings of the volumes of engravings of ancient Egypt. Their work followed the genre of engineer drawings. They drafted plans, sections and elevations of monuments and their parts. Like Piranesi before, they also followed the antiquarian practice and used ancient texts to provide the ruins with proper names.53 They used the ancient texts in conjunction with measurements provided by their colleague, the astronomer Nouet,54 and these put  Piranesi stated in the preface to Le Antichità Romane the aim of his research to be “to provide the ruins with their proper names. … to find the situation of many of the ancient buildings, which I had to represent in plan, though no trace of them now remains.” Quoted in Lola Kantor-Kazovsky, Piranesi as Interpreter of Roman Architecture and the Origins of His Intellectual World (2006), p. 77. 54  Nicolas-Antoine Nouet (1740–1881) had worked at the Paris observatory under Jean-­ Dominique Cassini IV and in 1798 became its head. With the departure of Bonaparte, Berthollet and Monge to France in the August 1799, Nouet became president of the Cairo Institute. 53

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Fig. 7.9  Île de Philae, “Vue des monuments de l’ile et des montagnes de granit qui l’environnent”, Antiquités, vol. I pl.4

them in a position to accept these texts while rejecting mistakes of more recent travellers.55 But they did more; the two set on an archaeological project that provided a restored version to the ruins and monuments they saw. Their explanations to the plates provide the necessary information as to the actual state of the monument they had drawn and the conjectures on which they based the restored version they presented.56 The explanations and the discussions in the descriptive texts they wrote indicate the two were using assumptions based on their professional skills as a first step, and only later, when available, supplementing these with information from previous texts in the reconstructions they were carrying.57 They used analogy, symmetry and proportions as well as some assumptions regarding relations between the edifices in space. They made what one may call inter-textual analogies,  See, for example, « Description d’Esné et de ses Environs », Antiquités-Descriptions, vol. I ch. VII, page 21: « …les distances données par la table Antonine, Ptolémée et M. Nouet, entre Hermonthis ou Erment et Latopolis ou Esné, coïncident assez bien pour autoriser à placer Latopolis à Esné. » 56  The comparison with Andre Dutertre’s representations of the same sites demonstrates the difference in approach. Dutertre will be discussed further on. See Fig. 7.9 for Dutertre’s view of the monuments of Île de Philae; see Fig. 7.10 for Jollois’ and de Villiers’ depiction of the monuments; see also their explication Antiquités, vol. I, pl. 5. 57  A plate representing the tomb of Ozymandias in Thèbes, by the two says in its caption: “Plan et coupes du tombeau d’Osymandyas restauré d’après Diodore de Sicile” Antiquités, vol. II, pl. 33. To the best of my knowledge, this is an exceptional explicit reference to a text as the source of a visual restoration. More on the use of previous texts in the following chapter. 55

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Fig. 7.10  Île de Philae, “Plan et coupe générale des principaux édifices. Coupe longitudinale du grand temple”, Antiquités, vol. I pl. 5

comparing the monuments among themselves, but staying within the confines of the monuments of Egypt for they sensed that their acquaintance with Greek and Roman architecture was not so relevant.58 They were archaeologists avant-la-lettre trying to make sense of a past about which they knew very little, by way of its material evidence. Trained as engineers at the most advanced institution of the time, they used their skills to painstakingly draw every element of its architecture. Their 58  For the need to unlearn, so to speak, the tendency to compare to the familiar Greco-­ Roman architecture, see Michel Ange Lancret, « Description d’île de Philae »in Antiquités-­ Descriptions, vol. I. Lancret wrote of the small temple and the arrangement of the columns in the gallery drawn by Jollois and de Villiers: « Ce qui distingue ces portiques de ceux que nous avons imités des Grecs et des Romains, c’est qu’ils sont fermés latéralement, et que tous les entre-colonnemens de la façade… sont fermés par un mur jusqu’au tiers et quelquefois jusqu’à la moitié de leur hauteur. … ce motif nous est actuellement si étranger, que le premier désir que nous éprouvons, c’est de voir ces murs d’entre-colonnement supprimés, afin de jouir de toute la hauteur des colonnes, dont la proportion est d’ailleurs peu élancée. »

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acquaintance with the engravings of Boullée probably eased their encounter with the long colonnades they so often represented. But they discovered in Egypt that what they knew before or what they assumed about proportions could not be taken for granted. They had to measure each column and every capital on its own because these differed from one another unexpectedly. “…and thus collapses that historical tradition that had been adopted following the teachings of Vitruvius” the two wrote in their Description of Thèbes.59 They were not the first to discover that Vitruvian proportions or the ideal type column did not really exist. Antoine Desgodetz had already brought to light, possibly involuntarily, the contradiction between Vitruvian theory and the actual proportions of Roman monuments. Claude Perrault, who had translated Vitruvius into French in 1684, having read Desgodetz, was even more outspoken.60 Piranesi possibly followed Claude Perrault’s Ordonnance des cinq éspeces des colonnes (1684),61 or as a result of his on-site measurements, concentrated precisely on the deviations and on the varieties of proportions he had noticed. In the explanation to one of the plates in the tomb cycle, he wrote: “One must not always rely upon Vitruvian rule as on some invariable law. Because when one examines the ancient monuments, one finds a large variety of proportions, the actual regularity of which—when speaking of the most significant architectural monuments—may be recognized from the circumstances of the specific place and from the constructions themselves.”62 These precedents were not necessarily known to the young engineers who went to Egypt, as their references to the orders and the proportions imply. They possibly had to discover them on their own, measuring their way through the monuments of ancient Egypt. The sense of unknown terrain was articulated by Jomard who wrote of the inability to make assumptions about Egyptian architecture like one can make about the better known Greek of Roman ones. The available publications about Egyptian architecture, he wrote, conveyed a false sense of uniformity 59  Jollois et Devilliers, “Description Générale de Thèbes”, Antiquités-Descriptions, vol. I, chap. IX, p. 39. 60  Antoine Desgodetz Les edifices antiques de Rome dessinés et mesurés très exactement (1682). A 1779 edition of Desgodetz and Perrault’s 1684 edition of Vitruvius were at the Polytechnic School library from the start. 61  I am following here Lola Kantor-Kazovsky Piranesi, pp.  230–234. Kantor-Kazovsky shows that Piranesi echoed Perrault in Parere su l’architettura. 62  Antichità Romane, vol. II, pl. 5, quoted in Kantor-Kazovsky, p. 114.

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making the readers believe it had only one mode, and was essentially monotonous. His experience, he continued, showed something else. “Among all peoples, the buildings intended for the same cult have always had great similarities between them; and, in this respect, the temples of Egypt have nothing in particular; though they do offer more material variety than the Greek temples. But when we isolate certain parts of Egyptian architecture, the columns, for example; we will be surprised by the variety of their proportions and their ornaments. There is certainly less resemblance between the most elegant and the plainest of Egyptian columns than there is between the Corinthian column and that of the Greek Doric order.”63 The teachings of Durand survive in Jomard’s generalisations about the temples whose universal role predicted similar architecture. But a sense of estrangement from the material evidence dictated a different approach. The variety in the proportions of the columns and the understanding that the same temple may include very different capitals, decorations, hieroglyphs or vases resulted in plates on which multiple capitals, multiple vases, murals, hairdos and head covers were drawn.64 Everything was important; everything was meticulously copied with hardly any classification but the geographical one. It is in these instances that one sees a difference between the architects of the older generation and the young Polytechnic graduates. The architect Lepère drew a generic phylône, and inserted a door at its centre, providing a symmetry that did not exist in the material evidence. He then decorated it with elements he found in the drawings that were carefully copied by the young engineers from the inner murals of various edifices.65 Be it because of lesser confidence and experience, or because of educational training and inclination, the young Polytechnic engineers worked very much like antiquarians, depicting each object on its own, calculating and measuring their options to reconstruct its architectural elements. They were studying Egyptian history through its material remains, practicing archaeology before the discipline defined itself as such. In so doing, they were following the work of Piranesi who offered precision and imagination, history within a geographical grid and a way to represent it all.

63  Edme Jomard, « Description de l’île de Philae », Antiquités-Descriptions, vol. I, chap. I, pp. 35–36. 64  For example: Fig. 7.11. 65  Figure 7.12 Le Père’s depiction from Edfou, « Élévation du pylône du grand temple »

Fig. 7.11  Ile de Philae, “Chapiteaux et corniche du portique du grand temple; corniches des deux pylônes; chapiteaux et corniche de la galerie de l’est”, Antiquités, vol. I, pl. 7

Fig. 7.12  Edfou, “Élévation du pylône du grand temple”, Antiquités, vol. I, pl. 51

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In Piranesi they could also find opposition to the conventional view that held Vitruvius architectural aesthetics as based on exact proportions implied in the orders as the only way to deal with the architectural past. Following Piranesi, they placed emphasis on structures and on architectural types that were not common in architecture books but common in the antiquarian inquiry. They drew tombs, and murals, copied fragments of mommies as well as unadorned functional aqueducts. They drew temples and their variety of decorations, columns and capitals that did not adhere to an ideal type. In Piranesi they found license to do this as well as the license to go beyond the visible, to go from ruins to reconstruction. It is here, I believe, that the influence of Gaspard Monge was very strong. Though a silent participant in the work—he did not produce any drawing and only one very short text—he was the intermediary, so to speak, the one that made the work of the eighteenth-century artist who had documented Ancient Rome very visible to the Polytechnic graduates he had taught their geometrical skills.66 The young engineers demonstrated no impulse to generalise, only a deliberate self-restraint. Their drawing technique and blueprint for the representation of antiquity was based on the engineer tradition, but the legitimacy and need to include all data collected, to sometimes crowd them on one plate while transgressing the usual engineering categories, came from the antiquarian tradition. These were not mutually exclusive categories though they do have different vocabularies and frames of reference. Like Piranesi, they were acknowledging the variety, avoiding generalisations or seeking ideal types. They found the legitimacy to draw it all and put it together, sometimes on one plate,67 in the belief that “behind

66  This is more a guess than an argument based on solid facts. However, it was Monge who had brought to the Polytechnic library the engravings of Piranesi’s early views of Rome as well as his publications on Roman antiquity which he probably thought important for the education of his students. More concretely, those who participated in the editorial committee’s meeting at Monge’s apartment until his death, among them Jomard and Jollois, recorded in their letters Monge’s close involvement and help at all stages of the work on the images and texts. 67  For one such example: Fig.  7.12, Memphis et ses environs, « Poignet d’un colosse à Memphis; plan, coupe et détails d’un tombeau de momies d’oiseaux à Saqqãrah; vue des carrières de Torrah; vue d’un mur antique ».

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the individual seemingly unrelated items there was Antiquity, mysterious and august.”68

André Dutertre: Landscape, People and Ruins A very different style of drawing is present in the work that André Dutertre (1753–1842) contributed to the Description. He was not a typical member of the group of civilians recruited to the expedition, older than most of them, with no ties to either the Polytechnic circle or to that of the Jardin des plantes. Nevertheless, he was one of the most dominant contributors to the plates. Dutertre was the son of a Parisian engraver, and after an early formation in the family business, he continued to study with Joseph-Marie Vien who introduced him to the paintings of the grandmasters and to the study of antiquity. He also studied with Antoine-­ François Callet portrait painting and ornament.69 Dutertre travelled to Italy twice, in 1786 and in 1788, as a commissioned artist to copy works of grand-masters in Florence, and to retrace the works of Raphael in the Vatican for the purpose of publications. During these visits, he followed the itinerary many French artists had travelled before, sketching monuments of antiquity, cathedrals and ruins. A dedicated adherent to the ideas of the Revolution, he was driven out of Rome in 1793 by the pontificate government for fear he was spreading revolutionary ideas. Back in France, he joined the republican educational institution the Lycée des Arts,70 worked as a book illustrator and took part in the debates that followed Quatremère de Quincy’s Lettres à Miranda,

68  Arnaldo Momigliano, “The Rise of Antiquarian Research”, The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography (The Sather Lectures, 1961–1962) (Berkley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1990), p. 58. 69  For more on André Dutertre, see Marie Aude Aumonier, À la découverte de l’Italie et de l’Égypte: les voyages d’André Dutertre (Unpublished thesis in history, École des Chartes, 2008). 70  For the history of these end of the eighteenth-century institutions, see Claude Viel, “Fourcroy et les lycées”, lecture published at https://www.persee.fr/doc/ pharm_00352349_2011_num_98_369_22273.

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supporting the Directory’s policy.71 He went to Egypt as a professional artist, to document the expedition and its participants, possibly, for the sake of propaganda in the age before photography. Bonaparte made him member of the Egyptian Institute from the start, and in one of its early sessions, Dutertre proposed a plan to start a school of drawing for army personnel and French civilians interested to learn the skill, saying the knowledge would improve the depictions and drawings of Egypt.72 The proposal was in line with his experience and perception of his profession: it was a skill that could be taught and learned, a view common at the end of the eighteenth century when the perception of art was fluctuating between high culture and an artisanal enterprise.73 In Egypt Dutertre sketched portraits of his fellow participants in the expedition, drew portraits of Egyptians who actually sat for this purpose and copied wall paintings and architectural topics.74 But his most interesting

71  Lettres à Miranda, a polemic text by Antoine Quatremère de Quincy was published in June 1796 under the full title Lettres sur le préjudice qu’occasionneraient aux arts et à la science le déplacement des monuments de l’art de l’Italie, le démembrement de ses écoles et la spoliation de ses collections, galeries, musées, etc. It was a series of seven letters addressed to Colonel Francisco de Miranda regarding the artistic spoils of war confiscated in Italy, and arguing for a connection between works of art and monuments of antiquity to their geographical surroundings and their history. Two public letters followed, one somewhat in support of Quatremère de Quincy, among its signatories was Vivant Denon, the other, in support of the Directory signed, among others, by André Dutertre. 72  The project was presented at the Institute in Cairo 6 vendémiaire, an 7 (September 27, 1798) and reported in the Décade Égyptienne, N. 4, 1er, an 7. In the second half of the eighteenth century, there were two large teaching models used in French drawing schools, the one based on the study of the human body and the other based on geometrical drawing. See Renaud d’Enfert, L’Enseignement du Dessin en France: figure humaine et dessin géométrique 1750–1850 (Paris: Belin, 2003), pp. 3–11. For the group predominantly composed of engineers and architects, Dutertre obviously thought the first model was needed. 73  A.l. Millin in the Dictionnaire des Beaux-Arts (Paris, 1806 tome I p.  430) radically opposed the artist and the artisan. The encyclopaedist tradition, on the other hand, emphasised their integration. Drawing as an integral part of the curriculum was seen as a mean to develop the faculty of observation. Among the égyptiens, one can name Vivant Denon as an example of an artist, while André Dutertre would be the example of the integrated artist and artisan. This is not to speak of their work but of their self-perception and the ways they were perceived by their colleagues. 74  The Bibliothèque nationale holds 172 of these portraits of Bonaparte, members of the savants, officers and rank and file. These were reproduced in Marie Roch Louis Reybaud, Histoire scientifique et militaire de l’expédition française en Egypte in ten volumes (1830–1836). The Description of Egypt used only his portrait of Claude Berthollet.

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contributions to the Description of Egypt were his picturesque views of Egyptian antiquity and of its contemporary life. Dutertre worked in Egypt quite independently, joined the army in Upper Egypt, followed Girard and his group of engineers who were surveying Egypt’s agriculture and irrigation and at his convenience, joined the two groups that went up the Nile to systematically record the antiquities of Upper Egypt.75 His independence is the reason many of his drawings from his time in Upper Egypt represent the very same objects others were assigned to record. For the reader, this offers an opportunity to compare Dutertre’s work with that of others. But for the editors, it also created problems which might explain in part the hostility to Dutertre’s work one reads between the lines in Jomard’s explanations to Dutertre’s drawings.76 Dutertre also worked in Cairo and Alexandria and provided the volumes of illustrations of État moderne both with picturesque images and with portraits of the local population. Dutertre’s talents and commitment were appreciated by General Kléber who promised him the role of artistic director of the future publication of the work on Egypt. In Paris he was a member of the first committee that prepared a plan for the future publication.77 But at an early point, Dutertre disagreed with decisions of the editorial committee and turned hostile to the project of a common publication. Like Denon before, he tried to publish his drawings of Egypt on his own. However, financial difficulties, and possibly, technical ones, drove him back to the editorial committee, after he had engraved eleven of his drawings. A special committee was nominated to review his work and to decide whether to also include the ones he had already engraved in the publication. The quality of the paintings was immediately acknowledged, but not the technique used in their engraving. Dutertre was asked to make some minor changes, but overall, his drawings were accepted. Dutertre’s privately engraved plates highlight the contribution of Conté’s engraving machine to the work as well as the skill of the engravers hired by the committee. As explained above, the contributors were 75  See references to meetings and at times collaboration with him in Edouard de Villiers’ journal entry of August 29, and again September 3. Edouard de Villiers du Terrage, journal et souvenirs sur l’expédition d’Égypte, mis en ordre et publiés par le baron Marc de Villiers du Terrage (Paris, E. Plon, 1899). 76  See, for example, “Explications des planches”, Antiquités, vol. I, pl. 3. 77  BnF NAF 21959, vol. 26 n. 261. This early report dates from 23 prairial an 10 (June 12, 1802).

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instructed to try to avoid framing their work in a way that left wide areas of sky and open horizons of empty desert lands. But Dutertre’s plates did just the opposite. His views often included in their frame these wide, almost empty, areas of arid land and light blue skies. All contributors were struck by this feature of the Egyptian landscape, but while his colleagues were instructed and thus tried to avoid its implication on their landscape drawings by drawing their objects from a seemingly closer point of view so as not to leave empty space at the foreground, Dutertre was drawing this very feature.78

Fig. 7.13  Thèbes, Memnonium, “vue Générale du tombeau d’Osymandyas et d’une partie de la plaine de Thèbes, prise du nord-ouest”, Antiquités, vol. II, pl. 23

78  Figure 7.9 shows the existence of clouds in Dutertre’s privately engraved drawing. For the difference in framing of the image, see Fig. 7.13 (Dutertre) Thèbes, Memnonium, « vue Générale du tombeau d’Osymandyas et d’une partie de la plaine de Thèbes, prise du nord-­ ouest »; Fig. 7.14 (Cécile) Thèbes, Memnonium, « Vue du tombeau d’Osymandyas et d’une partie de la chaine libyque, prise du nord-est ». All the above were printed on the largest paper (812mm X1137mm).

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Fig. 7.14  Thèbes, Memnonium, “Vue du tombeau d’Osymandyas et d’une partie de la chaine libyque, prise du nord-est”, Antiquités, vol. II pl. 26

Four views of the Island of Philae further demonstrate this as well as the technical problems Dutertre faced when engraving his drawings. Balzac’s general view of the island was taken like that of Dutertre’s from the north but the framing of the drawing was very different.79 The editorial committee that examined Dutertre’s drawings faced the problem of having already accepted drawings of the same places by Balzac and Cécile. It had to explain its willingness to ignore the rules it set of avoiding repetitions in

79  Balzac’s position is north to the island (see Fig. 7.15) and Dutertre’s is slightly more to the east (see Fig. 7.16); see also Dutertre’s Fig. 7.9. The similarity of point of view was discussed in the report and I believe the caption that emphasised the different points of view was a late addition of Jomard.

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Fig. 7.15  Île de Philae, “Vue générale prise du côté du nord-ouest”, Antiquités, vol. I pl.2

text and images. In doing so, it acknowledged Dutertre’s exceptional abilities in representing the Egyptian landscape.80 Michel Ange Lancret who wrote the first part of the verbal description of the Ilē de Philae gave special emphasis to Dutertre’s image. Lancret, then editor of the work, probably wrote his text while consulting the images already available. His description is a verbal testimony to the late acceptance of Dutertre’s images by the editorial committee. Lancret first described his arrival at the island from the north, following the point of view of Balzac’s drawing. A few paragraphs later he wrote, this time, preferring Dutertre’s point of view: “If I would have visited the island of Philae again, and if I would have had with me a travelling partner. … I would go first with him to sit on the rock. … From there the eye readily 80  [BnF NAF 21959, 50–51] The plates mentioned are the following: Fig. 7.9: (Dutertre), Île de Philae, « Vue des monuments de l’île et des montaignes de granit qui l’environnent »; Cécile, Île de Philae, « Vue de l’édifice de l’est et de plusieurs monuments », in Antiquités, vol. I, pl. 25; (Dutertre’s is a large drawing while Cécile’s is in the regular size of 541 × 704 mm); Fig. 7.16: (Dutetre), Île de Philae, « Vue générale prise du côté du nord-est »; Balzac, Fig.  7.15, Île de Philae, « Vue générale prise du côté du nord-ouest” Balzac’s drawing is on large paper, Dutertre’s on regular size; La vue d’ombos [I could not find a drawing of Ombos by Dutertre, either the editor did not include it in the work or the committee had mistakenly named the location and was actually discussing the drawings of Hermonthis, to which their discussion is quite proper.]: (Cécile), Antiquités, vol. I, pl. 91); (Dutertre), Antiquités, vol. I, pl. 92).

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Fig. 7.16  Île de Philae, “Vue générale prise du côté du nord-est”, Antiquités, vol. I pl. 3

embraces the small stretch of Philae of which the monuments occupy much. From that point of view, we see it almost entirely. The isolated edifice would now be on our right, at the other side the obelisk and the long colonnade. … a few mud huts barely the height of a man, form the adobe of whom we may call the current owners of the island.”81 Lancret maintained the documentary quality of his description in a fictitious narrative by using the conditional mode. It enabled him to verbally acknowledge the point of view of Dutertre’s drawing. In Dutertre’s recording of ancient Egypt, he depicted its ruins in their contemporary state of conservation. He was not trying to make conjectures about Egypt’s past, and did not take part in the archaeological 81  Michel Ange Lancret, « Description de l’Ile de Philae », Antiquités-Descriptions, vol. I., p.  6. For the relevant drawings, see Balzac, Fig.  7.15; Dutertre, Fig.  7.16; and Dutertre, Fig. 7.9.

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project on which many of the engineers and architects had embarked. In Dutertre’s images, the ruins were represented in the vast landscape, their inscriptions often blurred by dust, some broken, others well preserved, their colossal size emphasised.82 His panoramic lens, so to speak, was often behind the editors’ decision, guided by the engineer pattern of presentation, to present his drawings first, as an overall view of a site, and then have other, more focused depictions of the same monuments follow. Dutertre was converting a prevailing artistic style into Egyptian realities. In 1767  in a review of Huber Robert’s debut at the Salon of 1767, Denis Diderot wrote of the poetics of ruins: “A palace must be in ruins to evoke any interest. … [Ruins] set us dreaming…” Dreaming of the past, but also, wrote Diderot, of the future: “Our glance lingers over the debris of a triumphal arch, a portico, a pyramid … and we retreat into ourselves; we contemplate the ravages of time, and in our imagination we scatter the rubble of the very buildings in which we live over the ground; in that moment solitude and silence prevail around us, we are the sole survivors of an entire nation that is no more. Such is the first tenet of the poetics of ruins.”83 Hubert Robert’s debut in the Salon of 1767 followed an eleven-year sojourn in Rome, part of that time as an academician, where he studied with Giovanni Paolo Pannini (1691–1765), a painter of architecture, and also with Piranesi following his studies of classical ruins.84 He befriended Fragonard, to mutual benefit, and one can see in his work of that period a greater interest in the study of landscape and in the picturesque lives of ordinary Roman people. Robert presented at the 1767 Salon twenty paintings inspired by the Roman experience among them The Port of Rome, Ornamented with Different Monuments of Architecture, Ancient and Modern, known as The Port of Ripetta, and a drawing that demonstrated his talent for landscape drawing, Ruined Bridge with Figures

82  See Dutertre’s depiction of the two colossal statutes at Thébes, Fig. 7.2, and Jollois and de Villiers depiction of the same in Fig. 7.3. 83  Denis Diderot, “Salon of 1767” in Diderot on Art, John Goodman (editor and translator) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). 84  See Piranèse et les Français, 1740–1790 catalogue d’une exposition: Rome, Villa Medici, Dijon, Palais des Etats de Bourgogne, Paris, Hotel de Sully, mai novembre 1976 (Rome: Académie De France, 1976); Nina L. Dubin, Futures & Ruins, eighteenth century Paris and the Art of Hubert Robert (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute Publication, 2010), especially pp. 139–143.

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Crossing. Robert’s later works, of Paris, would demonstrate even better Diderot’s “first tenet of the poetics of ruins.”85 Robert’s aesthetics of ruins was shaped very much by theories of the sublime and the picturesque and by his encounter with Piranesi and his painterly approach to architecture.86 A more popularised version of these concepts can be found in the work of William Gilpin whose essays on the picturesque were also translated into French, and had inspired leisure travellers who enjoyed depicting ancient monuments and ruins as a favourable addition to their pictorial composition, rather than as a scholarly project that was to explain a past.87 But Dutertre was not a leisure traveller; he was an artist, slightly younger than Denon and one who had travelled in Italy before the Egyptian campaign. An immediate and relevant visual reference to the poetics of ruins for Dutertre would be the voyages pittoresques carried out at the end of the eighteenth century to Italy, Greece and other Ottoman lands, and published in France in grand-format, especially the lavishly illustrated editorial project sponsored and edited by Saint Non, that included many drawings by Fragonard and Hubert Robert and some by Denon.88 These drawings of landscape with ruins can form a point of reference and demonstrate the ways in which Dutertre departed from the familiar composition when drawing Egypt. Dutertre introduced human figures to most of his drawings, to those of ruins in landscape that appeared in the volumes of Ancient Egypt and to the picturesque drawings that depicted contemporary landscape and life in 85  I am referring to, among others, his drawings of The Bastille in the First Days of its Demolition (1789), the Demolition of Houses on the Pont Notre-Dame (1786), The Demolition of Houses on the Pont-au-Change (1786), Demolition of a Church (1787) and even more, to the Imaginary View of the Grande Gallery of the Louvre in Ruin (1796). 86  In 1765, the founding work by Edmund Burke (1729–1797), A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, was published in French. 87  William Gilpin, Observations on the River Wye and several parts of South Wales … relative chiefly to picturesque beauty made in the summer of 1770 (London, 1782). Sir Uvedale Price, Essay on the picturesque as compared with the Sublime and the Beautiful (1794). Price, further developing Gilpin, wrote of the picturesque mode of landscape as the synthesis of the Beautiful and the Sublime. For a discussion of the role of ruins in landscape drawings, see Stuart Piggott, Antiquity Depicted: Aspects of Archaeological Illustration (London: Thames and Hudson, Walter Neurath Memorial Lecture, 1978). 88  Abbé de Saint Non, Voyage pittoresque et description du Royaumes de Naples et de Sicile (Paris, 1781–1786); Choiseul-Gouffier, Voyage pittoresque de la Grèce (1779–1782). An earlier publication is by Jean Laurent Pierre Houël, Voyage pittoresque des îles de Sicile, de Malte et de Lipari, ou l’on traite des Antiquités qui s’y trouvent encore des principaux Phénomènes que la Nature y offre; du Costumes de Habitans, & quelques usages (Paris, 1762–1787).

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the volumes of Modern Egypt. His human figures were not used only as human scales as in the work of his colleagues in Egypt.89 Though this purpose was certainly served in the drawings, the human figures conveyed more than that. French and local figures in his drawings are active; they interact, and at the same time seem to be almost consumed by the vastness of the scenery. The presence of the French is not a dominating presence; it is practically ignored by the locals, and sometimes stands out in its awkwardness.90 His figures, like in drawings of Robert and Fragonard, seem indifferent to the grandeur of the past within its ruins they live, but the extraordinary light, the vastness of the land, the sand and dust, overtake all other components of the composition.

Fig. 7.17  La Kaire, “Vue générale de la ville des tombeaux”, État Moderne, vol. I, pl. 61

 In most drawings, the figures-as-scale seem to incline towards a single, static type.  For example: Fig. 7.17, La Kaire, « Vue générale de la ville des tombeaux »; Fig. 7.18, Alexandrie, « Vue de l’esplanade ou grande place du Port Neuf et de l’enceinte des Arabes, seconde partie ». (Notice how the French soldiers stand out in their military exercise.) Others have drawn Cairo quite empty of its inhabitants focusing on its architecture. 89 90

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Fig. 7.18  Alexandrie, “Vue de l’esplanade ou grande place du Port Neuf et de l’enceinte des Arabes, seconde partie”, État Moderne, vol. II, pl. 98

As said above, Dutertre’s training and experience was in drawing human figures, portraits and detailed ornament and not in landscape drawing. Human figures and portraits were his familiar terrain where he was able to use well-known and practiced techniques and conventions. He was probably familiar with, though not experienced in, drawing portraits of oriental figures, so to speak, with head turbans, reclined on low cushioned sofas, with sometimes a sketchy view of the city hinted at from the window.91 He contributed to the Description eight of the eleven plates of the section titled Costumes et portraits.92 These portraits included named dignitaries and un-named local figures Dutertre portrayed along the way.93 Some of his drawings of heads of anonymous individuals distinguished in the captions according to place of birth, social role or religious congregation 91  Jean Baptiste Vanmour (1671–1737) Recueil de cent estampes représentant différentes nations de Levant (Paris, 1712–1714). The book went through several editions. One of its famous depictions was of Lady Montagu and her son at their Ottoman residence. Another influential precedent was Jean-Étienne Liotard (1792–1789), who stayed in Constantinople for four years where he painted portraits of members of the European colony often in what he saw as native dress. 92  Conté is signed on plate A and J while Dutertre is responsible for the rest but plate K. Plate K depicts a variety of figures (thirty figures). Its caption reads: “Communiqué par M. Marcel et dessiné d’après les originaux faits au Kaire de la main d’un Kopte.” 93  The most famous portrait is of Murad Bey, the Mameluke Bey, the French failed to subdue and with whose power and leadership they eventually had to come to terms. After his death, his widow received French pension for the rest of her life. État Moderne, vol. II, pl. G.

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seem to be part of an experimental learning process that examined different options to draw the local population.94 In the individual portraits, though quite conventional, one can see Dutertre’s subtle observation of expressions and gestures.95 It is hard to follow the process Dutertre went through when in Egypt. Though it is quite tempting to construct a narrative in which he gradually left behind the conventions, formulae and skills with which he arrived in Egypt and developed attentiveness to the unique landscape. His Egyptian portfolio is diverse. Some of his drawings work well with this narrative, while others not so much so. The dates of the drawings are unknown especially in the case of drawings of Cairo and its environment and of Alexandria. Alexandria could have been drawn upon arrival or during the long weeks before the departure. Cairo was where he lived most of the three years in Egypt, and again, it is not clear to what period of time one should assign particular drawings. There is very little evidence of Dutertre’s whereabouts only of the time spent in Upper Egypt, documented in the diary entries of Edouard de Villiers and in the itinerary of the two commissions he eventually joined. So when one speaks of a process of unlearning of the conventions of the academic tradition of drawing with which Dutertre came to Egypt and of his growing attentiveness to Egypt’s light, landscape, monuments and sculptures, one speaks of assumptions based on drawings and falls into a circular mode of argumentation. However, some tentative comments can be made. Dutertre’s drawings of statues of Upper Egypt as well as his depiction of human figures from murals demonstrate a certain sensibility and an ability to accommodate to new forms of sculpture and architecture. This was probably not achieved easily, as a view of the drawings of his

94  État Moderne, II pl. I. The caption reads: 1,4,5, Coptes; 2 homme de la grande oasis; 3,9,10,12,15,16,17 Cheykhs et gens de la loi du Kaire et de Constantinople; 6,7 Batéliers de Damiette; 8 mamlouks; 11,13 Santon nègre; 14 marchand d’Alexandrie. These portraits are reminiscent of those of Watteau’s « Study of seven heads » (1717–1718) often used in drawing classes. See Renaud d’Enfert, L’Enseignement du Dessin en France: figure humaine et dessin géométrique 1750–1850, (Paris: Belin, 2003). Vivant Denon’s Voyage en Basse et Haute Égypte (Paris, 1802) has similar sketches. 95  This is especially apparent when compared to Conté’s human figures in État Moderne, vol. II pl A.

