Discovery at Rosetta

Jonathan Downs

Description

• A history of the French occupation of Egypt (1798-1801), the scholars and scientists who accompanied the expedition, and the beginnings of Egyptomania, which took the world by storm in the early nineteenth century.


• Contains a new foreword and material outlining the contribution of the little-known Arabic scholars from the Golden Age of Islam – scientists and visionaries who nearly cracked the code of hieroglyphs 1000 years before Champollion, among them Ibn Washiyya, Dhu al-Nun and Ibn Maslama, still unknown in the west.


• Focuses on the story of the inscription found at Rosetta in the Nile Delta which held the key to deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs—the Rosetta Stone.


• Written for the general reader interested in one of the most iconic and important objects to have survived from the ancient world.

Sujets

• Islam
• Europe
• France
• 1922
• George Herbert (Lord Carnarvon)
• Science
• Obermodern-Zutzendorf
• Social
• History
• Ancient
• Ancient Egypt
• Middle East
• North Africa
• Tutankhamun
• Napoleonic Wars
• Ancient history
• Languages of Africa
• Napoleon I
• Egyptology
• 18 (number)
• Abu Simbel temples
• Earl of Carnarvon
• Modern history
• Egypt
• Archaeology
• Egipto
• Tutankamon
• George Herbert de Carnarvon
• Abu simbel
• Histoire
• Modern
• 20th Century
• African Languages
• Foreign Language Study

Informations

• Publié par: The American University in Cairo Press
• Date de parution: 30 mars 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781617979699
• Langue: English

Extrait

Discovery at Rosetta
Discovery
at
Rosetta


Jonathan Downs










The American University in Cairo Press Cairo New York
This electronic edition published in 2020 by The American University in Cairo Press 113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt One Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10020 www.aucpress.com

Copyright © 2020 by Jonathan Downs

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN 978 977 416 9267 eISBN 978 161 797 9699

Version 1
For my father
Contents




Foreword to the Second Edition
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Maps

Introduction The Sword and the Stone
Chapter 1. Egypt: The Lost World
Chapter 2. A Raging Continent: Europe at War
Chapter 3. Triumph and Disaster
Chapter 4. The New Colony
Chapter 5. The Stone – July, 1799
Chapter 6. Assassins and the Pig-General
Chapter 7. Castle Keep
Chapter 8. Stone Cold in Alex
Chapter 9. Scavenger Hunt
Chapter 10. Splendid Plunder
Chapter 11. The Key
Epilogue A Proud Trophy
Appendix 1. The Inscription on the Rosetta Stone: The Decree of Memphis
Appendix 2. Recovery of the Rosetta Stone: The Account of Major-General Turner
Appendix 3. Recovery of the Rosetta Stone: The Account of E. D. Clarke, LL.D.
Appendix 4. Wybourn’s List of Antiquities
Appendix 5. The Work of Arabic Scholars and the Translation of Hieroglyphs

Notes
Bibliography
Foreword to the Second Edition




This second edition, published by the American University in Cairo Press, includes a new appendix – an overview of the medieval Arabic scholars who attempted to decipher hieroglyphics. Too often it is forgotten that the Rosetta Stone is an Egyptian and not European artefact, its roots deriving from a region that has undergone dramatic cultural change over the centuries since Rome – the most extensive of which is arguably the advent of Islam.
The Golden Age of Islam, in the early Middle Ages, brought with it a burst of scientific curiosity and experiment similar to that of Europe’s Enlightenment. Islamic scholars of the day by no means ignored the all too evident remnants of ancient Egypt, as has been largely supposed by many European historians. For some time, I have wanted to acknowledge the many medieval Arabic scholars who gained ground in the translation of hieroglyphics, but whose efforts are rarely mentioned in popular English-language commentaries of the great nineteenth-century decipherment.
One of the reasons for writing the original book was to dispel myths, clarify a confused chronology and add the names of soldiers, sailors and scholars forgotten by popular histories – hence the inclusion of the first English translation of the Memphis Decree, by Stephen Weston, and the work done by the Philomathean Society of Pennsylvania. Perhaps now, in the second edition, with the inclusion of such thinkers as Dhu al-Nun and Ibn Wahshiyah, the appendices are more complete. There has been some contention regarding the impact of their work on Champollion’s efforts, as there was once about Young’s, but this is not surprising: as it was in the nineteenth century, any investigation or criticism of Champollion’s efforts is often interpreted as nationalist or culturalist bias; and, given our sensitive global situation, any research into the Arabic scholars can be seen as religiously or politically motivated – equally, its dismissal also an example of cultural prejudice. I would leave it to specialists to draw their own conclusions, but hope these additions will point researchers in the right direction for further investigation.
Since writing the first edition, Egypt underwent tumultuous revolution during the Arab Spring of 2011. There could be no greater indication of the dedication of the Egyptian people to their cultural heritage than their selfless defence of archaeological sites across Egypt, including the Alexandria Library (the Bibliotheca Alexandrina), Cairo Museum and French Institut d’Égypte , even in the face of riot and armed violence. Their actions, I hope, will serve as reminders of popular feeling as the repatriation debate continues. The two-hundredth anniversary of Champollion’s decipherment of hieroglyphics and the Rosetta Stone provides an ideal opportunity to revisit the argument, and perhaps find a solution acceptable to all.
Acknowledgements




