The Sahara (17 page)

Arriving in Cairo in September 1797, Hornemann planned to cross the Sahara along the route that the ill-fated Ledyard had planned. While there he continued learning Arabic, becoming proficient enough to become the first of the Association’s men to travel in disguise, as a local trader. In this unremarkable guise of a man from some distant Islamic land, he joined a caravan that was formed to cross the desert. Whether a Christian in disguise or an innocent Muslim trader, there was safety in numbers in the lawless Sahara.

Unfortunately for Hornemann, the caravan’s departure from Cairo for Bornu was delayed because of a local outbreak of plague. Just when the threat of the epidemic passed, events of global importance transpired to thwart his departure as Napoleon invaded Egypt. Without the permission of the de facto authorities, Bornemann’s preparations would come to nothing. Yet, as Jules Verne wrote in his
Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century
, the situation was resolved when Hornemann was presented “to Napoleon Buonaparte [sic], who was then in command of the French forces in Egypt. From him he received a cordial welcome, and Buonaparte placed all the resources of his country at his service.” Once again it seemed that the French authorities were more interested in advancing than stand ing in the way of exploration.

The African Association was delighted by their latest protégé, and put their faith in his abilities, not least his passing for an Arab in hostile territory. Indeed, so confident were they in Bornemann’s capabilities that they did not pursue enquiries for some time after communications from him ceased. In his last letter to arrive in London, Bornemann had written, “My intention is, respecting that I am the first Traveller in this part of the world going so far, not to stay longer than till the month of September at Bornou [sic] [Chad], but to go to Kashna with that great Caravan, which is always in time travelling from Bornou to Soudan.” It appears that Bornemann’s disguise held up well, and he managed to travel undetected, albeit accompanied by another German as his interpreter, a Muslim convert called Joseph Freudenburg, Bornemann’s Arabic not being adequately fluent.

From Cairo Bornemann and Freudenburg travelled via the oases of Siwa and Aujila to Murzuq, before heading north to Tripoli on the coast. While in Tripoli, Bornemann sent his journals back to London before retracing his steps to Murzuq and continuing south from there to Bornu, where he may have got within sight of Lake Chad. On leaving Bornu, he turned west, getting as far as Bokani, in modern Nigeria, just short of the Niger. There he died some time later of dysentery, a more peaceful if no less unpleasant end than the violent deaths met by many of his fellow explorers.

The Lutheran minister’s son was highly regarded by the locals, who thought him a distinguished Muslim holy man. Partly because of his crossing of the Sahara, the first from the north to the east by a European since Roman times, and also because of his journals, which were the first truly scientific study of the region, Bornemann must be regarded as the most successful “Geographical Missionary” sponsored by the Association. News of his death would not reach the African Association in London until 1819, nineteen years after they received his notebooks sent from Tripoli.

If the agents of the African Association failed to reach Timbuktu or trace the length of the Niger, the impact of their endeavours was still great, not least encouraging other explorers to follow in their footsteps. The invasion by Napoleon exposed Europeans, for the first time since the Roman Empire, to the art and culture of Ancient Egypt, which triggered a decades-long wave of scientific and cultural interest in all things Egyptian, guiding architects and fashionable society among others in the footsteps of the ancients. Regardless of the impact of French culture on Egypt, most notably the introduction of the French administrative and judicial systems, it was not nearly so great as the impact Egyptian culture had on the whole of Western Europe.

Napoleon’s July 1798 invasion of Egypt, nine years after the start of the French Revolution, represented a collision of two civilizations, one new, dynamic, inexperienced and immature, the other, ancient, traditional and conservative. According to al-Jabarti (1753-1825), an Egyptian chronicler whose non-European perspective is very valuable, he and his countrymen initially assumed that the French invasion was a continuation of the Crusades. Only later did he alter his judgment, seeing it as a cultural rather than a religious attack.

After the French invasion, Hornemann wrote to the African Association justifying his decision to travel in disguise, observing that

To travel as a Christian will, perhaps, be impracticable for at least five years to come, for it is incredible how deep and strong an impression the expedition of the French has made on the minds of the pilgrims to and from Mecca: dispersed to their several homes they will carry an aggravated prejudice against Christians far and wide, and to the very heart of Africa.

Al-Jabarti’s own reaction to the invasion was to retreat into a more conservative mode of behaviour, returning to what he saw as traditional practices. An educated man, al-Jabarti’s views were not those of the people, and while he admitted to being intrigued by many aspects of European culture, which he was encountering for the first time, he also believed that resisting the invaders was the right thing to do. Al-Jabarti was convinced that in fomenting
jihad
, Egypt might witness a return to the earliest days of Islam, when Islamic victories were numerous and defeats unknown.

Although militarily the invasion and partial occupation of Egypt was little short of disastrous for the French, who were expelled by British and Ottoman forces just three years after their arrival, Napoleon’s scheme was far grander than a simple military one. Travelling with him from France was a team of 167 scholars, Enlightenment savants who represented many branches of art and science including archaeology and botany. Their studies were recorded by a team of artists and engravers on a scale never before assembled for a military campaign, and the breadth of their research was impressive and its impact on Europe, when published, huge. Napoleon - himself something of an intellectual - always spoke highly of the world of academe, declaring that “The real conquests, those that leave behind no regrets, are those made over ignorance.”