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contemporaries show.96 He had to unlearn the ways of drawing Greek/ Roman sculptures thickly muscled, and anatomically detailed, that served him well when he was travelling in Italy. He also had to unlearn the drawing of thick cloth, and attention to flesh and objects he mastered so well when copying drawings of saints, the Madonna, and mythological figures. All these were absent from his depiction of ancient Egypt. Dutertre’s drawings cannot be described as orientalist drawings, an anachronism in name, for in the early nineteenth century, one cannot yet speak of orientalist painting as a recognised and established genre.97 Orientalist painters followed two common paths: that of anecdotal turqueries and eastern fantasies and the path of the more rigid academic teachings of the neoclassical formulae. As for the well-known examples discussed as the beginning of the genre, those that brought together the orientalist imagination and the colonial project were not the creation of the participants of the Description of Egypt. They were done after the expedition to Egypt and took its events as topics. The paintings of Girodet, Gros and Ingres were concocted in their studio from costumes and accessories collected by travellers and seem to have completely ignored the work of Dutertre in the Description.98 The paintings followed the neoclassical compositional formulae combined with an intensity of colour and expression. But Egypt and its realities had a very different impact which Dutertre’s drawings demonstrate. He used conventions as his point of departure; he portrayed the cities of modern Egypt depicting its buildings in a sketchy way. But his centre of attention was elsewhere. Dutertre focused his observation on the extraordinary light of Egypt and on the landscape of the country, the physical and the human one. I assume that his less conventional drawings, more daring in their almost empty canvas, were the ones he composed towards the end of his stay.99 In a way, there was more poetic license, so to speak, in Dutertre’s picturesque drawings than there was in the imaginary reconstructions of Jollois and de Villiers. His preference to 96  Vivant Denon’s depicting of human figures on the murals in Upper Egypt show his difficulty in accommodating to the non-muscular figures. See also Jollois and de Villier’s muscular reconstruction of the statues of Memnon in Fig. 7.3. 97  Orientalist painting was eventually recognised and institutionalised in 1893 with the establishment of the Société des Peintres Orientalistes. 98  For example: Girodet, La Révolte du Caire and Bataille d’àboukir; Gros, Bonaparte visitant les pestiférés de Jaffa; Ingres, le Bain Turc. 99  I am referring to the general views of Cairo such as in Fig. 7.17.

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emphasise the subjectivity of the sublime and the picturesque over depictions made with measurements were disliked by Jomard, who tried to “correct” these effects in the explanations he added to Dutertre’s engravings. It is difficult to give a general summary to the plates of the Description of Egypt for they present a remarkable variety of styles, topics and skills. Opposed concepts crossed constantly one another and at times, a mixture of contradictory ideas can be traced in the work of an individual. The volumes of images were created and edited by a group of predominantly engineers, architects and artists. The first two were trained to measure and draw according to their measurements. The younger ones were highly influenced by their formation at the Polytechnic, and they were all influenced by dominant figures such as Etienne Boullée and Nicolas Durand and by the renewed interest in seventeenth-century classicism. These influences are apparent in the images they produced. But it was not all. The experience of Egypt was too strong to resist and to varying degrees, according to individual abilities and tendencies, some with greater openness than others, the contributors to the Description of Egypt were able to draw Egypt away from artistic and architectural conventions.

CHAPTER 8

Texts About Ancient Egypt and Their Predecessors

In November 1798, the twenty-two-year-old orientalist Jean-Jacques Marcel (1776–1854), who was recruited to the expedition after his teacher, Louis-Mathieu Langlés, had refused the offer, published in La Décade Égyptienne his translation of extracts from the work of the fifteenth-­ century Muslim scholar Abd el Rachyd el Bakouy.1 Marcel explained the reason for his translation. “The most effective way to gain accurate knowledge of Egypt”, he wrote, “so important at the present, given the situation in which the French have now found themselves, is to have the ability to compare the writings of early Greek historians and geographers, and those of modern European geographers and travellers, with the description of the country written by Oriental scholars of centuries ago.”2 Marcel’s annotated translation of Bakouy was a work of philology well within the tradition of the works produced by scholars of the école des langues orientales vivantes of which he was a graduate. Very soon, his suggestion and method of “knowing Egypt” would be taken over by the 1  I am following Marcel’s transliteration of the name. There was an abridged translation of Abd al Rashid ibn Salh al Bakui’s work by M. De Guignes from 1789. The extracts published by Marcel were not included in the abridged translation but were translated by Marcel. I could not determine whether he did it in Paris, before the expedition, or if the manuscript he used was one attained in Cairo. 2  La Décade Égyptienne, N. 8 p. 248.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Sarfatti, The Description of Egypt from Napoleon to Champollion, War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15606-9_8

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spirit, enthusiasm and very different skills and scholarly approach of the young engineers of the Polytechnic. But a close look at some of their essays displays a more complicated picture than might be assumed. The Polytechnic skills and the experience in Egypt were at the forefront of their work, but these were used in tandem with more traditional methods and sources, at times creating new understandings, at others, reproducing old ones. The texts in the Description of Egypt about ancient Egypt included descriptions of monuments and their immediate environment, essays about the manners and customs of the ancient Egyptians derived from both textual sources and information observed on the murals of monuments, essays about Egyptian music and essays about measurements, about ancient religious practices, about the hieroglyphs and about ancient geography. The three individuals who wrote the texts at which this chapter will look were not historians and did not see their essays as a work of history.3 They were young engineers and their memoirs and descriptions began, honouring their training, with geographical coordinates and detailed measurements. However, the project of which they were part, and the eighteenth-­century intellectual traditions, allowed them to compose essays that were also a commentary about the civilization of ancient Egypt.4 They worked within a range of contested methods and practices, and it is interesting to observe the choices they made and the modes of reasoning they adopted. Jomard used his professional skills to confirm Herodotus in his description of Lake Moeris and the Labyrinth. Jollois and de Villiers based their conjectures, assumptions and criticism of classical texts on what they saw as a solid base formed by the exact measurements they had taken on-site. The three knew their Latin and Greek; they knew, or gained knowledge when preparing their essays for publication, of the texts of ancient authors, and those of modern philologists. Some of them knew and followed Voltaire more than others. They were attentive students of the changing methods of reasoning and achieving historical truth publicly discussed among scholars, intellectuals and bureaucrats at the time. They differed from each other in the choices they made regarding these debates. 3  The view of the contributors (and the readers) was that that was the role of Fourier’s introduction. The Préface historique was to provide a chronology of Egyptian history to the time of the expedition of the French. 4  I use this vague term intentionally to include antiquarian research, travel literature, geographical tracts and philosophical histories.

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A close reading of the memoirs and descriptions show the different ways and understandings of previous texts about Egypt, texts of the philosophes and of the less fashionable erudite and the country they had come to know from experience. These differences cannot be easily explained by political affiliations or experiences. The coexistence of these texts in the Description of Egypt draw a more complex picture of the intellectual world at the time of its creation.

Jomard, Herodotus and the Labyrinth of Egypt “The people who went to excavate Egypt and Mesopotamia had primarily Herodotus as their guide” wrote Arnaldo Momigliano in an article about the changing acceptance of Herodotus and the method and object of his work.5 Momigliano told the story of the posthumous changing reputation of Herodotus, from “Herodotus the Liar”, Cicero’s reference to the author he had also named “Father of History”, to his rehabilitation in the sixteenth century that Momigliano connected to the impact of the modern accounts of distant countries and societies, and to the Reformation and its impact on biblical studies. Herodotus became an inspiration for travellers, for ethnographical research and an important non-biblical source for the history of the ancient Orient. When the French expedition left for Egypt, Herodotus’ Histories was among the books in the library General Caffarelli had assembled, as can be expected. But not one of the contributors to the Description of Egypt exemplifies Momigliano’s above quoted phrase as well as Edmé-François Jomard. After three months in Cairo, the twenty-one-year-old geographical engineer Edmé-François Jomard was sent to map the district of Fayoum. With Herodotus as his guide, in the very literal sense of the word, the geographical mission became more than a mapping project; it was also a search to identify Herodotus’ man-made Lake Moeris and the two-story labyrinth of three thousand apartments. Jomard prepared a paper based on the results of his six-week survey in the Fayoum which he read at the Cairo Institute on October 8, 1800. Following some revisions he later 5  Arnaldo Momigliano, “The Place of Herodotus in the History of Historiography”, The Journal of the Historical Association, vol. 43 (1958), p. 13 [In the off print I am holding]. Momigliano returned to this on other occasions. I also used A. Momigliano, “The Herodotean and the Thucydidean Tradition”, The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography, Sather Classical Lectures (Berkley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1990) (based on the lectures delivered in 1961–1962).

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made in Paris, he published the now much extended dissertation as two essays in the Description of Egypt.6 One of the most incredible parts in Book II of Histories is the depiction of Lake Moeris and the Labyrinth built above it. Herodotus wrote about the twelve kings who had ruled Egypt “in mutual friendliness” after the reign of Sethos, and of their decision to leave a common memorial of their reign; to that end they constructed a labyrinth above Lake Moeris, near the City of Crocodiles.7 “I have seen this building, and it is beyond my power to describe it; it must have cost more in labour and money than all the walls and public works of the Greeks put together. … The pyramids too, are astonishing structures … but the labyrinth surpasses them. … the building is of two storeys and contains three thousand rooms, of which half are underground, and the other half directly above them.”8 Herodotus noted that he had observed the upper galleries and only heard about the lower ones from those who had seen them. The galleries, rooms and courtyards were built of white marble, wrote Herodotus, and at the end of the labyrinth, there was a pyramid, two hundred and forty-feet high. Herodotus then continued to write of the lake: “Marvellous as the labyrinth is, the so-called Lake of Moeris beside which it stands is perhaps even more astonishing.” After providing its size and shape, he continued: “it is obviously artificial … in the middle of it are two pyramids standing three hundred feet out of the water. The water in the lake … has been brought from the Nile through an artificial duct, and flows in during six months of the year, and out again into the river during the other six.”9 Herodotus’ depiction was contested by other writers and Jomard set out in his memoir to refute the views expressed by previous travellers and 6  “Mémoire sur le lac de Moeris comparé au lac du Fayoum”, Antiquités-Mémoires, tome I (25 pages); « Descriptions des Antiquités du Nomé Arsinoïte, Aujourd’hui Le Fayoum », Antiquité- Description, tome II, chapitre XVII. The first section: « Description des vestiges d’Arsinoé ou Crocodipolis, et des Antiquités situées dans l’intérieur de la Province » (12 pages); the second section: »Description du Temple Égyptien connu sous le nom de Qasr-­ Qeroun; (10 pages); the third section: « Description des Ruines situées près de la Pyramide d’Haouârah, considérées comme les restes du Labyrinthe, et Comparison de ces Ruines avec les Récits des anciens. Suivi de la Description de la Pyramide d’el-Lâhoun » (20 pages). The last part, the description of the pyramid, was written by Philippe Joseph Caristie, a fellow polytechnician. 7  Herodotus, The Histories, translation by Aubrey de Sélincourt (1954); revised introduction and notes by John Marincola (Penguin Classics, 2003), Book II, cap. 147. 8  Ibid., cap. 148. 9  Ibid., cap. 149.

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to identify Herodotus’ Lake Moeris. He unequivocally stated that the present lake in the Fayoum was the remains of Herodotus’ Lake Moeris. In the past, he stated, the lake covered the area of the present Birket-­ Qeroun. It was the only area, he wrote, in all of Egypt, that offered the extent and depth described by Herodotus. By way of comparisons between ancient measurements and more modern ones, Jomard adjusted his calculations, added explanations and struggled so as to keep Herodotus’ text untouched. He refuted suggestions of other travellers and of some of his colleagues that had located the lake elsewhere. He also objected to those who had dismissed the possibility that a lake of the said size could have been built by the ancients. They did not understand Herodotus properly. Herodotus should be understood as having said that the lake was not a natural lake but was created as a result of the man-made canal that brought the water to the area, Jomard explained.10 The first two sections of the second text, the description of the ruins of the Fayoum district, were also, like the memoir, predominantly geographical. However, there were some exceptions in the first two sections in which Jomard discussed the etymology of names of locations11 or the possible function of a mysterious chamber which he described as able to provide extreme sounds, demonstrating the myths about Egypt were still prevalent, even among those educated in modern institutes that emphasised exercising rational observation.12 The third section titled “Descriptions of 10  In elaborate footnotes, Jomard presented the beginning of what would later be an independent three hundred and seven page memoir, “Exposition du système métrique des anciens Égyptiens, contenant des recherché sur leurs connaissances géométriques, géographique et astronomique, et sur les mesures des autres peuples de l’Antiquité » It was published in the first section of the third instalment in 1818, but was bound in the same volume as the memoir on Lake Moeris. The reader was referred for examples to the memoir on Lake Moeris. 11  See, for example, the discussion of crocodile, using Strabo, Herodotus, other authors quoted by Strabo, Kircher and ending with Jablonski who was most probably the source of the whole discussion (“Descriptions des Antiquités…” p. 21). 12  Jomard believed this to be a sanctuary. « Quand le dieu du temple étoit consulté, un prêtre chargé de cet office pénétroit dans le caveau, levoit la pierre, et sa voix, répondant dans un espace hermétiquement fermé, retentissoit avec force dans le sanctuaire, et imprimoit à la voix de l’oracle un caractère extraordinaire. Si ce n’est là qu’une conjecture, c’est peut-être la seule manière d’expliquer l’arrangement bizarre de cette chambre sans issue apparente, et où l’on ne pénétroit que par des souterrains. » This kind of explanation recurred in many of the texts of the Description. The perceptions of ancient Egypt as a place of mysterious cults took time to loosen its grip. See also the description of the “vocal Memnon” (“Descriptions des Antiquités…” p. 16).

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the Ruins situated close to the Pyramid of Haouârah, considered as the remains of the Labyrinth”—most of it written by Jomard—began by stating its conclusion: “The ruins, found north and west of the pyramid, given their extent, their position, and the nature of the remains, belong, without doubt, to the famous labyrinth.” Jomard’s text then proceeded to prove the assertion by comparing his description to the one given by the ancients. Seeing the point as established, he ended: “And thus will be resolved, so we hope, the question debated for so long about the location of the labyrinth.”13 He had been there with colleagues in January 1799, he wrote, they had provided succinct descriptions and geographical calculations that advanced this resolution.14 And as proper to a scientific resolution, later excursions to the site, in which different engineers participated, confirmed the initial impression. When at the site, Jomard’s identification with Herodotus was complete. While all he could see from the top of the pyramid—according to his own testimony—were ruins covered in sand, his imagination took him elsewhere: “One cannot but think of the country of Fayoum with its thousand canals that bring it perpetual freshness. … One cannot choose a better place to build a labyrinth, one of the most impressive creations produced by the art of the Egyptians.”15 Coming back to the present, the geographical engineer trained to recognise material added: “The stones that had served to build the edifice though not of marble could be easily mistaken to be so when examined from afar.”16 The first part of the essay was based on observations Jomard made on-­ site, though largely defined by the text of Herodotus. It set the stage for the following subsection in which he discussed the description of the labyrinth. Here too, like in the memoir about Lake Moeris, Herodotus’ text was taken as the decisive account to which the observations and measurements were to be adjusted. The one thing Jomard found hard to settle was the number of apartments Herodotus had described, one thousand five hundred above the ground and the same number underground. Jomard found this number incompatible with the overall size of the structure.17 He partially resolved this by suggesting the entry to the structure was  Jomard, « Description des Antiquités… », section III, p. 23.  Ibid., p. 24. 15  Ibid. 16  Ibid., p. 26. 17  Ibid, p. 38. 13 14

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further away than he had originally understood. As for the Twelve Kings whose rule was no longer than fifteen turbulent years, Jomard wrote it was improbable they had built such a structure in such a short time, and assumed they had just begun the process which was completed by their successors.18 Jomard’s description quoted in full Herodotus’ account of the labyrinth and lake. The text he was using, as he indicated in a footnote, was the 1786 annotated translation of Herodotus by Pierre Henri Larcher.19 Pierre Henri Larcher’s reputation in eighteenth-century France was not gained only by his translation of Herodotus. In July 1767, Larcher had written an anonymous three-hundred-page commentary on Voltaire’s La philosophie de l’histoire, first published two years before, under the transparent veil of the pseudoname l’Abbé Bazin. 20 A duel of unequal forces followed, to the delight of the Parisian literary public.21 Voltaire published a counterattack, À la défense de mon oncle 22 that accompanied the following editions of La philosophie de l’histoire. Larcher, in Voltaire’s text, was described as an old teacher in belles-lettres at the Mazarin College,23 and came to be dismissively known as one of the “trio Mazarin”, at the forefront of the clerical attacks on Voltaire.24 Larcher was not a cleric and had never taught at Mazarin, but the accusations say much for the Collège  Ibid., p. 40.  Ibid., p. 32, note 1. 20  La philosophie de l’histoire, par feu l’Abbé Bazin (Amsterdam: Changuion, 1765). Larcher’s commentary appeared in April 1767 titled Supplément à la Philosophie de l’Histoire de feu M. L’Abbé Bazin, nécessaire à ceux qui veulent lire cet ouvrage avec fruit (Paris, 1767). 21  The expression is from J.M. Moureaux, « Voltaire et Larcher, ou le « Faux Mazarinier », Revue d’Histoire littéraire de la France, 74e année, No. 4 (Jul.-Aug., 1974) pp. 600. The article mostly covers the public aspect of the debate not so much the texts that were its cause. For the details of the debate, I closely follow Moureaux. 22  Voltaire, À la défense de mon oncle (1767). To this Larcher replied in a sixteen-page pamphlet, Réponse à la Défense de mon oncle. His more substantial response was in the second edition of Supplément à la Philosophie de l’Histoire (1769) that explicitly addressed Voltaire’s response in its preface. 23  As Voltaire’s correspondence show it took him some time to establish who the anonymous writer was. The quote is from Votaire’s “Avertissement essentiel ou inutile”, À la défense de mon oncle (1767). 24  In a letter to D’Alembert, Voltaire wrote: “Riballier, Larcher, et Cogé sont trois têtes du Collège Mazarin dans un bonnet d’âne. Ce sont les troupes légères de la Sorbonne; il faut crier: Point de Mazarin ! » (quoted in Moureaux, p. 601) Grimm mistakenly added the title “Abbé” to Larcher’s name, rendering him one of the clerical attackers of Voltaire (see Moreaux, p. 600, note 4). 18 19

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Mazarin and the image of its professors in enlightenment circles. The popularity of Voltaire, as well as his sharp pen and superior literary talent, made it almost impossible for Larcher, for many years, to build a reputation away from the ridicule imposed on him by his rival.25 Pierre Henri Larcher (b. 1726) was a man of the eighteenth-century world of letters. When in his twenties, he travelled to England to perfect his English and then began a career as translator, mostly of scientific and technical publications. But Larcher’s interest and strength were in the classics. In 1763 he translated, annotated and wrote an introduction to the Greek novel by Chariton of Aphrodisias, Histoire des amours de Chéréas et Callirrhoë. Following its publication, Larcher slowly gained a name as a Hellenist in erudite circles, though sometimes of an over-pedantic one. It is possible that this very quality gained him a request in 1764 to continue the unfinished translation of Herodotus by the late Abbé Bellanger. This was some two years before the clash with Voltaire. The translation of Herodotus became his grand oeuvre; he worked on it for more than fifteen years, and when finally published in 1786,26 Les Histoires, with its extensive notes, somewhat freed Larcher from the one-dimensional public image of the “cleric” who had quarrelled with Voltaire.27 A close look at the exchange between Voltaire and Larcher shows that the work on Herodotus was at the very centre of their quarrel. It was a clash between the Hellenistic erudite, who was in the midst of his grand oeuvre, and the philosophe that had carelessly entered his domain. It was also a clash between two intellectuals of the eighteenth century about ways of working with historical sources and about scholarship. Their legacies and ways of work would be interpreted and reinterpreted by succeeding generations of men of letters, interpretations that could be found on the pages of the Description of Egypt.28 Larcher stated his ideas about how one can work with ancient texts from the beginning of the Supplément à la philosophie de l’histoire. The text 25  It is important to note from the start that though Larcher was critical of Voltaire’s La philosophie d’histoire, his intellectual personality was very far from those “Mazariniers” and not worthy of Voltaire’s ongoing ridicule and attacks in that venue. 26  The translation was ready in 1780, and received its privilege pour l’impression in 1781. 27  The notes, some could be better described as short essays, were translated separately into English: Larcher’s Notes on Herodotus, historical and critical remarks of the nine books of the History of Herodotus (two volumes). Translated from the French (London, printed for John R. Priestly, Great Russell Street, 1829). 28  A very different way of work from that of Jomard will be discussed in Chap. 9.

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should be posited at the centre, and philology alone could render a new life to those divine authors whose language was destroyed by the barbarians that came after them, he wrote. He was well aware that philology had lost its prestige and was now unjustly ridiculed and relegated to the dusty corners of the colleges. “They have invented a name to those who exercise philology, they now call them pedants.”29 He was an erudite, he explained, and as such, could not but reveal plagiarism, false citations, misunderstood passages and signs of ignorance of history and chronology when he encountered them.30 Larcher found unacceptable Voltaire’s free style, the audacity of his argumentation without any footnotes to support it, his easy use of ancient history to illustrate his arguments and his lack of attention to context when using concepts from antiquity. “What a bright and fertile imagination!”,31 he wrote of Voltaire’s text, a grave insult coming from a philologist. Towards the end of his commentary, he ascribed the following adjectives to the author of La philosophie de l’histoire: “The Abbé Bazin, a compiler, a plagiarist and a poet.”32 Voltaire and Larcher would have probably agreed with the last attribute. The opposition between the poet and the philosophe on the one hand and the erudite on the other was made over a decade before in D’Alembert’s discours préliminaire to the Encyclopédie. These two scholarly types were described by D’Alembert as occupying two very different intellectual worlds.33 In this context, which was a very immediate one for Voltaire, D’Alembert and others in their circle of friends who were very much involved in the debate, the attribute would not be taken as an insult.34 But it is possible that Larcher wrote “poet” with a different reference in mind. As said above, he had been working on Herodotus for almost two years when he wrote the Supplément. Writing of his work, Larcher said that beyond Herodotus, he had been immersed in rereading most of the texts

 Larcher, Supplément, p. 27.  Ibid., p. 36. 31  Larcher, Supplément, p. 129. 32  Larcher, Supplément, p. 292. 33  Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, etc., eds., Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond D’Alembert. University of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie Project (Spring 2011 Edition), Robert Morrissey (ed), http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu. D’Alembert, Discours préliminaire. See more about this and the quote from D’Alembert in the section “A Land of the Bible” in this chapter. 34  For D’Alembert’s and the involvement of others, see Moureaux’s article. 29 30

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of the ancients so as to better understand the text he was translating.35 Aristotle’s Poetics was probably what Larcher had in mind. In part IX of Poetics, Aristotle wrote of the difference between the poet and the historian, using Herodotus as an example for the historian: It is, moreover, evident from what has been said, that it is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what may happen - what is possible according to the law of probability or necessity. The poet and the historian differ not by writing in verse or in prose. The work of Herodotus might be put into verse, and it would still be a species of history, with meter no less than without it. The true difference is that one relates what has happened, the other what may happen. Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular. By the universal I mean how a person of a certain type on occasion speak or act, according to the law of probability or necessity; and it is this universality at which poetry aims in the names she attaches to the personages. The particular is—for example—what Alcibiades did or suffered.36

It was possible for Larcher to extract the distinction made by Aristotle and accept it while at the same time to ignore the hierarchy proposed in the text.37 When referred to away from D’Alembert’s denunciation of the erudite, Aristotle’s “poet” was meant to state Voltaire was not a historian and to render illegitimate his free use of examples from ancient history.38 The style in which Larcher wrote the Supplément was not different from that in which he was writing his commentary on Herodotus at the same time. This was the way to comment on a text in Larcher’s world. He was not writing a polemical essay on Voltaire’s work, nor was he arguing with an overall argument. Larcher was examining Voltaire’s examples, one by  Moureaux, pp. 605–606.  Aristotle, Poetics, part IX. The quotation is from the online edition of Aristotle Poetics http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.1.1.html. The translation is of S.H. Butcher. My speculation is inspired by a reading Carlo Ginzburg, “Aristotle and History, Once More”, History, Rhetoric, and Proof, the Menahem Stern Jerusalem Lectures (Brandeis University Press, 1999). 37  It is very possible that the original reference for D’Alembert was Aristotle as well. He basically agreed with the distinction and with the place given to the poet, to which he added the philosophe in the discours préliminaire. But I would argue that by the time of the debate between Larcher and Voltaire, the texts about the erudite in the Encyclopédie had assumed a popularity of their own, independent of Aristotle’s distinctions. 38  The linguistic discontinuity was not just historical. 35 36

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one, comparing them to the ancient authors who originally related them, and stating his conclusions from these comparisons. In a series of notes appended to approximately sixty passages of Voltaire’s work, Larcher demonstrated that the historical examples Voltaire had chosen to illustrate his ideas were based on a wrong reading of the texts, or even worse, at times, on ignorance of ancient history. The ideas of La philosophie de l’histoire became no more than speculations in Larcher’s commentary. He was fighting for the fate of philology. His comments on Voltaire demonstrated, so he believed, the dangers that may result from relegating philology to the dust. Voltaire responded furiously portraying Larcher as a ridiculous erudite engaged in defending Church and faith. Titled À la défense de mon oncle, Voltaire’s response was brilliant and funny, but it did not engage with the criticism of Larcher.39 Larcher, though easily ridiculed, was not easily deterred. He responded in a second expanded edition of the Supplement that included commentary on fourteen additional passages of Voltaire he had not addressed before.40 When reading Larcher’s notes to the first edition of his translation of Herodotus, it is all the more clear the quarrel between the two was not about faith and Church as Voltaire had so strongly portrayed it to be. Larcher was attacking the charlatan not the atheist.41 Larcher’s Herodotus in its 1786 edition caused quite a furore in clerical circles. His essai sur la 39  Grimm wrote of it: « …l’on étouffe de rire à chaque page. Il est impossible de rien lire de plus gai, de plus fou, de plus sage, de plus érudit, de plus philosophique, de plus profond, de plus puissant que cette Défense et it faut convenir qu’un jeune homme de soixante-treize ans comme notre neveu, sujet à ces saillies de jeunesse, est un rare phénomène. » (Grimm, Correspondance littéraire, 15 juillet 1767, Éd. Tourneuse, t. VII, p.  367) (quoted in Moureaux, p. 616). 40  The second edition was published in 1769, and was widely read due to the interest À la défense de mon oncle had created. Larcher explained the reason for Voltaire’s attacks: “Outré de se voir arracher le masque de savoir dont il s’était couvert et de ne plus passer que pour un charlatan d’érudition, il a eu recours… aux injures » (quoted in Moureaux, p.  608, note 47). 41  When the initial commotion had subsided, the lines drawn between the sides became less rigid. It was not publicly done; Voltaire continued to mock Larcher publicly for many years. But behind the scenes, in private correspondence, the change was evident. In 1772 D’Alembert wrote Voltaire that he heard from common friends that Larcher was actually tolerant, moderate and modest (Moureaux, p. 617, note 91). But the most important victory for Larcher appeared in the last revision Voltaire had made to La philosophie de l’histoire before he died. He almost unnoticeably corrected many of the inaccuracies to which Larcher had pointed.

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chronologie d’Hérodote that accompanied the translation and commentary of book VI was but slightly different from that of Voltaire, and could be accommodated to that of the Bible only when and if its beginning was removed. Though he did not explicitly question the biblical chronology, Larcher did emphasise the reliability of the Egyptian one.42 But these modifications notwithstanding, Voltaire and Larcher did differ substantially in their way of working with ancient texts. It was not only in the refusal of Voltaire to annotate his texts. When Voltaire judged the authenticity of a testimony, he asked about the probability of the ideas or facts it conveyed. Larcher first asked about the reliability of the text itself. Once the authenticity of the text and its author were established, he believed it was his role to make sense of the testimony not to criticise, question its probability or refute it altogether. When the twelve-year-old Jomard began his studies at Mazarin a few months into the Revolution, it was no longer an active bastion of clerical ideas, but it did retain its renown as a centre of erudition in the classics.43 And when Jomard in his first months in Egypt began his search for Lake Moeris and the labyrinth, he was not only holding Herodotus in his hand, but he was also carrying with him Pierre Larcher’s notes. Jomard’s discussion of the labyrinth and Lake Moeris in the two memoirs was fully based on these notes. The discussion owes more to the work of the erudite than to the experience in Egypt. Like Larcher, Jomard refuted D’Anville’s assumption that there were two lakes, and therefore, two labyrinths. He followed Larcher in his distinction between the man-made canal and the resulting lake; like Larcher he found the description of three thousand apartments puzzling and followed Larcher’s explanations in the effort to 42  Histoire d’Hérodote, traduite du grec avec des remarques historiques et critiques, un Essai sur la Chronologie d’Hérodote et une Table géographique par M. Larcher, (Paris, Musier et Nyon, 1786), vol. VI, p. 149. This can be seen as the counterpart to Voltaire’s revisions related in the above note. The comments and essays to Book VI were written after the controversy with Voltaire, and it is possible that Larcher too had discretely modified some of his views, arguments and ways of reasoning in its light. There are many more general commentaries, not at all of a philological nature, but more in the style of the philosophes. See, for example, the commentary of Larcher regarding Herodotus’ priestess of Athens growing a long beard (Book I, cap. 175). 43  Most of its faculty stayed intact through the years, including the Terror period. However, they kept to teaching rather than public discussions. In addition to its strength in classical studies, Mazarin had also become a centre for studies of science with chairs in mathematics and physics [Mme. Ter-Menassian, « Les Universités », R. Taton, (ed.) Enseignement et diffusion des sciences en France au XVIII siécle (Paris, 1986), pp. 125–168].