I would like to thank a number of people for their considerable assistance with the research of the first and second editions of this book: Dr. Patricia Usick, honorary archivist, and Dr. Richard Parkinson, keeper of the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum; Adrian James, chief librarian at the Society of Antiquaries of London; Dr. Frances Willmoth at the library of Jesus College, Cambridge; Dr. Brian Muhs at the University of Leiden; the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University and the Philomathean Society of the University of Pennsylvania.
From France, I would like to thank Yves Laissus, Roland Pintat of the Bibliothèque nationale , and Marie-Claire Cuvillier, Secrétaire générale of the Société française d’égyptologie , who provided generous support, research and access to the work of the esteemed Jean Leclant. Thanks also to former editor Peter Furtado, Charlotte Crow and Sheila Corr of History Today magazine in 2006–2008, and current editor Paul Lay; Rob Gray, House and Collections Manager of the National Trust property Kingston Lacy; Middle-East specialist Dr Manouchehr Moshtagh Khorasani; historian John Norris; Trudy Foster of the Jersey Heritage Trust; L/Sgt Gorman of the Scots Guards archives; authors Paul Strathern, Dorothy King, William St. Clair; Dr David Dalby; and The Egyptian Society of South Africa for their interest and support.
Illustrations




1. The Battle of the Pyramids, 21 July 1798, from Denon: Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte .
2. Murad Bey, the Mameluke leader, from volume two of Description de l’Égypte
3. Nicolas-Jacques Conté (1755–1805), directeur des méchaniciens , engineer, aeronaut and inventor.
4. Gaspard Monge (1746–1818), mathematician, engineer, scientist, and co-founder of the Institut d’Égypte .
5. Édouard de Villiers du Terrage (1780–1855), one of the youngest members of the Commission.
6. Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772–1844), the naturalist and zoologist whose defiance at Alexandria saved the savants’ personal collections.
7. ‘A View of Rosetta’ from Denon: Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte .
8. The Cockpit, Battle of the Nile by William Heath.
9. The hieroglyphic and demotic inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone.
10. The Rosetta Stone in its current setting at the British Museum.
11. The list of then Lt T. Marmaduke Wybourn, RM, a bill of lading for HMS Madras , listing the Egyptian antiquities taken from the French and bound for the British Museum.
12. The Philae obelisk, obtained by William John Bankes in 1815, sited on the front lawn of his estate in Dorset, England.
13. Edward Daniel Clarke, LLD, (1769–1822), Cambridge scholar, mineralogist, antiquary and explorer.
14. Sir Thomas Young (1773–1829), polymath and pioneer contributor to the decipherment of hieroglyphs.
15. Jean-François Champollion (1790–1832), Egyptologist and linguistic genius, the principal decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphs.
From an original map by savant Édouard de Villiers du Terrage, showing the cuts through the Alexandrine Canal, which flooded the once dried-up plain of Lake Maryut with the waters of Lake Maadieh, isolating French Alexandria during the Anglo-Turkish siege of 1801.
Introduction
The Sword and the Stone




Somewhere out to sea, bearing down furiously upon the sweltering coast of Egypt, came an invasion fleet sent by the greatest power in the East. Crammed aboard the plunging decks, clutching musket, pistol and razor-sharp yataghan sword, were 15,000 Ottoman Turks bent on revenge: after Bonaparte’s slaughter of their countrymen in Palestine and his desecration of the Holy Land, they were coming for French blood.
The attack due at any moment, chef de brigade Dhautpoul, battalion commander of the engineers in the Delta, ordered Lieutenant Pierre François Xavier Bouchard to repair and reinforce the crumbling outer wall of Fort Julien, on the shores of the west branch of the Nile. The ancient stone castle stood just to the north of a small, palm-lined port called Al-Rashid – known to Europeans as ‘Rosetta’. As others anxiously scanned the horizon for signs of Turkish sail, Bouchard hurriedly organized his platoon and labourers. Little did he realize, in the midst of their frantic efforts, that he was about to make an extraordinary discovery – a discovery that would open the floodgates of history, reviving the gods of the Nile after two thousand years of their patient, megalithic meditation. Bouchard’s engineers would unwittingly provide the key to the greatest mystery of this most ancient of antique lands.
Cooled by the sea breeze and tormented by the tempting blue waters of the Nile before them, the sweating engineers waited, ready on the guy-ropes. Bouchard gave the order: the ropes tautened and the sl