Egyptomania

Although al-Jabarti’s Arabic account was the first into print after the invasion, it did not gain a wide audience until it appeared in translation. For European readers the first bestselling account of the invasion was Dominique Vivant, Baron de Denon’s,
Voyage dans la basse et haute Egypte,
published in 1802 and which appeared in English the next year. Of even greater impact, however, was the monumental and perennially impressive multi-authored
Description de l’Egypte
, the first volume of which came out in 1809, with the complete 23-volume collection, including twelve volumes of plates and one of maps, finally being published in 1829. Between them these two works more than any other revealed the wonders of Egypt to audiences in Europe and America, launching Egyptology as an academic field and precipitating the more populist embrace of all things Egyptian in an explosion of what became known as Egyptomania.

Nascent Egyptomania was clear from Napoleon’s decision to travel with his band of savants. For Napoleon, the creation of an Institute of Egypt and the cataloguing of the country were almost as important as military conquest, at which he ultimately failed. When the
Description
came to be produced, Count Simeon wrote in the Preface, ‘‘A great number of designers, painters, able printers, artisans, and almost 400 engravers have been occupied, with admirable steadfastness, in the execution of this monument that unites the souvenirs of ancient Egypt with the glory of modern France.”

While it is appropriate to acknowledge the Egyptian influence in the heights of artistic creation, the opera
Aida
for example, it is also important to note that Egyptian style also enjoyed a far wider reach. When the Crystal Palace exhibition halls were built in 1854, the Egyptian Court created by the designer Owen Jones was one of the most popular re-creations of foreign settings. In the thirty years after it opened, the Egyptian Court received approximately two million visitors annually. Egyptian themes also became common in advertising, selling everything from cigarettes to bed linen. Egyptian motifs were prevalent in fiction too, and for the burgeoning middle class there were any number of Egyptian-inspired designs in such household items as dinner services.

One of the oddest phenomena of the day was the vogue for mummy parties, in which the host bought a mummy that the guests would then unwrap. The idea of re-animating a mummy with electricity also inspired Edgar Allan Poe to write a satire on the subject. Published in
American Review
in 1845, “Some Words with a Mummy” relates a conversation between a group of educated American men, keen to prove the superiority of their culture, and an Egyptian mummy that the men shock back to life with electricity. In the course of the conversation it becomes clear that modern civilization does not surpass ancient knowledge, except in the production of cough drops, which the mummy is forced to concede he did not have in his day.

The rediscovery of Egyptian culture received a characteristically unique interpretation upon reaching America. A new nation, the United States was still developing an original national identity of its own, and if one of the world’s first nation states could help in this task, it was to be welcomed. The American doctor, occultist and writer Paschal Beverly Randolph encapsulated this view of Egypt when he wrote in 1863, “For America, read Africa; for the United States, Egypt.”

The importance of the Egyptian Revival in architecture can most obviously be seen in the decision that the national monument to George Washington would be an obelisk. The design was selected in a competition in 1836. The winning entry, by Robert Mills, sometimes referred to as America’s first trained architect, for an Egyptian-style monument was what the judges thought most fitting to honour the first president and Father of the Country. Mills’ original design also called for an Egyptian winged-sun motif above the monument’s main entrance, but this was later dropped in favour of the less ornate and less costly design we see today. Upon completion in 1884, more than thirty years after building work started, the 555-foot Washington Monument was the tallest structure in the world; it remains the world’s tallest obelisk.

Modern creations or purloined originals, obelisks remain the most obvious ancient Egyptian monumental structures, partly because of the prominent position they enjoy in cities where they were erected. The earliest obelisk to be removed from Egypt for re-erection in Europe is in St. Peter’s Square, Vatican City, and did not come to the city in the nineteenth century, but in 37 CE on the instructions of the Emperor Caligula. While a cross now crowns the Vatican obelisk, the monument was once topped by a metal ball, which was said to contain the ashes of Julius Caesar. The Cleopatra’s Needles on the bank of the Thames in London and in New York’s Central Park are a pair originally from Heliopolis, via Alexandria, and were unveiled to great public acclaim in 1878 and 1881 respectively. The Luxor Obelisk in Paris was erected in 1836 by King Louis-Philippe in Place de la Concorde, on the spot where a guillotine operated during the French Revolution. This obelisk’s former home for 3300 years was the entrance to the temple in Luxor.

Obelisk plundered by Caligula, in Vatican City

More contemporary creations that demonstrate an abiding love of Egyptian styles would include the glass pyramids erected in the main courtyard of the Louvre museum, designed by the Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei, in 1989. Considering Napoleon’s role in Egypt, and the fact that there are more than 50,000 items in the museum’s Egyptian collection, the striking glass pyramids can hardly be said to be wholly out of place. The large main pyramid and its three smaller satellites were controversial at the time of their construction, not a difficulty encountered by the larger, more affected Luxor hotel and casino in Las Vegas which failed to ruffle any feathers when it opened in 1993. One supposes that whereas the feeling in Paris was that such a modern design was not in keeping with the French and Italian classical and Renaissance architectural styles making up the Louvre, the same was not true of the post-modern brashness of the Luxor Las Vegas, which does seem to fit rather comfortably in its environment.