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give it some sense. Jomard followed Larcher’s presentations and discussion of ancient authors as well as Larcher’s method that accepted the text while adjusting the explanations. Both thought it doubtful that the labyrinth could have been built in fifteen years. Larcher put forward some doubts regarding Diodorus’ account about the fifteen-year-long reign of the Twelve Kings, and added that if Diodorus was right, then the Twelve Kings probably completed a work that was started by Mendes, a somewhat opposite sequence to the one given by Jomard. Throughout his contributions to the work, one can see that Jomard was far from the ideas and methods of the philosophical historians of the eighteenth century and that he worked more comfortably in the world of the erudite. In the préface to the 1786 edition, Henri Larcher wrote of Herodotus’ ways of collecting the materials for his Histoires: “He traveled to all the countries of which he spoke. He examined with the most scrupulous attention rivers & streams with which they were watered, the animals which were particular to them, the produce of the earth, and the manners of the inhabitants. … We cannot refute the confidence of a historian who made so much effort to ensure the truth.”44 Jomard, who would later describe the work of the savants with a very similar vocabulary, found no reason to question Herodotus. Like Larcher’s method of reasoning, he went to the Fayoum to validate Herodotus’ text, not to question it. He had accepted the credibility of the text and its author long before arriving in Egypt, most probably in his days at Mazarin, where he had cultivated a taste for Larcher’s erudition as well. But Jomard provided an independent contribution, away from Herodotus’ text and Larcher’s notes, in his speculation regarding the purpose of the labyrinth: “[T] he main purpose of the building, so it seems, is to be used as a meeting place for the prefectures of Egypt; since the whole nation was there assembled, temples were erected to all gods, so that each province could find there the cult that belonged to it. So it was both a kind of pantheon and a place where state leaders dealt with the secret affairs. The mystery that apparently was to preside over their deliberations, was reflected in the dark galleries the deputies had to cross on the way to their 44  Larcher, « Préface », Hérodote, Histoires, (1786), p. V.  A few pages before Larcher wrote of history and Herodotus the historian: «Sans la vérité, l’Histoire devient un Roman. … Il ne suffit pas à l’Historien d’être vrai, il doit encore tâcher de plaire. … La réunion de ces deux qualités compose l’Historien parfait. Peu d’écrivains peuvent se flatter de les avoir réunies à un degré aussi éminent qu’Hérodote. » (Larcher, Préface, p. II).

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respective courts.”45 Herodotus’ labyrinth was also seen through the eyes of the young Jomard who had witnessed the Revolution and the gatherings of the assemblies of representatives while at the Collège Mazarin.

Prosper Jollois and Edouard de Villiers Facing Egyptian Antiquities The Description générale de Thèbes written by Edouard de Villiers and Prosper Jollois begins with a fictitious documentation of their initial reaction upon arriving at the site.46 It was a place that brought back many memories, they wrote, a place where thousands of questions flooded one’s mind all at once: Where are the hundred gates of which Homer sung, and through which two hundred armed chariots passed on their way to war?. … Where is the statue of Ozymandias touted by Hecataeus, as the most colossal of all those of Egypt? Where the famous circle of gold a cubit high and three hundred and sixty-five cubits in circumference, on which were indicated the rising and setting of the stars every day of the year?. … Where is the location of that great Diospolis whose scope ancient authors celebrated, and which contained one of the largest buildings the Egyptians had ever erected?. … Where, finally, is the colossal statue of Memnon, whose voice so many illustrious people have heard at daybreak?47

The rhetorical strategy was probably aimed at creating a common ground with their assumed readers, based on previous knowledge of classical texts. The strong impression of the site, they wrote, was not restricted to the educated. They have witnessed men of no education who were struck with awe when faced with these imposing masses; they have seen soldiers that after the initial astonishment, engage eagerly in the study of the ornaments at their feet.48 Jollois and de Villiers were trying to convey to their readers the overwhelming feeling one probably had when encountering Egypt’s monuments and their state of conservation.

 Description, section III, p. 40.  Prosper Jollois et Edouard Devilliers, « Description Générale de Thèbes » Chapitre IX Description de l’Egypte Antiquités-Descriptions, vol. I. 47  Jollois et Devilliers, « Description Générale de Thèbes », pp. 4–5. 48  Ibid. 45 46

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Yet, looking at the journal entries of the two, written at the time they arrived at the site, one can read quite different reactions into which previous texts scarcely enter. de Villiers’ writing was about the heat, quite understandable for they arrived at Thebes during the first week of August. The heat remained a most pressing experience for quite a while, as the first paragraphs of a letter he wrote to his friend Ripault, in Cairo, demonstrate. After a general comment regarding their activities—describing in notes and drawing plans of the monuments that surround them—de Villiers continued to praise at length the caravanserails, a contemporary institution rather than a monument of antiquity of which he wrote: “[It is] a precious service that noble sentiment and selfless hospitality erected for travellers in thousands of locations in Egypt” adding that for its importance to be appreciated, one had to actually experience the excessive heat of Upper Egypt in the way they were experiencing it.49 de Villiers also wrote in the letter of his assumptions regarding the impact the silt brought by the Nile had on the changing level of the land, the inscriptions on the ruins, the material of which the edifices were built and the resulting state of their preservation. The verbal description in the journal gives the impression of a camera moving along, recording everything encountered at close and medium distance. Momigliano’s words on antiquarian research are relevant: “It [the research] was systematic and covered the whole subject section by section: descriptive in a systematic form, not explanatory in a chronological order.”50 There is a vague unspecific allusion in de Villiers’ journal and letter to “ancient authors” but mostly, his references are to other ruins they had already visited. Even when addressing the two colossal statues, de Villiers’ writing was done from the perspective of the present: “Next, in a grove of acacia trees, lay a considerable number of fragments of statues. Nearby stand the two colossi that locals call Tama and Chama, which can 49  Édouard de Villiers du Terrage, Journal et souvenirs sur l’éxpédition d’Égypte (1798–1801), pp. 185–186. For a discussion of the way the journal was compiled over the years see Patrice Bret, “L’expédition d’Égypte. Journal d’un jeune savant engage dans l’état-major de Bonaparte (1798–1801), Annales historiques de la Révolution française, no. 337 juillet-­ septembre 2004. Bret corrects mistakes in the various editions and begs for a critical use of the journal especially its annotation, however, he added, « Heureusement, le texte lui-même, quelles qu’aient été les péripéties de son écriture, a conserve toute sa fraicheur. » (p. 2). 50  Arnaldo Momigliano, “The Rise of Antiquarian Research”, The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography (Sather Classical Lectures, vol. 54) (London, Berkley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990) [the lectures were delivered in 1961–1962].

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be seen from a distance of four lieus.” After some notes about the height and assumed weight of the statues, he wrote: “The Greek and Latin inscriptions that one reads on the pedestal of Tama, show, beyond doubt that one is in front of the statue of Memnon.”51 The only mention of the strong impression Egypt’s antiquities had on soldiers and officers appears in de Villiers’ account of a celebration at Luxor following the news of Bonaparte’s victory over the English-Ottoman force at Aboukir.52 Jollois’ journal entries, though different in style, were not very different in content. They too did not mention previous authors nor convey any of the excitement the published article displayed. They offered very close scrutiny of the edifices, with focus on the materials used in their construction. The only mention by name of a textual reference was of D’Anville, whose map was used by the French in Egypt.53 “The Palace of Memnon is surrounded by a wall of bricks”—he wrote of the site that would assume a different name in the discussion in the published article, “…the vaults … are they Egyptian or Arab constructions? The first opinion seems more likely to me; they seem to be a natural induction of the constructions we have since encountered at either Élythya or at Abydos.”54 Jollois then mentioned briefly the two colossi “vulgarly called the Memnon colossi”, not yet committing himself to their possible identity55; and further on in the text, when describing them, and the material of which they were built, he distanced himself even more from the popular name.56 Jollois’ journal entry was based on observation and measurement. Its focus was the building material and situation of the land that surrounded it. It is not clear what Jollois understood from the references of the Latin and Greek inscriptions to what he called the “Song of Memnon”. It is possible that at that time, he did not know of the legend of the vocal Memnon first reported by Strabo, and perpetuated in writing by Pausanias, Juvenal and Pliny, and orally, by visitors who came to witness the sound, some of 51  de Villiers, Journal…, p. 188. Lieu was used in eighteenth-century France to indicate approximately 4000 meters. The decimal units were formally in use at the time but the old measurements were still a habit. 52  Ibid., p. 190. This possibly inspired the paragraph from the publication noted above. 53  Prosper Jollois, Journal d’un ingénieur attaché à l’expédition d’Egypte 1798–1802 (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1904), p. 109 “A droite du temple et en avant, on voit un basin carré, où Danville [sic] indiqua un nilomètre ». 54  Ibid., p. 111. 55  Ibid. 56  Ibid., p. 112.

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whom were responsible for the inscriptions.57 The locals knew the legend but Jollois and de Villiers, at the time, were not travelling with the two formal commissions that went up the Nile to record the monuments. They did not enjoy the assistance of interpreters and therefore, their ­interactions with the locals were restricted to daily needs. One may assume that had they known the legend and the discussions around its causes which they would later address in their text, they would have inspected the statues more thoroughly to see whether there were other possible explanations for the sound. The two Polytechnic graduates were using their training to observe and record the site and its structures; they were also using antiquarian techniques of sorting and depicting the artefacts that, as far as they knew, had no obvious relationship to texts and therefore, were all of equal importance. This is not to say that Jollois’ and de Villiers’ view of ancient Egypt was not framed by previous knowledge. But this knowledge was varied and should not be understood as restricted to early classical texts written about Egypt. They both came from families who had the means to see to their sons’ education even in revolutionary times.58 Their writings testify that they certainly did know their Latin and Greek, and these were taught in the different colleges by the study of some of the classical texts they would later use. However, one may assume that the focused reading of Strabo, Pausanias, Diodorus of Sicily, Herodotus and others, quoted by Jollois 57  Strabo, Geography, 17.1.46. Strabo reported of his visit to Thebes with Aelius Gallus in 24 B.C. Strabo said he had heard sounds at dawn, but having stood far away from the statue, he could not say whether the sounds came from the statue or from the many soldiers who accompanied Aelius Gallus. Strabo explained the possibility that the sounds had come from the statue as being a result of its damage during an earthquake. At approximately 27 B.C. according to Eusebius Chronicle, a severe earthquake occurred in Thebes. Strabo’s explanation is quite widely accepted today. The restoration of the upper part of the statue, probably in the first century A.D., stopped the occurrence of the sound. For an article about the vocal legend and an error regarding the harps of Memnon see, Robin C. Dix, “The harps of Memnon and Aeolus: A Study in the Propagation of an Error”, Modern Philology, Vol. 85, No. 3, February 1988, pp. 288–293. I believe Jollois understood “chant de Memnon” to be a reference to a hymn, not to an actual sound the statue produced. 58  Édouard de Villiers was born in Versailles in 1780; his father was a senior finance civil servant, who was jailed during the Terror. Édouard de Villiers, only thirteen years old, was sent to Paris, to the school of M. Coutier at the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. He probably found there others of similar background for he tells in the journal that he studied there with Prince Eugène, the son of Josephine de Beauharnais. (M.  De Beauharnais was jailed as well.) Prosper Jollois, born in 1776 in the Department of Yonne, was able to study there without disruption.

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and de Villiers in the published text, was done after the event, most probably in Paris when preparing the descriptions, memoirs and engravings for publication.59 This understanding obliges us to work with a more complicated approach to the influence of previous texts. One cannot take an early publication date of a text and the fact that it was quoted in a memoir as proof of an early reading and an influence that shaped the way Egypt was viewed. This simplistic view of the influence of previous knowledge, never true, is even more inadequate here, given the fact that the two worked mostly on their own, even without the benefit of discussing their experiences and sharing assumptions with their educated elders. It is safe to say that most of the works cited by the two in the publication were read after having been at the site and more often than not, after leaving Egypt altogether. These texts sometimes shaped the way they wrote and thought about their experiences, in a similar way that a book or film review shape the way one thinks of a movie or book he had read or had watched. These texts, both classical texts and those of modern scholars and travellers, certainly defined the focus of their discussions but were also read through the filter of their experience on-site. The understanding and use of the texts were constantly tempered by the observations, measurements, sketches and evidence collected by the two when in Thebes. Jollois and de Villiers were experiencing Egypt as trained engineers, accurately measuring the land and its monuments, but also as amateur antiquarians, who were systematically recording everything they saw. Their engineer training was predominantly the previous knowledge that dictated their activities on-site. They mapped the areas they surveyed; they wrote in their notes about the changing level of the land, the material of the edifices, the arrangements of the structures, their state of preservation and its reasons. Their training disciplined the way they worked and possibly prevented a more speculative free-handed attitude in the face of Egyptian antiquity that one finds in the accounts of Vivant Denon that visited many of the sites at the same time they did. But the Egyptian experience expanded their areas of interest beyond those of engineers and

59  For the restoration in the engravings of Jollois and de Villiers, see Chap. 7. For the restoration of Ozymandias tomb declared as done following Diodorus of Sicily, see Antiquités, vol. II, plate 33.

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certainly beyond the assignments they were asked to fulfil by their superiors.60 They copied inscriptions from murals and statues; they collected coins and other objects they found in the tombs of the kings, sometimes forged items sold to them by locals; they copied systematically mural drawings of what they assumed were religious rituals; they copied vases and head covers, and collected skeletons and mommies. When they returned to Paris, they tried to identify the sites to which they had been and to name the tombs and edifices they had encountered with the help of classical texts and texts written by modern scholars. In Paris they began working on their engravings and prepared their contribution to the Description Générale de Thèbes.61 They were now able to look closely at the inscriptions they briefly saw on the northern statue of Memnon and evaluate their meaning.62 The inscriptions, they wrote, all testify their authors had heard the sound of the statue, and sent the reader to the inscriptions cited at length at the end of their memoir, as common in philological texts of the time.63 However, their analysis went beyond a philological commentary. Not one of these inscriptions, they said, was from the time of the Ptolemy dynasty; they were all written after the Roman conquest. They assumed that under the Ptolemies, the Egyptian religion was still quite effective and respected.64 Bringing in Strabo to support their argument they wrote: “If we are to believe Strabo, one could no longer find in the temples the skilled and educated priests from whom 60  As written before, Jollois and de Villiers, when in Thebes, were doing so on their own initiative, before Bonaparte sent two groups to Upper Egypt, often, despite objections from their direct superiors. 61  Their section was titled « Description des Colosses de la plaine de Thèbes et des Ruines qui les environnent », Antiquités-Description, Vol. I chap. IX, section II, p. 77. (The pagination is internal to the Description and not to the volume as a whole.) 62  Some of the inscriptions quoted in the text were copied by Frederik Norden and Richard Pococke when travelling in the first half of the eighteenth century. Others were copied by members of the two commissions that arrived in Thebes some weeks after Jollois and de Villiers. When in Thebes, the two chose to focus their work on the edifices. 63  « Description Générale de Thèbes », p. 82. See Anthony Grafton, The footnote, a curious history (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999), chapter 4; see also Frédéric Louis Norden, Voyages d’Égypte et de Nubie, Nouvelle édition Soigneusement conférée sur l’originale, avec des notes et des additions tirées des auteurs anciens et modernes, et des géographes arabes par L. Langlès (Paris: Pierre Didot L’Ainé, L’an III de la République M DCC XCV). See especially volume III of Langlès’ commentary. Langlès decided to postpone the publication of the third and fourth volumes of his commentaries until the return of the expedition. 64  « Description Générale de Thèbes », p. 82.

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Plato, Solon, Eudoxus and the greatest philosophers of Greece would draw lessons of science and wisdom; there were not to be seen there, only ignorant and vain men, who were susceptible to superstitions, and who had retained from the old religious institutions but their rites and outward worship.”65 The critical distance from Strabo implied in the phrase “if we are to believe Strabo” was related to the fact that the two did not accept Strabo’s explanation to the source of the sound of the statue. But it also implied something wider. It implied an approach the two held to classical texts that was different from that of their colleague Jomard. The two saw in the classical texts an important source for the knowledge of the past, but at the same time, one that should be evaluated in conjunction with other evidence and with their own understanding or common sense. The texts were not uncritically revered, neither were the inscriptions though their authenticity was not questioned. One of the inscriptions suggested the statue was broken by Cambyses II. Jollois and de Villiers wrote that rather than an accurate account, this inscription was a reflection of a general fear from Cambyses. They believed, based on their understanding of the way religion was practiced, that the statue and its ability to produce sound were well known even before the Persian invasion, when the Egyptian religion enjoyed all its splendour.66 Jollois’ and de Villiers’ analysis was in line with their secular view of religious institutions and their historical dimension. In an earlier part of the Description générale de Thèbes, they described the palace at Medynet-­ Abou and commented on the changing use of its assumed temple. In a “Voltairean” commentary, so to speak, they explored the evidence of the changing religious role of the structure. First a place of worship for the ancient Egyptians, they could observe in its northern parts some floral crosses and halos, the remains of niches where statues of saints were placed, all testimony that the edifice had been dedicated to the worship of the early Christians. The Muslims then took over the possession of the edifice from the Christians. “Maybe, soon Mohammedanism will give way to another religion, when one of those ardent and enthusiastic conquerors who show up at certain intervals in the Eastern countries, [will claim to] have received from heaven new laws and other religious institutions.”67  Ibid.  Ibid., p. 83. 67  « Description Générale de Thèbes », p. 38. 65 66

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The two had no obligation to the philological tradition, a tradition in which material evidence was treated as a lesser source for historical knowledge, and in which monuments served chiefly to illustrate specific arguments but not as a way to answer wider questions about a society of a certain period. The two were well educated in the classics but were surveying Egypt first and foremost as engineers. To the survey of the material of which the monuments were made and their inner organization, the survey of the land and other material conditions, they added their understanding of the ways religion worked that was more a product of texts of the eighteenth century they had read privately than of the texts of Roman or Greek antiquity of their more formal education. Their Egyptian experiences informed their explanations and their decisions as to what to adopt from the classical texts. Their argument will become even more convincing, they wrote, if one was to be guided by analogies between the monuments. They have often encountered, they wrote, in the temples of Egypt “secret conducts with the help of which the priests maintained the superstition of the people; perhaps by oracles, or just by simple sounds, such as those that could be heard at the statue of Memnon.”68 The two believed the sound was a result of some physical aspect of the construction that was manipulated by the priests. However, they dismissed the option proposed by the orientalist Langlès that this happened from within the statue. Their dismissal was based on what they saw on site: the material from which the statue was constructed. The irregularity of the sound, they wrote, was the result of the choice made by the priests. After the fourth century A.D. no writer, neither Christian nor Muslim, had mentioned the sound. “It is safe to assume that the sound stopped once the priests of Egypt were completely stripped of their wealth and authority.”69 It is interesting to note that in their discussion of the geography of the plain of Thèbes, the two adopted completely the classical texts and at the same time dismissed modern travellers like Lucas, Norden and Pococke. “This opinion, which at first seems plausible, is completely unacceptable, if we consider the silence of ancient authors on a similar location.”70 In their view, based on what they had seen, the city of Thebes in ancient times was not at the same level it was at present. After providing evidence they had collected on the site, with the dates they had collected it, they  Ibid., p. 83.  Ibid, pp. 104–105. 70  Ibid., p. 84. 68 69

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wrote: “It now remains for us to see that all the testimonies of antiquity are in accordance with the opinion and facts we have here exposed.”71 Herodotus was quoted as the one who presented the argument, and Diodorus, Strabo, Pliny, Plutarch and Ammien Marcellin were quoted as having adopted his opinion.72 The extracts about the role of the Nile inundation served to support Jollois’ and de Villiers’ postulation that the two statues were part of a larger edifice now erased almost without trace. They assumed it was built in limestone and therefore hardly left any evidence of its existence on-site. In the last part of the essay Jollois and de Villiers brought together their observations and readings to present their hypothesis regarding the identification of the statues and the past existence of a large palace that had surrounded them. Once again they demonstrated their conjectures that were based on measurements were in accord with the writings of the ancient authors.73 The classical texts were given extensive exposure especially since the main opponents to Jollois’ and de Villiers’ arguments were modern philologists who had based their work very much on those very texts. They first wanted to establish that the vocal statue of Memnon was the one they claimed it to be. They then wanted to strengthen their claim it was part of a larger edifice. What followed was a long and winding journey through the different texts, in which the two picked and chose those extracts that supported their arguments. At the same time, they explained their points of disagreement with the sources in various critical ways some more convincing than others.  Ibid., p. 88.  They adopted Herodotus’ statement: “My own observation bears out the statement made to me by the priests that the greater part of the country I have described has been built up by silt from the Nile” (Histories, Book II cap. 10). The agreement between the classical authors made it even harder for the two to understand “how a famous academician, based on the same authorities, could propose a diametrically opposed opinion.” (« Description Générale de Thèbes », p. 88) The reference was to Nicolas Fréret, who served as secretary of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres from 1742 until his death in 1749. His essay « De l’accroissement ou élévation du sol de l’Égypte par le débordement du Nil » was published, posthumously in Mémoires de l’académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, tom. XVI, p.  333 (1751). His work was considered scientifically relevant and was published in numerous but inaccurate editions of Œuvres completes (1775, 1787, 1792, 1796, and 1798) that attributed essays by other authors to Fréret. In 1825 a first volume of a newly edited Oeuvres completes was published by Firmin Didot. Its editor was Jacques Joseph Champollion-Figeac. This edition never came to completion. 73  « Description Générale de Thèbes », p. 95. 71 72

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Herodotus, they wrote, did not write of the vocal statue of Memnon nor of any monuments of Thebes because he either passed there quickly or felt he had nothing to add to the travelling historians that had preceded him. However, they could infer from his writing that he did not confuse Memnon with Sesostris. Diodorus too was silent about it because he had never visited Thebes.74 Regarding Strabo’s eyewitness testimony of the sound the statue produced and his opinion, it was the result of an earthquake that had broken the stone; they reminded the readers that Strabo was not certain as to the source of the sound he had heard. “In this uncertainty, he was willing to believe whatever he was asked to believe, rather than think that the sound came from the arrangement of stones.” Norden identified the statue to be the one broken at Medynet Abou. Others, who Jollois and de Villiers did not name, claimed that Strabo’s Memnonium came to signify all the ruins of Medynet Abou and the tomb of Ozymandias. “As for us, we have many reasons to believe that Strabo’s Memnonium is nothing else than the vast ruined edifice which we have found to exist. If the testimonies of antiquity that we still have to discuss, confirm this result, we will be allowed to believe that our conjectures are entirely founded.”75 The list then continued to include Pliny who wrote of the statue as standing within the temple of Sérapis,76 Tacitus that reported Germanicus planned to visit the statue but ignored the existence of the edifice and Juvenal who mentioned both the statue and its environment. Though Juvenal was just a poet, they wrote, his testimony should be taken seriously for he had visited Thebes, when returning from his exile in Syene.77 Pausanias was then mentioned as a worthy witness. His attribution of the destruction of the statue to Cambyses, they wrote, was a result of rumours that prevailed around him.78 The last of the classics they looked at was Philostrates, the biographer of the life of Apollonius de Tyane. They were  Ibid., p. 96.  Ibid. 76  Jollois and de Villiers explained that the existence of two different assignments to the same temple by two authors writing so close in time (Strabo, Memnonium, and Pliny, Serapis) was because the Egyptian temples were not exclusively consecrated. 77  « Description Générale de Thèbes », p. 97. 78  Description, p. 98. Pausanias’ wrote that the sound which issued from the statue resembled the sound of a broken lute string, an analogy transformed into a statement of fact that would propagate the image of Memnon’s harp. (See Robin C. Dix “The Harps of Memnon and Aeolus; a Study in the Propagation of an Error”, Modern Philology, Vol. 85, no. 3., Feb. 1988.). 74 75

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referring to the story of a local informer who related the information to Apollonius and found him to be precise. Though they admitted his story was ornamented in marvels, it did mention that the statue of Memnon was in a temple of which one can see but ruins. “This enumeration of ruins”, they wrote, “is not a common way to embellish a story.” Jollois and de Villiers were not only presenting their view they were actively arguing with Paul Ernst Jablonski, the German philologist who had published in 1753 his work on the Greek and Egyptian Memnon.79 Jablonski followed Richard Pococke and identified the statue of Memnon with that of Amenhotep III.80 He then continued and argued that Memnon, Amenhotep and Ozymandias were one.81 Jollois and de Villiers first complimented Jablonski’s erudition,82 and then presented his mode of reasoning as unacceptable.83 His etymologies rest on very weak foundations, they wrote, and his deductions scarcely arrive at the results he wants to draw from them.84 Their own method of work, they strongly believed, was the new alternative: “The fortunate circumstances in which we found ourselves enabled us to study the monuments on the spot, and not from inaccurate drawings; to survey them holding the ancient authors in our hand … it gave us some advantage in a discussion we would have preferably avoided, had erudition arrived at a satisfactory result. Thus, according to the authorities mentioned above, Memnon, possibly the same as Amenhotep; but there is no relationship between Memnon and Osymandyas.”85 It was in Paris that Jollois and de Villiers brought together the antiquarian method of systematic research with a critical evaluation of literary texts to form an interpretation of their own. They almost perfectly demonstrated Momigliano’s description of the changes that had occurred in antiquarian

79  P.E. Jablonski, De Memnone Graecorum et Aegyptiorum huiusque celeberrima in Thebaide statua syntagmata (Frankfurt a.d.O: Institutiones historiae Christianae antiquioris, 1753). 80  Pococke, vol. I, p. 105. This is the accepted view today. 81  Eugène Savary followed Jablonski’s error. Jablonski used his knowledge of the Coptic language to demonstrate the identification of Amenophis-Memnon-Ozymandias. Jollois and de Villiers presented his argument at length (« Description Générale de Thèbes », pp. 101–102). 82  « Description Générale de Thèbes », p. 101. It is quite obvious the allusion here is to D’Alembert’s description of the role of the érudits described above. 83  This was different from the ways they argued with Nicolas Fréret or with Pococke or other modern travellers whose views they did not accept. 84  « Description Générale de Thèbes », p. 102. 85  Ibid.

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research at the turn of the eighteenth century.86 Jollois’ immediate reference was probably Volney, whose lectures on history at the école normale de l’an III he had attended. Volney described the way to arrive at historical truth: “History is but a true investigation of facts. The historian who has a sense of his duty must, like a judge, call before him the narrators and witnesses of the facts, confront them, question them, to arrive at truth.”87 This change of view was also reflected in a report delivered at the national convention by the chemist Fourcroy. While the method of the erudite was not acceptable, the approach of the philosophes had to be somewhat modified as well: the naturalist, the physicist and the chemist have abandoned divine explanations with the help of the teachings of the philosophes of the last century. Their study was now based on observed facts. They no longer guessed without observing. This, wrote Fourcroy, was also the method the skilled antiquarian now follows.88 Prosper Jollois and Édouard de Villiers were neither the érudit nor the philosophe. They implied their affiliation to Volney’s views from the start, in an epigraph to their essay. It was not taken from Volney’s account of his voyage in Egypt as might be expected, but rather from his philosophical work, Les Ruines. The text describes the author standing in front of the ruins of Palmyra and meditating the rise and fall of empires.89 The antiquarian method they followed in conjunction with the precision of their engineer training was at the base of their account of Thebes and its monuments. Their assumption regarding the edifice, of which the two colossi were part, and its subsequent ruin by floodwater, is now accepted by Egyptologists and archaeologists. However, the two were mistaken in their disapproval of Strabo’s 86  Arnaldo Momigliano, “Ancient History and the Antiquarian”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute, 13 (1950), pp. 285–315. 87  Volney, Cours d’histoire à l’école normale de l’an III, séance II. (The lectures given at the école normale de l’an III were written by designated assistants, printed and distributed to teachers and school masters all over France. For more on the école normale de l’an III, see Dominique Julia, L’École normale de l’an III: bilan d’une expérience révolutionnaire (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Revue du Nord, 1996). 88  AN/F !& 1064-1065, Rapport de la Commission Temporaire des Arts sur une proposition de Fourcroy, 25 ventôse an III [March 15, 1795]. Fourcroy was then member of the Commission de l’instruction public, the report was in response to his proposal for educational reform (see A. Leon, “Les écoles centrales de la Révolution et l’enseignement technique », Paedagogica Historica, vol. 2 No. 1, 1962), pp. 69–90. 89  « Ici fleurit jadis une ville opulente. Ici fut le siège d’un empire puissant. … Ces colonnes abattues ornoient la majesté des temples. Ces galeries écrulées dessinoient les places publiques » C.F. Volney, Les Ruines, ou Méditation sur les Révolutions de Empires (Paris, 1791).

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explanation regarding the sounds the statue produced. As for Jomard’s account of Fayoum, the existence of Herodotus’ labyrinth was widely debated among modern scholars in the twentieth century but was proved correct by recent archaeological surveys. By the 1790s, Pierre Henri Larcher’s views had so changed, that Voltaire’s false accusations discussed in the first part of this chapter can be read as prophecy. Larcher was now a passionate Christian agonizing over his previous publications. In 1802 he published a new revised edition of Herodotus from which he removed the notes of the philosophe and revised the essai chronologique. Voltaire already dead, Larcher identified a new enemy, Constantin François de Chassebœuf, comte de Volney whom he described in the following words: “M. Chasseboeuf, whose knowledge of history is no better than his ability to hear the Greek language.”90 Volney responded, but unlike Voltaire, Volney systematically pointed to problems in Larcher’s translation, notes, and in his chronological essay. He accused Larcher of a tiring and heavy style, of excessive notes and of betraying Herodotus’ chronology. To support his argument, he made a reference to the soon-to-be-published Description of Egypt: “Such is the strange destiny of Herodotus that after having been misjudged by the ancients, the merit of his work is elevated with us, the moderns, as we acquire more knowledge about the countries he had addressed. All travellers to Egypt agree that nothing can be added to the accuracy, correctness and greatness of the picture he had painted of that country.” It was no longer just philosophical history or philology. The understanding of the past required a critical assessment of all evidence based on language skills, reading and observations. In a clear reference to the dispute between Voltaire and Larcher of forty-one years before, Volney titled his small book: Supplément à l'Hérodote de Larcher.91

90  Histoire d’Hérodote, traduite du grec avec des remarques historiques et critiques, un Essai sur la Chronologie d’Hérodote et une Table géographique par M. Larcher nouvelle édition (Paris: G. de Bure, 1802), vol. III, p. 273. Volney was actually an old rival. When in his twenties, he had already negatively commented on Larcher in an essay on Herodotus’ chronology. He was then young, unknown and trying to gain entrance into Parisian literary circles. His commentary was dismissed by Hellenists but accepted in the salon of Madame Helvétius. 91  Volney, Supplément à l’Hérodote de Larcher (Paris: Courcier, 1808). The allusion to the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns is clear as well.

