The Discovery of Egypt

Vivant Denon's Travels with Napoleon's Army

Terence M. Russell

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9780752495811
• Edition: 0
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

Dominique-Vivant Denon was a lover of the Empress Josephine, a compulsive collector, the first director of the Louvre museum and Bonaparte's adviser on artistic matters. Indeed, Denon was known as 'Napoleon's eye'. But the man who impressed the emperor with his courteous manners and his talent for pornographic drawing was also the primary force behind revealing Egypt's civilisation to an astonished Europe.

Invited to accompany Bonaparte during the French Expedition to Egypt - a staging post in Napoleon's campaign to wrest India from the British - Denon was forcibly struck by Egypt's architecture. With often only a few minutes to record the scene before him, he would sketch under fire. On one occasion he worked for sixteen hours, while the windblown sand caused his eyelids to bleed. Upon his return to France, Denon published Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt. His insightful and deeply humane volume became an instant bestseller. Hitherto no one had suspected that Egypt's rich and mature civilisation existed. In this book Terence M. Russell unfolds Denon's colourful, extraordinary and contradictory character. While Denon was the first to present to Europe a true and honest image of ancient Egypt and the first European traveller to spend months exploring the desert and recording the monuments he found there, he was also a hard-headed collector. Throughout his travels he made plans for the wonders of Egypt to be crated up and shipped back to Paris.

The Discovery of Egypt is a story of heroic endurance and accomplishment set against a bloody military campaign. Illustrated with Vivant Denon's incomparable drawings and the works of others who accompanied Napoleon to the deserts of Egypt, it gives an insight into the mind of one of the first Egyptologists: an adventurer, an artist of consummate ability and a compulsive collector.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface: Dominique-Vivant Denon
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The French Armada
• 2 The Conquest of Egypt
• 3 The Storming of Alexandria
• 4 Rosetta and the Battle of the Pyramids
• 5 Abukir Bay and the Battle of the Nile
• 6 The People of Rosetta
• 7 The Delta
• 8 Cairo and the Pyramids
• 9 On the Plain of Saqqara
• 10 In the Province of Fayum
• 11 Under the Shadow of the Libyan Mountains
• 12 Thebes
• 13 To the Cataracts
• 14 Upper Egypt
• 15 Tribulations of an Artist
• 16 Karnak and Luxor
• 17 Dendera
• 18 To the Red Sea
• 19 The Tombs of the Kings
• 20 The Splendours of Middle Egypt
• 21 Departure from Egypt
• Postscript: The French Legacy
• Select Bibliography