The birth of Egyptology under Napoleon

Napoleon was fascinated by Alexander the Great, and for that reason, he deserves some attention as France celebrated the bicentenary of Napoleon’s death on 5 May 2021. 

The young general launched his Egyptian campaign in 1798 in order to cut off the British route to India. At the same time, he intended to free Egypt from the Mameluk warriors. With his fleet, he landed in Alexandria and fought his way inland to Cairo and the Pyramids. Unfortunately for him, the British Royal Navy, under the command of Lord Nelson, sunk the French fleet on the Nile, and Napoleon was forced to return to France, leaving his troops behind – something Alexander would never have done! 

However, Napoleon somehow managed to turn his disastrous campaign into a cultural and scientific victory. Egypt, in those days, had little or no interest in the legacy of the great pharaohs from antiquity, which they dismissed as pagan. 

Inspired by Alexander, Napoleon added a large number of scientists, engineers, artists, cartographers, botanists, mathematicians, and art connoisseurs to his army. History does not remember most of their names, but it is worth mentioning, for instance, Mathieu de Lesseps, whose son Ferdinand built the Suez Canal half a century later (see also: The canal of the pharaohs, the Suez Canal of antiquity). Napoleon founded the Institute of Egypt with four distinctive sections: Mathematics, Physics, Political Economy, and Literature and Arts. 

Napoleon’s scientific expedition made extensive studies of the pyramids and temples of Egypt and in particular of the statues of Pharaohs like the head of Amenhotep III, which can still be admired in the Louvre today. At that time, a slab of black basalt was discovered at Rosetta, some 35 miles from Alexandria, displaying a trilingual inscription in Greek, Demotic and Egyptian hieroglyphs. 

After the Battle of the Nile in 1798, Napoleon lost most of the excavated objects to the British, including the Stone of Rosetta and the Sarcophagus of Nectanebo II, which, among other items, ended up in the British Museum. 

Importantly, the French Egyptologist Jean-Francois Champollion deciphered the hieroglyphs using the Greek text on the Stone of Rosetta to guide him. This was a huge step forward in discovering and studying the culture of ancient Egypt. Interestingly, the inscription on the stone honors Ptolemy V, who lived from 210-180 BC. 

During his extensive campaigns, Napoleon didn’t shy away from acquiring whatever artifact pleased him or was of some value. Most of his collection ended up at the Louvre and included, for instance, the Horses of San Marco in Venice (which originally stood in the Hippodrome of Constantinople) and one splendid frieze from the Parthenon in Athens.