CHAPTER 9

Describing Modern Egyptian Society

The texts with which this chapter engages have contemporary Egyptian society at their centre. They were authored by two Polytechnic graduates, Jean-Marie-Joseph Dubois-Aimé (b. 1779) and Gilbert Joseph Gaspard Chabrol de Volvic (b. 1773). Very different in their style and temper, the two authors do demonstrate some common features in their writing. Their descriptions and analysis of society are grounded in a geographical grid and influenced by field observations and personal experiences. While committed to measurements, observation and a somewhat “neutral” gaze, they were also driven by a sense of wonder when describing a society different from their own. But the differences between them are meaningful. Beyond personal tendencies, the texts were written at a different time both in the history of France and in their respective careers. Dubois-Aimé’s account easily oscillated between his observations of the Bedouins of contemporary Egypt and his images of ancient Egyptian society derived from biblical stories, philosophical texts of enlightenment authors and his role as an officer of customs in Bonaparte’s administration in Italy. Chabrol de Volvic was perfect of the Seine for some ten years when his account about Egyptian society was finally published. He wrote it over a long period of time making use of the available surveys of the medical corps in Egypt during the occupation, the accounts of the French administration at the time, but also, of his personal experience in French local administration from

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Sarfatti, The Description of Egypt from Napoleon to Champollion, War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15606-9_9

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the time of the Consulate. These sources and experiences were brought in to produce what was presented as the definitive and systematic account of contemporary Egyptian society.

Bedouins, Hebrews and an Engineer-Philosophe’s Views of Biblical Stories On November 12, 1810, a committee of three read to the assembly of contributors to the Description of Egypt their report regarding a memoir submitted by Dubois-Aimé titled “Mémoire sur les tribus arabes des déserts de l’Égypte et sur les tribus Israélites qui ont occupé autrefois les mêmes déserts” [A memoir about the Arab tribes of the deserts of Egypt and of the tribes of the Israelites that had occupied these same deserts in the past]. The first part of the memoir dealt with the Arab tribes that resided in Egypt, their history, mores, customs and political arrangements; its second part was about the Hebrews whom Dubois-Aimé believed could be considered an ancient but similar example of these Arab tribes. The committee found the last assertion troubling and recommended its suppression. It did accept the comparison the author had made between the habits of the Arabs and those described in the biblical stories and recommended they remain part of the memoir.1 Dubois-Aimé was in Italy when he heard of the report, an officer in the bureaucracy of Bonaparte’s Empire. He was unhappy with the decision and exercised his right to appeal for a second committee to examine his work.2 This second committee included Claude Berthollet, then president of the commission in charge of publication, and his inclusion gave its report an air of a final judgement. The assembly asked the new committee to focus its observation on two questions: whether the second chapter of the memoire was relevant to its topic, and whether its publication might cause inconvenience. The second committee found the comparison Dubois had made between the customs and habits of the biblical Israelites  BN NAF 21959.  To the best of my knowledge, this was the only case when an author practiced this right for a second report. An abbreviated copy of the letter is in NAF 21959. For the full letter: Jean-Marie-Joseph Du Boisaymé (Aimé), Correspondance sous les divers gouvernements qui se sont succédé en France depuis l’an X de la République (Grenoble: Prudhomme, 1842.). An abridged and more available edition holds letters from the years 1810–1814, Correspondance de M. Du Boisaymé sous les divers gouvernements qui se sont succédé en France depuis l’an X de la République (Paris: Librairie historique F. Teissèdre). 1 2

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and those of the Arab tribes perfectly relevant to the topic of the memoir, and thought that part should even be expanded. It found the author’s observations about the story of Exodus, the crossing of the Red Sea and the sojourn in Sinai until the death of Moses to be of no relevance to the subject of the memoir, though, the report emphasised, these were legitimate views for the author to hold. As for the second question regarding the inconvenience such a topic might cause to the publication, the report stated that the tone and style in which Dubois-Aimé addressed the biblical miracles were not proper in a work published under the auspices of the government. “Mr. Dubois has to consider that our work has the honor of not being subject to censorship … the government … gave the members of the commission a great proof of its confidence. … there is a solidarity between us and we are confident that Mr. Dubois will not want to turn future possible personal benefits, to the disadvantage of his colleagues.”3 Censorship had a very concrete and immediate reference at the time. As part of an effort to comprehensively reorganise the book trade, Bonaparte had begun deliberations about book licencing at the Council of State from August 1808, producing numerous drafts of the law that would finally be approved by him in 1810. The offices of the state’s censors were put under the direction of the Minister of Interior. The debate, the law and its importance to Bonaparte were probably well known to the Senator Claude Louis Berthollet.4 The power of deterrence, as Robert Darnton showed, worked to impose self-censorship on the members of the editorial committee.5 As the publication of the Description of Egypt was entirely dependent on state-funding, the report was asking Dubois-Aimé to avoid putting the whole project at risk, a request with which he had to comply. The essay published was then titled—Mémoire sur les Tribus Arabes des Déserts de l’Égypte—reflecting the changes he had to make. It is interesting to note that while the committee feared the reference to the biblical miracles would cause trouble, it approved the parts of the essay that included criticism of the conduct of the French army towards the Bedouins and a justification of the latter’s violent resistance. It also approved the lightly veiled criticism of the First Consul turned Emperor done very much in the  BN NAF 21959.  Isser Woloch, Napoleon and his collaborators: the making of a dictatorship (New York: W.W. Norton, 2002), pp. 209–211. 5  Robert Darnton, “Censorship, a Comparative View: France 1789-East Germany 1989”, Representations, No. 49, Winter 1995. 3 4

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manner of the writers of the Enlightenment that distanced their criticism by placing them in foreign lands. Dubois-Aimé wrote in his essay of the rule of the sheikhs of the Bedouin tribes: “…one sees no means of oppression in the government of sheikhs; it does not exist in prison camps where innocents are abandoned … there is no seraglio where the sovereign can hide his actions from view. The Arab sheikh, has no guards, and no court; he spends his life in plain air; his actions and speeches are witnessed by all the men of his tribe; he cannot escape the censorship of opinion, he cannot mask abuse of power as an act for public interest, and his subjects are not numerous enough that he can, by dividing their interests, have the ones subdue the others.” The paragraph was intentionally critical. In a letter he wrote after the fall of Napoleon, Dubois told a friend that upon the advice of friends, he had replaced the word palais with the word serail to distance his criticism of “some governments including that of the Emperor”.6 But as we see from the report of the committee about the memoir, the égyptiens of 1798 were asked in 1810 not to offend the Church rather than the Emperor. Dubois-Aimé’s account of the Arab tribes of Egypt can be seen as part of the eighteenth-century discourse in which the Bedouins’ negative image transferred into the image of the bon nomad with a touch of post-­ Revolutionary phrasing.7 In his memoire, he opposed the liberty of the Arabs to the “nations of slaves that surrounded them”8 and described their fraternité and their egalité as being both physical and moral.9 Like in Rousseau’s Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes, Dubois-Aimé sometimes portrayed them as the “younger us”, before we had been corrupted by civilisation. But his descriptions were also concrete, and invoked particular encounters in which he learned of  Du Bois-Aymé (Aimé), Correspondance…, vol. I, p. 79.  For a thorough analysis of Dubois-Aimé’s view of the Bedouins and the influence of Enlightenment writers on it, see Sarga Moussa, “Une peur vaincue; l’émergence du mythe bédouin chez les voyageurs français du XVIII siècle », La peur au XVIII siècle, J. Berchtold et M. Porret, éd. (Genève: Droz, 1994), pp. 193–212. 8  When writing about Ottoman despotism, Savary called the Bedouins “martyrs de la liberté” (see Claude-Etienne Savary, Lettres sur l’Égypte) (Paris: Onfroi, 1785–1786). Dubois-­ Aimé was opposing them to the Mamelukes. 9  « Il règne une grande uniformité dans leur taille, qui ne varie guère que de cinq pieds quatre pouces; on ne voit point, comme parmi nous, de pygmées à côté de géants, d’avortons à côté d’athlètes; on ne rencontre point d’estropiés de naissance; les forces physiques, comme les force morales et politiques, ne se rapprochent nulle part autant de l’égalité ». (Mémoire sur les Tribus Arabes des Déserts de l’Égypte, État Moderne, Mémoires, vol. I. 6 7

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the daily practices of their existence.10 The Arab society, he believed, had not changed through the ages; this enabled him to look at descriptions by Diodorus of Sicily and at those in the Bible to further his understanding. Quoting from the book of Genesis, Dubois-Aimé wrote that one could recognise the Bedouins in the biblical portrait of Ismail. This led him to assume, “with some certainty”, that the Arabs and the Hebrews have a common origin. “When reading the Bible attentively, one is amazed by the resemblance of manners of the ancient patriarchs to those of the Bedouin Arabs. This reading is all the more interesting if it can be done, like I have done it, in the land of Goshen, on the shores of the Red Sea, at the fountains of Moses, or in the midst of the desert whose horizon is bordered by the chain of mountains of Horeb and Sinai.”11 The European scenery in which Dubois-Aimé actually wrote the memoir was possibly responsible for the more sober commentary he added to this reverie. “When one looks at the Bible as a basis for religious beliefs it is either too despised or too venerated”, he wrote. He suggested to look at the ethnographic value of the Bible, thus trying to avoid offending either the believers or the atheists. While its chronology, facts and physical explanations might seem questionable to some, one should at least admit “that it was impossible to paint more accurately the picture of the private lives of families wandering the desert: we still find among them the same customs, the same lifestyle, the same maxims of public law, the same arts,

10  Jomard held very different views from Dubois-Aimé regarding the Arab tribes. In his text—“Observations sur les Arabes de l’Égypte moyenne” (État moderne, vol. I)—he offered a demonised image of the Arabs, one that dominated accounts of pilgrims and travellers before the eighteenth century (see Sarga Moussa, “Une peur vaincue”). He divided the Arab tribes into two groups, one sedentary and the other completely nomad but portrayed both in a similar negative way as thieves, both greedy and violent. Jomard did not see them as proper Egyptians but as invaders constantly threatening the prospects of Egypt. While both Dubois-Aimé’s and Jomard’s account reflected the problems the French encountered when trying to subjugate the tribes, Dubois-Aimé lauded and idealised their resistance, while Jomard saw the opposite. 11  « Mémoire sur les Tribus Arabes des Déserts de l’Égypte », État Moderne, Mémoire, vol. I. p. 580.

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the same utensils, and almost the same language.”12 Using Homer and the Bible, Dubois-Aimé was able to compare and comment on ancient manners and the organisation of the patriarchal way of life. The different sources could coexist and were made into an ethnographic text.13 The Bedouins were Muslims who prayed, cited the Koran and followed Muhammad the prophet, but they also adored a Supreme Being and saw in the heavenly bodies mediators “which under a sky so beautiful and pure, seemed to announce the greatness of god with greater magnificence than the rest of nature.” Dubois-Aimé was quoting, and acknowledging quoting, Voltaire’s Essai sur les mœurs.14 This was as far as the editorial committee, and the editor Jomard, had accepted, so as not to invoke the anger of the censors. Jean-Marie-Joseph Dubois-Aimé (b. 1779) was a student of the Polytechnic when recruited to the Egyptian campaign.15 Like his classmate and friend Édouard de Villiers, he passed his exit exams in Cairo. He participated in the project of measuring the level of the water conducted by the engineer Lepère from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean to appreciate 12  Ibid., note 3, p.  580. The note continued; « La loi du talion, le droit de vengeance dévolu aux plus proches parens, le rachat du sang, l’autorité des vieillards, la punition des blasphémateurs, la circoncision, les sacrifices sur les hauts lieux, les preuves de la virginité des filles exigées au jour de leur mariage, la stérilité regardée comme une malédiction du ciel, le désir d’une nombreuse postérité, les droits de propriété et d’héritage, la préparation des alimens, l’horreur pour la chair de porc, les bijoux, les vêtemens, la manière de faire la guerre, le partage des dépouilles enlevées sur l’ennemi; l’usage d’habiter sous des tentes, mêmes dans les pays fertiles couverts de villes et de villages; celui de jeter de la poussière en l’air dans les grands dangers, dans les grands chagrins; tout cela est aussi commun aux deux peuples ». 13  Ibid., p. 582. Arnaldo Momigliano noted that the belief that Homer mirrored the age of the patriarchs was not unusual at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Arnaldo Momigliano, “Historiography of Religion: Western Views” On Pagans, Jews and Christians (Middletown, Ct.: Wesleyan University Press, 1987), p. 24. 14  Voltaire, « Essai sur les mœurs », in Œuvres complètes, tome 13 (1878), pp. 44–45. It was not the only time he was inspired by Voltaire. The angry letter he sent the assembly on November 28, eighteen days after the first committee read its report, said: “Si, enfin, les noms d’Ibrahim, d’Abraham ou Bram que je donne à Abraham ont parru irreligieux à vos commissaries, que ne s’en prennent-ils à l’auteur du texte hébreu de la Bible ? C’est dans son livre que je les ai trouvés. » Voltaire wrote in La Bible enfin expliquée (1770) on the longer Eastern tradition of the name Abraham beginning with the Indian Brama to the Persian Ibraim, which Voltaire argued, the Jews took and appropriated into their scriptures. A longer essay on Abraham in Eastern traditions appeared in Essai sur les mœurs following the essay on the Arab tribes. The letter of Dubois-Aimé is in Correspondance, p. 79. 15  The name is sometimes spelled Du Bois Aymé or Du Boisaymé or Aimé de Boués. I follow the spelling used in the Description of Egypt.

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the possibility of digging a canal there.16 Under the supervision of the engineer Pierre-Simon Girard, he went to Upper Egypt with Prosper Jollois and Édouard de Villiers. All three disliked Girard but Dubois-Aimé, possibly, because of a more rebellious character, did not contain the disputes with his superior. At a certain point, after provoking Girard to a duel, he was “exiled” so to speak, to the port city of El Qoseir.17 This exile as well as his participation in Lepère’s project probably defined the areas about which he wrote: the Arab tribes of Egypt in general and of El Qoseir in particular, and the changing limits of the Red Sea.18 As mentioned above, in 1810 Dubois-Aimé held a post in Italy in the administration of customs.19 Unhappy with the decision that censored his memoir, he tried to submit its rejected parts once again in 1814, during the unstable period that followed the first fall of Napoleon. He was helped by his two friends. Jomard, the editor was away in London, and Prosper Jollois, then secretary of the editorial committee, nominated Édouard de Villiers to write the report about the memoir. On June 6, 1814, two months after Napoleon’s abdication, the new report recommended the publication of the essay “Notice sur le séjour des Hébreux en Égypte et sur leur fuite dans le désert” emphasising its relevance to the work in general, for, commented the report, the wandering of the Israelites in the desert gave the author an occasion to discuss Egypt’s ancient geography and its geology. The report found it was proper to see the history of the Hebrews in Egypt as part of the history of ancient Egypt and complimented Dubois-Aimé for his reserved and careful style. Thus, the essay was recommended for publication.20 When published, Jomard added an explanatory note, a somewhat exceptional gesture in the Description, in  This was Gratien le Père, an engineer, and not Lepère the architect discussed before.  The dispute as well as the dislike for Girard who seemed to have not been taken by Egyptian antiquities like the others was elaborated in the diary entries of Édouard de Villier du Terrage, Journal et Souvenirs sur l’expédition d’Égypte 1798–1801,…., see p.  127; p.147; p. 166. 18  Dubois-Aimé, « Mémoire sur le tribus arabes des déserts de l’Égypte » (État Moderne, mémoires, t. I, pp. 577–607); « Mémoire sur la ville et la vallée de Qoceir et sur les peuples nomades » (État Moderne, mémoires, vol. I) « Mémoire sur les anciennes branches du Nil et ses embouchures dans la mer » (État Moderne, mémoires, vol. I, pp., 265–277); « Notice sur le séjour des Hébreux en Égypte et sur leur fuite dans le désert » (État Moderne, mémoires, vol. I, pp. 291–324). 19  With the Restoration, he was nominated director of customs at Nantes and Marseilles. In 1831 and in 1835, he was elected deputy of Ile-et-Vilaine and Isére, respectively. 20  BN NAF 21959, report of June 6, 1814. 16 17

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which he told of the initial rejection, subsequent modification and the decision to finally include the essay.21 The title notice for a thirty-three-­ page essay was also exceptional for it was usually reserved to two-page addendums to larger essays. These gestures by the editor all provided an air of “disclaimer” to what was probably seen by Jomard as a problematic memoir. Dubois-Aimé began his memoir by pointing to the exceptional situation of the Jews at present, and through history and already at its start, he presented himself at once a disciple of Voltaire’s approach to history, and an independent thinker away from Voltaire. He praised the conscious sense of a common past the Jews shared, which he thought, was unlike the French,22 and attributed this “political phenomenon to the force of the laws given by Moses”. There followed a short account of the widespread unfortunate situation of the Jews that he attributed to the humiliating circumstances in which most societies held them, and noted that in enlightened and tolerant countries that have improved the lot of the Jews, one could find among them “virtuous men, distinguished writers; and we have witnessed nowadays young Israelites fight with glory under the flag of France.”23 The blame for the situation of the Jew had shifted from the Jew and his religion to the host society. Dubois-Aimé then reminded his readers that the religion of the Israelites was the foundation of the Christian one, that Jewish history had many instances to admire and that they had preserved not only the biblical laws but also their self-dignity. He drew his examples from the past—the rebellion of the Jews against Rome, and from Rome of the present. The Jews of Rome, he wrote, refuse to walk under the Arch of Titus where the story of their defeat is engraved. Dubois-Aimé thought both acts merit admiration. A personal story followed, used as a rhetorical device to relocate the narrative to Egypt. Dubois-Aimé revealed that while he was examining the ornamentation of the menorah in Rome, he saw “a Hebrew man, walking near me. I immediately recognized he was Hebrew for no climate could change that physiognomy … How many questions would have addressed that Hebrew man to me had he known I had lived in the land of Egypt, that I had set my tent in Goshen, crossed

 The essay appeared in Description de l’Égypte, Antiquité-Mémoires, vol. 1, pp. 291–324.  Dubois-Aimé, « Notice sur le séjour des Hébreux en Égypte… » p. 291. 23  Ibid., p. 292. 21 22

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the Red sea on foot, and wandered in the wilderness on whose horizons one can see the mountains of Sinai and Horeb?”24 From the introduction, one can see that Dubois-Aimé’s method was very much in line with that of the philosophes. He saw connections between present realities and earlier states of human existence; he projected his understanding of contemporary social behaviour onto history as a way of understanding the past. His knowledge and observations of the Arab tribes of Egypt shed light on the biblical stories, while the biblical stories could be projected to explain the present state of the Jews around him. He could find legitimacy to this method in a closer source, the work of Volney on the tribes of North America. Volney’s analogical method in which he compared the ancient Greeks to the indigenous people of North America a comparison that was as provocative to the Revolutionary elite and their views of antiquity as those of Dubois-Aimé were for the Restoration. Volney first made a general comment suggesting that the more one perfected the study of the lives and history of the savages, the better one will be able to have proper ideas about the nature of man in general, about the development of societies and on the habits and manners of the nations of antiquity. He then elaborated: I am struck, above all, by the analogy which I observe every day between the savages of North America and the ancient peoples so boasted of Greece and Italy. I find in Homer’s Greeks, especially those of his Iliad, the usages, discourses, and customs of the Iroquois, Delawares, and Miamis. The tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides almost literally depict the opinions of the Red Men on the necessity, the fatality, the misery of the human condition, and the harshness of blind destiny. But the most remarkable piece by the variety and combination of the traits of resemblance is the beginning of the history of Thucydides, in which he recalls and summarizes the habits and way of life of the Greeks before and after the Trojan War up to the century in which he wrote.25

Dubois-Aimé’s text also reflected something else that was unique to the post-Revolutionary era. It revealed a brief moment in European history, a  Ibid.  Volney, « Observations générales sur les Indiens ou sauvages de l’Amérique du Nord, » in Œuvres complètes de Volney (Paris, Firmin Didot, 1840), pp. 725–726. Volney had begun asserting this comparison between the Greeks and the savages in his lectures on history at the école normale de l’an III. See lesson V. 24 25

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moment of openness to its Jewish minority. The self-segregation of the Jewish communities and their habits and customs were tolerated in his text and celebrated as a virtue. It reflected the short period when the laws that discriminated the minority had already changed but national ideologies had not yet taken over with their demand for complete assimilation. Like in his depiction of the self-segregation of the Arab tribes, neither the Jews nor the Arabs were seen in Dubois-Aimé’s text as a reason for fear or discrimination. In a similar way, he did not see the Arab tribes of Egypt as external to the Egyptian society—as his colleague Jomard did—while their habits, preserved over the ages, formed an explanation to what he saw as a liberated and egalitarian society. Dubois-Aimé asserted his views on the bible and its historical value from the very beginning. As before, he denied the importance of its religious teachings but also found the philological discussions it invoked as senseless. Its importance lay elsewhere, he wrote. The bible told the history of a particular people that started as nomads, became cultivators, slaves, and nomads again and then conquerors. These processes told as a particular history were actually a universal history of human societies.26 He dismissed those who focused on some uninteresting contradictions that were most probably the errors of copyists or translators. He was dismissing the very work Jomard was so good at doing. His was a different method. He was looking at the wider picture without entering into philological discussions. His emphasis was not on dates, events or big men, but on the habits, customs, laws and social organisation that the Bible revealed. The biblical stories were seen by him as a social-ethnographical account. Be the hypotheses of the erudite sound or not, wrote Dubois-Aimé, “…we cannot accept them for they appear to contradict the march of the human spirit, and diverge from that which we witness around us every

 Dubois-Aimé, « Notice sur le séjour des Hébreux en Égypte… », p. 293.

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day.”27 This was the spirit of the Encyclopédie.28 In the entry fact in the Encyclopédie, Diderot presented one of the ways to evaluate a historical fact: “If the fact is transmitted to us by history or by tradition, we have but one rule for judging it; the application [of the rule] can be difficult, but the rule is safe: it is the experience of past centuries, and that of our own.” Diderot then continued and wrote some paragraphs further on: “We arrive in this world, we find in it obscure witnesses, some texts & some monuments; but what will teach us the value of these testimonies, if not our own experience?” Voltaire too, in the entry History, advised to look at the “ordinary course of nature” implying a judgement based on contemporary reality in order to arrive at historical conclusions. The knowledge of what was the regular order of human things, he wrote, could instruct one how to distinguish truth from fables.29 The reason the history of Abraham as told in the book of Genesis seemed convincing to Dubois-Aimé was the way that history, when unclothed of its exaggerations, told of a life one could encounter among the Arab tribes of contemporary Egypt.30 And in a general comment on the limits of the historical inquiry, he added: “We urge those who read us never to forget that we do not pretend to prove that this or that man existed, that this or that event actually occurred; only that it is likely or at least possible that it was so.” The victory of the few Israelites over the Egyptians did not need a miracle to explain it, he wrote, nor did it need providential guidance. The French victory at Mount Tabor in which the Anglo-Ottoman force had an advantage in numbers was a recent event that proved the probability, or at least the possibility, of such an occurrence.31

 Ibid., p. 295.  As briefly discussed in the previous chapter, D’Alembert’s Discours préliminaire to the Encyclopédie acknowledged the important role the erudite had played at the time of Europe’s awakening from its centuries of ignorance. The erudite labour was essential then to reintroduce the work of the Ancients. However, times have changed and new conceptually refined approaches to historical studies have developed. The texts would no longer be cited and compared among themselves, but evaluated for their historical truth. « Discours préliminaire », Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, etc., eds. Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond D’Alembert. University of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie Project (Spring 2011 Edition), Robert Morrissey (ed), http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu. 29  Encyclopédie, http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu. The entries “Fact” and “History”. 30  « Notice sur le séjours… », pp. 297–298. 31  Ibid., p. 300. 27 28

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Dubois-Aimé wrote what had probably happened based on his experiences in Egypt and in particular his periods of residence among the Arab tribes. The footnotes often referred the reader to his essay on the Arab tribes. That was his source for understanding the biblical stories more than any other written essay, either of the classics or of eighteenth-century biblical commentary of which he was aware. “The land of Goshen was therefore on the road between Memphis and Ghaza and had been given to the Israelites in the same way we had bestowed it, during our stay in Egypt, to three Arab tribes that came, like the Hebrews before, from Syria.”32 This was a mild hint at Dubois-Aimé’s original memoir in which he not only claimed a common ancestry to the Arab tribes and the ancient Hebrews, but made them indistinguishable: “The Bedouins Israelites wandered for some time in the deserts of Syria and the Isthmus of Suez and—with the consent of the Pharaoh of Egypt—settled in the land of Goshen, nowadays Valley of Sabah-Byar.”33 Dubois-Aimé’s explanation of the ten plagues of Egypt as natural events that were often witnessed by the French when in Egypt had precedents in the writings of earlier eighteenth-century scholars. The Göttingen professor Johann David Michaelis, a biblical scholar and an Orientalist, had stated his views in an introduction to Pierre Hardy’s book of 1758 Essai physique sur l’heure des marées dans la mer rouge, comparé avec l’heure du passage des Hébreux. Hardy’s book was written as a response to contemporary views that were trying to reinterpret the Red Sea crossing as a natural event. Michaelis, well acquainted with the miraculous arguments that Hardy was trying to sustain, expressed his disagreement in the introduction to the book pointing that Moses had nowhere written that a miracle had taken place.34 The right way to explain the Red Sea crossing according to Michaelis was to see it as a natural occurrence that was occasioned by the will of Providence. Michaelis had moved from Halle to Göttingen, a move that implied a distance from Pietism and an association with an academic centre in which the antiquarian’s work was officially recognised as

 Notice, p. 308.  This quote is from the uncensored version published in Italy. Quoted in Sarga Moussa, “L’image des Bédouins dans la Description de l’Égypte » Égypte/Monde Arabe, Première série, Anthropologies de l’Égypte 1, [En ligne], mis en ligne le 08 juillet 2008, p. 24. 34  Pierre Hardy, Essai physique sur l’heure des mares dans la mer rouge, compare avec l’heure du passage des Hébreux, ed. J.D. Michaelis (Gottingen 1758) (préface). 32 33

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ancillary to historical research.35 While Halle sent missionaries to Felix Arabia, Michaelis, from Göttingen, would soon design a scientific expedition to go there. “The Old Testament”, wrote Michaelis, “is a book which, if we are to comprehend it, compels us to enter into the entire natural history and customs of the Orient.”36 A close look at the expedition Michaelis had designed will demonstrate the differences between its concepts and the work of the French Committee of Arts and Science, both self-described as scientific. In 1760 the scientific expedition to Felix Arabia began to form. Financed by the king of Denmark, it had Johann David Michaelis as its academic authority. Michaelis provided the participants, among them, Carsten Niebuhr, with a set of instructions and questions that were to secure the scientific aspects of the expedition and promise that its participants focus on the topics that were of interest to him. Michaelis emphasised the importance of collaboration between the armchair academic and the traveller, a necessary collaboration if one was to reach the truth. The traveller spends but a short time in a location and is often distracted, he wrote. “The European scholar … in the peaceful retirement of his cabinet. … surrounded by a large library, can collect ten facts and lacks but the eleventh to complete the discovery. This eleventh [fact] is under the eyes of the traveler; but he cannot notice for he could not carry with him the books from whose inspection the idea would have been born. But if the European scholar would take the trouble and provide the traveler with a collection of well elaborated questions, that traveler would achieve what others could not.”37 Michaelis proceeded according to his own advice, designated each participant in the expedition an area of inquiry and provided the elaborate 35  Arnaldo Momigliano, “The Rise of Antiquarian Research”, The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography, Sather Classical Lectures, vol. 54 (Berkley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1990) (based on the Sather lectures delivered in 1961–1962), p. 74. 36   The quote from Michaelis is in Wolf Feuerhahn, “A Theologian’s List and an Anthropologist’s Prose: Michaelis, Niebuhr, and the Expedition to Felix Arabia”, Little Tools of Knowledge (Ann Harbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), pp. 141–168. p. 150. 37  Johann David Michaelis, Recueil de questions proposes à une société de savants qui par ordre de Sa Majesté Danoise font le voyage de l’àrabie (Amsterdam and Utrecht, 1774), instruction 4. This edition included an introduction by Michaelis about the aims of the expedition, the instructions as well as the questions. Its last part included extracts of Niebuhr’s answers to the questions with Michaelis’ comments on them. For the fall out between the two, see forward.

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questions that each individual was to answer. Carsten Niebuhr was supposed to make geographical observations and a map of Arabia and the Red Sea in order to facilitate determination of “how the Jews went through with Moses.”38 The naturalist was to give special attention to the flora and fauna mentioned in the Bible, while the philologist was to record the mores and customs of the land “above all, those which cast light on sacred scriptures and Mosaic law.”39 Michaelis summarised the available knowledge to date before each question he posited.40 Question II was “On the tide, which occurs at the northern end of the Red Sea. On time & tide greatness. The depth & bottom of the sea where the Israelites have passed. Question XVIII asked to look for “a branch that would render the salt water sweet” and question XIX asked about “The existence of waters that are alternatively sweet and bitter.”41 Each question elaborated what exactly should be looked at, almost defining the expected answer. In the elaboration to the question of the Red Sea crossing, Michaelis referred the travellers to his editorial comments published in Pierre Hardy’s book. He also emphasised the need to state the exact hour and minute of the tide and its duration. Michaelis also pointed to the place and the days of the month these should be measured. The travellers were asked to interview people well acquainted with the sea. Even these interviews were directed from Göttingen: they were to inquire the locals whether there ever has existed a “double tide”, how long it took the water to recover from a sudden wind storm and many such questions.42 For Michaelis, the land of the Bible was a-historical. The answers to be found there were set in advance. They were to provide natural explanations to the scriptural monuments, wonders and miracles, thus rationalising the scriptures but always keeping Providence close at hand. The expedition set off in January 1761 and within three years, all its participants died leaving Carsten Niebuhr, the mathematician who had  Ibid., instruction 31.  Ibid., instructions 16, 17, 35. 40  The questions were mostly written by Michaelis. The Académie des inscription et belles-­ lettres provided the expedition with some questions as well. These last concerned contemporary Yemen, its government, manners, learning and science. They were different from the focus of Michaelis on the land of the Bible. 41  Johann David Michaelis, Recueil de questions proposes à une société de savants qui par ordre de Sa Majesté Danoise font le voyage de l’àrabie (Amsterdam and Utrecht, 1774). All questions appear on the first four pages. 42  Ibid., p. 3. 38 39

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practiced some geography towards the expedition, the only survivor to carry the mission. The expedition was thus transformed. Niebuhr’s answers had almost nothing to do with the initial biblical aim of the expedition. His interest was in the life and customs of the contemporary Arabs. The biblical dimensions almost completely fell out of his descriptions, thus disenchanting the land of the Bible. Niebuhr wrote that it was indeed not to be doubted that the Israelites crossed through the Red Sea. But as several thousand years have gone by, one had now to investigate in earnest where this noteworthy occurrence took place. It would be hard to establish the actual place of crossing with complete certainty, he wrote, for the banks of the sea have changed as much here as in other parts of the world. 43 Dubois-Aimé held a similar view. He thought the present position of the Arabian Gulf prevented from conceiving how it was possible for the Israelites to find themselves so quickly upon exiting the land of Goshen on the shores of the sea. But these, he believed, were different in ancient times. The research done by the engineers of the expedition, the geological observations, the sea shells found, the nature of the earth and numerous other observations supported his view. In a footnote, he wrote that though he was not aware of this in Egypt, he now found support for his views regarding the ancient limits of the Red Sea in the work of Niebuhr.44 The difference between his conclusion about the site of the crossing and that of Niebuhr was explained by the expedition of which Dubois-Aimé was part. An expedition that due to great advances in engineering was able to measure and arrive at scientific conclusions regarding the level of the Red Sea. While Niebuhr found the crossing to be a possibility he could not further comment about it with the data available to him, Dubois-Aimé explained it as a natural order of things, known to Moses who had resided 43  The distance between Michaelis’ questions and Niebuhr’s answers resulted in Michaelis’ decision not to edit and publish them. Niebuhr could not even find the supposed monuments or location of the miracles to naturalise. When Michaelis did not publish, Niebuhr included his sceptical answers in his publications of his travels, originally in German but immediately translated into French: Carsten Niebuhr, Description de l’àrabie faite sur des observations propres et des avis recueillis dans les lieux mêmes (Amsterdam: chez S.J. Baalde; à Utrecht; chez J. Van Schoonhoven, 1774); Carsten Niebuhr, Voyage en Arabie et en d’autres pays circonvoisins (Amsterdam: S.J. Baalde, 1776–1780). The dispute between Michaelis and Niebuhr, though fascinating, is beyond the scope of this chapter. It is well demonstrated in the extracts from Niebuhr’s descriptions that Michaelis included in the Recueil, and on which he commented. 44  « Notice sur le séjours… ». It is interesting to note that while the physical qualities of the land were perceived by Dubois as changing through history, human character was universal.

