Vivant Denon's Re-discovery of Ancient Egypt. Part 1

In 1798 Napoleon was still a young man, just 28 years old, but the volatile times of the French Revolution had already granted him more action than most people get in the course of a long life. His most recent adventure – the momentous Campaign in Italy – had brought the Austrians to their knees, crushing the First Coalition. It had also turned Napoleon into a national star and, enjoying his new prestige, he played a central role in the French government’s plans to subdue England, France’s only remaining enemy with superpower status. An invasion of the British Isles was planned but cancelled due to England’s unchallengeable supremacy at sea. Instead the old colonial dream of a French Egypt gained ground: it would more than compensate for the recent losses in the West Indies and would moreover sever England’s trade with the east, forcing her to sign a favourable peace treaty. What had at first been wishful thinking thus changed into an essential plan for French interests.

It was a remarkable project by all accounts; bold and romantic, it conjured up images of Alexander the Great’s campaigns in the mystical East. To begin with the project seemed blessed by Napoleon’s legendary good luck: Malta fell and there was no sign of the English fleet. But scarcely had the army made it safely to Egypt’s shores before Admiral Nelson decimated the French fleet and with it the army’s lifeline to France. The French were to discover that Egypt was not the dream it had been made out to be. This was not the land of the Ptolemies; it was poor and backward. The Egyptians did not think of the French as the children of the Enlightenment. Instead, they were conservative and unwelcoming. Nor did Turkey acquiesce to French infringement on her territory but rather joined forces with the English. The campaign never evolved into a heroic struggle against overpowering odds. More atrocious acts were committed in Egypt than at any other time in Bonaparte’s career. And if it wasn’t the country’s hostile climate that cut through his ranks it was the plague. Any romantic ideas of the campaign harboured today exist only thanks to the two centuries that have passed, time having distorted reality.

Napoleon set foot on Egyptian soil on 2 July 1798. The Mameluke armed forces were no match for modern French arms, and less than three weeks later on 21 July Napoleon defeated the Mamelukes outside of Cairo in the battle that has gone down in history as the Battle of the Pyramids. There was one Mameluke leader, Murad Bey, who managed to flee the battle unscathed though, and from his refuge in Upper Egypt (south of Cairo) he was to prove a great nuisance to the French occupying. So much so in fact that Napoleon was soon forced to dispatch a punitive expedition of 2,800 men under the command of General Desaix. Still to this day Desaix operations in the Nile valley stand out as textbook examples of shrewd manoeuvres and sound policies towards the local populations.

The campaign’s academic claim was not down to military actions alone though, far from it. What set Desaix's campaign apart were the deeds of one man in particular: Vivant Denon, the scientific expedition’s leading artist who joined Desaix's expedition in November in the hope that the chase would carry him to some of Egypt’s near-forgotten ancient monuments.

The name and location of the ancient sites were still known to the world and so Denon knew where to look for the monuments but when it came to more specific information, such as what the exact function of the temples was or who had built them, he was left wanting. Like every other enthusiast, his knowledge of ancient Egyptian history was restricted by the paltry availability of literature on the subject, most of which was ancient itself. The wealth of hieroglyphic inscriptions was also of little help. The ancient language had fallen into oblivion more than a thousand years earlier in the wake of the fall of the Roman Empire.

Denon's investigations are all the more amazing in light of the difficult circumstances under which they were carried out. He was always on the tail of the marching troops,in the dust of battles and arduous marches, as he undertook the perilous job of surveying temples, pyramids and tombs.

Still, the foundation of Egyptology arguably owes more to Denon than any other individual. When Denon returned to Cairo the following summer, Napoleon was so excited with his work that he commissioned a further two scientific expeditions to the Nile valley. These expeditions produced the ground-breaking work that was to form the backbone of the giant publication, the Description de L’Egypte– still a core text to Egyptologists today.