Civilisations: First Contact The Cult of Progress by David Olusoga

Author:David Olusoga [Olusoga, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile Books
Published: 2018-04-13T04:00:00+00:00

38. The Description of Egypt was intended to be encyclopaedic, a drawing-together of all knowledge on contemporary Islamic Egypt as well as the ancient pharaonic land. Here, a weaver's workshop from a section on the arts and trades.

None of the ambitions that had led the French to Egypt were realised, although there are direct links between the expedition and the later construction of the Suez Canal. But there were real long-term effects of Napoleon’s invasion for France, Egypt and the wider Islamic world. The engraver Vivant Denon had spent his time in Egypt drafting sketches of the sites of upper Egypt and the Nile valley. In 1802 he published his book Voyage dans la basse et la haute Égypte pendant les campagnes du Général Bonaparte, which included drawings of the architecture of ancient Egypt along with engravings of the designs of the temples and tombs of the pharaohs. The book became a source of the so-called Egyptomania that took hold in early nineteenth-century France and spread to other nations, particularly the United States.

Between 1809 and 1820 the French government published the twenty-four volumes of Description de l’Égypte, an archetypical Enlightenment project to catalogue, classify and record the architecture, ancient monuments, natural history and culture of Egypt, ancient and modern. The enormous and encyclopaedic Description de l’Égypte was hugely influential in Europe. Its impact was felt in French art and architecture. Egyptian motifs became a feature of the so-called ‘Empire style’ of French decoration and architecture. It also perpetuated the portrayal of Napoleon’s invasion as an act of cultural benevolence, down-playing the violence, abuses and resistance. The popularity of Description de l’Égypte further conspired to fix Egypt within the western gaze as a place of conquest, or ‘an appendage to Europe’, as the influential theorist Edward Said wrote.9

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