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in the area before, when escaping persecution after killing the Egyptian. There was no providential intervention, he emphasised, just the natural course of events. “We have witnessed”, wrote Dubois-Aimé, in the year seven of the French Republic, “General Bonaparte, upon returning from the Fountains of Moses, and wanting to cross the sea … near the Suez rather than going around the tip of the Gulf, thus shortening his way by more than two miles. This was at the beginning of the night, the tide was rising; it grew faster than expected, and the general and his entourage, were in great danger; even though they had locals as guides.”45 This was brought as proof that the perdition of the Egyptian forces was possible, even though the Israelites went through the waters just moments before. As for the miracle of the undrinkable water turned proper, Niebuhr answered Michaelis’ question46 that he had neither the time nor the desire to stop long enough to investigate whether or not the water in this locale was alternately sweet and sour. Dubois-Aimé’s explanation was based on Josephus Flavius, but even more, on his own experience in El Qoseir.47 The inexplicable details in the stories of Exodus were either a result of trivial errors of copyists or of the need of those writing them to augment the bravery and the miraculous for reasons of their own. This, he thought, was quite a usual aspect of human societies: “Do not we know how easily civilized or savage men, adopt the most absurd exaggerations about the strengths of their nation and the number of enemies it had defeated?”48 The events that accompanied the giving of the laws at Mount Sinai could be explained as either natural—a volcanic eruption or a storm—or as a 45  Notice, p. 311. Here Bonaparte follows the steps of Moses rather than those of Alexander the Great as is usually argued. 46  Question XVIII that asked to look for « un bois, qui rend douce l’eau salée. » and question XIX that asked about « Des eaux alternativement douces & ameres ». 47  Dubois-Aimé quoted Josephus Flavius book III chapter 1 explaining the way Moses purified the standing water making it drinkable and added “on sait qu’en faisant vider un puits, l’eau qui survient est ordinairement bien meilleure. Cette observation est conforme aux lois de la physique, et nous avons d’ailleurs eu en Égypte l’occasion de la répéter fréquemment » (Notice, p. 315). In a letter to a friend in Cairo, Édouard de Villiers wrote of Dubois-­ Aimé’s experiences in El Qoseir: « Dans les lettres de Du Bois je vois que le principal désagrément de ce port était le manque d’eau douce, car les puits ne donnaient que de l’eau saumâtre à peine buvable. Par un système de drainage, il est toutefois arrivé à avoir de l’eau potable, ce qui l’a rendu très populaire dans la garnison. Il a eu le temps d’étudier la curieuse tribu nomade des Ababdeh. » (Édouard Devilliers, Journal, p. 147). This experience probably determined Dubois-Aimé’s explanation to the miracle of the water. 48  Notice…, pp. 310–311.

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retroactive creation of aura to the historical moment. Moses, like other law givers—Numa who was said to have consulted the nymph, Mohamed who was aided by the angel Gabriel, Manco-Capac who talked to the sun and Lycurgus who had his laws approved by the Delphi oracle—were all able to manipulate the populace. They knew how to profit from phenomenon of nature to invoke belief and awe in those less educated than them. “Did we not see Columbus, about to die of starvation, tell the simple men of Jamaica that if they did not bring bread to the Spanish camp, they would be punished by the hand of God? The eclipse he had predicted took place, and the trembling people obeyed. Yes, the childhood of nations was always a fertile ground for miracles.” Human nature is universal; it does not change, neither through time nor geography. There is nothing as easy as to deceive the common people with alleged miracles as his recent experience in Italy demonstrated: “Does the crowd not gather around images of the Virgin Mary and believe they see her eyes move? The priests need not bother to draw on any machine; they just say: You see? And everyone repeats: We see. Such is the creative power of the imagination!”49 Dubois-Aimé ended his account with the death of Moses in which he saw a great leader. When describing Moses raising his hands so his people will win in battle, he based it on the image created by Michelangelo: “I picture this venerable old man in the person of Moses by Michelangelo in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome; his brow furrowed by age to look more calm; his eyes kept their fire but are gentler; the hand of time has respected the majesty of his features; his teeth, white as ivory, are shaded by a thick beard that goes down to his chest. He walks slowly, but confidently; his pallor and his gaze directed skyward to announce he will be leaving the earth for a place more holy.”50 Michelangelo’s Moses completely blended in Dubois-Aimé’s description with the biblical one.51 The present shaped his reading of the biblical past in the most literal sense. The essay ended with a general reflection. He did not think the story of Exodus was an invention of the imagination. “These Jewish priests have already given the Hebrews rich and powerful ancestors; they had talked of victories and not of defeats. When one invents the story of his nation, the pride  Notice…, p. 322.  Notice…, p. 323. 51  In a footnote, he quoted the biblical phrase from Deuteronomy, chapter 34, v. 7: ”Moise avoit six vingts ans lorsqu’il mourut; sa vue ne baissa point, et ses dents ne furent point ébranlées ». 49 50

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is there that dictates every sentence.” He was a follower of Diderot’s dictum mentioned above: “If the fact is transmitted to us by history or by tradition, we have but one rule for judging it; the application [of the rule] can be difficult, but the rule is safe: it is the experience of past centuries, and that of our own.”52 Dubois-Aimé’s essay on the Arab tribes of Egypt, and his description of their laws, customs and social organisation, is not very well known. But his method, of a “participant observer” who lived among the tribes of Egypt for long periods, has been used by anthropologists ever since. A brief survey of journals of anthropology shows their essays address many of the issues he had: the role and mode of rule of the sheikhs, the egalitarian dimension of Bedouin societies and questions of dignity and resistance, of feud and of its resolution, marriage and more. The understandings of the Bedouins they reach are not very different from those Dubois-Aimé had, though the tone of enthusiasm in which he wrote has disappeared. As for the biblical stories—the question of their truth has remained a sensitive political issue. Some of Dubois-Aimé’s geographical assumptions are accepted by scholars. But more important, his philosophical argument about the purpose of the biblical stories and the way they were constructed is now part of many scholarly explanations to the book of Exodus.53 Chabrol de Volvic: An Engineer-Statistician Faces Egyptian Social Realities On March 20, 1815, as Napoleon Bonaparte was settling at the Tuileries following his return from Elba, the prefect of the Seine, Gilbert Joseph Gaspard de Chabrol de Volvic, went into hiding. He had been organizing the Parisian forces to defend the king as the news about the returning emperor reached the city, but stopped once he heard Louis XVIII had fled 52  Denis Diderot, “Fait” in Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, etc., eds. Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond D’Alembert. University of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie Project (Spring 2011 Edition), Robert Morrissey (ed), http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu. 53  See Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s new Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts (New York: The Free Press, 2001). See especially Introduction and chapter 2, “Did the Exodus happen?”]; D.B. Redford, “An Egyptological Perspective on the Exodus Narrative”, in A.F. Rainey (ed.) Egypt, Israel, Sinai: Archaeological and Historical Relationships in the Biblical period (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1987).

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to Ghent. According to some accounts, he first stayed at a friend’s house in the Berry countryside, and at the end of April, when Edmé Jomard, his Polytechnic classmate and fellow égyptien, returned from London, Chabrol de Volvic entered Paris anonymously to stay in his apartment on the rue de Bourgogne. It is most probable that during that time at Jomard’s house, Chabrol de Volvic was able to expand the notes and drafts on which he had been working in Egypt and in France following evacuation, adding to them the numerous documents of the French administration of Egypt, kept by Jomard, the editor in chief of the Description of Egypt.54 Shortly thereafter, Chabrol de Volvic’s extensive description and analysis of Egyptian contemporary society titled Essai sur les moeurs des habitans modernes de l’Égypte was brought before the editorial committee of the Description of Egypt. The essay went through numerous revisions and was finally published in the 1822 instalment to be part of the État Moderne volumes of the work.55 Gilbert Joseph Gaspard de Chabrol de Volvic was born in September 1773 in Riom in the Haute-Auvergne, the fifth of six siblings, to a family that had held judicial functions for generations.56 His grandfather Guillaume Michel (d. 1792) was ennobled by Louis XV in 1767 and nominated conseiller du Roi in 1780.57 His father, Gaspard, was first an officer in the army but soon followed his father and served on the king’s council as avocat du Roi. When the Estates General were summoned in May 1789, Gaspard Chabrol was a deputy on behalf of the nobility and did not join the National Assembly until the final dissolution of the Estates General. At

54  A. Passy, “Éloge de J.G.G. de Chabrol”, Extrait des mémoires de la société impériale et centrale d’agriculture de France, (1860). A. Passy wrote of the stay at a house in Berry; Yves Laissus, in Jomard, le dernier Égyptien, p.  152, wrote of the stay with Jomard, based on Richard Cortambet, “Notice sur la vie et les œuvres de M. Jomard » (Paris: impr.de Soye et Bouchet, 1863). Chabrol de Volvic did not mention his whereabouts during that period in his personal memoires. 55  It is printed in État moderne, vol. 2, pt. 2, pp 361–526 of the first edition. The first draft available in the archives is a two hundred and nine-page handwritten essay with numerous marks and corrections, probably by Chabrol de Volvic. Whole paragraphs are marked as redundant, alternatives suggested on the margins and style corrected as well as contents. The second version is signed off by Claude Berthollet (BN NAF 21960). 56  The Chabrols had one daughter and five sons. All five sons would have successful careers in state administration under Bonaparte and under the Bourbons. 57  The nomination to the king’s advisory body delegated to its holder, among other privileges, judicial authority.

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the time of the Terror, the family was imprisoned in Riom and set free after 9 Thermidor (July 1794) to resume its local status. Gilbert Joseph Gaspard de Chabrol soon thereafter sat the first exams for the newly founded Polytechnic school, exams he passed successfully, and entered its first class in December 1794. He was selected to be one of the twenty five chefs de brigade and graduated, first of his promotion, in 1796. He continued to the école des ponts et chaussées, and very close to graduation joined the Egyptian campaign as a civil engineer. In Egypt he used his professional skills to supply Alexandria with a permanent source of water and was part of the group that was to assess the possibility of renewing a waterway between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. He contributed to the survey of the country’s cultivable land and its villages, and to the French administration’s collection of information about the distribution of Egypt’s population. As many others, he was taken by the monuments of Egypt’s ancient past and his contributions to the Description of Egypt reflect this fascination.58 In 1802, in response to the minister of Interior Jean-Antoine Chaptal’s letter of invitation to submit material collected in Egypt for a future publication, Chabrol de Volvic included within his proposal a suggestion for an essay about the manners of the inhabitants of contemporary Egypt. He was one of six to suggest such an essay but the only one who eventually provided it to the volumes about modern Egypt.59 Two years following the evacuation of Egypt, Chabrol de Volvic joined Bonaparte’s administration, first as sub-prefect in Pontivy in the Morbihan (1804), and within two years, as prefect of the recently created department of Montenotte, where he stayed from 1806 to 1812.60 In this last post, he demonstrated some diplomatic know-how as Pious VII was made prisoner in Savoy. He succeeded in maintaining the Pope’s respect and 58  Chabrol de Volvic authored or co-authored tens of drawings of monuments and bas-­ reliefs. He wrote two essays in collaboration with Lancret, « Mémoire sur le canal d’Alexandrie », Description de l’Égypte, État moderne, vol. II, (1812), p. 185 à 194; « Notice Topographique sur la partie de l’Égypte comprise entre Ramânyeh et Alexandrie et les environs du lac Mareotis » Par MM. Chabrol et feu Lancret, Description de l’Égypte, État moderne, vol. II, (1812), pp. 483–490. These essays reflected his work as engineer in Egypt. The third essay to which he was the only author was of a different nature: « Essai sur les mœurs des habitants modernes de l’Égypte », Description de l’Égypte, État moderne, vol. II, 2e partie, Paris (1822), pp. 361–529. 59  The list of proposals to the Minister is in BN NAF 21957. 60  The department of Montenotte was a French administrative creation of 1805 which combined territory from Liguria and Piedmont, and was to be made an extension of France into Northern Italy.

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dignity without disobeying Bonaparte’s instructions to keep the Pope secluded from his officials and from his admirers in the region, quite a show of skill that was subsequently complemented by the two rivals.61 In a demonstration of appreciation, Bonaparte made him baron of the Empire in May 1810. In 1812, he received with great surprise the nomination to the prefecture of the Seine that followed the disgrace of the prefect Nicholas de Frochot who did not stand strong against general Malet’s coup of October 1812.62 This was an act of trust on behalf of the Emperor already shaken by the Russian campaign and the weakening political support in Paris. A few months later, Bonaparte further demonstrated his trust and gratitude for extraordinary service by nominating him to a post he had revived, maître des requetes au conseil d’état, a judicial post in line with the Chabrol family tradition. Chabrol de Volvic was a loyal and efficient administrator to Napoleon until the Emperor’s fall and then took part in the delegation that negotiated the terms for the capitulation of Paris to the allies “in an effort to avoid a fate similar to that of Moscow”, as he explained in his memoirs. He continued his role under Louis XVIII and on Bonaparte’s arrival from Elba, decided to take a political stand, and go into hiding. In his memoirs, he wrote that though raised in a strongly royalist family, he had never betrayed Bonaparte, a person he admired and the one to have put him in his position. But when the time came to choose between empire and royalty, he chose “to take the white cockade.”63 Chabrol returned to Paris after Waterloo to welcome the returning king on July 8, 1815, with the speech that created the formulation Hundred Days: “One hundred days have passed since the fatal moment when Your Majesty, forced to tear himself away from the dearest affections, left his capital amid tears and public lamentations.”64 Chabrol de Volvic held his role as prefect of the

61  René Boudard, « La mission du préfet Chabrol, « Geôlier » de Pie VII à Savonne, (1809–1812) », Revue de l’Institut Napoléon, 112 (juilliet 1969), pp. 181–188. 62  Thierry Lentz, La conspiration du général Malet. 23 octobre 1812. Premier ébranlement du trône de Napoléon (Paris: Perrin, 2012). 63  Comte Chabrol de Volvic, Souvenirs inédits, édition critique par Michel Fleury, avant-­ propos: Bernard Billaud (Paris: Ville de Paris commission des travaux historiques, 2002), p. 14. 64  « Cent jours se sont écoulés depuis le moment fatal où Votre Majesté, force de s’arracher aux affections les plus chères, quitta sa capitale au milieu des larmes et des lamentations publiques. » Ibid., avant-propos.

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Seine until the July Revolution providing Paris with fifteen years of administrative stability. He published three large studies during the Restoration years: the Recherches statistiques sur la ville de Paris et le département de la Seine that began appearing in 1821, Essai sur les mœurs des habitants modernes d’Égypte printed in 1822 in the Description of Egypt and four volumes of Statistique des provinces de Savone published privately in 1824 long after the department of Montenotte had ceased to exist.65 The publication dates are somewhat misleading, for the research and notes on which these works were based were done in earlier periods. The research for the essai sur les moeurs was conducted in Egypt in 1798–1801 and was partially written shortly after evacuation in 1802–1804, before Chabrol de Volvic had taken on any administrative role. The volumes about Montenotte reflect the time of his prefecture there and most data refers to the years 1809–1812. Only the Recherches Statistiques for Paris were published in close proximity to the time the information was gathered. This is important for the texts differ in the genre in which they were written and the goals they were to achieve.66 The essai sur les moeurs is a  Recherches statistiques sur la ville de Paris et le département de la Seine (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1821–1860). The work appeared in six volumes, four of which were written under Chabrol de Volvic’s direction and to which he also contributed essays (1821, 1823, 1826, 1829); Essai sur les mœurs des habitants modernes de l’Égypte, Description de l’Égypte, État moderne, vol. II, 2e partie, Paris, 1822, pp. 361–529; Panckoucke edition, t. XVIII partie 1, 1826, pp. 1–340. Panckoucke blamed Chabrol for delays to his printed edition because the perfect of the Seine has asked for 200 reprints of the essay instead of the twenty usually granted. Statistique des provinces de Savone: d’Oneille, d’Acqui, et de partie de la province de Mondovi, formant l’ancien département de Montenotte (Paris: Jules Didot ainé, 1824), 4 vols. 66  The statistics of the department of the Seine was written during his role as prefect there. Being in Paris meant that every administrative decision that was taken came under intense public and political scrutiny. The work served to legitimise administrative decisions, those already taken, and those to be taken in the future. Very mathematical in its nature, it reflects the importance of the department of statistics Chabrol established in Paris and the role of Joseph Fourier there. See Ozouf-Marignier Marie-Vic, « Entre tradition et modernité. Les Recherches statistiques sur la ville de Paris » (1821). Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome. Italie et Méditerranée, tome 111, n°2. 1999. pp. 747–762. The information for the work on Montenotte was gathered when he was prefect there and served, at the time, as a base for his operations. Its structure mostly followed the questionnaire provided by Chaptal to the prefects (see forward). With the end of French rule there, the publication lost its relevance for the central administration and it was therefore published privately. The work on Egypt, published years after evacuation, was a work whose goal was to provide the reading public with accurate information about a foreign land and its people, and though some of the information on which it is based was gathered for the benefit of the French administration and future colony, these were no longer its goals after 1801. 65

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sociological-­ anthropological observation on Egyptian society written before these titles had clear disciplinarian boundaries and guidelines. It was written within a discursive system of works and rules that constituted, at that historical moment—the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century—an intelligible horizon for both the author and its intended audiences. Some of the components of this discursive system will be addressed in what follows. Having been in the Napoleonic and Restoration administration for eighteen years at the time of the publication of the essai sur les moeurs, and the one to have founded the department of statistics at the Prefecture de la Seine, it is almost an obvious choice to look at the genre of statistiques as the one that influenced the essay on Egypt. Chabrol de Volvic is described in some studies of the Napoleonic administration as the préfet-­ staticien and as the example of the passage from science to administration under Bonaparte.67 Some details about the genre are therefore in place. Scholars describe the Napoleonic period as the golden age of statistics, the time when the genre assumed a more defined form. Napoleonic statistics were built on a long tradition of this field of inquiry in the service of the state, but before the Revolution, one could find under its title a melange of genres and discourses that ranged from quantitative information to descriptions, to the telling of anecdotes and stereotypes.68 While the state gradually developed an understanding that regular quantitate information, serialised, without recurring to descriptions or evaluations, may offer a certain knowledge of social facts, the development in method and approaches to description and social analysis occurred independently from the monarchy and from its intendants. Geographers and natural historians who conducted surveys of provinces gradually inserted in their surveys paragraphs that dealt with social aspects of the regions they were studying. Learned individuals or societies published surveys of localities that ranged from information about local agricultural products to dietary 67  M.V.  Ozouf, «Administration, statistique, aménagement du territoire: l’itinéraire du préfet Chabrol de Volvic », Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 44-1 (janvier–mars, 1997); J.C.  Perrot, L’âge d’or de la statistique régionale française (ans IV-1804) (Paris: Société des études robespierristes, 1977); C.  Gillispie, «Aspects Scientifiques », Henry Laurens, Charles C. Gillispie, Jean-Claude Golvin, Claude Traunecker (eds.), L’Expédition d’Égypte (1798–1801) (Paris: Éditions Armand Colin, 1989). 68  For a good description of the field, see Marie-Noelle Bourguet, Déchiffre la France: la statistique départementale à l’époque napoléonienne (Paris: Éditions des archives contemporaines, 1988).

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traditions, from local days of festivity to customary laws and practices of inheritance, marriage and death.69 A more systematic effort to include social observations in regional surveys was carried out by medical practitioners, as part of a neo-Hippocratic approach to medicine popular in the second half of the eighteenth century. The “medical revolution”, as it is referred to by some scholars, began in the Montpellier School of Medicine and spread by way of individuals and salons to Paris.70 According to its advocates, medicine was to expand beyond the narrow terrain of therapeutics to be a comprehensive science that would look at the whole human persona in its different domains of experience. They adopted a certain reading of Hippocrates according to which health was dependent on social practices and environment. Hippocrates’ demand for careful clinical observation and data-recording was seen by these reformers as genuine empiricism that resonated with their views of the science they were practicing. The full development of medicine into the Science of Man would happen in Paris. It would include reforms in educational institutions of medicine, an emphasis on o ­ bservation and a belief that the understanding of the physical, mental and emotional human phenomena could guide societies to new certitudes. The physician Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis (1757–1808) would articulate and systemise these understandings in an address to the Class of Moral and Political Sciences of the National Institute—in itself a reflection of these beliefs in the Science of Man—in February 1796, and connect them to Condillac’s analytic methods, to sensationalism and to the physical knowledge of man which he saw as the common foundation of the Science of Man.71 Twenty years before Cabanis’ philosophical articulation of the Science of Man, in 1776, the general secretary of the Royal Society of Medicine, Vicq d’Azyr, launched a grand research plan whose goal was to map the 69  One such example is the four volume commentary published by Gilbert Joseph’s grandfather (1714–1792), about the customary laws and practices of Auvergne. Guillaume Michel Chabrol de Volvic, Coutumes générales et locales de la province d’Auvergne (Riom: M. Dégoutte, 1784–1786), 4 vols. 70  For a comprehensive study of the medical revolution, see Elizabeth Williams, The Physical and the Moral: Anthropology, Physiology and Philosophical Medicine in France 1750–1850 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 71  P.J.G. Cabanis, « Considerations generales sur l’etude de l’homme et sur les rapports de son organization physique avec ses facultes intellectualles et morales » (February 1796) Memoires de l’Institut national (Paris: Beaudoin, an IX [1801]), vol. 1, pp. 93–99, reprinted in P.J.G. Cabanis, Rapports du physique et du moral (Paris, 1802). I will further elaborate other aspects of the Science of Man, when discussing Volney.

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medical topography of France. The research was to be carried out by the intendants and they, in turn, delegated it to local learned societies. They were instructed to collect data about the overall conditions of living; about death and its reasons; about dietary habits, the climate and the physical environment; and about the prevalence of diseases. René-Nicolas Dufriche Desgenettes (1762–1837), then, a medical student, assisted in the compilation of the information. In 1798, Desgenettes was chosen by Bonaparte to head the medical corps of the expedition to Egypt. He shared the role and its responsibilities with the army’s surgeon-in-chief, Dominique Jean Larrey (1766–1842), himself one of the founders of the Societé medicale d’émulation whose stated mission was to encourage the medical Science of Man. Be it for the sake of the army or for the sake of a future colony, the two conducted in Egypt surveys that were similar to the one launched by Vicq d’Azyr in 1776. They provided the medical staff located in the different regions of Egypt with elaborate questionnaires, similar to those used in France, to guide the collection of information. The questions addressed topics regarding specific physical conditions of each region, mostly its climate and topography, but also social and cultural circumstances such as nutrition, hygiene, life styles, beliefs and professions of the inhabitants. The elaborate questionnaires were expected to neutralise the effect of the varying abilities of individual medical officers, and to create consistent categories that could be compared and analysed. The goal was to create a map of what they called the medical topography of Egypt. They hoped this information, based on on-site observations, when properly analysed alongside information about prevalent diseases, would enable them to combat existing diseases and future epidemics.72 Questionnaires as guides for research had a long history in different fields of inquiry. It was briefly discussed above, when mentioning Michaelis’ questionnaire to the expedition to Felix Arabia. Though very different in their goals, administrative questionnaires held a similar assumption that the armchair scholar, the medical doctor or the policy maker and administrator were in a better position to form questions and decide on categories and ways of classification than was the individual researcher, faced with chaotic realities in situ. Be it when surveying French territories or when surveying foreign lands and societies, the questions and categories prepared in advance were considered neutral and not likely to be influenced 72  The questionnaires were published in the Décade Egyptienne, vol. I N.1, p.  29. Desgenettes served as editor of the publication. See Chap. 4.

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by either the researcher’s knowledge, prejudice or personal tendencies or by the situation in which he conducted the survey. They were expected to provide a universal method to represent all aspects of a territory in a systematic way. Beyond the medical officers, there was an ongoing effort by others in the service of administration to organise and classify the information observed in ways that would promise efficient coverage and common expressions that could be put together to form a neutral and true tableau, that would also expose the interrelations between the different types of information.73 These opinions and developments were gradually brought back into the service of the state, whether for the sake of state-initiated medical intervention or for an accurate picture of its finances. In 1801, J. Peuchet could define Statistics more clearly as the methodical and positive exposure of the objects that compose the richness and force of the state.74 The change was not only in methodology, though the clearer definitions and practices of the Napoleonic era provided administrative reports that were more unified, and whose calculations enabled comparisons and pointed to inequalities according to regions. A significant innovation of the period was the assumption behind the analysis of these regional differences and inequalities. They were assumed to be historically or politically determined and not a result of essential characteristics of a group or class of people or of a region.75 The questionnaire of Jean-Antoine Chaptal, to the prefects of France, demonstrates that these attitudes and beliefs in human perfectibility have entered the administration of the state.

73  There are numerous examples for questionnaires that were to guide research in situ; some examples of relevance are François Quesnay, Questions intéressantes sur la population, l’agriculture et le commerce proposées aux Académies et autres sociétés savants des provinces (1758) and Volney, Questions de statistiques à l’usage des voyageurs (written and published for specific readers in 1795, published for the general public as part ofhis Œuvres complètes 1821). According to Volney, these were an abridged version of the 1789 « Questions for the Patriotic Traveller » by the Bohemian Count Leopold von Berchtold who had compiled 2500 questions. Joseph-Marie Degérando, Considération sur les diverses méthodes à suivre dans l’observation des peuples sauvages (1800) (the list is not exhaustive). 74  Jean Peuchet, Essai d’une statistique générale de la France (Paris: Testu, an IX [1801]). « [La statistique] présente les faits, les bases de calcul, le tableau réel de la richesse et des forces de l’état. » 75  H.T. Parker, “French Administrators and French Scientists during the Old Regime and the Early Years of the Revolution”, in R.  Herr & H.T.  Parker (eds), Ideas in History (Chicago, 1965).

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Jean-Antoine Chaptal, chemist and teacher at the Polytechnic School, became Bonaparte’s Minister of Interior in December 1800, following a short and administratively unsuccessful period of the mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace (November 1799–December 1799), and a somewhat longer period of Lucien Bonaparte (December 1799–November 1800) who had too independent a mind to be working under his brother Napoleon. Chaptal held the post until August 1804.76 Chaptal’s questionnaire introduced some new categories that did not appear in previous questionnaires such as that of Quesnay. These were, in addition to the category of private property, the classification of individuals into groups according to their source of income: those living off the state, those living off property and those living off their art, their labour or their professional skills. He also had a category of questions that were not defined rigidly and were of a historicist nature about the habits and the manners of the different populations of the regions of France. Though this last category of questions was of an anthropological nature, they were not meant to report, celebrate or preserve ancient customs, dialects or traditional forms of cultivating the land. The information provided in those categories was seen as describing habits and ways of life that either needed intervention for the sake of economic and social advancement or as information about traditions that could serve as tools to prevent social unrest.77 Chabrol de Volvic’s Statistique des provinces de Savone mentioned above, though published in 1824, was very much a product of Chaptal’s questionnaire and of the assumptions behind it. The Essai sur les moeurs des habitats modernes de lÉgypte was conceived and written within the sphere of influences of these complementary discourses, developments and approaches. In a very concrete way, the administrative and medical surveys carried out in Egypt were an important source of information for Chabrol de Volvic’s essay on Egyptian contemporary society. Even more, in 1822, the year the last version of the essay was submitted to print, the mature Chabrol de Volvic had been practicing statistics as a prefect for almost twenty years, and parts of the essay reflect this experience. However, these influences notwithstanding, in order to 76  The role of Chaptal is described in Jean-Claude Perrot and Stuart J. Woolf, State and Statistics in France 1789–1815 (London, Paris, New York: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1984). Perrot’s text is mostly based on his 1977 work mentioned in note 14. 77  As Marie-Noelle Bourguet showed in her book Déchiffre la France, there was a bifurcation between the views of the administrator and those of the philosophe-anthropologist, though they both relied on the same data.

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understand the ways Chabrol de Volvic had collected the material for the essay when in Egypt, the decisions he had taken as to the way it would be structured and the opinions he expressed in it, one should revisit the young Chabrol de Volvic, the Polytechnic student, graduate of its first promotion and the individuals—teachers and colleagues—that have shaped his social outlook and intellectual world in those years. The encounter of the young Chabrol de Volvic with the opinions of Constantin-­ François Chasseboeuf (Volney) about man and society and the methodology Volney believed should be used when writing about these topics were strongly present in his essay. Chabrol de Volvic became acquainted with these views when attending Volney’s Leçons d’histoire at the École Normale de l’an III, and when reading Volney’s travel account to Egypt in which they were presented throughout its two volumes.78 Constantin-François Chasseboeuf (b.1757) arrived in Paris in 1776. He had studied law for two years in Angers but decided not to pursue it as a career, and came to Paris to study at the School of Medicine. This appeared to have been another wrong career choice and he left the School of Medicine after two years without graduating. However, this period in Paris had a strong impact on everything he did from then on, for it was there that he met and befriended Pierre Cabanis. The friendship and their ongoing intellectual conversation continued until Cabanis’ early death in 1808. The two’s social and intellectual lives were shaped in the salon of Madame Helvetius at Auteuil.79 While this is a general truism, in a more concrete way, it is a plausible to argue that Volney and Cabanis had read at that time a work of Claude Adrien Helvétius’ De L’homme published posthumously by Madame Helvetius.80 In the work Helvetius asserted the inseparability of the intellectual and moral faculties of man and his physical 78  For the participation of the chefs de brigade in these lessons, see Chap. 6. Chabrol de Volvic addressed in his footnotes Volney’s travel account, at times disagreeing with the information or analysis it provided. I do not know whether he read it before or after he heard the lectures at the École normale. 79  In the spring of 1778, Cabanis was introduced to Madame Helvetius by Turgot, a friend of his father and a frequenter of her salon at Auteuil. Madame Helvetius adopted him as a son and within a short while, due to poor health, he moved into the house at Auteuil. Auteuil became a place where the group, later referred to as the Ideologues, would meet. 80  Claude Adrien Helvétius, De l’homme, de ses facultés intellectuelles & de son éducation (London: Société Typographique, 1773). The work was written after De l’Esprit as its author explains in the preface. Following the reception of the previous work, both by the state and some of his fellow philosophes, Helvetius decided this second work should be published only after his death.

