Napoleon Bonapartes Egyptian Propaganda Campaign

France’s Commission for Arts and Sciences Role in Egyptology

Oct 19, 2009 Pamela Livingston

Revolutionary France's concerns with their arch political and economic rival, England, moved her to consider furthering colonial and strategic opportunities in Egypt.

France’s 1798 expedition to Egypt was possible due to the victorious Italian Campaigns of 1796 and 1797 led by the newly promoted Commander-in-Chief, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 – 1821). A weakened Ottoman Empire (1299 – 1922) drew interest in its vast and strategically placed lands leaving France’s trade routes threatened by the powerful and collusive Catherine the Great of Russia (1729 – 1796) and Joseph II of Austria (1741 – 1790).

Politics and Propaganda

France’s strongest Mediterranean ally was Turkey. Maintaining this relationship in the region was critical as the Ottoman’s weakening hold on Egypt threatened France’s existing Egyptian colonies. The expedition’s multifaceted goals included both the destruction of England via a slow disintegration of her trade through the Suez Canal supported by the colonization of Egypt.

Bonaparte’s Army of the Orient was an expeditionary force 54,000 strong. His retinue included 167 engineers, artists, scientists and journalists named the Commission for Arts and Sciences (Commission des Sciences et Artes d’Egypte). Their purpose was to catalogue Egypt’s wonders and promote their discoveries through Bonaparte’s propaganda machine.

According to Joan DeJean, France developed marketing as we know it during the 1700’s under Louis XIV. Bonaparte was both a student and product of this tool. On Venetian islands he placed Greek and Arabic printing houses while in Egypt he created a postal service for distributing communications. After the defeat of the Mamelukes, presses were installed in Lower Egypt as outlined in The Discovery of Egypt.

Admiral Nelson’s (1758 – 1805) British naval forces cut-off French access to the Mediterranean at Aboukir in the 1798 Battle of the Nile. This set-back, along with Turkish political changes, forced Bonaparte’s remaining resources into Upper Egypt. Although the Battle of the Nile landed the first blow to the ultimately defeated expedition, repositioning forces to the southern sector of Egypt expanded the Commission’s discoveries.

The Commission of Arts and Sciences Publications

The Commission was created specifically for the expedition by the Executive Directoire, Citizen Minister, of France in March of 1798. Led by Claude Louis Berthollet (1748 – 1822), a chemist, and Gaspard Monge (1746 – 1818), a noted mathematician dubbed the father of differential geometry, they recruited from science institutions while artists came primarily from personal contacts. Equipment for this expedition included laboratories, machine shops, libraries, artist supplies and printing presses.

Of the artists on the Commission, Baron Dominique-Vivant Denon (1747 – 1825) stood out for his prolific efforts record Egypt’s monuments at great personal risk. He and his colleagues defied orders requiring they be accompanied by security to record temple architecture. He was the first expedition artist to publish his own work, Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte pendant les campagnes du general Bonaparte in 1802.

Other publications occurred during Bonaparte’s brief occupation period (1798 – 1801) and long after the expedition had returned to France. Courier de l’Egypte was a scientific journal of the expedition and La Decade Egyptienne promoted the overall work of the Commission. Bonaparte initiated the great tome of accomplishments by the Commission in the multi-volume Description l’Egypte. It took twenty-three years to complete.

Egyptology is Born

Years before its publication the English removed Bonaparte from Egypt. The French returned home with as many artifacts and specimens from their journey as possible. Their citizens viewed many of these items at the Commission’s headquarters exhibition space in Paris as well as at the Louvre. The artifacts remaining in Egypt were kept at the Commission’s Institute in Cairo which became the basis for the Cairo Museum.

The prize artifact, The Rosetta Stone, as well as many other outstanding pieces were kept by the British and are primarily housed at the British Museum. Thanks to forethought by members of the Commission, plaster casts of The Rosetta Stone were taken to France becoming the key to Jean Francois Champollion’s translation of hieroglyphics in September of 1822.

Noted by Jean Joseph Fourier (1768 - 1830) of the Ecole Polytechnique, on the birth of Egyptology, “there can be nothing more valuable for the history of the arts than a knowledge of the great models that fired the imagination of the Greeks and helped develop their genius.”

Sources

Beaucour, Fernand; Laissus, Yves; and Orgogozo, Chantal. The Discovery of Egypt: Artists Travellers and Scientists. Paris: Flammarion, 1990.

DeJean, Joan. The Essence of Style. New York: Free Press, 2005.

Lane, Edward William. Description of Egypt. New York: The American University in Cairo Press, 2000.

McClellan, Andrew. Inventing the Louvre: Art, Politics, and the Origins of the Modern Museum in Eighteenth-century Paris. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994.

The copyright of the article Napoleon Bonapartes Egyptian Propaganda Campaign in W European History is owned by Pamela Livingston. Permission to republish Napoleon Bonapartes Egyptian Propaganda Campaign in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Dendura Temple relief, Egypt 2005