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existence. He wrote that in order to increase one’s knowledge about the moral dimension of man—his mores, customs, habits and languages—one needs to use the tools of the physiologist which were observation, classification and analysis. While acknowledging the importance of climate, Helvetius put more focus on human institutions—political, religious and educational ones—which he thought should be studied historically, both as products of man in society and as the motor of his change.81 These understandings and connections would be elaborated by Volney in his accounts about foreign societies.82 After leaving his medical studies, and following much preparation, Constantin François Chasseboeuf travelled to the Ottoman provinces of Egypt and Syria in the years 1783–1785. He then retired to his home in Anjou to write the manuscript of his travel account published under the pseudonym Volney—commonly believed to have been a combination of Voltaire and Ferney—in 1787.83 In the preface to the work, Volney explained his decision to travel to the East: “It is in these countries that most of the opinions that govern us have been born; it is from there that the religious ideas that have influenced, so powerfully, our public and private moral, our laws and our overall social state … it is therefore interesting to understand the places where these ideas have been born, the customs and the habits of which they were composed, the spirit [esprit] and the character of the nations that have consecrated them. It is interesting to examine whether and to what degree this spirit [esprit], these customs and these habits have changed or have been preserved … to examine whether these have been the result of climate, the effects of governments and of habits…”84 Throughout the work, Volney asserted the importance of fieldwork for social inquiry, of first-hand observation and of careful examination of testimonies. “From all the topics of observation [of a country], the topic most important, without doubt, is the ways of life [morals] of its  Helvétius (1773), pp. 2–6.  These included, in addition to the work on Egypt and Syria, Tableau du climat et du sol des Etats-Unis d’Amérique, suivi d’éclaircissements sur la Floride, sur la colonie française au Scioto, sur quelques colonies Canadiennes et sur les sauvages (1803) and Précis de la Corse, most of it published in March 1793 in the Moniteur and in full only posthumously (see Chap. 2). 83  C.F. Volney, Voyage en Syrie et en Égypte, pendant les années 1783, 1784 et 1785 (Paris, 1787), 2 vols. 84  Volney, Voyage, preface. It is beyond the purpose of this chapter to question whether these were really the reasons for Volney’s travel; it seeks to shed light on Volney’s methods of inquiry which he would later teach at his lectures at the école normale. 81 82

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inhabitants. But one must admit, it is the most difficult [to study] for it does not involve a sterile examination of facts.” To be able to conduct such a study, to understand habits of action and character, “one must communicate with the people that one wishes to understand, one must adopt their circumstances in order to feel the forces that are acting upon them, and the attachments that result: one must live in their country, understand their language, practice their customs…”85 Coming from the outside, Volney explained, much might seem irrational to the observer for the different contexts in which people live limit their ability to perceive what they share with others. The researcher has to be aware of this. “Not only must one fight the prejudice that one encounters, one must defeat those that one carries: the heart is partial, custom is powerful, facts are insidious, and illusion easy.”86 This awareness to the problematic position of the observer was behind his emphasis on the need to have multiple sources, whether living informers or written sources, to look at them critically, to test them against each other. But even then, he asked the traveller to cast doubt about his findings, to make tentative generalisations, to recognise the limits of human understanding and to leave the door open to new truths. “In contrast, the spirit of certainty and fixed beliefs restricts us to received ideas, ties us to chance … to the yoke of error and untruth.”87 Volney wrote that the problematic position of the traveller-observer continued when he returned to his home-culture. His writing then may be guided by the views and interests around him. “Soon there arises between his listeners and himself an emulation and an exchange according to which he returns in astonishment what they pay him in admiration.”88 Volney recommended the traveller not only collected data on location but wrote elaborate and opinionated notes when there. He believed that the conduct of man in society, in the widest sense of the word, was the product of the interaction of social and natural conditions. In his writings, climate and the qualities of the soil did not have a fixed presence but were described as complex and changing global systems. He explored temperature variation

 Voyage, Vol. II, chapter XVI.  Ibid. 87  Ibid. This is very far from Edward Said’s portrayal of Volney’s work mentioned in the first chapter. 88  Voyage, Vol. I, p. 241. 85 86

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over short periods of time and avoided averaging temperatures.89 Volney refuted the vague generalisations of Montesquieu and the deterministic nature Montesquieu attributed to the physical environment. He straightforwardly attacked the concept of Oriental Despotism based on climate. “How could one explain that within the same climate the tyrannical class has enough energy to oppress while the oppressed have no energy to resist?”90 Many of the same ideas were put forward in his lectures on history at the école normale in 1795, presented as understandings to which he had come through personal experiences.91 The lessons were praised in contemporary journals and by those listening to them. One of those attending the lectures was the tutor of the group of chefs de brigade of the Polytechnic, Joseph Fourier. Fourier’s notes show he was impressed and somewhat critical. “Volney is quite a young man, well dressed, tall, with a very agreeable appearance. I hardly know his writings. He talks with ease and in terms very carefully chosen.” His lessons are brilliantly structured, wrote Fourier, very philosophical, at times, too philosophical to the detriment of the purpose of the subject of instruction.92 The Science of Man, the interrelation between Man, both physical and moral, and its physical and political environment were at the heart of the project of the Ideologues, the group who among its prominent individuals were Pierre Cabanis, Destutt de Tracy and Volney. Volney, in the methodological parts of the Voyage en Egypte (1787), in his Questionnaire for the use of Travellers (1795) and especially in the Lessons of History of 1795, offered an early theoretical exposition of the philosophy that would be

89  Anne Marie Claire Godlewska, Geography Unbound: French Geographic Science from Cassini to Humboldt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 200. 90  Voyage, Vol. II, chap. XV. 91  The lectures were given from January 22 to March 23, 1795. At the same time, he published, following the request of the government, the Questions de statistique à l’usage des voyageurs, to be made available to travellers. Jean Gaulmier, L’idéologue Volney, 1757–1820 (Beyrouth, 1951); Sergio Moravia, “La méthode de Volney”, Corpus, 11–12, 1989, p. 21; J. Lefranc, « Le voyageur Volney et la critique de l’histoire », L’enseignement philosophique, (1987), n.1, pp. 85–94. For a very good summary, see Barthélémy Jobert, “Introduction” in Daniel Nordman (dir.) L’École normale de l’An III. , vol. 2, Leçons d’histoire, de géographie, d’économie politique: Volney Buache de La Neuville, Mentelle, Vandermonde (Paris: Éditions Rue d’Ulm, 1994). 92  “Lettres de Joseph Fourier”, Bulletin de la Société des sciences historiques et naturelles de l’Yonne, XII (1858), pp. 118–119 [in Jobert, p. 27].

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further developed and universalised by Destutt de Tracy, and Cabanis.93 It is important to remember that while Cabanis and Volney shared many of their views and methods, their emphasis was different. Cabanis looked at the connections between the physical and the moral, while Volney was looking at the connections between the social-political environment and man. There are no notes of Chabrol de Volvic’s experience of Volney’s lectures at the école normale, but his Essai sur les moeurs is a testimony to Volney’s influences. In the opening paragraph of the two-hundred-page essay on the inhabitants of modern Egypt, Chabrol de Volvic positioned himself as a researcher and defined the goals of his essay: “We are offering here an abridged tableau of the manners and habits of modern Egypt. There might be some features that bear resemblance to ancient habits and these may motivate us to make some connections. These all merit attention in this country where the imagination is full of memories. The philosopher closely follows the historian; he likes to study the various causes that affect climate, and the action of the climate on animated beings. The new men he sees around him are the topic of his observations, while the debris of antiquity are the topic of the in-depth research of the archaeologist.”94 Different from the essay of his colleague Dubois-Aimé discussed above, the topic of his inquiry, he emphasised, was modern Egyptian society. It would be studied for its own sake, and not in interaction with or for the purpose of shedding light on ancient Egypt or on the biblical Hebrews. Chabrol de Volvic would conduct his study following the approach and method discussed in the last decades of the eighteenth century and demonstrated by Volney. Man would be discussed within his physical environment and within his social one. He would try to avoid generalisations and base his descriptions and analysis on observation and critical reading of previous information. The many influences of climate, physical environment and political institutions (in the widest sense) on Man, his customs and character, would be analysed and brought before the reader.95 The essay was not coherent in its structure and sometimes, in the information or opinions it provided, possibly due to the very long process of its writing. But it did offer a sociological-anthropological perspective  Barthélemy Jobert convincingly makes this argument in the introductory essay.  All quotes from Chabrol de Volvic’s “Essai sur les moeurs…” are from the first edition. 95  Essai …, introductory paragraph. 93 94

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avant-­la-­lettre as the titles of its six chapters show: (1) general view on the climate, the population and the customs of Egypt; (2) man considered in infancy: childhood and education, arts, sciences and literature; (3) man considered in adolescence and middle age: civil and domestic practices; (4) man considered in old age: death and funeral [ceremonies]; (5) institutions; and (6) of trade, industry and agriculture.96 The first and the two last chapters seem like a later imposition on the more coherent three chapters that were organised around man’s life cycle. Climate and geography were often brought as a cause of difference between regions,97 but, Chabrol added, they could not explain it all. “…climate might have some influence but it is not the major one. … It is the lack of education that makes them such fatalists as well as being constantly exposed to the caprices of tyrants. … one does not have to search farther the causes of this kind of stoic resignation that distinguishes the Orientals.”98 Whether when depicting specific social groups or when writing a more general impression, Chabrol de Volvic expressed throughout the essay a genuine interest in the people he was observing and a strong conviction that at the root of the country’s most serious problems laid a long experience of poor government. In the second, third and fourth parts of the essay he studied Egyptian society beginning with the age women gave birth and ending with attitudes to the old. Within this framework of man’s life cycle, he addressed the environment, the habits, the beliefs and the place of women in family and in society. He discussed education, commerce, agriculture, pastime activities and dietary habits, and he discussed culture in the broadest definition of the term. The physical environment was constantly referred to as an explanation of differences between regions, as the reason for certain social practices, but these explanations were always tempered by references to social and political institutions. Within this more structured part of the essay, one can see an anthropological interest that often expands into numerous valuable observations about street life in the city, about women 96  1. Coup d’œil général sur le climat, la population et les mœurs de l’Égypte 2. L’homme considéré dans le premier âge, enfance et éducation, arts, sciences, littérature 3. L’homme considéré dans l’adolescence et l’âge mûr, usages civils et domestiques 4. L’homme considéré dans la vieillesse, mort et funérailles; 5. Institutions; 6. Du commerce, de l’industrie et de l’agriculture. 97  “…ces differences ont été necessités par la nature du sol et l’influence du climate.” Ibid., p. 375. 98  Ibid., p. 376.

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of different social groups, about resolution of disputes and about the status of the elderly in society. There is always the awareness he was observing from the outside and his limited ability to understand. There are many comparisons to his own cultural experience in France, but there is also an ongoing effort to make sense of what he saw, and to explain it in the terms of the society he was observing. Much of the information regarding the life cycle of man was taken from the medical questionnaires collected in Egypt. Details about age of marriage, male and female circumcision, rates of death according to age groups, elaborate descriptions of the diet in different localities and according to social status, ways of dressing, frequency of bathing and more were all based on information collected by others but analysed by him with additional personal anecdotes that served to emphasise his own observations confirmed the data. He tried to avoid generalisation, to maintain a nuance gaze that often referred to the geographical place and social group of the object observed. This is most evident in his depictions of women and in his analysis of the tribal population of Egypt.99 In the late chapters, Chabrol de Volvic argued that one could not rigidly divide between the settled population and the nomads, and saw their relations in a more complex way. He criticised those travellers who have described the relation in conflictual terms for, he wrote, he had also observed much cooperation between the two ways of life. Chabrol de Volvic’s description of the attitude to old age in Egypt becomes an explicit criticism of European society. We might be perfect in science and art, he wrote, but we are indifferent to the old among us. He quoted Savary, which he described as “the author we so often unjustly criticise” but who had depicted perfectly the difference between the people of the East and those of the West.100 “Savary wrote that among civilised people he has often seen the old die socially before they die physically. … In Egypt the old, who are well respected and honoured by the young, taste the charms of living until their last minute.”101 Chabrol de Volvic addressed previous travel accounts and authors but always in a critical way, echoing Volney’s warning about uncritically reproducing previous sources 99  There is a difference in his depiction in the first chapter, where his negative view of the Bedouins is similar to Jomard, and his depiction in the following chapters. 100  The reference here is especially to Volney who criticised Savary throughout his work. East and West are presented as two opposing cultural entities, referred to in bold letters (Ibid., pp. 455–446). 101  Ibid., p. 446.

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as a way to reproduce false impressions and prejudice. Pockoke whom Chabrol de Volvic described positively as a “savant voyageur” was wrong in his assertion about the serpents in Egypt. “This assertion” he wrote of Pockoke—“is it well founded?”102 From Niebuhr he copied parts that related the games played on the streets of Cairo only, as he noted, after having observed they were authentic, and even Volney’s information received scrutiny. Chabrol de Volvic’s essay ended with numerous tables and charts about Egyptian commerce and its components, its industry and its agricultural production. In this part, again, political institutions and bad government rather than inherent oriental features are given as the reasons of the failure of Egypt to fulfil its potential. Chabrol de Volvic’s essay about contemporary Egyptian society was written following a military invasion, and part of the sources it used were to serve French colonial aspirations. As such, it served as an example for Edward Said when writing about the cultural dimensions of European imperialism. In Orientalism, Said defined the Description of Egypt and within it, Chabrol de Volvic’s essay, as a description of “the Orient in modern Occidental terms” where the Oriental bizarre games or pastime activities “serve to highlight the sobriety and rationality of Occidental habits.”103 But this narrow approach ignores the efforts and at times, the successes of the text to observe, respect and appreciate a society and culture and the mentalities of its individuals that were different from his own. Labelling these as orientalist obscures the uniqueness of the historical moment in which the 1798 invasion of Egypt occurred, casting it together in the same mould with all colonial practices in the Middle East from then on. It also ignores the value of some of the observations about Egyptian society at the end of the eighteenth century still cited by modern scholars of Egypt.104 A few months before his death in April 1843, Chabrol de Volvic wrote some forty pages he titled Souvenirs D’Égypte.105 Possibly a sense of an  Ibid., p. 524.  Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), p. 87. 104  Judith E.  Tucker, Women in nineteenth century Egypt (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985); for a historiographical summary, see “Problems in the Historiography of Women in the Middle East: The Case of Nineteenth Century Egypt”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 15, No. 3 (August, 1983), pp.  321–336; Kenneth M. Cuno, The Pasha’s Peasants: Land, Society, and Economy in Lower Egypt, 1740–1858. 105  The unpublished notebook was printed on the occasion of the bicentennial of the 1798 expedition. Chabrol de Volvic, Souvenirs D’Égypte, Paris (Ville de Paris: 1998), Préface de Jean Tulard, notes, Michel Fleur. 102 103

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ending had brought his thoughts back to his formation as an engineer at the Polytechnic School. Contemplating what was needed for a complete history of Ancient Egyptian society, he wrote: If, with these famous monuments of Egypt that triumphed the centuries, the account of the means employed for building them had survived; if this account was made by the man who presided over these great works, if he had recorded their progress and the circumstances in which they were done; had he indicated the number of workers, their wages, their provenance, the implementation of materials, their origin and type; [had he indicated whether] these grants were distributed, throughout the work to the population, or whether they served to [enable] the existence of slaves chained to these gigantic structures, this account alone would have been one of the most precious remains of antiquity.106

The engineer of roads and bridges and the experienced prefect was expressing, as he had before, his belief in the enduring accuracy of factual—preferably numerical—information. Factual information, he asserted, would outlive those who had gathered it, and would be the reliable source for writing a history of a society. Chabrol de Volvic was proposing a social history avant-la-lettre. In 2013 a large corpus of papyri was found at Wadi-al-Jarf during excavations led by the archaeologist Pierre Tallet. Among these was one that recorded everyday activities of a team led by a Memphis official, the inspector Merer who was in charge of a team of about two hundred men. The logbook, now referred to as Merer’s journal, reports—in entries written twice a day—the operations conducted by the workers during the last phases of the construction of the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza.107 Chabrol de Volvic’s wish can now be fulfilled.

 Ibid.  Pierre Tallet, Gregory Marouard, “The Harbour of Khufu on the Red Sea coast of Wadi-al-Jarf”, Near Eastern Archaeology, 77: 1 (2014). 106 107

CHAPTER 10

Jomard and Champollion: A Rivalry at the Birth of Egyptology

In June 1998, the French Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres and the Academy of Sciences organised a three-day international conference on the event of the bicentennial of the expedition to Egypt.1 Three of its participants were Egyptologists Claude Traunecker, Jean Leclant and Michel Dewachter. They all addressed in their essays the contribution of the Description of Egypt to their field of study and, as may be expected, that of Jean-François Champollion. To various degrees, all three contributors believed that once Champollion deciphered the hieroglyphic scripture, the Description of Egypt had lost its place in the field of Egyptology. Michel Dewachter ended his essay saying he was not sure that “the laborious enterprise the Description de l’ Égypte” was the true product of the spirit of

1  The proceedings were published a year later in a book titled L’expédition d’Égypte, une entreprise des Lumières 1798–1801, Patrice Bret (editor) (Paris: Éditions TEC&DOC, 1999).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Sarfatti, The Description of Egypt from Napoleon to Champollion, War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15606-9_10

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the Enlightenment and added “is not the deciphering of the hieroglyphs the true incarnation of that spirit?”2 The three texts can be read as a toned-down echo of a debate of the early nineteenth century that had accompanied the birth of Egyptology and the publication of the last instalments of the Description of Egypt. It involved Hellenists and Orientalists, geographers and astrologists, members of the academy and of learned societies, égyptiens and arm-chair scholars. It was a debate that involved personal alliances and threatened vested interests; it was political and paradigmatic, and in the 1820s, it was a debate that defined who held the authoritative knowledge about ancient Egypt. This chapter will address some of these aspects and will emphasise those contended between the Champollion brothers and Edmé-François Jomard, the dedicated editor of the Description of Egypt. The correspondence between Jacques Joseph Champollion (b. 1778), the older and less famous brother, and Edmé-François Jomard (b. 1777) began in 1806. Jacques Joseph Champollion was an autodidact, an amateur orientalist and member of the Société des sciences et arts de Grenoble. He had been working since 1804 with Joseph Fourier, then prefect of Isère who resided in Grenoble. Champollion the elder was assisting Fourier in collecting the material for the préface historique of the Description of Egypt. Jomard was the secretary of the editorial committee, and following Michel Ange Lancret’s death in 1807, editor of the work. Their exchange was first related to Champollion’s role as assistant to Fourier. It gradually became a friendly correspondence between learned men of a similar age and interests, in which Jomard enjoyed and emphasised his authority derived from having been an égyptien, and one who had all the 2  Michel Dewachter, “De la curiosité aux sociétés savants: les premières collections d’antiquités égyptiennes”, ibid., p.  357. The other two contributions were Claude Traunecker, “Visions utopistes et réalité archéologique dans l’ancienne Égypte de la Description”, and Didier Devauchelle, “De la Pierre de Rosette à Champollion”. Traunecker praised the engravings but emphasised the texts, following Champollion, were not consulted by Egyptologists. Michel Dewachter believed that the environment that had inspired the young Champollion and in which he had developed his method was not the Description de l’Égypte but the study of the amateur orientalist, collector and engraver, Abbé Campion de Tersan where Champollion found artefacts and manuscripts with which he could work. Devauchelle said that the connection between the decipherment of the hieroglyphs and the Rosetta stone, though engraved in public memory, was symbolic rather than real and ended his essay saying that modern Egyptomania has its roots, at least in France, in a mythical creation whose ingredients were the figure of Bonaparte, the adventurous expedition and its fabulous discoveries and the exceptional personality of an individual genius.

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material from Egypt at hand. “Following your last letter”—wrote Jomard on May 24, 1806—“I have been busy researching the information you requested. I searched my notes and I consulted my travel companions. … I have not seen in the ancient cave paintings of Thebaid. …, nothing in all the engravings. … Nevertheless, these practices seem to be very old in the Orient as you assume.”3 Jomard ended the letter in a comment about Jacques Joseph’s plans for the education of his younger brother, Jean-­ François, complimenting his efforts, and promising his help and that of his fellow égyptiens.4 Jacques Joseph’s plans for his brother began to materialise when in September 1807, Jean-François Champollion (b. 1790) left Grenoble to pursue his studies at the school of Oriental languages in Paris. The educational scheme was designed by Jacques Joseph following Jean-François’ request; it was made possible with connections provided by Joseph Fourier.5 The Parisian orientalist scene into which the young Champollion arrived was dominated by prominent figures of established status who, at the time, were beginning to come to terms with the new information brought back from Egypt. It included figures like the politically conservative Silvestre de Sacy who held the chair of Oriental languages at the Collège de France; Louis-Mathieu Langlès, the very powerful director of the École des langues orientales situated at the Bibliothèque impériale, that held oriental manuscripts; and Aubin-Louis Millin, a close friend of Joseph Fourier, and the powerful editor of the influential journal within learned circles, the Magazin encyclopédique. Millin was an antiquarian with a large collection of manuscripts and artefacts. He also held the paid post of conservator of the department of Medals and Antiquities. One may add to these three names that of Volney, a traveller and historian who had by then shifted his interest and scholarly contributions to the field of philology, to name but some of the figures.

3  The letter is quoted at length in Yves Laissus, Jomard, le dernier Égyptien, 1777–1862 (Paris: Fayard, 2004), pp. 124–125, from the Archives de l’Isère. Papiers Champollion-Figeac, 185 J, vol. I f. 255. I have relied heavily on texts and letters cited in Laissus’ very informative biography of Jomard when writing this chapter. My interpretation and emphasis differ from his. 4  Laissus, Jomard … , pp. 124–125. Jomard specifically offered the help of his close friend Remi Raige who had been recruited to the expedition from the école des langues orientales. 5  Jean Lacouture, Champollion, une vie de lumières (Paris, éditions Geasset & Fasquelle, 1988), Chaps. 3–4.

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It was an intellectual scene saturated with rivalries and alliances of both political and scholarly nature.6 It was within this scene that Jomard tried to manoeuvre and cultivate relationships for the sake of the acceptance of the Description of Egypt—not an easy task for someone whose only credentials were his Egyptian experience and his role as editor of the Description. Jean-François Champollion was thirteen years younger than Jomard and had a very different temperament. After two years of studies of Persian with de Sacy and Arabic with Mathieu Langlès, he left Paris, having earned their hostility and that of their chosen students and protégés. The hostility was such that he was unable to secure a minor position at the Collège de France or at the Bibliothèque impériale that would have enabled him to prolong his stay. Langlès went as far as refusing to issue a certificate of his studies.7 The difference between Jomard and the Champollion brothers was not only of character, temper and networking skills. As one can see quite early on, it was also a difference of approach to scholarly work. With the publication of the first instalment of the Description of Egypt, Jomard began soliciting articles and reports that would review it favourably.8 He assumed Jacque Joseph, a friend and an assistant to Fourier, would be an obvious choice for the purpose of public relations. Jomard, at that time, was seeking unconditional loyalty to the project not scholarly opinions. But Jacques Joseph thought differently. He wrote Jomard he needed more information to write his article and asked him to point to the important contributions and the new knowledge about Egypt provided in the 6  One example of the “politics of scholarship” is demonstrated in the battle fought over the form of transliteration to be used when writing in French the Arabic names on the map of Egypt. This was a debate that continued for more than a year at the dépôt de la guerre and in which Volney triumphed over Sacy and Langlès. Volney retrospectively defined the debate as one between orientalists, those who had developed their philological skills in libraries, and Arabists, those who had travelled to Arab lands, referring especially to General Berthier who allowed his intervention and supported it, and Sacy and Langlès who opposed it (Constantin-­ François Chasseboeuf, Comte De Volney, L’alphabet européen appliqué aux langues asiatiques (1819) préface). The results had haunted the publication of the Description to its end. Many of the plates of the map, already printed, had to be engraved again, and the whole work suffered from inconsistencies in transliteration. Jomard tried to solve this by creating a table that presented the various ways each site was transliterated throughout the work. 7  Jean Lacouture, Champollion, une vie de lumières (Paris: Éditions Grasset & Fasquelle, 1988), Chapter 4. The title Lacouture gave the chapter about Champollion’s first Parisian experience was « Babel ou les embarras de Paris. » 8  AN F17/1104-1105 for lists of authors to be approached for favourable previews and reviews in the press.

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Description and to the ways the new knowledge differed from prevailing views.9 As the exchange continued, Jomard increasingly understood it would not be as easy as he had hoped to receive a positive review from Champollion; and when the latter informed him that having read the material, he found two of the memoirs to be problematic, Jomard disagreed in a long elaborate letter.10 He did not argue for specific views just assured Champollion the two essays he had criticised were written by two individuals who had exercised serious research. He ended the letter suggesting Champollion should either briefly refer to those articles or not mention them at all, thus keeping his scholarly integrity.11 The Description of Egypt included all the articles that the members of the Commission of Arts and Sciences had submitted. Some, Jomard admitted, were of “weak erudition”, while others were of a speculative nature. The contributors’ qualification to write about Egypt was the fact they had been there. Jomard was willing to accept diversion of opinion; he had been doing so for some years now. But he would not accept even mild hints regarding the right of his comrades, les égyptiens, to write about ancient Egypt. For the sake of loyalty and friendship, Jacques Joseph was expected to either rethink his views or abstain from writing them altogether. Champollion adopted Jomard’s request in a more significant manner than Jomard had intended in his offer. After many delays, Champollion’s review-essay was published in October 1811. It not only abstained from commenting about the two memoirs; Jacques Joseph had abstained from writing about the work at all. His article was about the importance of the evidence Egyptian civilization had left posterity.12

9  The correspondence between the two lasted from November 30, 1810, until October 1811. Available in Laissus, Jomard…, p. 130, from Archives de l’Isère, Papiers Champollion-­ Figeac, 185 J, vol. II, f. 313. 10  The first essay Champollion mentioned was by G.A.  Villoteau, « Dissertation sur les diverses espèces d’instruments de musique que l’on Remarque sur les sculptures qui décorent les antiques monuments de L’Égypte, et sur les noms que leur donnèrent, en leur langue propre, les premiers peuples de ce pays. », Description de l’Égypte, Antiquités-Mémoires; the second was written by Remi Raige, “Mémoire sur le zodiaque nominal et primitive des anciens Égyptiens” Description de l’Égypte, Antiquités-Mémoires. Raige was the friend whose help Jomard offered Jean-François Champollion, five years before. Raige died a few months before this exchange, and for Jomard, this was reason enough to include Raige’s work, honouring the memory of a fellow égyptien. 11  Quoted in Laissus, Jomard … p. 130. The letter is from June 4, 1810. 12  See Magasin encyclopédique, octobre, 1811, pp. 426–436.

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The Egyptologist Debate: The Zodiac The Egyptologist debate of the years following the expedition to Egypt crystallised around two main themes, one of which was the interpretation of the zodiacs and the astronomical bas-reliefs found in the temples of Denderah and Esneh. These, so the participants in the expedition believed, determined the age of the temples in which they were found; more generally, they hoped they would enable accurate dating of Egyptian antiquity and imply a reinterpretation of ancient chronology. The debate was tense and spirited because of its implications on sacred chronology.13 On February 14, 1802, the Moniteur universel published a letter Samuel Bernard, the Polytechnic graduate, had written to citizen Morand, member of the legislative body. The letter related Joseph Fourier’s initial observations about the zodiac presented the year before at the Cairo Institute and which Bernard described as “highly interesting”: “The discussion of the astronomical monuments that have now been discovered … justifies the chronology of Herodotus and remains certain that the current known division of the zodiac, has been established by the Egyptians about fifteen thousand years before the Christian era … The zodiac was obviously a primitive calendar of Egypt.” 14 Bernard then cited from a letter Fourier had written Berthollet when in Egypt. Fourier declared with certainty that the condition of the skies represented in the zodiacs were an indication of the age of the monuments in which they were found: “Everything indicates that the buildings which still exist, were built in the days when the sky condition was such as it has been represented. … The one engraved on the Esne temple dates its foundation to six thousand years before Christ; and the beautiful temple of

13  The debate about ancient chronology was much older, and had been briefly mentioned in Chap. 8. The expedition to Egypt, the engraving of the zodiac by Denon published in 1802, the engravings of the Description published in 1810 and 1818 and the arrival of the zodiac from Denderah in 1821 stirred up the old debate time and again. For a study of the debate, see Jed Z.  Buchwald, Diane Greco Josefowicz, The Zodiac of Paris: How an Improbable Controversy over an Ancient Egyptian Artefact Provoked a Modern Debate between Religion and Science (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2010). 14  Le Moniteur universel, 25 pluviôse, an x [February 14, 1802]. The letter is dated nivôse, an X (December 1801–January 1802). Bernard who had returned on one of the last boats coming from Egypt was still in quarantine in Marseilles.

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Denderah … was probably built over a thousand years before the siege of Troy.”15 The debate that followed engaged Hellenists among them Pierre Henri Larcher; scholars of ancient Rome as Ennio Quirino Visconti; naturalists, like Georges Cuvier and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck; and men of science such as the mathematicians and professors of astronomy Joseph Lalande and Jean-Baptiste Biot.16 At different stages, different aspects of the debate were emphasised, for political reasons as well as for scholarly ones. Visconti strongly opposed the views expressed in the above letter of Samuel Bernard and believed the temples belonged to the Hellenist period, relying on two inscriptions at the entrance to the temple.17 Not unconnected to his opposition, but also representing a wider concern that would be repeatedly expressed in educated circles, Visconti took the opportunity of the Report to the Emperor about the state of the sciences of 1808 to state: “The conquest of Egypt by the French in 1798 … would have expanded our knowledge of that country … .but the new wealth [of knowledge] is not yet in circulation and the public awaits with extreme impatience the great work whose publication the government is sponsoring and which must lift a corner of the mysterious veil in which its history is enveloped; a history of a country as unknown as it is famous.”18 The Egyptian campaign and the fragments of the work of the savants that had reached the public had stimulated the debate and elevated the expectations from the Description of Egypt. Its belated appearance, but also the absence of essays that dealt with topics at the centre of public interest in the first instalments, had caused it to gradually lose its stand as the most 15  Ibid. The mentioned paper by Fourier was never published in the Décade égyptienne, the journal that published most of the papers presented at the Institute. 16  Jean-Baptiste Biot presented his views following the arrival of the Zodiac of Denderah in France in 1822. A member of the Academy of Science, he dated the zodiac found in Denderah to 716 B.C., based on astronomical calculations. Jean-François Champollion attacked Biot’s method and said that to study such a monument, it was not enough to be a mathematician or an astronomer; one had to first have knowledge of Ancient Egypt. Biot, wrote Champollion, should have kept quiet on this issue. J.J.  Champollion, Fourier et Napoléon, p. 57, referring to an article in the Revue encyclopédique, July 1822. 17  The inscriptions were addressed by Jacques Joseph Champollion in a paper to the Grenoble society already in 1806. The paper, written as a letter to Fourier, was reported in the Magazin encyclopédique, janvier 1807, p. 210. 18  Ennio Visconti, « Histoire et littérature ancienne, depuis 1789 », Rapports à l’empereur sur le progrès des sciences des lettres et des arts depuis 1789, Part IV: Histoire et littérature ancienne (Paris, 1808); reprint: (Paris: Belin, 1989) (pp. 95–96)

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important source of knowledge about Egypt. Joseph Fourier, whose daring views regarding Egyptian chronology were expressed with certainty in Egypt, was now carefully following the scholarly debates regarding the zodiac and the information it could provide. After investigating the different views, he slowly moved away from his initial enthusiasm when in Egypt, to a more sober assessment, and then, to a decision not to publish an interpretation of his own altogether.

The Egyptologist Debate: The Hieroglyphs The second theme of interest and debate centred on the enigma of the hieroglyphs. It would culminate in September 1822, with Jean-François Champollion’s famous Lettre à M. Dacier. The hieroglyphs too were not a new focus of interest and of debate. The most famous effort to decipher them was made at the end of the seventeenth century by Athanasius Kircher, who had dedicated the third volume of his work Oedipus Aegyptiacus to the Egyptian scripture.19 By the end of the eighteenth century, there was a consensus—already established by Kircher—that the Coptic language was the language of the ancient Egyptians and that the three forms of writing, demotic, hieratic and hieroglyphic, belonged to the same system. When in Egypt, many of the members of the Commission of Arts and Sciences, among them Jomard, tried to make sense of the hieroglyphs they painstakingly copied off the walls of Egyptian temples and tombs. These were very amateurish attempts of no consequence. The efforts to decipher the hieroglyphs were very much increased following the discovery of the Rosetta Stone whose importance was immediately recognised.20 In 1800 General Dugua, who returned to France before the evacuation of the French, carried with him prints of the Rosetta Stone prepared by Jean-­ Joseph Marcel and Nicolas Conté, and a mould of sulphur of the stone prepared by Raffeneau Delile. These were brought to the Institute in 19  Athanasius Kircher, Oedipus aegyptiacus (Rome, 1652–1654). Kircher’s effort was based on the Bembine Tables. 20  For an account of the connection between the Rosetta Stone and the decipherment of the hieroglyphs, and more generally the contribution of the Description of Egypt and its engravings to the discovery of Champollion (or the lack of that off), see D. Devauchelle, La pierre de Rosette. Présentation et traduction (Paris, 1990), and his article “De la pierre de Rosette à Champollion” in L’expédition de l’Égypte, une entreprise des Lumières (Paris, 1999). For a more favourable connection, see R. Solé et D. Valbelle, La Pierre de Rosette (Paris, 1999).

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Paris, printed and distributed immediately. In 1802 following the confiscation of the Rosetta by the British, the British Academy made a facsimile of the engravings on the stone and distributed it to sister academies throughout Europe. Deciphering the hieroglyphs became an international enterprise. Many senior scholars were now contributing to the effort. In France, the Hellenist Hubert-Pascal Ameilhon published in 1802 a work on the Greek text.21 Silvestre de Sacy tried to interpret the Egyptian Demotic scripture following a formal request from Jean-Antoine Chaptal, then Minister of Interior. Sacy’s Lettre au citoyen Chaptal au sujet de l’inscription aegyptienne du monument trouvé à Rosette was an account of his tentative findings and of his failure to fulfil the request.22 Johan David Akerblad followed. He was a Swedish diplomat who spent years in Istanbul before coming to Paris in 1800.23 In Parisian scholarly circles, he was seen more as a scholar than a diplomat. Akerblad followed de Sacy’s lectures on the Coptic language at the Collège de France. A loyal student of the kind de Sacy liked, his work was titled Lettre sur l’inscription aegyptienne de Rosette, adressé au Citoyen Silvestre de Sacy. In his essay, Akerblad first complemented de Sacy’s work, and proceeded to identify more words, but like de Sacy, eventually came to a dead end. The decipherment of the hieroglyphs was at the centre of Jean-François Champollion’s interest and studies already when in Paris. “You suggested I study the inscriptions on the Rosetta stone”, he wrote his brother in April 1809, from Paris. “This is indeed where I want to start.”24 He addressed the different scriptures of the stone in the two-volume work on ancient Egypt he had published in 1814.25 Silvestre de Sacy, not a man 21  It became the accepted text of the Greek inscription of the Rosetta until 1840 when that of the geographer and academy member Jean-Antoine Letronne (b. 1787) took its place. Letronne was member of the Academy and a rival of both the Champollion brothers and Jomard. 22  Reported by A.L. Millin in Magazine encyclopédique, n. 3, messidor an X, pp. 426–427. According to the report, Silvestre de Sacy succeeded in identifying three names, one of them Ptolomée. However, a later report by de Sacy showed he sought an alphabetic equivalent to each sign, and soon reached a dead end. See Magazin encyclopédique, n. 20, ventôse an X, pp. 489–494. 23  He was well versed in Ottoman, Persian and Arabic, a knowledge he had acquired probably in Istanbul. 24  Michel Dewachter, Champollion, un scribe pour l’Égypte (Paris: Gallimard, 1990), p. 33. 25  Jean-François Champollion, L’Égypte sous les pharaons, ou Recherches sur la géographie, la religion, la langue, les écritures et l’histoire de l’Aegypte avant l’invasion de Cambyse (Grenoble et Paris, 1814).

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inclined to forget those who had rejected his authority, wrote Thomas Young of Champollion’s publication26: “Mr. Champollion … also claims to have read the inscription [the demotic text on the Rosetta stone] I certainly put more trust in the enlightenment and criticism of Mr. Akerblad than in those of Champollion, but until they publish some results, one is right to suspend judgment.”27 After some months, and probably after having read Champollion’s publication, de Sacy wrote Young again advising him not to share his findings with Champollion, who might incorporate them into his work and claim priority. “He is searching all over … to make people believe he discovered many words of the inscription of Rosetta. I'm afraid this is nothing but charlatanism, and I may add that I have strong reasons to think so.”28 The explorative nature of Champollion’s work was charlatanism in the eyes of the traditional scholar of the Orient. The competition between Young and Champollion has been often portrayed as another area in which the rivalry between the French and the British played out. It is important to remember that at the time, the world of letters formed its alliances and rivalries on other parameters rather than the nationalist ones. When in 1819 Thomas Young published the results he had achieved to date, Jomard wrote to compliment him and added he too was working on a study of the Egyptian scripture. In a presentation at the Academy in September that year, Jomard introduced his paper as part of a larger project about the hieroglyphs. He explained the early presentation of the uncompleted work to be a result of Young’s publication and emphasised his was a work very different from Young. Unlike others who were taking part in the effort to decipher the hieroglyphs, an effort he was now joining, his method would not be based on the knowledge of the ancient Egyptian language. He added, in a manner that seemed oblivious to the areas of contention between the scholars or to the methods debated, that his valuable contribution was based on careful observations conducted in

26  Thomas Young (1773–1829) was an English physician by education and a polymath. Young was working to decipher the hieroglyphs with the Rosetta Stone. He too began to notice the phonetic component but was unable to go beyond this initial step to make sense of the script in its entirety. He was the only one to have come close to Champollion’s discovery of 1822. 27  Quoted in Laissus, Jomard…, p. 201 from Robert Solé, D. Valbelle, La pierre de Rosette (Paris, 1999), p. 91. 28  Laissus, Jomard … p. 202

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Egypt.29 But the statements and methods of Jomard were not the only problem. In the debate about the hieroglyphs as in that about Egyptian chronology, the publication of the Description of Egypt was not leading the debates in essays and engravings, as was expected, but trailing them. The engravings of the Rosetta Stone, ready in 1818, were published only in 1823 after the decipherment of the hieroglyphs by Champollion.30 As Yves Laissus, the biographer of Jomard, noted: “The tragedy of the Description of Egypt was that it was too late to arrive.”31

Jomard and Champollion: A Difference of Character and of Approach to Scholarship The regime changes in France affected Jomard and the Champollions differently. The two brothers were quite taken by Bonaparte upon his return from Elba in 1814, and were quick to publicly identify with him. Jacques Joseph followed Bonaparte to Paris to work in his administration during the Hundred Days, and Jean-François who stayed in Grenoble, wrote in the Annales de l'Isère “Napoleon is our only legitimate Prince.”32 Jomard and other members of the editorial committee of the Description were more cautious; they changed the letterhead of the committee’s stationary accordingly, but avoided public endorsement of either side. Their sole commitment at the time was to the publication of the Description of Egypt. With the return of the Restoration, the Champollions were banned from entering Paris, and Jean-François lost the academic post he held in Isère. In 1818 the ban was lifted and Jacques Joseph moved to Paris where he befriended Bon Joseph Dacier (b.1742), a philologist and historian who 29  The text was published in the last instalment of the Description (see forward). The letter to Young is in Laissus, Jomard, p. 203. 30  A reference in the Annales encyclopédiques octobre 1818, p. 365, indicates the engravings were ready in 1818. A letter of Jean-François Champollion from Grenoble to his brother Jacques Joseph in Paris regarding the demotic inscriptions of the Rosetta lends itself to the interpretation that this was the print he had received from Jollois and which he found better than the facsimile he had received from Millin distributed by the British Academy (J.F. Champollion, Lettres à son frère (Paris, 1984), pp. 51–52). The letter contradicts the efforts of the Egyptologists mentioned above to disconnect the expedition and the discovery of the Rosetta from the deciphering of the hieroglyphs and to downplay the role of the Rosetta, or of the contributors to the Description though the Rosetta was not the only source Champollion had used. 31  Yves Laissus, Jomard…, p. 106 32  Jean Lacouture, Champollion, pp. 273–275.

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was the perpetual secretary of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. Jean-François, with the help of a new moderate prefect in Isère, returned to the local academic post he had held before with the help of Fourier. Jomard spent the first years of the Restoration cultivating his connections in Paris. The Wednesday evening salon he began to entertain at his house was well attended by men of letters, travellers, members of the academies and fellow égyptiens. His academic politics were crowned with success when in October 1818, after six attempts, he was finally elected member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres.33 However, being an academician did not gain him the appreciation he had expected in scholarly circles. Most of Jomard’s presentations at the Academy were connected to his work as editor of the Description. His contributions to the Egyptologist debates were mostly meant to guarantee that the place of the publication and the contribution of his fellow égyptiens would be preserved. Following the arrival of the zodiac in Paris, he presented a very long memoir whose reading took six sessions in December 1821 and January 1822. The memoir’s title clearly stated he stood in opposition to those who defended sacred chronology,34 but the paper itself contributed very little to the actual debate. More than anything else, Jomard’s paper was an essay in praise of Jollois’ and de Villiers’ achievements in representing the zodiac. Jomard regularly addressed each and every argument presented by others in learned journals and public presentations that had any relevance to the Description, whether implicit or explicit. On March 8, 1822, Jean-­ Antoine Letronne presented the first of five parts of a work about Egyptian monuments built under Greek and Roman rule in which he claimed the members of the expedition were trying to prevent other scholars from studying Egyptian monuments. A week after Letronne’s first presentation, Jomard read a letter to the members of the Academy. The letter did not address the contents of Letronne’s work but his claim that the French travellers wanted to be the only ones working on Egyptian antiquities which they perceived as their property. Jomard saw this as a personal 33  One of his competitors wrote a vicious letter to the members of the Academy, who he called “Les frères Ignorantin” in which he wrote of Jomard; “M. Jomard, dessinateur, graveur ou quelque chose d’approchant, que je ne connais point d’ailleurs, et que peu de gens, je crois, connaissent, sait graver, diriger au moins des graveurs et les planches d’un livre font fois qu’il est bon prote en taille douce » (Laissus, p. 166). 34  The title was « Recherches nouvelles sur les monuments anciens de l’art Égyptien, ou Défense de l’ancienneté des monuments de l’Égypte ».

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offense, a criticism he described as unfounded. The publication of the Description, he argued, as well as the numerous public presentations of its memoirs was evidence to the contrary. We have put our work in the public domain; we are interested in a scholarly debate about our research which we see as pertinent to the spirit and love of scientific research. Though he otherwise appreciated the talent and knowledge of Letronne, Jomard continued, he believed such groundless claims were not the way to gain neither favour nor votes in the Academy.35 Jomard was probably right. Letronne’s presentations at the Academy were often opportunities for settling scores or sending hints at the work of others, and he was one of those who found Jomard’s presence at the Academy difficult to accept.36 It also seems to be a fair presentation of Jomard’s view of the scholarly world which he had entered with much effort and in which he was still struggling for acceptance. Jomard wanted the research done in Egypt and its representation in the Description to be accepted as scholarly sound and as the base for further learning that might in turn bring to new insights and understandings; this he found to be an acceptable process37; what he found unbearable was to have the Description of Egypt and the research done by its contributors, either ignored or dismissed as wrong, as a mistaken foundation. But Letronne’s argument too had its foundation. It was difficult for Jomard to share the position of being the source of knowledge about Egypt, especially with those who had never been there. Jean-François Champollion continued to work away from the academic petty-rivalries. The Rosetta Stone certainly served as a source and  Laissus, Jomard…, p. 206. The letter was read on March 8, 1822.  In 1826 Letronne wrote a report about Jean-Raymond Pacho’s Voyage en Cyrénaïque. He took that opportunity to add an irrelevant comment about the illustrations engraved in M.  Cailliaud’s Voyage à l’oasis de Thèbes, a work edited and its engravings supervised, by Jomard. Letronne wrote the engravings that were quickly arranged had little similarity to the monuments they were supposed to represent. Jomard replied in a letter to the Academy, once again with arguments that were definitely accurate: “Si mes travaux ont quelque léger mérite, c’est celui de l’exactitude consciencieuse, et d’une scrupuleuse fidélité en ce qui regarde la représentation des monuments” (Letter of May 5, 1826, in Laissus, p. 231). 37  Jomard stated his belief in the evolutionary process in which knowledge was accumulated in numerous articles through the years. For two of many examples, see « Extrait d’un Mémoire sur L’Uniformité à introduire dans les Notations Géographiques » Bulletin de la Société de géographie, avril 1847; Considérations sur l’objet et les avantages d’une Collection Spéciale consacrée aux cartes géographiques et aux diverses branches de la géographie (Paris: Imprimerie de E. Verger, 1831). 35 36

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influence for his work initially, but he had developed his system based on many additional manuscripts and artefacts that were now available to consult, following the Egyptian campaign. He returned to Paris in 1821 and began presenting the results of his work as they evolved to the Academy, of which he was not a member. First in a paper he read in August 1821 about the ancient Egyptian scripture that showed close connections between its three forms—the cuneiform, demotic and hieroglyphic script. Then in August 1822, in a second paper about the Demotic script. This second paper was better received than the first. However, the breakthrough arrived two weeks later, when Champollion came to the understanding that the hieroglyphic scripture was at the same time, often in the same sentence, both phonetic and symbolic.38 The importance of the new understanding was immediately recognised by those to whom it was revealed. Dacier, the secretary of the Academy, easily received the consent of Silvestre de Sacy, the acting president of the session, to allocate special presentation time in the pre-set schedule of September 27, 1822. The rumour was quick to have spread and the session was fully attended by the members of the Academy and by its guests, one of whom was Thomas Young, then on a visit in Paris. Though there were no immediate comments, as was the rule at the Academy’s sessions, the sensation of the discovery was well understood. The text of the address was quickly published titled Lettre à M. Dacier and presented to the Academy on October 25.39 In the publication, Champollion paid his debt, or so he believed, to Jomard. He stated quite at the beginning that the explanation that followed was reached “following the engravings of the Description of Egypt, the proper names were traced in phonetic hieroglyphs on the monuments of that country, that are so well known to us from this magnificent work, and thanks to the fidelity with which these travellers [copied them], and the enlightened people who directed the execution of the work.” A note 38  I am aware this is a very sketchy and amateur account of Champollion’s work which is well beyond my training. Champollion wrote later in a work published posthumously: “C’est un système complexe, une écriture tout à la fois figurative, symbolique et phonétique, dans un même texte, une même phrase, je dirais Presque dans le même mot.” J. F. Champollion, Grammaire égyptienne, (Paris, 1836) cited in Michel Dewachter, Champollion un scribe pour l’Égypte, (Paris, 1990) p. 4 39  The event in the Academy and the following publication of the 52 page booklet was reported and celebrated in the press. See for the report of the presentation: Moniteur universel, October 1; Revue encyclopédique, t. XVI, October 1822, p. 226. For the report of the publication: Journal des savants, November, 1822.

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at the end of the sentence even named Jomard as the editor in charge.40 The following day, Jomard wrote Jacques Joseph Champollion a friendly and very typical letter. After complementing Champollion for his modesty by calling the printed lecture a brochure, and offering him an engraving he had previously promised, Jomard wrote that someone brought to his attention the note where his name was mentioned. That “someone” had remarked, so wrote Jomard, that it would have been more appropriate had Champollion, when mentioning his name, not only thank him as director of the execution of the work, but also mention Jomard’s essay about the hieroglyphs; and he added: “I promise that I am more interested in the topic itself than in what is personal to me. If I lose some benefits, science loses nothing, especially in hands like yours.”41 Jomard’s letter, friendly but quite surprising in its focus on the way he was presented in the Lettre à M. Dacier and not on the actual content of Champollion’s presentation, was quite characteristic of him. It was also typical in its indirect style, in which Jomard was trying to convey his point while avoiding direct confrontation. But it was the following letter that actually raises the question whether Jomard had grasped the significance of Champollion’s discovery and its implications. On November 9, Jomard wrote Jacques Joseph Champollion suggesting his brother should consult Jomard’s tableau des legends encadrées, which he might find useful and with the help of which he will be able to discern the repetitive motif.42 For Jomard, Jean-François Champollion and he were two scholars working on the hieroglyphs. Jomard, the more experienced and member of the  J.F. Champollion, Lettre à M. Dacier (Paris: Didot, octobre 1822), pp. 16–17.  Quoted in Laissus, Jomard…, p. 212. Laissus believed the note was a deliberate statement by J.F. Champollion, saying he accepted Jomard as a skilled editor but did not think much of Jomard’s essays. I believe that though it was a reflection of what he thought of Jomard, it was not meant as a deliberate offense. More generally, the Champollions were quite friendly in their exchanges with Jomard, not very typical of their relationships with others whose work they did not appreciate. Champollion presented a more elaborate account of his discoveries in 1824. There, again, he gave credit to the Description of Egypt. He wrote that though there was ongoing interest and effort to decipher the hieroglyphs, one opinion seemed to have reigned –that it was impossible to achieve. This changed with the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, a discovery that had reawakened public interest and hopes. The very important discovery, he wrote, had occurred, thanks to the French during their memorable campaign. J.F. Champollion, Précis du système hiéroglyphique (Paris, 1824), p. 13. 42  The letter is quoted in Laissus, p. 213. Laissus sees in it evidence that Jomard was still on friendly terms with the Champollions; I believe it also conveys a lack of understanding (or interest) of the significance of the deciphering of the hieroglyphs. 40 41

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Academy, was generous to share his work with the young colleague. Jomard’s numerous lengthy presentations in the following period continued as before. There is no evidence he tried to understand Champollion’s work or that he saw the deciphering of the hieroglyphs as an opportunity to revisit his own work or to re-examine the engravings of the Description to gain more understanding of Egypt’s ancient past. Champollion continued to elaborate and consolidate his work and to enjoy his newly gained authority in the field of Egyptian studies. Old rivalries persisted, some tried to challenge his work, and others to downplay the achievement. Letronne who had called him in the recent past a charlatan now dedicated a work he published in 1823 to “Thomas Young, Champollion the younger, Huyot and Gau, all who have contributed enormously to our knowledge about Egypt since the memorable expedition”, a dedication that emphasised Champollion was but one of many.43 Thomas Young too did not accept Champollion’s newly achieved status as the title of an article he published in 1823 suggested: “An account of some discoveries in hieroglyphic literature and Egyptian antiquities, including the author’s original alphabet as extended by M. Champollion.” A sense of injustice haunted Young to the end of his life as is evident from an article he published some months before he died in a journal addressed to M. Arago, then secretary of the Academy of Science. In the article, he reproached the French Academy for giving too much importance to the work of Champollion.44 These were of no consequence to Champollion who continued his work, received an honorary medal from the king and now sought an official post to secure a steady income and an academic platform. The role of curator of the Egyptian section at the Louvre would provide him with both.

43  Letronne, Recherches pour server à l’histoire de l’Égypte pendant la domination des Grecs et des Romains (Paris, 1823). Jomard, another rival, was not even named. His contemporary contributions were ignored; he belonged to the memorable expedition, the remote and early stage of Egyptology. 44  Thomas Young, “A Letter to M. Arago”, the Classical Journal, vol. 38, n. 75, September 1828. This and the previous quote is in Laissus, p. 239.

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The Egyptian Museum and the Struggle for Authority over Ancient Egypt The moment Jomard understood Jean-François Champollion was using his newly achieved success to secure a post as curator of the Egyptian section at the Louvre was the moment the Champollion brothers became his bitter rivals.45 Jomard was a very generous patron as long as his authority was not questioned. In many ways, he probably saw himself as the person behind Champollion’s success. The Rosetta was his—so to speak; he was the embodiment of the expedition that had discovered it, and of the Description that would soon publish its engraving. While the contents of Champollion’s discovery did not trouble Jomard, it was the position of curator of the planned Egyptian museum that drove him into battle. But this unspoken contest over who enjoyed the authority over Egypt was but one level on which the two clashed. The other was of a paradigmatic nature. The crisis that erupted over the post of museum curator was enhanced with the question of the purchase of Drovetti’s collection,46 and was made public when the Champollions failed to enter the Academy. The very heated debate that followed revealed an unbridgeable scholarly gap between the opponents. On December 3, 1824, as Jean-François Champollion was studying the Drovetti collection in Turin, his brother, Jacques Joseph, decided to submit his candidacy for a place at the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-­ Lettres. It was his third submission and though the voting members have not changed significantly since his last attempt, it is possible he thought the new status of the Champollions would override the influence of old 45  Yves Laissus, Jomard’s biographer, emphasised the origin of the rupture was not intellectual but concrete. Laissus provided evidence that Jomard’s idea to constitute an Egyptian Museum that will put together the various collections that had been accumulating in France since the Egyptian campaign dates back to 1818. While the evidence is certainly there, Laissus is possibly too immersed in Jomard’s point of view to question whether it was not a wider struggle over the authority on all matters Egyptian. 46  Bernardino Drovetti (1776) was made French consul in Egypt by Bonaparte in 1803, a post he held more or less continuously until 1829. He is best remembered for his ruthless pillaging of Egyptian antiquities, an activity in which he competed with Henry Salt, the British consul from 1815. In 1824, after Louis XVIII did not purchase part of his private collection, he concluded the deal with Victor Emmanuel, of Piedmont. The collection forms the base of the Egyptian Museum in Turin. The Champollions believed that Jomard was acting behind the scene to prevent the purchase of the collection by the French king, because of the prospect of Champollion becoming curator.

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rivals.47 The candidacy was rejected; Jacques Joseph won thirteen votes in his favour, while the winning candidate was elected with nineteen. Though he had declared his expectations to be very low, Jean-François was furious when he received the news: « Letronne can count on my ‘gratitude’,” he wrote his brother, “as he has declared himself such a partisan of justice, justice he will receive in due course.”48 After other insults and promises to avenge those suspected of not voting for his brother, he announced: “The Academy has definitely pronounced its divorce from us, and we will console ourselves with the epitaph of Piron.”49 Jomard was seen as the man who had orchestrated the outcome and accordingly, received the greatest insults: As for Jomard, whose little hypogeomicroscopic ruse has spoiled the whole affair, he is a dead man. You can notify his acquaintances and friends. If one is to use his vocabulary—he has not yet seen me, but in the form of a clement Osiris, with a head mask of ibis or lamb. I am preparing him an appearance of Osiris with a mask of a crocodile and a hippopotamus. We shall see how he finds this new Theophany. It is nice to cover and to surround oneself with the veil of sacred mysteries, I will tear the cover and show the good believers that the High Priest is but a stranger in the land of Egypt, a Pastor, a Ykschos that on its own authority, wears the pschent and claims dominion over the upper and lower regions of the country.50

47  A few days before, Jean-François wrote his brother that the Academy had approached him to submit his candidacy for the vacant place, which he refused: “I do not want a chair there until I can sit next to yours.” He added that but for M. Dacier, he was confident the academicians did not want either of the brothers, for they wanted only mediocre candidates, not men of knowledge and opinions. Jean-François added that should his brother decide to submit his candidacy, they would at least have the pleasure of knowing their enemies and pay them their due. Jean Lacouture, Champollion, une vie de lumières (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1988), pp. 337–340. 48  Letronne was said to have declared that justice had been done in the choice of Charles Hase, a philologist, over Champollion-Figeac. 49  The allusion is to Alexis Piron (1689–1773), whose entry to the Academy was vetoed by Louis XV.  Piron suggested his epitaph to read: “Ci-gît Piron, qui ne fut rien, pas même académicien.” 50  The letter of December 13, 1824, is quoted in Jean Lacouture, Champollion, p. 339. The term Hyksos was used by Manetho who also used Pasteur Kings for rulers of Egypt of Asiatic origins. Both terms refer to Jomard as a stranger to the country. They and their rule were demonised by the native rulers who later expelled them from power. Pschent is a crown of Ancient Egypt.

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From then on, the two sides missed no opportunity to attack each other whether in private letters or openly in their publications. When Jean-­ François Champollion’s accounts of the Drovetti collection were reported in the Moniteur universel, Jomard was quick to send his reaction.51 He complimented the exposure of the new discoveries but asked to draw attention to inaccuracies: It is wrong to attribute to our young Oedipus the merit of having distinguished first, the true character of Egyptian art. If the ideas in question came to him after looking at some statues of the Turin museum, would they not have occurred to the French travelers, who had under the eyes, for several years, all the great works of Egyptian sculpture, the colossi that were not transported to Europe, and finally, the reliefs and the numerous paintings of temples, tombs and royal tombs? By consulting Denon’s Travels in Egypt, published in 1802; the first instalment of the Description of Egypt, published in 1808[sic] and printed well before (Antiques-description, Chap. V, p. 25, etc.), the second instalment, published in 1812 (ibid., chap. IX, p. 336.342, etc.), the third instalment, published in 1817 (chap. XI p. 8,9,20) and elsewhere, one can determine whether the author [of the review] was justified in saying that Mr. Champollion has now published entirely new thoughts about Egyptian art, or, when he continued to say he was the first who gave correct notions about the physiognomy of the Egyptians, fought the ideas of Winckelmann about an alleged Chinese figure, an idea already refuted by Blumenbach; and finally, [that he was the first] to recognize the distinct characteristic features of the Egyptian race, well distinct from those of the Greek race. … It is just to attribute these comments to the Commission of Egypt. … these ideas, on which today all seem to agree, have been published and put in circulation by it twenty five years ago.52

Except for the date he gave the first publication, 1808 instead of 1810, Jomard was very right in his accusation and in his call to give the Description its due respect in this regard. There were many instances in which the contributors discussed the relationship between Egyptian and Greek art 51  Jean-François’ accounts of the Drovetti collection was published in instalments by Jacques Joseph Champollion titled Lettres à M. Le duc de Blacas relative au musé royal égyptien de Turin (Paris, September 1825). The Duc de Blacas was a former minister and close to the French king. He sponsored Champollion’s stay in Turin. The report in the Moniteur universel was published on October 5, 1825; Jomard’s reaction followed on October 21. 52  In Laissus., pp. 245–246. The ironic reference to “our Oedipus” was probably making reference to Athanasius Kircher, Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1652–1654 (3 volumes)).

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and architecture and pointed to the limits of Winckelmann’s work.53 However, Jomard in his tiresome style was fighting a rear-guard battle. True, Champollion no longer paid Jomard and his editorial project its due respect; he stopped acknowledging it for providing the platform from which he was able to take the leap that took him so far. But Champollion was also young, brilliant, a serious scholar, and his success was celebrated by the king and the press as France’s academic achievement. The Description of Egypt by its prolonged publication process had exhausted its time to receive its much-deserved public acclaim. Jomard would increasingly find it difficult to publicly debate Champollion and defend the Description of Egypt once Champollion had made him into an arch enemy. He would certainly not be able to do it by sending painstaking comments to the press demanding again and again to put things right. On May 15, 1826, the king signed an ordinance, granting Champollion the title of royal curator of the department of Egyptian antiquities at the Louvre. Jomard could not let go. A week later, on May 22, he sent a letter to Champollion-Figeac. He wrote that due to the amical relations they had enjoyed, he initially assumed Champollion-Figeac was not aware that for the last ten years, Jomard had been planning to form and curate a collection of Egyptian antiquities. But then he remembered he had mentioned it to him years before, and therefore Jomard cannot understand the efforts of the Champollions to take the post but as an intentional act of hostility aimed at him. In a postscript to the letter, Jomard added: “Would it not have been possible to obtain a chair without seizing the property of another?”54 Jomard saw the post as his property, and Champollion’s act as a hostile seizure of what belonged to him. In an account to the Revue encyclopédique of Mme. Minutoli’s recently published souvenirs from Egypt, Jomard expressed the feeling he was operating within an ungrateful community.55 Addressing the forgivingness with which the quality of the engravings in Minutoli’s work were received,  See Chap. 7.  Laissus, pp. 248–249. Note Jomard had record of their correspondence from two years before. October 24, 1824, was two months before the failed candidacy to the Academy. 55  Mes souvenirs d’Égypte par Mme la baronne Minutoli, revus et publiés par M.  Raoul-­ Rochette (Paris, 1826). Madame Minutoli had accompanied her husband the baron Heinrich Menu von Minutoli, a Prussian general. The year-long expedition was financed by Mehmet Ali and its collections form the foundation of the Egyptian Museum in Berlin. Her souvenirs were accompanied by her sketches of monuments and people. 53 54

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he wrote that the Description of Egypt has never enjoyed a similar ­generosity from its critics. The work that had conserved in its engravings the exact image of monuments and temples, now destroyed by British antiquarians and their Arab accomplices, he wrote, had never received its due gratitude from the scholarly community. Small rivalries and jealousies from archaeologists, some not yet born when the expedition to Egypt had taken place, were the reason for the way the work was often criticised. “How could a work, published by a society whose individual members have always voluntarily erased [their names], excite such jealousy?” 56 This was a mild attack, somewhat nostalgic of the Egypt he and his fellow égyptiens had so carefully recorded and was now open to all.57 One may even say there was some justice in his claims, though many monuments now existed only within the engravings of the work, having been brutally pillaged, the authors of those engravings enjoyed no acclaim. The Egyptologist debate had moved on; there were new participants involved and new collections to consult; the engravings of the Description were no longer the preferred source of information about Egyptian antiquities. But Jomard stayed on, constantly demanding to be respected and trying to maintain a claim or authority to all things pertaining to Egypt. The Champollions, whose reverence, when it existed, was never really about his scholarship, were now liberated from their self-imposed obligation to keep their views to themselves.

The Antiquarian and the Egyptologist On November 14, 1826, Jomard announced the distribution of the last plates of the Description of Egypt.58 The new plates included some that belonged to a section titled Manuscrits sur papyrus, hieroglyphes et inscriptions, and these drew much attention in light of Champollion’s recent discovery. Two of the engravings were of tables prepared by Jomard and titled Tableau méthodique des hieroglyphes. 59 He had prepared and engraved  Revue encyclopédique, vol. 32, décembre 1826, p. 762.  J.F. Champollion wrote in his letters from Egypt of the destruction of the sites recorded in the Description and so brutally excavated and looted in 1829. However, it is important to note that Jomard too was taking part in the process by accumulating privately, with the help of Drovetti, a collection of Egyptian antiquities. 58  The texts were not ready and would be published but three years later. 59  Antiquités-Planches, vol. V, pl. 50, 51. 56 57

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them some years before and had obviously not found them to be affected by Champollion’s decipherment.60 Jomard’s initial reaction to Champollion’s discovery and the suggestion he had made in November 1822 to Champollion-Figeac regarding the two tables might be somehow dismissed as being the result of lack of time to examine Champollion’s work in depth. But after four years and much commentary in learned journals and at the Academy, as well as Champollion’s further elaboration of his system,61 one cannot dismiss Jomard’s decision to publish the tables as being merely an indication of bad judgement. The explanations that accompanied the two plates exposed Jomard’s inability to make the shift from an antiquarian method of classification to the new foundation on which the study of ancient Egypt’s scripture was now standing following Champollion’s work. In his characteristically elaborate way, reproducing in text what one could see in the image, he described to his readers his laborious project, elaborating the classification he had followed. The tables Jomard presented in 1826 were in direct opposition to the understanding that led to the third Lettre à M.  Dacier. But one may assume Jomard did not see it in that way; otherwise, he would have either debated his view or at least would not offer the tables to Champollion in 1822 to consult. Jomard de-contextualised the symbolic part of the hieroglyphs; he collected all the cartouches that were engraved throughout the plates of the Description as well as the symbolic signs and figures and ordered them in tables. His description of his classification is telling: Class I (see the first column on the left) , devoted to human figures; Class II (contained in column 2) , containing parts of human figures; Class III (column 3, 4.5), figures of animals; Class IV (column 6) portions of figures of animals; Class V (column 7–18) , figures imitating inanimate objects , utensils , vases, furniture and instruments, and in general the works of human industry; Class VI (column 19, 20 columns) rectilinear figures, most borrowed from geometry, and does not appear to be an imitation of a particular  As mentioned above, they were partially ready in November 1822 when Jomard offered them to Champollion to consult following the Lettre à M. Dacier. 61  Jean-François Champollion, Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens Égyptiens (Paris, 1824). In this publication, Champollion wrote that he knew « du Tableau général des signes hiéroglyphiques dressé par M. Jomard … et je regrette de ne pouvoir en dire davantage sur ce Tableau qui n’est point encore publié et dont je n’ai aucune connaissance.” p. 379. 60

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object; Class VII (columns 21, 22), figures of mixt lines, composed of straight and curved lines, with various indeterminate figures; Class VIII (columns 23, 24 column), figures of plants; Class IX (column 25–42), complex figures, characters combined together in pairs and sometimes in threes.62

The explanation, not easy to follow for the tables were engraved on a regular size plate and their details very small, was followed by an effort to regroup the above into larger classes, under additional titles such as he saw possible.63 Each individual sign was numbered so as to make it easier for scholars, so he wrote, to cite in their research. The explanation to the second table pointed to two additional groups, one of figures or recurring signs and the other represented what he called framed legends. This last group was subdivided again: “The first group, in sixteen columns, contains the vertical legends; the second, in four columns, horizontal legends. … to provide the means to know the way Egyptian writers and artists had used hieroglyphic writing, always with more or less symmetry. We learn by this that the hieroglyphic scripture was used both for ornament and for the expression of ideas.”64 Champollion’s decipherment and its basis were completely ignored. Jomard was interested in making sense of the hieroglyphs from early on. He now tried to reach their meaning by amassing numerous examples he had at his disposal, describing their appearance and organising them in tables and columns. These measures, done with scrupulous precision and systematically, were expected, by the very act of classification, to provide a key to their understanding. It is quite clear that Jomard did not grasp the paradigmatic shift that was happening around him.65 He  Explication des planches, Antiquités, vol. V planche 50.  Plants, animals and humans all defined as living objects; still objects, indeterminate objects and others. 64  Explication des planches, Antiquités, vol. V pl. 51. 65  Jomard also referred the readers to two of his essays: « Notice sur les signes numériques des anciens Égyptiens » and « Observations et recherche nouvelles sur les hiéroglyphes. » In September 1819, as mentioned above, Jomard was quick to publish the first title following Young’s essay. At that time, he presented it as part of a larger work: « Remarque sur les signes numériques des anciens Égyptiens, fragments d’un ouvrage ayant pour titre: Observations et recherché nouvelles sur les hiéroglyphes, accompagnées d’un tableau méthodique des signes. The « Notice sur les signes numériques » is in the second volume of Antiquités-Mémoires. A promised new research on the hieroglyphs did not appear with the final instalment of essays, either because he did not write it or because he was convinced by friends to let go. 62 63

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was a man of details, a pedant and an antiquarian, and he was unable to fit those changes into his world. The advice of Claude Berthollet or the collaboration of Prosper Jollois would have probably prevented the publication of the tables at this stage; but Jomard was now working alone, immersed in engravings of inscriptions and papyri, searching for new methods to classify their iconography so as to provide interpretation of the hieroglyphs.66 He referred scrupulously to the observed and copied hieroglyphs and used his categories and classifications, and his faith in the method, by now dated, to fit his belief in the symbolic nature of the hieroglyphs. He did so while ignoring they had already been deciphered by his rival who had extraordinary understanding and abilities to work with ancient languages. As might be expected, Champollion’s attack quickly followed. He believed, so he wrote, it was not too much to have hoped that the results of his research, so widely examined, discussed and accepted by learned societies all over Europe, would catch, at long last, the attention of those made in charge by the government to publish the Description of Egypt. He expected and hoped, he continued, that these salaried commissioners would be the first to verify his work, and adopt its results to re-examine their findings and improve them accordingly. Once this new knowledge existed, he continued, emphasising it was achieved “separate from the work of the commission”, it was their obligation, being a public project, to see to it that the work did not fall so far beneath the level of present knowledge about the ancient Egyptian system of writing. “The last instalments of this great work are still adhering to the ideas, doctrines and dreams of 1800, reworked from those of Kircher and Pluche.”67 Champollion was, once again, concise and precise in his lethal attacks. On December 15, 1827, the Egyptian gallery at the Louvre was officially opened; some months later, in June 1828, Champollion took a leave of absence and left for Egypt with Ippolito Rosellini, a young Italian 66  Claude Berthollet died in 1822, and Prosper Jollois left Paris for a senior role in the corps of engineers. At this stage, Jomard was very much working alone on the publication. 67  Jean-François Champollion, « Note sur deux planches du t. V (Antiquités) de la Description de l’Égypte », Bulletin des sciences historique (Férussac), t. VII, janvier 1827, pp. 44–49. Champollion’s dismissive reference is to the work of Abbê Noël-Antoine Pluche (1688–1761) and that of the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680).

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orientalist he had met in Florence. A few months later, in January 1829, M. Dacier read to the members of the Academy the following text from a letter he had received from Champollion: “Our alphabet is good; it applies with equal success to the Egyptian monuments from Roman times and the time of the Ptolemies, and what is of much greater interest, to the inscriptions on all temples, palaces, and tombs of the Pharaonic era.”68 This success notwithstanding, an entry to the Academy, remained a problem, a blatant demonstration of the weight of “politics of Academia”, and possibly to the talent of Jomard in this area. Champollion failed to be elected twice, in December 1824 and again in March 1829; he was finally made member in May 1830 following a reorganisation of the institution that opened up six vacancies at once. In 1831, Louis Philippe created for him the chair of archaeology at the Collège de France. Jean-François Champollion died in March 1832 at the age of 41.69 Jomard was defeated in his debate with Champollion. Not one of his fellow égyptiens had come to his defence publicly when Champollion attacked the tables of the hieroglyphs. One may assume Jollois, Fourier, Dubois-Aimé and others understood very well the work could not be defended. Jomard never published the promised essay on the hieroglyphs, and hardly anything else that pertained to ancient Egypt. His focus on things Egyptian turned now to contemporary Egypt. He corresponded with the French that worked in Mehmet Ali’s administration; he directed the école égyptienne de Paris, a preparatory school for Egyptian students, sent by the ruler to be trained in France’s institutions of higher education. Jomard continued to be involved in the education schemes of all these students, many of whom formed the Egyptian elite of the nineteenth century. Jomard wrote about Mehmet Ali and his reforms and defended him against his French critics with almost the same zeal he had defended the Description of Egypt before.

 J.F. Champollion, Lettres et journaux écrits pendant le voyage d’Égypte (p. 141). Jomard’s biographer, Laissus, notes that Champollion praised the exact descriptions and representations of Jollois and de Villiers, but that he never, to the end, mentioned Jomard or his work in a positive manner. 69  Champollion’s second attempt to enter the Academy was made from Egypt. The failure was all the more surprising for it happened shortly after the abovementioned letter was read and received with much acclaim. Champollion wrote his brother, he would never attempt to enter the Academy again. 68

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He remained an antiquarian to the end. His last published work was titled “Methodical Classification of Products of non-European Industry, or Objects from distant Voyages, followed by a plan for Classification of a complete Ethnographic Collection”. He believed, so he wrote, this classification would provide a way to understand the otherwise silent histories of people who did not leave behind them written records.70 Jomard died on September 23, 1862, at the age of 85. He was the last of the égyptiens of year VI of the Revolution.

70  The work was first presented on April 14, 1862, at the Société d’ethnographie américaine et orientale, a society founded in May 1859 and of which Jomard was one of six vice presidents. The lecture was published in revue orientale et américaine and an extract was published with the same title in Paris, by Challamel ainé éditeur, Libraire de la société d’ethnographie, 1862. Many of the categories Jomard suggested resemble those he had used in the Tableau méthodique des hierogglyphs.

CHAPTER 11

Conclusion

The Description of Egypt, a scholarly product of a colonial endeavour of the end of the eighteenth century, was fully published in 1829. It was created at a time of transformation in political and economic relationships, in ways of thinking about the world, and in ways of studying it. The history of its making is also a history of the individuals who had created it. These individuals came into their own in France of the Revolution, and many of them were students of institutions that were created after the fall of Robespierre. Their contributions to the work offer an opportunity to look at the ways these individuals understood and interpreted the ideas of their time and those of some of the eighteenth-century enlightenment thinkers. It was a work that was not as scholarly innovative as its creators believed it to be, and it was certainly less influential than they hoped. Edmé-­ François Jomard, its dedicated and committed editor, was the one who had brought the publication to completion against all odds; he had also contributed to the perception of the work as scholarly irrelevant. The abundance of material about the work and the process of its publication provides the historian with an opportunity to extend the inquiry well beyond the case study itself. It offers a glimpse into a moment in the history of France that is often overshadowed by the dramatic events that preceded it and those that followed. It also demonstrates the complex connections between politics and scholarship. We may point to the rise or demise of individuals, governments and constitutions and date them © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Sarfatti, The Description of Egypt from Napoleon to Champollion, War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15606-9_11

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clearly, and we may also find those who support or oppose them. However, ideas about the world and about ways of studying it are not as clear-cut. As mentioned throughout this book, many of the men who contributed to the Description of Egypt grew up in the 1790s, and many of them believed in universal equality and liberty; they also believed that these ideals should be achieved through education and protected by political institutions. This was the spirit of the Idéologues, and this was the perspective through which many of the contributors looked at the Egyptian society around them, and the perspective that dictated their view of the colonial project in general: a belief in the ability to transform man and society, to regenerate society by way of education and good governance that was the interpretation of Enlightenment ideas by the Idéologues and the birth of the mission civilisatrice. Jean-Luc Chappey argued that after Thermidor, these thinkers extended their claims beyond the realm of the sciences to that of politics. They believed the approach of the Science of Man was one that can defend the Republican project from the excesses of the Revolution.1 Chappey wrote that the prominence of the project after Thermidor was short-lived. He argued that the reorganization of knowledge by Napoleon Bonaparte, the closing down of the Class of Moral and Politics of the National Institute— the institutional platform for the General Science of Man—in January 1803, was more than a step towards professionalisation and specialisation of the world of knowledge; it also signalled a break with the Republican political project. Science’s role under the concentrated authority of Bonaparte was restricted to narrow professional fields, thus making a distinction between power and knowledge. Chappey makes a compelling argument but the lines he draws and the political affiliations he portrays are too neat. The Description of Egypt is a demonstration of the ongoing intellectual influence of concepts that were at the centre of the General Science of Man. These concepts existed in the accounts of Chabrol de Volvic on contemporary Egyptian society. But Chabrol de Volvic, the able administrator under Bonaparte and the Bourbon Restoration, did not express his views only in the Description. His administrative projects testify to the enduring belief of this declared 1  Jean-Luc Chappey, « De la science de l’homme aux sciences humaines: enjeux politiques d’une configuration de savoir (1770–1808) », Revue d’Histoire des Sciences Humaines, 2006, 15, 43–68.

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royalist in human perfectibility by way of education, economic improvement and law, or in a word, by way of politics. Chabrol de Volvic practiced (and stated throughout his works) the view that careful observation and systematic gathering of facts were a source for social analysis on the base of which political decisions should be taken, and to the end, he continued to believe in the connections between the improvement of man’s circumstances and social stability. His case offers a more complex configuration of the connections between world views and political affiliations. A close scrutiny of others, more radically affiliated colleagues, like Joseph Fourier and Dubois Aimé, demonstrate similar attitudes. Edmé-­ François Jomard was a staunch believer in the need to expand free public education from a young age. Aware of the costs of such an expansion, he promoted the mutual education system as a way to overcome these expenses. Chabrol de Volvic, the prefect of the Seine until 1830, opened many such schools in Paris at the time of Bonaparte, but also during the Restoration despite heavy criticism from fellow royalists. Jomard’s École égyptienne de Paris mentioned before, the educational project for students of the Egyptian elite that persisted in the years 1826–1835 was a product of this same spirit. Many of the former égyptiens participated mostly as examiners. The Description of Egypt was a scholarly project that was created by the very men who had come to Egypt to assist in that country’s colonisation; it was funded by the polity that designed it and continued and designed other colonial endeavours. But it was also something else. It was written by a group of which many were attentive to Egypt, and their contributions in texts and in images are a demonstration of the ways Egypt’s complexities often resisted the efforts to categorise it and shaped the scholarly project. But the project is also evidence of unintended consequences of historical events. The 1798 invasion of Egypt was conceived as a progressive colonial endeavour by members of the French political and intellectual elite of the time. It turned into an occupation, often more brutal than enlightened, and it made Egypt into one of the sites in which the British and French sometimes fought, sometimes agreed, over colonial control and exploitation. The scholarly product, a result of careful and respectful recording of Egypt’s ancient past by the members of the Commission of Arts and Sciences, increased the interest in those sites and monuments and brought about their unscrupulous looting and often complete

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devastation. The scholarly work gave Egyptology a thrust so forceful that it was left behind, lingering in its irrelevance. The scientific project of the Égyptiens de l’an VI, carried out by the teachers and graduates of the most advanced school in Europe, turned into a monument of erudition of the eighteenth century, possibly a last effort to understand Egypt’s ancient past before the deciphering of the hieroglyphs. Arnaldo Momigliano had pointed to the possible afterlife of antiquarianism within what he called the cultural sciences. The Description of Egypt, and the well-documented editorial process of its production, forms a rich repository to this possible afterlife and to the non-linear process by which this transformation of antiquarianism occurred. At the beginning of the nineteenth-century archaeology, anthropology and sociology were not yet recognised and institutionalised academic disciplines; Egyptology was yet to emerge and geography was being transformed. The volumes of the Description of Egypt hold testimony to this transformative period in the history of knowledge and to the contribution of antiquarian methods to the social sciences. It is also testimony to the non-linear process which culminated in these areas of study emerging as full-fledged academic disciplines.

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Index1

A Ancien régime, 9, 25, 67, 129 Antilles, the, 48, 48n9, 49, 51, 59, 67, 67n71 See also Caribbeans; Saint Domingue; West Indies Antiquarian methods, 12, 13n16, 86, 212, 213, 272, 280 tradition, 12, 13, 103, 104, 174 Archaeology, 12, 17, 152, 153, 166–175, 275, 280 B Balzac, Charles-Louis, 161, 162, 179, 179n79, 180 Baxandall, Michael, 143, 144n52 Bedouins, 215–250 Bernard, Samuel, 92–94, 93n63, 93n64, 100, 256, 256n14, 257

Berthollet, Claude Louis, 23, 76n17, 83, 84, 90, 91, 91n55, 96, 129, 130, 142, 168n54, 176n74, 216, 217, 233n55, 256, 274, 274n66 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 1–4, 6, 8, 9n10, 12, 15, 16, 19–43, 45, 46, 56–59, 58n41, 58n42, 61, 61n52, 61n54, 63, 64n63, 65–68, 66n67, 66n68, 68n73, 71, 72, 75n13, 76, 77, 79, 80, 80n26, 82–84, 87, 90, 91, 94, 94n65, 95, 97–99, 110, 111, 128n5, 130n10, 142, 150, 150n7, 160, 161, 168, 168n54, 176, 176n74, 204, 207n60, 215–217, 230, 230n45, 232, 233n56, 234, 235, 237, 239, 241, 252n2, 261, 267n46, 279 See also Emperor, the Boullée, Étienne Louis, 134n24, 149, 150, 150n7, 156, 165, 171, 188

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Sarfatti, The Description of Egypt from Napoleon to Champollion, War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15606-9

291

292 

INDEX

C Cabanis, Pierre, 15, 238, 242, 242n79, 245, 246 Caffarelli du Falga, Louis-Marie-­ Joseph Maximilian, 8, 11, 41, 41n73, 41n74, 42, 65, 65n65, 79, 80, 129, 191 Cairo Institute, 41n73, 42, 73, 75, 75n13, 76, 76n19, 79, 80n27, 84, 87, 90, 91, 110, 168n54, 191, 256 See also Egyptian Institute Caribbeans, 2, 24, 35, 48n9, 51 See also Antilles, the; Saint Domingue; West Indies Chabrol de Volvic, Gilbert Joseph Gaspard, 215, 232–250, 279 Champollion-Figeac, Jacques Joseph, 210n72, 270, 272 Champollion, Jean François, 97, 123, 251–276 Chaptal, Jean Antoine, 84, 85, 87, 90, 94, 130, 143, 234, 236n66, 240, 241, 259 Chassebœuf , Constantin François de, vii, 15, 20–25, 22n12, 23n13, 48n8, 49, 50, 68, 81, 99n82, 107, 112, 213, 213n87, 214, 214n90, 223, 223n25, 238n71, 240n73, 242–246, 242n78, 243n84, 244n87, 245n91, 248, 248n100, 249, 253, 254n6 Chassebœuf , Constantin François de, comte de Volney, 15, 20, 214, 242, 243, 254n6 See also Volney Chefs de brigade, 139, 140, 140n38, 142, 168, 234, 242n78, 245 Class of Moral and Political Sciences, 15, 46, 60, 64, 72, 82, 115, 130, 238 See also National Institute

Cole, Juan, 68, 69 Commission of Arts and Sciences, see Committee of Arts and Sciences Committee of Arts and Sciences, 1, 9, 23, 66n68, 67n71, 71, 80n27, 82, 84, 87, 88, 107, 110, 111, 126n3, 152n15, 165, 167, 227, 255, 258, 279 Committee of Public Safety, 51, 61n52, 130, 138, 158 Condorcet, Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de, 14, 50, 51, 51n19, 129, 129n9 Conté, Nicolas Jacques, 83, 83n33, 90, 91, 130n11, 143, 157–160, 177, 185n92, 186n95, 258 Corsica, 5, 21, 23–33, 23n14, 36, 39, 40, 40n71, 48, 48n8, 74n10, 117 Costaz, Louis, 76, 85, 88, 92, 92n60, 142 Courier de l’Égypte, 73n5, 77, 77n20 D D’Alembert, Jean le Rond, 11, 197, 198, 198n37, 199n41, 212n82, 225n28 D’Anville, Jean Baptiste Bourguignon, 74, 96, 96n74, 116, 116n38, 119, 200, 204 Declaration of the Rights of Man, the, 45 Denon, Vivant, 79n24, 89, 90, 90n53, 95, 95n69, 110–113, 119, 150, 176n71, 176n73, 177, 183, 186n94, 187n96, 206, 256n13, 269 Desgenettes, René Nicolas Duffriche, 65, 65n65, 74, 75, 75n13, 76n18, 79n24, 239, 239n72 Devilliers, Édouard du Terrage, 73, 73n6, 76, 89n50, 92, 109, 112,

 INDEX 

154n20, 163, 168, 186, 187, 190, 202–214, 220, 221, 230n47, 262, 275n68 Diderot, Denis, 34n49, 42, 50, 50n16, 69, 158n27, 182, 183, 225, 232 Directory, 5, 9n10, 16, 19, 40, 43, 46, 51, 53, 56, 57, 58n42, 59, 60n47, 60n48, 61n54, 64n63, 65–68, 66n67, 68n73, 176, 176n71 Dubois-Aimé, Jean-Marie Joseph, 73, 74, 215–226, 218n7, 218n8, 219n10, 229–232, 230n47, 246, 275, 279 Dutetre, Andre, 76, 76n19, 169n56, 175–188 E Ecole normale, 23, 131, 132n19, 133, 137, 138, 140, 142, 242n78, 243n84, 245, 246 Ecole Polytechnique, see Polytechnic School Editorial committee, 7, 10, 77n20, 83, 85, 86, 88–102, 89n45, 108, 110, 113n30, 119, 126n3, 150n8, 156, 157, 166, 174n66, 177, 179, 180, 217, 220, 221, 233, 252, 261 Egyptian Institute, see Cairo Institute Égyptiens, 13, 14, 83, 86, 91–93, 100, 101, 157, 176n73, 218, 233, 252, 253, 255n10, 262, 271, 275, 276, 279 Emperor, the, 13, 22, 26, 65, 94, 96–98, 99n83, 113n30, 142n48, 217, 218, 232, 235 See also Bonaparte, Napoleon

293

Encyclopédie, 11, 158, 197, 198n37, 225, 225n28 Engineer drawing, 168 geographical, 13, 74, 74n10, 74n12, 77, 90, 96, 113–123, 144, 191, 194 military, 41n73, 106, 129, 133, 135 of roads and bridges, 93, 144, 250 training, 125–145, 206, 213 Érudit, 11, 37, 212n82, 213 Eschasseriaux, Joseph (ainé), 41, 41n74, 42, 61–63, 61n52, 61n53, 65 F Fourcroy, Antoine François de, 82–84, 82n30, 130, 139, 139n37, 143, 213, 213n88 Fourier, Joseph, 7, 8, 23, 63, 76, 77, 79n24, 80n27, 85, 86n39, 88, 89, 89n45, 92, 97, 97n77, 99, 102, 105, 108n15, 112, 126, 127, 142, 147, 150, 150n8, 165, 166, 190n3, 236n66, 245, 252–254, 256, 257n15, 257n17, 258, 262, 275, 279 G Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Etienne, 77, 77n21, 106 Girard, Pierre-Simon, 73, 74, 77, 77n20, 79n24, 168, 177, 221, 221n17 H Herodotus, 116, 123, 126, 190–202, 205, 210, 210n72, 211, 214, 214n90, 256

294 

INDEX

Hieroglyphs, 74, 123, 164, 172, 190, 252, 252n2, 258–261, 261n30, 264–266, 265n41, 265n42, 272–275, 273n65, 280 Histoire de deux Indes, 28, 32n40, 33–43, 48n9, 50, 63, 64, 69, 79 See also Raynal, Guillaume Thomas François, Abbé I Ideology, 128n5, 129, 141, 224 See also Idêologues Idêologues, 14–17, 64, 242n79, 245, 278 Institute of Egypt, 8–9, 71 J Jacotin, Pierre, 74, 74n10, 74n11, 77, 77n20, 90, 96, 96n74, 97, 97n77, 117, 118, 118n43 Jollois, Prosper, 73, 74n9, 76, 83, 89n50, 92, 95, 95n71, 100, 109, 112, 126n3, 140n38, 150n8, 154n20, 163, 163n40, 165n43, 167–168, 169n56, 170n58, 174n66, 182n82, 187, 187n96, 190, 202–214, 205n57, 205n58, 206n59, 207n60, 207n62, 211n76, 212n81, 221, 261n30, 262, 274, 274n66, 275, 275n68 Jomard, Edmé François, 63, 74, 74n12, 83, 90–96, 91n55, 91n59, 93n63, 98, 100, 102, 105, 109–111, 109n19, 115, 117–123, 121n47, 128n5, 140n38, 159, 164, 165, 165n42, 171, 172, 174n66, 177, 179n79, 188, 190–202, 193n10, 193n12, 196n28, 208, 214, 219n10, 220–222, 224, 233, 233n54, 248n99, 251–277,

255n10, 259n21, 262n33, 263n36, 263n37, 265n41, 265n42, 266n43, 267n45, 267n46, 268n50, 269n51, 270n54, 271n57, 272n60, 272n61, 273n65, 274n66, 275n68, 276n70, 279 K Kléber, Jean-Baptiste, 41n73, 66, 66n68, 67, 72, 76–78, 78n22, 177 L La Décade égyptienne, 65n65, 91, 189 La Décade Philosophique, 15, 16, 65 Lancret, Michel-Ange, 83, 91, 95, 120, 140n38, 166, 167, 170n58, 180, 181, 181n81, 234n58, 252 Larcher, Pierre-Henri, 195–201, 195n20, 195n22, 195n24, 196n25, 196n27, 198n37, 199n40, 199n41, 200n42, 201n44, 214, 214n90, 257 Lebreton/Le Breton, Joachim, 63, 64, 64n63 Le Moniteur (universel), 63, 256n14 Le Père, Gratien, 163n39, 172n65, 221n16 Le Père, Jean Baptiste, 142 Lokke, Carl Ludwig, 62n56, 68n73 M Marcel, Jean Jacques, 94, 189, 189n1, 258 Menou, Jacques François (Abdallah), 12, 41, 41n73, 42, 66, 66n69, 67, 78, 78n23

 INDEX 

Michaelis, Johann David, 87, 226–228, 226n34, 227n36, 227n37, 228n40, 228n41, 229n43, 230, 239 Momigliano, Arnaldo, 11, 12, 103, 104, 104n2, 191, 191n5, 203, 203n50, 212, 220n13, 280 Monge, Gaspard, 12, 14, 23, 41, 41n73, 41n74, 61, 61n53, 65, 75n13, 76n17, 79n24, 83, 83n33, 84, 90, 91n55, 121, 121n49, 122, 128–133, 128n5, 129n6, 131n13, 131n14, 131n15, 132n19, 135–137, 139n37, 140–142, 140n40, 140n41, 142n49, 144, 151, 151n11, 158, 168, 168n54, 174, 174n66 N National Institute, see Class of Moral and Political Sciences Niebuhr, Carsten, 81, 87n42, 227–230, 227n36, 227n37, 229n43, 249 Nouet, Nicolas-Antoine, 168, 168n54, 169n55 O Orientalism, 6–8, 21, 45, 249 See also Said, Edward Orientalist, 6, 7, 10, 12, 17, 68, 72, 79n24, 83, 86, 86n37, 87, 94, 147, 157, 161, 187, 187n97, 189, 209, 226, 249, 252, 252n2, 253, 254n6, 275 Ottoman Empire, 48, 48n8, 57, 58, 58n43, 81

295

P Philosophes, 11, 12, 37, 65, 69, 152n13, 191, 197, 198n37, 200n42, 213, 214, 216–250, 242n80 Piranesi, Giovanni Battista/ Giambattista, 97, 137, 151–153, 151n11, 152n13, 152n15, 153n16, 153n17, 156, 167, 167n50, 167n51, 167n52, 168, 168n53, 171, 171n61, 172, 174, 174n66, 182, 183 Pococke, Richard, 81, 86, 107, 107n12, 108, 108n15, 126, 126n1, 127, 207n62, 209, 212, 212n83 Polytechnic School curriculum, 14, 131 graduates, 11, 14, 41, 41n73, 71, 74n12, 83, 84, 109, 117, 120, 123, 142–144, 156, 163, 166–175, 205, 215, 242, 256 history of, 136–142 network, 143 See also Ecole Polytechnique Protain, Jean Constantin, 161, 161n36, 162 R Raynal, Guillaume Thomas François Abbé, see Histoire de deux Indes Robert, Huber, 119, 182–184 Robespierre, Maximilien, 17, 46, 51n20, 64, 65, 128n5, 130, 277 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 25, 28–30, 39, 80, 141, 141n46, 218

296 

INDEX

S Sacy, Antoine Isaac Sylvestre de, 253, 254, 254n6, 259, 259n22, 260, 264 Said, Edward, 6–8, 17, 21, 22, 45, 244n87, 249 See also Orientalism Saint Domingue, 46n4, 51, 67, 161 See also Antilles, the; Caribbeans; West Indies Sheikh Hardy, 125, 126n1 Slave labour, 41, 50, 51, 55, 62, 68 trade, 50, 55, 60, 61 Slavery, 35, 42, 50, 50n16, 55, 56 abolition of, 5, 45, 55n33, 60n48, 69 T Talleyrand-Périgord, Charles Maurice de, 46 Tott, François, baron de, 21, 31, 43, 49, 49n11, 58n43, 81 Travel Literature, 73, 75, 104–110, 112, 120, 127, 137, 190n4

V Volney, see Chassebœuf, Constantin François de Voltaire, 11, 28, 30, 79, 80, 80n26, 106, 121, 141n46, 190, 195–200, 195n22, 195n23, 195n24, 196n25, 198n37, 199n40, 199n41, 200n42, 214, 220, 220n14, 222, 225, 243 W Wadström, Carl Bernhard, 50, 55, 55n33, 56, 60–62, 60n48, 62n56, 81 West Indies, 46, 47, 51, 56, 66, 67 See also Antilles, the; Caribbeans; Saint Domingue Winckelmann, Joachim, 148–152, 149n5, 269, 270 Z Zodiac, 74, 89n50, 112, 256–258, 256n13, 257n16, 262